Home. It is, in its rightful incarnation, the place where you are declared safe. Home has familiar smells, familiar faces, familiar stuff, familiar food, familiar nuisances. If you have a home, more likely than not most of the time you take it for granted. If you've lost it, you mourn it like family.
The Bible is filled with wanderers in search of home. We join our journeys with theirs, not to find shortcuts, but to better understand what we seek. The Spirit leads us through wildernesses we wouldn't choose for ourselves. The promise is home.
September 5: The Authority of Love
Exodus 19:16-24, Romans 13:1-10, Matthew 18:15-20, Psalm 115:1-11
Context is everything. Taken alone, Romans 13:1 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God...") seems not just to uphold law and order, but to disallow argument with the government--whether it is passing legislation or passing ammunition.
In Romans 12, Paul addresses aspects of how a Christian should act. Verse 12:2 instructs, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." It concludes with verse 12:21, on the love of enemies: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
Christians living by these tenets would be expected to avoid wrongdoing that would necessitate civil punishment. Obviously, much of what is punishable under civil authority--murder, theft, assault, etc.--goes against the ethical traditions of scripture and the call to "live in harmony with one another" (Romans 12:26).
But the defining allegiance for Christians is to God. All constructs of power are subject to sin. Because of that, governments use violence and coercion to get what they want; they may demand unconditional loyalty for reasons of self-preservation instead of the public good; they may make idols of themselves. In those cases the call to live by following Jesus, to live by the law of love, means disobeying civil authority.
If all of creation is God's, then everything we would render unto Caesar is ultimately God's as well.
September 12: On Forgiving
Exodus 20:1-20, Romans 14:5-12, Matthew 18:21-35, Psalm 19:7-14
"Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends." The quote from Shakespeare was on the sign in front of an Italian restaurant in Washington, Pennsylvania. Words of wisdom, right below the weekly pasta special.
Jesus' call to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22) is not, of course, to be taken literally--490 times, not a single more. We are to forgive as often as it takes, and then some. There is not a statute of limitations or a top limit. Put together with Paul's exhortation against judgment (Romans 14:5-12), we have two of the most basic and two of the most difficult teachings in Christian life. Who can say they have completely, consistently followed both?
Jesus specifically did not promise that following him would lead away from conflict. ("Do not think that I have come to bring peace on Earth..."--Matthew 10:34. And see Matthew 18:15-20, which lays out a method for dealing with conflict between members of the community of faith.) But before we burn all our bridges and ready ourselves for casting out those with whom we disagree, we must know that it doesn't mean we're finished with them. Even if conflict requires separation--in a family, church, or community--we are still called to forgive the one we strive with, and not to judge them.
Righteous anger may be the most dangerous kind--justified, often necessary, but it is like a cornered animal if not acknowledged, like a slow poison if not dispersed when its rightful work is done. How do we keep needed arguments on principles from destroying the bonds of life? Do we regularly seek the embrace of a God who forgives each one with infinite mercy and loves each one without bounds? At the end of the day, do we eat and drink as friends?
September 19: Just Payment
Exodus 32:1-14, Philippians 1:21-27, Matthew 20:1-16, Psalm 106:7-8, 19-23
When Jesus told the parable of the laborers, his point may well have been that Gentiles would receive the same blessing in God's reign as the people of Israel (who had worked under the "burden" of the law for centuries).
But if life was fair, shouldn't the ones who labor longest get what they deserve? What about self-sufficiency, hard work, and earning your way in life? The early bird gets the worm. God helps those who help themselves. You get what you work for. Right?
Turn it all over. In God's economy we're worth more than we could ever earn.
New immigrants, homeless men, laid-off factory workers gather in parking lots or line up in front of storefront offices in the early morning, hoping to be picked for a day job (digging, moving office furniture, painting). Paid in cash, if they get picked.
Other people wait by the phone, hoping for a call from the temp agency. Formerly secure professionals find themselves laid off and then rehired as temporary workers or consultants in order to save their employers the cost of paying benefits. A young mother would like a job instead of government assistance, but she can't find one that pays enough for her to afford child care and health insurance.
Does God's economy have anything at all to do with our economy? How do we live as recipients of divine generosity in a society where we sort and rank each other according to employment status and income?
