New York vs. Miami. Last night’s match-up was supposed to be a game that would make or break Jeremy Lin. It had all the pieces for an epic David vs. Goliath story: the best villains the NBA could conjure, the glitz and glamour that comes with an All-Star weekend, even LeBron James’ receding hair line. But after scoring eight points and committing eight turnovers, this game was just another tough learning experience for Jeremy Lin—and a fitting metaphor for the conversation that was sparked by the “Humble Hero from Harvard.”
Lin’s road ahead will be paved with wins and losses (like last night’s 102-88 defeat), and only time will tell if his sudden NBA stardom is a fleeting moment or a lasting career. But for better or for worse, Lin has became a symbol within the current conversation surrounding race in America. What started as the boyish, charming story of the rise of a basketball phenom with a vocal Christian faith took a cynical turn after Floyd Mayweather pulled the race card and ESPN threw in a slur for good measure. Fortunately, the symbolism hasn’t been wasted; rather, it has turned into a fascinating conversation about the need for forgiveness and humility.
An Elite Minority
I’d imagine that like nearly every other Asian-American I know, some friend has tried to convince Jeremy Lin that A Christmas Story is a good movie. I’m sure there are good reasons as to why it appears on nearly every must-see/top 10 Christmas movie list. But like so many others, I completely lose all of my patience for it when the family goes to the Chinese restaurant. I’ve tried to persevere; I’ve tried to get to what I suspect is a happy ending. But I can never seem to get past that point of the film because it takes me back to the place where Asian-Americans like myself are portrayed as ignorant and primitive people.
Thankfully, Asian-Americans have come a long way from the caricatures we used to play. Hollywood has transitioned from offering us emasculating, nerdy, tech-support walk-on parts to strong and more complex leading Asian roles. (Granted, they sometimes end up looking like modern-day samurais, but at least it’s a step in the right direction).
Simply put, Asian-Americans now stand in a unique place within the race conversation in the United States. We are considered to be an elite minority. Elite because the racial stereotypes presented tend be mostly positive: Asian-Americans are good at math, play musical instruments, have survived tiger mothers—and now, might even be good at basketball. Sure, we don’t drive as well as some people, but that’s because our eyelids are more narrow, right?
ESPN and Reconciliation
What happened at ESPN was inevitable. Someone was going to make a “chink” comment. But after ESPN attempted to make amends for their gaffe by firing one employee and suspending another, two of their commentators had one of the best conversations I have heard about race in a long time. Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless went on the air to address their frustration with the very nature of the conversation. Unlike the hilarious SNL skit that used clever Jeremy Lin puns to slyly comment on the undefined, lopsided race conversation in this country, Smith and Bayless risked their public profiles and said something of real substance.
Smith outlined the need to be more careful about how minority groups respond to racially charged situations as there is currently a bad precedent set by groups that over-respond to genuine mistakes. And Bayless added we all have to be more mindful that we have entered a new chapter in American history, where every enthic group can feel marginalized, including those who have been historically identified as the oppressors.
As this back-and-forth took place, it was almost as if the two were simply reciting lines from the book of Proverbs or pulling on New Testament language of forgiveness and humility. It was almost as if the practical wisdom offered in holy Scripture was being uttered as a worthy guide for what it means to live into the image we were created to be.
It was a conversation handled with the incredible poise Lin himself is becoming synonymous with.
Hum-LIN-ity
Jeremy Lin’s public profile has certainly blossomed in the past few weeks. He was even offered a GQmagazine cover—Lin turned down the opportunity because he felt it would be a distraction from his team. And this was by no means the first time he made such a gesture.
In a video clip of Lin sharing his testimony with a Chinese Church, he described all the things that needed to happen for him to have a shot at playing for the Knicks. He broke down the elements he had no control over and confessed that every part was a gift from God.
In an interview after he played the Lakers, he was asked, “What were your nerves like at the start of the game?”
Lin responded: “The same as every game … I play as hard as I can. I try to do everything I can to help my team win. And I play unto God. That’s it.”
Later in the same interview, he was asked, “Can you describe what your family’s reaction has been to all of this this past week and seeing you on the back page of [New York Post]?”
He said: “We are just thankful. The journey was very different. It’s been tough at times and my family has been through a lot … just the last year and a half, the downs we had to go through, but God is faithful and He put us on this unbelievable journey. We are just trying to enjoy everything right now. We are trying to stay together and make sure we handle everything the right way.”
It is clear that for Lin, humility and forgiveness have defined his faith. Maybe that’s the lesson we should take away from all of this. If we are going to make any progress with the tensions between differing races and cultures, then minorities need to be more forgiving. Because, as Lin has said, “you can rise as quickly as you can fall.” And we need to be more gracious in the way we handle the inexperience of others—even if that means eventually watching A Christmas Story all the way to the end.
