Tuesday of Lent 1

“What is this? A new teaching—with authority!” (Mark 1:27)

They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. (Genesis 37:18)

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

What a contrast between Joseph’s brothers and the father of the prodigal son. In each instance someone is viewed at a distance, someone with whom there is a deep yet troublesome relationship. The brothers behold at a distance and plot murder. The father beholds at a distance and runs out to embrace. The brothers embody our warped tendency to resolve tension with violence, scapegoating the “other” on whom we project all our discomfort. The father embodies God’s better path, resolving tension with compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, and rejoicing.

Every day we, individually and as a society, are faced with choosing between these paths. What shall we do with our shadow, with our anxiety and discomfort, with the fear that gnaws at the pit of our stomach, with the self we are unwilling to acknowledge? Destroy the other to appease our inner demon (though it can never be appeased from without)? Or embrace the other (and our own self) and find wholeness?

…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

God is not to be identified with--nor assumed to support--consumerism, imperialism, or the goals and values of any tribe, language, people, or nation. From every tribe, language, people, and nation God creates a new thing that draws on all of these and far transcends them. The Gospel is not about the acquisition and wielding of worldly (i.e., violent and coercive) power or goods. It is about nurturing life and justice, building peace, walking in harmony, sharing God's goodness.

The Gospel is messy and embodies, something that scandalized the Greeks and the clarity of their philosophical abstractions. The Gospel rejects the worldly, and imperial, vision of Davidide rule implied in most messianic strains of thought, thus frustrating the Zealots of Jesus' day and the Zionists of our own. The Gospel overturns our categories in order to transform all definitions, relationships, and ways of interacting. It also offers the kind of hope that is not limited to our narrow categories, a hope available to the hopeless.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Outsiders and outcasts, rejoice! God is on the line and it's for you.


Grant to your people, Lord, grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only true God; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

--the BB