Prophets, Losses, and Complex Truths

MY PARENTS WERE raised watching Westerns in which the tropes were all the same: There were “good guys” and “bad guys.” I was raised on Disney movies with similar tropes. There was little moral complexity in these stories, which I suspect reflects our tendency to look at the world in terms of a good/bad dichotomy. Reality is much more nuanced. I appreciate the way that popular 21st-century movies have embraced some of that nuance. One example is the Oscar-winning film Crash, a complex racial narrative released in 2004. An antagonist police officer in the movie’s opening becomes a hero by the end, while his idealistic partner takes the inverse path. It’s never totally apparent who the “villains” and “heroes” are. While I think our investment in the good/bad dichotomy is still substantial, it seems popular culture might agree with the psalmist who says, “there is none who does good” (Psalm 14:3).

Our willingness to accept human complexity is key to our ability to reshape ourselves into more just communities. Today, we see state legislatures seeking to prohibit educators from teaching uncomfortable truths about our country’s past because of the dominant culture’s inability to confront that truth. I remember the words of James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The scriptures for this month help us change what needs to be changed by facing it and trusting in God’s ability to move us forward.

July 3

Things Difficult to Understand

I ONCE ATTENDED a lecture by theologian James H. Cone where he gave a characteristically powerful address on white supremacy and his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Cone took some questions from the audience and a white sibling, clearly wrestling with all they’d heard, asked what white people should do. I let out an audible sigh. I’d heard this question many times. And while I don’t doubt its sincerity, it continues to feel like misplaced hand-wringing. People who’ve not been socialized to see how racialized the world is find confronting racial inequity daunting. I suspect the answer isn’t so much obscure as it is difficult to receive.

In 2 Kings, Naaman initially rejects Elisha’s prescription for curing his leprosy. Not because it was difficult to do, but because it was difficult to understand. In truth, not everyone will welcome good counsel. In Luke 10, when Jesus sends his disciples out to share the gospel throughout the region, he prepared them for when (not if) they weren’t welcomed. Rejection, however, did not compromise their authority to defeat demons or change the fact that, more important, their names were written in heaven.

Cone never directly answered the question from the audience. I don’t think he could have. He’d already given plenty of answers, but the questioner wanted a particular clarity that wasn’t Cone’s to give. Lack of clarity doesn’t mean we are helpless in the face of the world’s ills. Our task is usually very simple. The challenge is in trusting God to make clear all that we cannot yet discern.

July 10

Neighborly Acts

IN MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s final sermon, as he prepared to demonstrate with sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., he preached from Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan. He noted that the priest and the Levite both asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” King continued, “But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” The Poor People’s Campaign to redress unemployment and housing problems—in which King was engaged following the passage of the Civil Rights Act—was animated precisely by this question: If I don’t act, what will happen to this person?

The prophet Amos, a southerner from Judah, was called to speak truth to the northern kingdom of Israel because God had a bone to pick with a nation that failed to follow the law in its care for the poor and vulnerable. The plumb line, as the prophecy explains, foreshadows a remodeling of an Israel that had become morally dilapidated and needed to be rebuilt to be upright. This prophecy was part of a series in which God promised to no longer pass Israel by and ignore its transgressions. The message wasn’t well received. Amos’ words were distorted. The priest Amaziah told King Jeroboam that it was Amos conspiring against the king, when actually it was God who’d set sights on Jeroboam.

Power always seeks to distance itself from responsibilities to others. But Jesus and the prophets reveal God’s mind about these matters. We are not absolved of our responsibility to act—and our neighbors are determined by our actions, not our proximity.

July 17

Divesting from Empire

HOSPITALITY IN MEDITERRANEAN culture might be the oldest custom we know of in our Judeo-Christian tradition, and in ancient kinship and clan cultures it was absolutely everything. The moral code set forth in Exodus to “welcome the stranger” (23:9) determined how Israel was to treat the foreigner and the visitor among them. Customs and systems of behavior were built around these values. So, when we read the story of Mary and Martha, we should understand Martha’s frustration. Jesus is a visitor in her home. One has certain duties when a guest is present. Martha is doing what she was supposed to do. She was not wrong. Or was she? Hospitality is ultimately about the guest, and here the guest would have rather had Martha sit with Mary. He preferred to be fully who he was—a rabbi—while a guest in her home.

In the Roman Empire, we recall, everything revolved around Caesar and his image. Imagine hearing, as the Colossians did, that Christ “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Christ is proclaimed as the visible image of the invisible God. All things came into being through Christ and thus bear Christ’s image, not Caesar’s. For Paul, maturity in Christ means interrogating our investments in empire and adopting a different standard for our lives.

In All About Love, author bell hooks wrote, “To open our hearts more fully to love’s power ... we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice.” To encounter the fullness of God is to have everything challenged, including the parts of us we think are already right.

July 24

Family Dynamics

THE BOOK OF Hosea is a difficult read. This prophet, from the northern kingdom of Israel, is instructed by God to take a “wife of whoredom” to demonstrate publicly Israel’s infidelity. The names of the children of this marriage all reflect God’s judgment. Yet, within 10 verses, we see a turn. Those once called “not my people” would again be called “children of the living God” (1:10).

Consider the personal and political dynamics in how the Lord’s prayer begins. We say it so much that we may not realize how revolutionary it was for Jesus and his disciples to say these things. Their community was under Roman occupation. Julius Caesar was given a title of divinity after his assassination. His son, Caesar Augustus, capitalized on that title and called himself, while still living, the “son of god,” which he then leveraged to overcome his political rivals. In this context, Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, under occupation by ruling families in which a head of state can be divinized, and his child can claim the same, therefore placing them above reproach. Jesus is already subverting Roman power with his audacious and even treasonous claim that he is God’s son. In teaching his disciples to pray this way, Jesus passes that distinction on to them. God’s “fathership” is shared (“our Father ...”). It is we—not Caesar, not the powerful—who are the “children of the living God.” If God is your parent and it is the duty of parents to care for their children, then God is obligated to care for you. God can do no other!

July 31

Obsessed To Possess

LUKE'S GOSPEL TELLS the story of one sibling’s appeal to Jesus for justice. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me” (Luke 12:13). We might expect Jesus to support the plea, but we’re dealing with Jesus here. It is not that Jesus doesn’t understand their problem; he just sees a deeper issue.

Jesus responds with a parable about a landowner whose land had produced much and so decided to tear down his barns to build bigger ones. The landowner hopes to relax for the rest of his life, but he dies before he can enjoy any of it. Jesus is speaking to both siblings, warning one not to be greedy with the inheritance and warning the other to not let pleas for justice be motivated by greed. If these siblings are more concerned about the inheritance than the relationship, then they have already lost. What is justice, after all, void of relationship?

To the community of Colossians, Paul lists sins that those who have been raised in Christ should “put to death” (3:5). The culmination of Paul’s list is greed, which he reminds the reader “is idolatry.” We associate greed with hoarding money, but it can also show up when we make an idol of the status quo or create hierarchies of oppression among marginalized identities. Christians must be careful to discern the things that undermine community, even when those things claim to be in the pursuit of justice.