Christopher Esposito-Bernard is the Dir. for Children, Youth & Family Ministries at All Angels’ Church in New York City. Although his name doesn’t show it, he’s an Asian-American whose mother immigrated to this country from South Korea.
God is at work through the most unlikely people. A helpful reminder for us self-important types.
First published at Out of Ur.
Some of the most important moments of faith do not come from the places we expect. They may not come from behind a pulpit or an altar, in corporate worship, or during a retreat. Those of us leading congregations are often tempted to think God works through us most. In our best moments, we are able to point to God’s work and simply step aside. But sometimes we forget that the Spirit of God is working even harder than we are. Sometimes this can catch us off guard. Like when I met Annie.
Annie was sitting outside the doors of our sanctuary. She had a battered, plastic blue shovel in one hand, her father’s hand in the other, and drool dripping on her shirt. Her father looked tired. No—beaten. Beaten by the unfulfilled dreams his daughter’s disease stole from him. Beaten by the guilt of wanting something more for his child. Frustrated at a God who would allow his daughter not to be “normal.”
I had just finished leading our children’s worship when I saw his daughter. To my naive surprise, Annie didn’t join the other children during their worship. And at the moment I thought about it, the reason was obvious. Kids with Down Syndrome aren’t like “normal” kids. They belong to the group of “special needs.” And since most churches don’t have the resources to accommodate this segment of our population, families who have to live with this struggle seldom feel fully welcomed.
Annie’s dad just wanted to sit in the service. He and his wife were trading off the responsibility of sitting with Annie. And she didn’t want to go inside, which meant they wouldn’t be able to fully connect during the service.
So with my own, broken sense of self-importance, I sat with them. Prayed with them. Sang with them. All outside the doors of the sanctuary. I had no idea that Annie was going to minister to me in the moments that followed.
I shared with her the Sunday school lesson of the day. And she shared that she understood the story. Then she plopped right next to me and we worshiped together. As I sang the lyrics of the song the congregation was singing, she repeated each line as if they were questions. I nodded along and we played this game of back and forth, where each question would break apart the melody and reveal the meaning. She, with her innocent curiosity, gave me an incredible gift. She helped me see faith through her eyes, and with new vision I was able to see the simple beauty of believing what we were singing. She exposed the awe present in a child’s faith in a way I had never seen before.
Or like when Bo taught me to love a terrorist.
During my first year of youth ministry, September 11 was still a very recent memory. I was very young, overly ambitious, and way too confident in my own abilities to teach the Bible to middle school students. I was trying to offer lessons in synoptic comparisons—the standard curriculum for middle school students!—when it happened.
We were comparing “the Sermon on the Mount” with “the Sermon on the Plain” when a seventh grade boy got a very serious look on his face. After Sunday school had finished and all the other students had left, he sat down next to me and asked what it meant to forgive our enemies. I asked (like all youth workers who aren’t exactly sure where the conversation is going) what he thought.
I assumed he was wondering about how to respond to bullies when he said something that took me completely off guard.
“Do you think Jesus would have forgiven Osama bin Laden?”
Shocked, I pressed the point again. “What do you think?”
His response still sits with me nearly a decade later:
“I think I want to pray for him.”
Or like when I heard the story of the Original Sanitation Worker.
There’s a guy who sleeps on a cardboard box near the front steps of our church. He’s been in the neighborhood for about 15 years, and people have been treating him like he was less than human for at least as long.
He never showers or changes his clothes. Once something he is wearing literally disintegrates, he throws on another layer like fresh paint over a battered wall. But that never contains the smell. He won’t accept food, water, or any type of help. He just digs through the trash, finds food that strangers have foolishly wasted, and stands on the corner of 80th and Broadway as a symbol of what happens when we dehumanize each other.
But the other day, I heard some of his neighbors talking about him. And they see a very different kind of person. They see the guy who digs through the trash for cans and bottles, not for himself, but for the other homeless women and men who share his stretch of the Upper West Side. When they ask if he wants the 30 cents he scrounged for them earlier that morning, he whimsically walks away and shouts over his shoulder, “Mail it to me.”
Why is it that grace continually surprises us? I don’t know. But with all the demands that come with pastoral work, it’s easy to allow fatigue, stress, anxiety, a desire to please, the disease of ego, or the busyness that fills all of our lives to prevent us from identifying God’s grace. But that grace appears in unexpected ways and places. And part of our work is to be open to it. To look for it. To claim it as God’s work in God’s people. All so we can mean it when we say, “Amen.”
Sermon Preached at All Angels’ Episcopal Church, New York, NY on July 10, 2011
Holy Father, help us be a people with ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to receive the words your Son has spoken. And as we make our way to the foreign land your Son inhabited so long ago, may his words rain down on us in such away where we will be renewed and refreshed. We pray these things in your name. Amen
So Jesus was having an odd sort of day. He had been healing people when some Pharisees and teachers accused him of working for the devil. Jesus responds elegantly as always using logic and the Old Testament to help them see that this accusation simply could not be true.
