Advent: Promise

Advent is a time when we remember the promises of God, which we do by retelling the Christmas story. 

This is the story of a God who promised to fulfill humanity's ancient longing to restore harmony to the world and to restore all that had been disordered.

It began with the birth of a child so unimportant that the only people who noticed were his parents, and a group of ruffians. When the child's parents took him to the Temple to dedicate him eight days later, amid the hustle and bustle and the jostling of the crowds only two other people are said to have noticed anything unusual: an old man, and an old woman, who each had been waiting their entire lives to see this child born.
 

The gospel of Luke tells us that Simeon and the prophetess Anna declared that the infant would do great things, that he would honor the weak and the downtrodden and bring ruin to the mighty.
 

This is what the people expected the messiah to do, after all. As he ushered in the Apocalypse, he would free prisoners, give the outcast a place of honor at the feast, and bring to an end the haughty and the powerful.
 

That Jesus was born is a sign that God is committed to honoring the promise he made to us in the myth-time, to overthrow oppression, to reveal money for the lie it is, to confound the wise and to leave the mighty confounded in their places. That's why the leaders of the day killed him.
 

The Resurrection is a further promise that it doesn't end there. If death has no power, neither do the dictator and thugs who tell us to trust them as they harass refugees at the border, who threaten their critics, or who oppress people of color on a daily basis.
 

You can't silence Truth when it won't stay dead.
 

"Stories are a promise," someone once said. "They are a promise that the ending is worth waiting for."

The Great Longing

You know, all I really want in life — all I think any of us really wants — is that sense of connection with somebody else, the idea that we belong to something bigger than ourselves.

I remember sitting at the altar by myself for hours, desperately wanting to feel that connection with God the way others at church seemed to, but it would never happen.

To this day, my biggest struggle is an unmet hunger for that connection, with God, with friends, even with my partner.

With that comes the tension of "Do I stay and give it more time?" or "Is it time to cut my losses and go?"

Forty-eight years old and I still struggle with this.

I’m not after forgiveness. I want fulfillment, and I want to belong. I want to be celebrated as I am, as God created me. What hope does your gospel offer?

Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Natural

What could be more natural than a flower? Pollinated by bees, blossoming on a bush, growing in good New Jersey soil.

The Rose of Sharon comes from India, eight thousand miles from where it grows in my back yard. This bush is one of dozens that mark the boundary between my yard and my neighbor's, all planted a foot apart in rows with scarcely 10 inches between them. Is there anything about this arrangement that can be said to be natural?

Surely the bees are natural. Drawn by nectar, they buzz from one flower to another, spreading pollen so that the flowers will yield the next season's generation of seeds. 

Alas, the honeybees that pollinate the flower, like the worms that build the soil the roots anchor the bush in, don't belong on this continent either. Apiarists brought the bees and gardeners brought the earthworms because they felt the native species didn't do the job as well.

There's nothing natural about any of this. If this were natural, you'd be looking at an oak hickory forest that would spread inland and up and down the coast for hundreds of miles. Over the past four hundred years, we've felled the forest, introduced invasive new species that drove the natives out, and forced the land to support a vast monoculture grassland.

This isn't natural. It's an environmental jigsaw put together by blind idiots.

And yet for all the damage we've done to Eden, it's still a place of beauty and routine miracles. Plants still run on sunlight, they still grow and build new branches out of thin air. They still keep the earth from washing away when it rains, and provide shelter and food for animals of all shapes and sizes.

The direction of history tells us that Eden is gone and we won't be returning. But with a little planning, a little wisdom. and a lot of grace, we can look forward to a bright future that reflects all the changes we've made, not as bugs in the system but as part of a deliberate design.

And in the final analysis, what ending would be more natural than that?

When a sacrament is just lunch

Eat some bread and drink some wine during church, and it's a sacrament we call Communion.

Outside church, it's lunch.

During church, we can have all sorts of rules on how to celebrate the sacrament correctly. Does it have to be consecrated by a priest? What kind of bread do we use? Is it actually wine, or is Welch's grape juice acceptable? What about some other brand?

No one complains that Maurice is defiling the sacrament if he goes to the deli and orders the wrong bread, adds some pastrami, or gets apple juice instead of wine.

Same bread, same wine. One's a sacrament, the other isn't.

If the deli owner refused to sell Maurice lunch because he was disrespecting the deli owner's religious beliefs about Communion, no one would take the deli owner seriously.

Just saying.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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President Trump, the Religious Right, and my Jesus

My Jesus cares about justice. There is no evidence that Trump or his supporters do.

My Jesus healed the sick. Trump has made cuts to healthcare, while his supporters approved.

My Jesus welcomes refugees. Trump turns them away while his supporters nod their approval.