September 26: The Backside of Glory
Exodus 33:12-23, Philippians 2:1-13, Matthew 21:28-32, Psalm 99
The people of Israel, perhaps like many of us, manage to be both jelly-spined and stiff-necked in their faith, easily distracted and hard to move. The first chance they got, the people had broken the divine covenant by worshiping a golden bull (Exodus 32).
Moses, while not flawless, is a faithful and stubborn mediator with God on behalf of the people of Israel. He had successfully convinced God not to destroy the people (32:11-14). But even though they had showed signs of repentance (33:4-6), God was not in the mood to get too close to them. The atmosphere is taut with the counter-pulls of judgment and forgiveness.
Despite God's warning that infinite holiness and finite humanness cannot make direct contact (33:5, 20), Moses demands God's total presence, not just evidence of God's acts. What happens is a compromise: As described in anthropomorphic terms, God offers a rear view (whether God has a backside as we know it is, like most theological mysteries, unprovable).
Our modern concepts of holiness are usually quite different than that of the ancient Hebrews. To the extent that we have broken free from over-focusing on God as a destroying patriarch, the change has been for the better. But where do we find a sense of awe toward God, as well as the kind of stubborn passion that Moses expressed? Do we seek God's action (and our own activism) in the world, but neglect to demand (or acknowledge) God's holy presence?
October 3: Property Rights
Numbers 27:12-23, Philippians 3:12-21, Matthew 21:33-43, Psalm 81:1-10
In the scriptures, more often than not the land that folks are supposed to call home is not the land they're standing on. Witness the Lord sending Moses to the top of a mountain to see the land that is promised to the people of Israel (Numbers 27:12) a land that Moses is forbidden to enter since he rebelled against God earlier. Then there is Paul writing to the church in Philippi that "our commonwealth is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). Christians are supposed to be seeking out a homeland that isn't even on any map.
Through the ages, the hazard with any sort of promised land is that it is usually claimed with bloody force. One people's land of promise is another's land of betrayal, loss, and death. The United States was built, consciously and unconsciously, on the wrenching of soil from others' hands. The gruesome staking of claims and counterclaims shatters the former Yugoslavia. In Israel, ancient promises engender bitterness and violence.
If the pursuit of earthly homelands has destroyed peoples and wounded the Earth, the pursuit of a heavenly country hasn't necessarily been better. Paul emphasizes "straining forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3:13) and not living like those who have "minds set on earthly things" (3:19). While this is a poetic call to a life of righteousness and deep spirit, such thinking has been misused to justify neglect and degradation of the creation, and dismissal or shame of our bodies, lovingly crafted by God.
What kind of tenants are we (Matthew 21:33-43)?
October 10: Strange Etiquette
Deuteronomy 34:1-12, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14, Psalm 135:1-14
Jesus' parables often are permeated with a disturbing melodrama. The parable of the marriage feast has more than its share of violent quirks. Giving your R.S.V.P. by killing the people who deliver the invitation is outrageous behavior by most anyone's standards.
The king's response--burning a city and throwing a wide-open party--is both expected and unexpected. We might expect vengeance in the form of utter destruction, or the different vengeance of generous hospitality to those who the original invitees would see as beneath them. But both actions at once make the king seem a little wild-eyed and dangerous. His fast and harsh casting out of one hapless man who hasn't obeyed the dress code is enough to confirm these suspicions.
This parable leaves us off balance (the better to fall into grace). Since it is addressed to the priests and Pharisees, we could dismiss it as a message just for them, the religious establishment that rejected God's new word in Jesus. But if we see scripture as living word, we also have to hear this parable today.
Have we ignored or, God forbid, been implicit in the killing of God's messengers? Or are we recipients of the second invitation, the ones who always had our noses pressed to the windows, but now are inside, overwhelmed by the candlelight and clink of glasses?
What do you wear to the kingdom of heaven?
No invitation should be taken for granted. And feasts are not something to trudge off to haphazardly. The proper response to a celebration is to prepare for it, to engage it actively. Repentance is not apologizing for doing wrong; it is changing your life's garments in preparation for and celebration of God's feast (and gratefully nibbling appetizers along the way).