But as he was responding to them, His mother and brothers made their way to the crowd, asking if they could speak to Him. To their surprise, Jesus said something that might not have gone over very well. He said to the crowd, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Like I said, Jesus was having an odd day.
After this encounter, Jesus left the home he was in. I don’t know why Jesus thought it was a good idea to get some air, or why he made his way to a nearby lake, but a crowd began to follow him. The crowd grew to point where Jesus had to step onto a boat and pushed off from the shore so that he could get a little distance. And as he was floating there, he told this parable.
“A farmer went out to sow his seeds.
“As he was scattering his seeds, some fell along a path, and the birds came and ate them up.
“Some fell on rocky places, where there was very little soil. The seeds sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.
“Other seeds fell among thorns and the thorns choked the plants.
“Still other seeds fell on good soil and they produced great crops — a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
“Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
After hearing Jesus share this parable, the disciple didn’t get what He was talking about, which I find deeply reassuring. If for no other reason that it gives us the freedom to say sometimes we don’t know what Jesus is talking about.
And I find this liberating because if they didn’t get it, and they were with him for years, then it gives me permission to say things, like “I don’t know” or “I don’t have an answer for that.” It reminds me of Paul’s language in Second Timothy about running the race. And I just find it comforting.
But I also find comfort that Jesus does go on and explain what he means when he uses parables.
Responding to his disciples question about why He uses parables, Jesus says this:
“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, and not to them… blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but didn’t see it. And to hear what you hear, but didn’t hear it.”
Jesus then goes on to explain what he means by the Parable of the Sower:
“When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.
“The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
“The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
This explanation is really helpful, but there are a couple of things the disciple would have immediately got that Jesus doesn’t need to explain.
I think the most obvious detail for them would have been that God is the Sower. And God is reckless when it comes to scattering blessings. Unlike a cautious farmer, who is methodical about planting her seeds in good soil, God just throws them and lets each seed go wherever they will land. This is an image of God that they would have gotten because they were the recipients of incredible grace and this is a lesson that would be hard for them to forget.
The other detail that they would have just known is that Jesus seldom talks about a person’s identity within an individualistic context. Jesus’ understanding of a person is rooted in a communal identity, meaning a person is a part of a family, village, or clan. To say you are from somewhere or belong to a particular family carries a great deal of meaning. It means that people can make assumptions about you and most of the time they are true. It means that you are a reflection of the community you come from and how you act shapes how others will view your community.
This is particularly important if we think back to what Jesus had just done earlier that day. Before he spoke this parable, he did something incredible. He redefined his family and said that you are not defined by where you have come from; you are defined by what you do. And if your actions are in tune with what God’s desires, then you belong to God’s kingdom. You are Jesus’ sisters and brothers and, in some sense, a mother.
When we look at the Parable of the Sower through this lens, some of the meanings shift and we have to re-imagine Jesus’ meaning for the churches today.
After reading these passages, I can’t help but wonder if He would have prescribed some additional meaning to this parable.
Like for the path:
Would Jesus have identified just the evil one or any action that could rob someone of a blessing? If its the latter, then groups in churches, sometimes referred to as the Frozen Chosen or the Old Guard or the Older Brother, have to be really careful. Because taking away an opportunity from other people to invest in a community robs them of a chance to belong and feel like they are valued as active members of the Church.
Or like the part about the shallow soil:
Have churches done enough to encourage depth or have we had other priorities? Because if we have placed other priorities over depth, then nothing we do will stick. Roots won’t sink in. And all our efforts will be wasted. And if we are open to the recent criticism of Eugene Peterson, then we will recognize that churches have been more concerned with entertainment (when it comes to our children), performance (when it comes to our services) and institutionalization (when it comes to the business of churches). By and large, our churches have given way to a culture preoccupied with consumerism, which means depth isn’t even on the table.
In the interview where Peterson makes these observations, he talks about how individual consumption has driven our piety. And as a result, we jump from one church to another using language about how our needs aren’t being met. This view of the self hinders our ability to cultivate depth. When we can’t stay still, or are too egocentric about our faith, we don’t have the experiences to become good soil.
These words were probably the hardest for me to hear because I’ve done my fair share of bouncing around. But what Peterson does in voicing this opinion is offer wisdom only age can give. Peterson doesn’t just speak as someone who embodies good soil. He speaks as some who is “rich” soil. Which why despite his criticisms, he describes optimism about where the Church is going because in the end Christ is still Lord.