My Jesus said "Blessed are the poor" and "Woe to the rich," and warned about the dangers of wealth. Trump is a billionaire who passed tax cuts for the wealthy, cut social aid to the poor while his supporters applauded.

My Jesus welcomes people of every tribe, nation and language. Trump wants to build a wall, block entire countries and set strict quotas on immigration. His supporters are all on board with this.

My Jesus warned against people who harm children. Trump's administration tears them from their mothers at the border, loses track of them, and defunds groups that provide prenatal care. From his supporters on the Religious Right? Crickets.

The first-century followers of my Jesus understood something about the holiness of sexual commitment in marriage. Trump brags about grabbing married women "by the pussy" and covers up a string of affairs. The Religious Right "gives him a mulligan." Ralph Reed even says character doesn't matter.

My Jesus talked theology with a Samaritan and commended the faith of a pagan. Trump slanders Islam,and his Religious Right supporters cheer him on.

My Jesus warned us against men like Trump. The Religious Right tells us he's the dream president for Christians.

What's the matter here? Which god do you serve?

‘Cause I’ve got to say, for all the news you make about your faith, it doesn’t look much like my Jesus.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Exiles in their own land

The Bible notes that when the walls of Jerusalem fell, the people who were carried into exile in Babylon were the nobles and the ruler of the people.

And yet the Babylonian captivity was something that affected the entire nation.

The Bible never really tells us the story of the people who remained. There’s a postlude in Jeremiah for the exiles who fled to Egypt and convinced him to go with them and of course there are the books like Daniel and Esther that tell the story of the captives in Babylon. For its part the Ezra scroll tells the story of how Ezra and Nehemiah led the descendants of the captives back. There are even psalms about how the exiles felt when in captivity (“Down by the rivers of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion”) and when they returned. (“We were like men who dreamed”) but about the people who remained in the land, nothing.

They never stopped being Jewish. They never stopped being people of the covenant; but, the writers of the Bible being who they were, they also never mattered much when it came time to write the history.

What was it like to have your identity, your entire way of life, upended and negated by the Exile, and yet have everything stay pretty much the same? Every day you went to the river to wash the clothes, watch your sheep, make your deals. Probably every Shabbat you went to the same high place your ancestors had gone to since before the Temple was built, excepting those brief periods of reform by kings like Hezekiah and Josiah, when they tore the high places down.

But the city was gone. The Temple was gone. Did you notice? Probably. the king was gone too, and now people ruled you who worshiped Astarte or Marduk or one of the other, more fashionable weather and fertility gods (though not Baal. He was kind of passe these days). Without the Temple priesthood around, the proo-Judaism of the day was more folk religion than anything else, centered around an unseen god talked about in stories that were passed down like beloved heirlooms.

Then one day the captives returned. What was it like when suddenly you were told that these strangers who didn’t even speak Hebrew were your superiors? All because their grandfathers had lived in Jerusalem and yours had tended sheep in Beit Shelem or Shechen, or Hebron or some place else.

Did your identity matter? How maddening must it have been to be pushed aside and subordinated to complete strangers, to be shoved to the margins because they mattered and you didn’t, simply because that’s the way status works

Being common is a form of exile in itself.

Good Friday in America today

It was, of course, an injustice.

Police found Stephon Clark in the back yard of his grandmother's house after he reportedly had climbed over the fence to get there. They were looking for someone who had been breaking car windows on the street, and when they caught up with Clark they ordered him to show his hands. An officer shouted “He has a gun!” and Clark was struck with a hail of bullets.

He was holding a cellphone. There was no gun.

According to an autopsy, Clark was shot 8 times from behind or from the side. Police have yet to provide any evidence that Clark was the window-breaking vandal they were looking for.

Fatal incidents of police violence have been a matter of routine horror in the news for years, compounded by our rush to assure ourselves that, while unfortunate, there's really nothing we can do about it. It's just part of the cost of having a safe society.  Sometimes people get killed, but it's their fault anyway, because they didn't follow orders, because they acted aggressively, or because police felt threatened. And besides he had a rap sheet.

That reaction should chill the very marrow in our bones. I can think of no reaction further from the heart of Christ and the heart of the Good Friday story that we celebrated in our churches today.

Even those outside the Christian faith know the Good Friday story. Jesus Christ, an innocent man, was arrested under cover of night. Denied the due process of law, he was deprived of his basic human rights, brutally tortured and finally executed.

Preachers often play up the story of Jesus' trials and execution for the moral affront that they were. To convict, all the priests needed was for two witnesses to agree on a charge. The gospels note that they couldn't even manage that. For his part, Pilate, the Roman governor, couldn't find any basis for a charge. Neither could Herod.

So why was he executed? The chief priest was afraid that Jesus was disturbing the peace and getting people riled up. Pilate wanted to maintain order. Herod just didn't care.