October 17: Together and Strong
Ruth 1:1-19a, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22, Psalm 146
The story of Ruth is set in a framework of cultural assumptions that women had no identity or security separate from males--either the ones they married or the ones they gave birth to. Women were defined more often than not by their roles as sexual partners and bearers of heirs.
When Naomi entreats Orpah and Ruth to go back to their mothers' homes in Moab, she wishes for them the best possible hope for their future, new husbands from their native land: "The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband." For herself, old enough that it is unlikely that she will have either a husband or more children, Naomi has little hope: "The hand of the Lord has turned against me."
So Ruth's choice to give up her country and her gods for Naomi is countercultural in more ways than one. The story hinges on Ruth's and Naomi's commitment to each other, the ways they work within a male-dominated system to care and support each other.
Ironically, Ruth's beautiful, lyrical words, "where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16), are often read during weddings. But this is Ruth's cross-generational, cross-tribal, and cross-religion pledge to her mother-in-law, not to a husband.
The story of Ruth and Naomi is one that is repeated again through history. Ones who are displaced, more often than not women, without home or certain means, find each other and stay with each other. Instead of mutual vulnerability making them weaker, their relationship brings forth grace and strength. God moves in subversion of what culture names as security and power.
October 24: Gleaning Grace
Ruth 2:1-13, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Matthew 22:34-46, Psalm 128
Leviticus 19:9-10 instructs, "You shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest....You shall leave them for the poor and for the foreigner." Ruth sets out to seek fields whose owners are obeying this Hebrew law in order to provide for herself and her mother-in-law, Naomi.
Such sloppy harvesting would be an affront to our modern notions of efficiency. Harvesting machinery is designed to gather every kernel possible, milking machines vacuum every drop a cow can give. Never mind that the surplus will as likely mold or be destroyed as be given to the poor and refugee.
In contrast, implied in gleaning is an ethic of gratefulness for the source of the harvest--an acknowledgment that the growth of the grain is a gift given above and beyond the farmer's work, a gift of God's provision that must be shared.
Boaz, noting Ruth's kindness and hard work for Naomi (far beyond the call of duty), responds by taking the gleaning code further. He instructs his workers to leave extra grain for Ruth to gather (2:15-16). Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz act as God toward one another within the limits of their social system--they create and carry blessing to each other, they strive to live in right relationship with God and others.
But while this story demonstrates the possibility of life lived with generosity, note especially the risks that Ruth must take: scraping up sustenance from the leftovers of those with plenty, wandering as a stranger in foreign fields, and standing as a woman alone when a woman alone was vulnerable to harassment or worse. We see in Ruth the plight of the refugee, the widow, the migrant worker. How do we move beyond gleaning to a truly shared harvest?
October 31: More Than Seven Sons
Ruth 4:7-17, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, 17-20, Matthew 23:1-12, Psalm 127
The act of "redeeming" in Hebrew law could mean several different things. As used in the book of Ruth, it refers to the right and obligation of the next of kin to recover or retain the property of a deceased man.
Here it is associated with another legal code that held that the wife of a dead man is to be supported and protected and his family line continued by the next of kin. According to some commentators, the reference to Ruth being "bought" in verse 4:10 can be paraphrased in this context to mean "marry as part of a legally valid commercial transaction"; it doesn't mean she's literally being purchased.
Still, this is small comfort, at least to modern ears. The strong and daring Ruth of earlier in the story is here described as an object to be transferred. And how are we to react to the events of chapter 3, where Ruth approaches Boaz in an encounter that ripples with sexual undercurrents (to uncover a man's feet might mean just his feet or his genitals as well)?
There is a twist in the final scene. The women of the neighborhood gather around Naomi and the child that Ruth has borne by Boaz. "And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying 'A son has been born to Naomi.' " The ultimate result of the maneuvering for a husband for Ruth, and the transaction at the city gate, is a restatement of the love and care between Ruth and Naomi.
When the women say to Naomi that Ruth is more to her than seven sons it is an astounding statement in a society where, as stated before, having sons and husbands was meant to define a woman's life and worth. In the child Obed, in the bonds between Ruth and Naomi, this system is both held up and turned over.
Julie Polter is associate editor of Sojourners.
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