And we should find comfort in that. Because with discipline and time, we can be people who really have ears to hear what God is doing and not people who are so distracted by advertisements and cultural messages that just make everything blur. We can be people who are patient with others, who call out the good in others, and carefully tend the broken because we can continually experience the love of God in a profound ways.
And I think this is why the bit about the thorns are so important because it warns us what happens when we put anything above our trust in God’s Lordship.
A bunch of years ago, I was in Korean church in Atlanta “piously” preparing my heart for the service. I’m sure I thought I had good intentions at the time, which is why I came early to sit in the sanctuary as the worship team practiced. But reflecting on it now, I’m pretty sure my motives weren’t so pure. There was probably some girl on the worship team I wanted to impress because that’s what you do when your 19. Eh, what can I say?
Back then, I was a freshly declared theology major who thought he knew much more than he actually did. Turns out, some things are hard to change, despite the better angels God grants us (most notably, my wife). But God was about to show me how far I needed to go if I was going to live the life God had intended.
You see, I wasn’t the only person who had come to church early that day. Annie was there too.
Annie was a short, plump Korean girl with Down syndrome. And as I walked in the sanctuary, I heard her before I saw her. She had come early because she couldn’t wait for church to start. And as soon as the worship band started practicing, she literally couldn’t contain herself. She sang so loudly and so badly that you couldn’t help but smile. And as I saw the worship team navigate their way through their practice, two things struck me.
First, the worship team absolutely adored this girl. So much so that they would play each song to the end before they went back to talk about the corrections they needed make, which probably took more time then they had. And second, I realized that I was never going to love God as deeply, as passionately, or as innocently as Annie. And as I heard her sing bad note after bad note, my heart began to break. It was like she was tearing at my thorns, ripping them out with tender love. And as this process began to settle in, a conviction settled in too.
That day, I learned that some of the most important people who can shape our faith will never stand behind a pulpit or break bread behind a table or write a theological masterpiece. Those who prop themselves up to be wise will be put to shame and those with the simplest faiths, like children, will inherit the Kingdom of God and truly be good soil.
I wish Jesus said more about what it looks like to be good soil. Maybe he didn’t because we have a tendency to value the heart over actions or works over faith. Most of us don’t hold the two in tension together very well.
Maybe, if we pressed him a little bit, like the disciples did, He would say good soil is kind. Good soil likes to listen. People who embody good soil probably would consider themselves unworthy of the title. They might describe themselves as having their own thorns, like Paul, or they might be open about their own shortcomings. They probably learned early on that they couldn’t do it all on their own and sought a mentor. And as they got older, they became open to the idea they could mentor others and generously give of their time. Really good soil has self-control, is slow to anger, and is patient. Really good soil has been refined by age, compassion, and most of the time pain. Pain because there is a cost in carrying a cross, or having thorns ripped out of you. It’s not easy. It requires discipline and no one does it on their own. But then again, no one does it on their own. We do it together. And maybe that’s the lesson we should learn from this passage. We can only do it together.
And so may we be a people who have ears to hear. May we recognize that we are in this together: one body of Christ, striving to be good soil, racing towards the end. May we be willing to listen to those in need with compassion and offer grace in ways that are fresh and new so that we can truly be the sisters and brothers of Jesus, our Lord and King. We pray these things in your name, Father in Heaven. Amen.
First Published at RELEVANT. As if his name alone doesn’t cause seventh-grade boys to snicker, New York Representative Anthony Weiner has become the current, cheap political punchline. After sending lewd photos and maintaining inappropriate online relationships with several women, his indiscretions have been mocked on a variety of news outlets, from NPR to The Daily Show. And after a couple of weeks of headlines, the jokes turned out to be in bad taste with the realization that his wife of almost one year is pregnant. What started off as another story of a politician enduring the ridicule of being culpable in a failing marriage has become a sad and all too familiar story of brokenness. While the public is enraged and calling for his resignation, I’m torn in a different direction. For me, it’s not just that he cheated on his wife or he lied about sex. A lot of people cheat. A lot of people lie. No, it is the blatant hypocrisy of it all. In a culture that has degraded intimacy to “hooking up,” where tabloids at checkout stands talk about who is sleeping with whom and where “normal” teenagers have four sexual partners by the time they graduate from high school, why are we shocked that the practices starting at such an early age are ingrained in the actions of “respectable” adults? We don’t live in a society where sexuality is heralded as sacred. And yet, we are scandalized by its misuse?
The hardest part of this conversation is that the highest virtue in American culture is “just don’t hurt someone else.” All things are permissible—as long as no one else is in “danger.” But there is a large leap from that standard to valuing the hard work and care necessary for cultivating a relationship that will be able to endure.
A person can’t just become a faithfully monogamous person if they are often encouraged to “experiment” in college or view a successful marriage as one that doesn’t end too quickly. If intimacy in practice has been a series of one-night stands, then sex fails to be intimate. We sell sex all the time through television shows, advertisements and other forms of entertainment we indulge in. Which makes the way the media has portrayed Weiner as another fallen, sleazy person just confusing. How can the media sell sex so openly and then come down on a person when they buy it?