Christianity used to be a religion of the powerless, but after 1,700 years of holding the reins of imperial power, we've become far too comfortable with the way those reins feel here in the West. We treat the execution of Jesus as though it's an aberration, a once-in-history occasion when the justice system failed in its duty and killed an innocent man. The effect is that we treat the Crucifixion as a one-time failure, an especially heinous act of evil. We always stress the innocence of Jesus to stress how shockingly unjust his death was.

I wonder, if we were to survey his contemporaries, how unusual they found it that Rome would kill an innocent man. I wonder how many peasants, carpenters and bricklayers there were who felt they couldn’t get a fair shake either. I wonder how many people could point to the mountaintop of Jerusalem, to Mount Gerzim in Samaria or to the rolling hills of Galilee and tell the story of family members, neighbors and friends who had been unjustly executed by the state.

It wouldn’t have been hard. After the riots that followed the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE, when rioters burned the city of Sephoris, the Roman legions restored order through the process of decimation. One man in every 10 was pulled out of the crowd, taken outside the city and crucified as a warning against unrest, without benefit of trial.

Good Friday wasn't a once-in-history event for the people whom Jesus lived with and walked among. It happened all the time.

It's the same in America now. Remember the names of those who have been denied justice by the authorities and killed without a trial. Can you even remember them all?

Michael Brown.

Eric Garner.

Walter Scott.

Philando Castile.

Alton Sterling.

Tamir Rice.

Terence Crutcher.

Sandra Bland.

Freddie Gray.

Laquan McDonald.

Unarmed. Shot by police, their murders justified just as the execution of Christ was. They were disturbing the peace. They were resisting arrest. They had a history. There were extenuating circumstances.

We were afraid.

When we in our fear excuse, allow or approve the death of the innocent, we take the reins of Caesar in our hands, give them a familiar grip, and we say to ourselves, “This isn't so bad.” When give approval to their deaths, let us remember the words of Jesus.

“Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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This is the sermon on guns you probably won't hear

There is a sermon you probably won't hear in church tomorrow, and that's a shame, because it's a sermon that needs to be preached from every pulpit in this nation, from coast to coast, from North to South, from city to city, from the highest mountain to the lowest valley, until we understand and our leaders finally listen.

It's the sermon that says that a society that claims to value life and freedom but brushes off death as casually as it puts on a new coat, is a society that has shaken off all semblance of morality and justice, and values nothing but power. It's the sermon that says that our nation has come unmoored. It's the sermon that says our guns have become an idol, the NRA has become the priesthood of a false religion, and our government has been bought lock, stock and barrel.

It's the sermon that says "In Christ's name, enough."

Seventeen students died at Parkland school in Florida earlier this week. Add those to the 58 murdered at the Las Vegas Strip last October, to the 49 mowed down at the Pulse Night Club, the 20 first- and second-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Remember the 33 college students killed at Virginia Tech in 2007? How about the 15 killed at Columbine High School in 1999? That number seemed so large at the time; now it almost seems like it's barely worth mentioning. There have been so many mass shootings in America that it's almost impossible to remember a time when they weren't routine, when Aurora, Colo. (2012, 12 dead); Jonesboro, Ark. (1998, 5 dead); and Erie, Pa. (1998, 1 dead), would be burned into our psyches forever.

Why do we tolerate this?

A long time ago the Phonecians worshiped a god name Moloch. Moloch wasn't a genteel god who liked to collect baubles, hear a few rhyming prayers and let people go about their business. He was a god of power. His priests promised the people wealth and good crops, military might and protection from their enemies. If you followed Moloch, you didn't have anything to worry about when other people came into your country and tried to take your place, they promised. You didn't need to be afraid of thieves, or home intruders or any threat to your well-being. If you worshiped Moloch, he had your back. All he wanted was your children.

Moloch was a right bastard of a god, but the Phonecians trusted him. There are remnants of their architecture, their literature and their art. The Israelites, when they came to the land, were appalled at what they found, and did their best to eradicate all trace of Moloch and the other gods of his ilk. The ruins we've found indicate that he had a tremendous appetite for the blood of humans, especially children.

The stories that his priests told are the same ones the NRA tells today about guns. There's a lot to be afraid of, but if you have a gun, you'll be safe. There's no need to worry about immigrants, inner-city gangs or even your own elected officials if you're armed enough. The bigger the gun, the better off you are, so why not own the kind of hardware professional troops use in combat zones? And if someone comes to town and massacres a dozen or more children? Well, that's just the price of being free. Anyone who opposes the exaltation of firearms is someone who hates freedom.

The Israelites didn't get rid of Moloch. He just hung around a while and opened shop under a new name with a new priesthood.

Our national religion makes a big deal about guns, and it's managed to convince a number of people that our embrace of gun culture is something that squares well with Christianity.

It does not.