The sad truth is that as we all endure the constant degradation of sex and sexuality as a vehicle of personal consumption, we have lost sight of the sacredness and joy of intimacy. Even Christians try to sell monogamy with tag lines like, “Christians have the best sex.” We have allowed the sin of gluttony to enter into commonplace, only to find that sex can never satisfy the emotional wounds caused by rejection and loneliness.
What we need is to offer something more—treating sex like it is a sacred union between two people, calling people to true intimacy.
True intimacy is possible, but like other Christian virtues, that process takes time. We have to be refined by sanctification. Just like a person has to learn what it means to enter into adulthood through adolescence, spiritual maturity takes time to fully arrive. And as conversation about Weiner continues to circulate, there needs to be that step between the one extreme of sexual gluttony and the other of mature monogamy.
Perhaps this is the place where the Church can be most helpful. Maybe we should be practicing the patience that comes with wisdom, the understanding of having been there, the grace to be sympathetic when we encounter people whose ultimate (though often misdirected) desire is to feel connected to others. Churches should function as places where people can come as they are and find the support they need to go from the limp bondage of broken humanity to the health and joy the Gospel offers. We need to be better about saying: “There is good news. There are ways we can heal.”
HOLY WEEK IS one of those traditions that may only seem to have a market for theology students. For most, Easter means hard-boiled eggs, chocolate rabbits and spending time with family. But for those of us fascinated by this set of odd rituals, there is something significant found in reliving the drama of the days between Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and the resurrection celebrated on Easter Vigil. Far too often, we look past this part of the story. We get so excited by resurrection and hope that we miss the pain of the disciples. We don’t like dwell in their suffering. We don’t want to experience the death of Jesus. We don’t comprehend that as Jesus descends into hell, God risks everything for us—even God’s very self. The way we think about death is not just important in the midst of crisis or tragedy. Only when we take the full weight of Jesus’ death can we fully comprehend the fragile moments of tragedy. And only then can we fully understand the grace Jesus shows us along the way.
Sermon on Lazarus, preached at All Angels’ Episcopal Church, April 10, 2011.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on a bench outside of church when one of my students walked up to me. She sat down and proceeded to tell me her mother’s cancer came back. It didn’t look good. After several months had passed, we found ourselves standing near the same spot of that first conversation as we buried her mother’s ashes.
That death was the first of a long series of tragic events. It felt like every other day I was at a funeral or at a hospital or picking up the phone only to hear more heart breaking news.
It became so frequent that it felt like Death would come home with me. Not in a dark-cloud-morbid sort of way, but in a should-I-pour-you-a-drink-after-a-long-day kind of way.
For a season, Death and I, we hung out. And it felt like no matter what I did, Death was just around. But after a few months of this, there was this moment where, it was almost like Death actually spoke to me. He said, “You know, I’m not the end of the story.”
Rationally, I knew that. I believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus. I believe our resurrection will one day come. I believe that part of this entire Christian thing means that we are given true freedom. Not the freedom that enables us to make our own decisions. Rather the freedom that liberates us from selfishness, additions, loneliness, depression, poverty, sickness, and finally death. But part of me, part of me didn’t, and still doesn’t, want to experience the part that comes before resurrection.
You see, I want to rushed through the story, which is way Lazarus’s story is so important. Because I want rushed through his story too. I want to make my way to the end, to see him stumbling out of the cave, wrapped in strips of white linen, clapping Jesus on the shoulder with a sly look in his eye saying, “You should have seen their faces,” like it was his attempt to be funny.
And I want to laugh at the joke because laughing is better than the crying I would have just gone through.
But that’s not how the story goes.
Jesus makes his way back to Bethany and Lazarus is dead. Mary and Martha are devastated. And yet, as the story unfolds, the thing that strikes me are their friends.
In a truly responsible, pastorally-sensitive act, they simply sat with them and kept them company. They didn’t try to give them words of comfort. Their presence was their comfort. They didn’t try to keep their distance. They intrude into their space. They made sure that their lives were inconvenienced for the sake of these two women. They even went a step further and followed Mary so that she wouldn’t be alone after they thought Mary was heading to the tomb to cry. It had been four day, and their friends were still there.
If only more of us who belong to God’s heavenly kingdom would act like these incredible women.
But here’s the truly extraordinary part: Jesus’s exchange between Mary and Martha is completely different from His interaction with His other disciples.
To the 12, it was like Jesus was throwing up his arms saying, “Man, you guys are thick. You don’t you get what I’m trying to say. I was trying to be nice. I was trying to break the news to you gently.”
But it’s clear through their response that they were less concerned about Lazarus’s safety and more concerned about their own. Their response exposes the real complexity of this story. It wasn’t just that Lazarus was dead. It was that Jesus was risking his own safety to go back to Bethany. And Jesus was risking theirs.
Up to this point in John’s account, multiple plots had been made to kill Jesus. And with the power and the authority only the Son of God could exercise, Jesus walked away from two stonings.
At this point in the John’s gospel, the disciples knew the cost of following him. They had been alienate and ridiculed for following this man. Their very lives had been threatened. And no one knew the cost of following Jesus better than the 12.
Despite the risk, they followed Him back to Bethany.
But it’s when Jesus sees Martha where something in him changes. His heart breaks a little. He is moved. And when Martha says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” you can hear the desperation in her voice. The pain, the grief, and everything that comes with it.
Jesus’s response almost seems hollow in a culture that takes for granted resurrection. He says, “Your brother will rise again.”
For those of us whom have experienced people close to us pass, we know the sting of those words. It’s almost as if there is a subtext there that spells out, “Why don’t you have more faith?” Like our faith is somehow less than.
But that’s not what Jesus meant. After Martha tries to receive some distant-future-comfort, Jesus says, “No. You don’t get what I’m saying.” Jesus had something else in store that day.
With the words of Jesus still hanging there, Martha went to retrieve her sister, Mary.
When Mary saw Jesus, she fell at His feet with tears in her eyes. Echoing the words of her sister, she said, “Lord, if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.”
And again, John says, “He was deeply moved” and his spirit was troubled.
That entire process mattered. Going through that death mattered. Because “This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.”
It’s like baptism.
We rush to celebrate our newest members.
We make promises to these people that we will support them, love them and care for them.
But we rush past the metaphor of dying. We have to die first. And then, we rise.
It wasn’t until I was forced to confront Death, to look him in the face, when I realized that Death wasn’t my enemy. That victory had already been won.
But during that season, I wrestled with Death. We brawled. We fought. We exchanged blows. And Lamentations couldn’t contain the words I had for my God. But in the end, I limped away having taken to heart all the cliched things you hear when Death needs to teach you something:
Death gave me perspective.
Death reminded me to love people moment by moment because each moment is a gift.
Death reinforced the importance of forgiveness.
And Death taught me something about Jesus’s love.
During that season, my Dad and I were in the midst of one of our normal “Father-Son” spats. It’s crazy to think that those closest to us can bring out the best and worst in us. But there we were, at it again, trying to prove something meaningless to one another, when it happened.
I had just gotten back from another funeral when he called. His best friend, a man who would have been my godfather if my father believed in a god, passed away. Our relationship had been mending, but it was that moment where we both forgave each other for the childish ways we had been treating each other. His death gave us both perspective.
And within a few months, after a couple more funerals, my dad was hospitalized. A tiny piece of scare tissue wrapped itself around his bowel, killing nearly a foot of it. Ten years ago, that would have been it for my dad. They wouldn’t have caught it in time. They almost didn’t catch this time.
And there, Death was again telling me, “You still have lessons to learn if you want to really get this loving Jesus thing.”
There was a lot of emotion in those months. Some of which I am still processing through, but I know one thing for sure: Jesus was there. Just like He was there for Mary and Martha.
After Martha went to get Mary, Mary took Jesus to Lazarus’s tomb. And there, He wept. Jesus felt all the things Mary and Martha were feeling. And He was moved.
Despite knowing how the story would end, Jesus was present with them. He carried their pain with them. And after a short prayer, so that no one would doubt how this was happening, Jesus proved that “This Illness Didn’t End in Death.”
He called to those around him and asked them to roll back the rock. Jesus could have called upon the heaven to crack open this tomb, but Jesus asked those present to begin His work.
And then, Jesus called to tomb. And Lazarus rose.
He actually rose.
In 7 days, we enter Holy Week. We will hear the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem. We will wash each other’s feet. And we will the hear the words Jesus spoke, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do.” This is a serious time for the Church because during this time we experience the death of Christ. But we also wait for something else. We wait to boldly proclaim, “This Illness Doesn’t End in Death.” For just as Jesus demonstrated that death is no longer our enemy with the resurrection of Lazarus, we testify that Jesus is Lord, with His.
So about a year ago, I vaguely remember reading something I thought was ridiculous at the time. Some person wrote about how hurt they were after they experience something truly painful and then blamed God for someone else’s actions.
While I understand that impulse, at the time I was fed up with people taking cheap shots at the God I love. And so I wrote a response that lacked any sense of pastoral care. That response was rightly not well received. It was more callous than it should have been and it lacked the sensitivity to meet people in really vulnerable places.
Thankfully, a great editor at RELEVANT took a small portion of the original post and turned it something that is more, well, edifying.
Check it our at Daily Devotional - Mad at God?
First Published at Out of Ur.
I love and hate the book of Job. I love it because it poses challenging pastoral questions—like being tested by God or God’s tolerance for the devil—but I hate it because it challenges my understanding of what it means to have a pastoral spirit.
Most know Job’s story. Satan approaches God for permission to test Job. God says, “Fine, just don’t kill him.” Job loses everything, including his wealth and his children. His wife tells him to curse God and die. And then, as if that weren’t enough, he gets this weird skin disease and tries to scrape it off with broken pieces of a clay jar.
It is in this moment that his friends decide to pay him a visit. They spend a week with him, just being present with him, mourning with him, and providing for his needs—a great example of pastoral care. But after the week has passed, the real reason for their visit becomes apparent. They are there to help Job discover what he did wrong.
The audience knows Job hasn’t done anything wrong. God actually considers Job to be blameless, righteous. But in chapter after chapter, Job goes back and forth with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. He adamantly argues that he did nothing wrong. And while Job’s anger is expressed in truly poetic ways, he never curses God. Job’s commitment to God does not change.
Then in chapter 32 a young, overly zealous Elihu enters the story and takes on the mantel to verbally assault Job into submission. He uses phrases like “I want to vindicate you” and “I will teach you wisdom.” He accuses Job of being more interested in making a profit than pleasing God, among other things. It is only after Elihu stops talking that God finally says something—and what God says breaks my heart.
God pushes back not on Job, but on the four accusers. God berates them with question after question, challenging their notions of who God is : a god that governs over transactions or a god defined by God’s relationship with Israel. As God speaks from the storm, I get the sense that the Book of Job isn’t about Job at all. It is about those who attempt to speak on God’s behalf.
Job’s response is beautiful. He says “I am unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.”
But to the four that spoke for God, God says, “I am angry with you… because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has…” And the story ends with Job being restored.
There is a real danger in pastoral work. The temptation to push past humility in our confession of what God is doing pulls at us all, and we need to resist this temptation. Often we are called upon to make sense of what is going on around us, and far too often we can’t. This leaves us scrambling with uncertainty at best; and at worst, it puts us in a position to substitute our own authority for God’s. But God speaks for Godself. It is not our place to judge or to condemn. It is our place to love. Because most of the time we don’t know what’s really going on. And when we attempt to place judgment on someone, or explain why God has allowed something to happen, we end up looking foolish. Who knows the mind of God? Not Job, not his friends, not his wife, and certainly not us.
But shouldn’t we preach the truth above all other things? Shouldn’t we justify our positions and stances on cultural issues that threaten our friends, families, and communities? Of course. But if at any point we presume to think that those we interact with are not created, and therefore loved, by God, then we fall into the danger of treating people as a means to an end, rather than an end unto themselves.
We need to be careful not to hold on to our towers of superiority or criticize people we think are wrong, or are sinning, or are corrupting our society. We cannot continue to ignore God’s warning, “Who are you to obscure my plans with words without knowledge?” And we must listen to Jesus, “Let the person without sin throw the first stone.”
Simply put, we need to be more loving. We need to be more humble. We need to show more self control. Or put differently, I need to more loving, I need to be more humble, I need to show more self control. Because as I heard the voice of Elihu speak, I thought it could be my own—a young man speaking out of turn, passionately compelled by the sound of his own voice, and still in need of more grace than he is willing to admit. Maybe that’s just the voice of my generation, too intoxicated with our achievements or our potential. Either way, I need to take some more time and listen to Job. And hopefully, I’ll cover my mouth before I preach.
In Korean society, everyone refers to each other in familial terms. Words like, “Brother,” “Sister,” “Uncle,” and “Aunt” are so common it’s simply ingrained into how you view others. The people in a korean community are a part of one family. We are all members of a collective, affecting and reflecting each other.
There is a similar sentiment in Nigerian culture. Family is extended beyond the American nucleus. Homes are filled with cousins, even if they aren’t tied by blood. Everyone is a part of the family.
And so, when I married Ariel, I married into a Nigerian family as well. She had been unofficially adopted into the Olateju family in college and Yemi, the matriarch, continuously referred to her as her “white daughter” - the explanation for why an Italian, red-headed New Yorker was running around with her six children during vacations and holidays.
Several members of the Olateju family participated in my wedding. Yemi and her husband, Sunday, made a promise to support us in our marriage. Lola, their oldest daughter, was one of the bridesmaids. And on that day, I embraced six new siblings.
But on May 29, in a moment of confusion and utter despair, our youngest sister took her life.
Tinu was 15. She was a deeply passionate Christian whose faith was expressed well beyond Sunday mornings. She fought against the social pressures of High School, prayed fervently, and helped others pragmatically experience love. Being one of a few African American girls in her school, she knew what it meant to be an outsider. But even in her popularity, she didn’t tolerate the division often found between those who are and aren’t socially accepted. She was a peacemaker, a true testimony of her grace.
The shock of her death hits us in different ways, but we knew how her parents would react. When a child dies in a Nigerian family, the parents don’t participate in the funeral. They mourn at home with their family. Others step in to make the arrangements. And Ariel and I stepped in to bury our sister. We bought jewelry for a corpse, wrote the obituary, mediated family conflicts, and solidified the necessary arrangements. We did all the things that come with death, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to celebrate the life she had lived. She had so much more to live for, so much potential, so much hope.
Despite our emotional turmoil, it’s in moments like these where the hope for resurrection is most meaningful. Knowing that God’s love refuses to control us so that we can truly be made in God’s image; knowing for true love to be expressed, the very worst had to be possible; knowing Jesus took on the worst so that we never have too; and knowing in Jesus’ resurrection we too will witness the defeat of death; there is only one fitting response.
At Tinu’s funeral, we sang these words: “Lord, you are good. And your mercy endures forever.” May we be reminded of these fundamental truths and never lose sight of God’s grace, even for those departed.
Another RELEVANT piece.
The stabbing of Joseph Igbineweka, student body president of California State University, Chico, is only the latest tragic event escalating racial tensions in the California university systems.
During Presidents Day weekend at the University of California, San Diego, a black member of a white fraternity threw a party in “celebration” of Black History Month. Those who were invited were encouraged to dress ghetto, speak loudly and use a limited vocabulary. Those who came were served fried chicken, watermelon and malt liquor. The incident escalated when the editor of a campus paper went on the campus TV station and referred to people who were rightly annoyed by the party, and the depiction of black culture, as a “bunch of ungrateful” (insert improper “n” word here). Within a week of the initial outbursts, a sign was hung over the TV station with the words “Compton Lynching,” a noose was hung in the central library, and a KKK hood was placed on a prominent statue. We have not reached the promised land. Racism still exists, just as racialism still exists, and just as self-hatred still exists. But Christians are in a unique position to speak more openly about race. After all, we are the ones called to love our neighbors regardless of who they are and what they look like. We are the ones who desperately try to follow Jesus, even when Jesus expressed grace by forgiving the people who beat and tortured Him. We are the ones who followed the tradition of the Rev. King fighting for civil rights and social justice. But if we are the ones who follow Jesus, why are churches less likely to engage this volatile issue? When the most segregated hour in the U.S. is still 11 o’clock on Sunday mornings, and when academic theologians still refer to white or Western theology as simply “theology,” it’s easy to recognize what theologian J. Kameron Carter calls “the problem of whiteness.” With this phrase, Carter critiques white culture’s struggle with humility, submission to authority, and how it often places itself above and sometimes against the standards and experiences of other cultures. However, the same criticism Carter levies on white culture can and should be levied everywhere else. African or Asian, Emerging or Orthodox, we have all committed the same sins of racial superiority. Far too often, we think of our own experiences as normal and anything other than our experiences as abnormal. We create distinctions so we are not like the infamous “them.” And by separating ourselves from “them,” we inflict damage upon ourselves. The notion that we might not be normal is beyond comprehension and is dismissed as severely as heresy. But this shouldn’t surprise anyone—we do the same thing with Jesus. For literally hundreds of years, Christians have depicted Jesus in images they find familiar. Instead of worshiping the Jesus who was from the Middle Eastern Town of Nazareth, most churches still depict Jesus in ways that reflect their own cultural and ethnic heritage—which is fine. Diverse groups of people should connect with the Son of God in any way they can. What’s not fine is when we think our images of Jesus are the only valid images of Jesus and every other image of Jesus is somehow less faithful. Many of us find comfort in old theologies even if these theologies do a poor job of confessing what God is doing in our midst. What we need is something more than a black and white theology, and more than a black vs. white theology. We need a new way of thinking about faith that begins with our primary identity in Christ. We can’t be Latin Christians or American Christians, Presbyterian Christians or Post-denominational Christians. When we identify ourselves first by our differences, it distracts from the very real fact that we are Christians first. And we need to be Christians first—in our politics, in our actions, in our theology and in our worship. We need to make everything else secondary. Instead of trying to transform Jesus into someone who looks and acts like us, we need to be transformed into someone who looks and acts like Him. It’s not about getting to heaven or bringing heaven here to Earth. It’s not about a one-time conversion experience or being raised in faith from a young age. It’s not about being predestined or choosing faith. It’s about being open to follow Jesus where He will take us. It’s about being humble enough to learn from the way others follow Jesus. We all have different experiences of faith, and there is much we can learn about Jesus from those we encounter on the journey. But if we don’t walk in love—the kind of love that is kind and patient and humble—then we will miss out on all the things Jesus wants to show us.