The NRA and its acolytes spread an atmosphere of fear. There are bad people out there, and no one is coming to help you. The only way to stop them is if you are armed yourself. If they are armed, you need to be too. Put guns into every church, into every store, into every school. Fire first, and don't back down. When everyone is afraid and everyone has guns, and everyone is on edge, then we will know peace.

Jesus warns that those who live by violence will die violently, and he tells his disciples to put away weapons of violence. Rater than fearing the alien, the outsider or the stranger, he encourages us to take the risk, welcome them, and befriend them.

This is a message the church needs to shout, and that it needs to live out as loudly as it can. I don't expect to hear it.

This Sunday, most churches are going to offer noting more than an anodyne prayer for the latest victims of the latest horror show. Some will offer even less. There may be a few churches that collect an offering, but that's as far as it will go.

Six years ago, Trayvon Martin was murdered by a vigilante who stalked the teen to the point that he feared for his life and felt the only chance he had was to fight back. (Zimmerman, who was armed, shot Martin and killed him.) Few churches said anything about it that Sunday; my own pastor made a throwaway comment about it in the beginning of the sermon where pastors usually use their bad one-liners as warm-up material, and seemed surprised that anyone responded negatively.

The truth is, we live in times that are marked right now by profound spiritual darkness. Our federal government has embarked on a relentless campaign against immigrants of color, it has placed abusive and racist men in positions of power, and it is led by a man of vulgar appetites with no regard for the truth, nor for justice. The church in America can choose either to embrace this darkness and call it "light"; to focus on "spiritual things" like truth, morality and principles of clean living; or it can call out evil in high places.

The NRA's tireless advocacy to sell more guns is one place we can start. The casual acquiescence of our leaders to the NRA's culture of death is a second.

It's a sermon our country needs to hear. Let's start preaching it.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and other things Jesus wouldn’t say

Back when I was in college, there was a trend in the church toward pithy sayings that sounded deeper than they really were.

The big daddy of these was “What would Jesus do?” or “WWJD?” It works like this. Post a question with serious moral overtones, like “Should we deport law-abiding people who entered the country without documentation?” or “Is it all right to vote for a vulgar, adulterous conman with no integrity?” Now ask, “What would Jesus do?” and follow accordingly.

Unfortunately, there are limits. “My girlfriend is pregnant!” one might share with a confidant. “What should I do?”

“Well, what would Jesus do?” comes the helpful rejoinder.

Not get her pregnant in the first place, would come the answer. Not much help there.

Other people tried to overapply it on the grounds that every area of life should be surrendered to God. (Waffles or an omelette — which would Jesus order?) Given the earnestness with which such questions were asked, they soon became incredibly fraught ethical and spiritual quandaries and led to people no longer inviting Ted to join them for breakfast.

As bad as those were, I remember one particularly bad time to ask the question. It was on a trip to LaSource, Lagonav, and it involved a disabled man who had withered legs and could not walk.

What would Jesus do? I leave it to the reader to ask that question, determine the answer and then guess how things went from there.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Advent: Tenderly

Got a call this evening from someone feeling upset, overwhelmed and anxious. We talked for close to 40 minutes, and I hope at the end of the conversation that things were better than they were at the start.

Truth is, we're all broken; and the pain goes down far below the surface, sometimes into caverns where dark things lurk. Maybe it's an injury a friend once dealt us, maybe it's the fear stirred by the toxic air our president is brewing, or maybe it's the trauma of having to hide our true selves. It doesn't matter; the darkness is real, and so is the pain. "The darkness and the light are alike to you,: the psalmist writes. "I am fearfully and wonderfully made.'

Jesus, it should be remembered, never came for respectable people. He came for hookers and thieves, for traitors and sycophants, for the filthy, for the ignorant and for the unemployed, not to give them better manners or to make them acceptable, but to remind them that God was on their side. He knows where the pain is rawest, and he touches us there tenderly.

God willing, let us remember who his people are, and let us follow his example.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Advent: Presence

My atheist friends may disagree, but I think it's fair to say that we spend most of our life searching for the Presence of God.

In some ways it's like the hour before lunch. Nothing drives us to food like hunger; to water, like thirst; to friends, like loneliness; to justice, like oppression. It's the very absence of God that makes us want to experience his presence. It's that very moment of need meeting satisfaction that glows with the light of heaven.

The gospels tell us that Christmas is when God saw our need and pitched his tent among us, making our life his and his life with us. We enter the Presence of God not when we cloister ourselves away with other like-minded people, but when we follow his example and shelter the immigrant from deportation, speak up for the woman being sexually harassed, reach out to the lonely with a call and offer of friendship, oppose favoritism for the wealthy, and resist evil in places both high and low.

At that moment, a miracle occurs. In meeting the need of another, we experience the Presence, and so do they.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Advent 2017: Open

I've met people (and I'm sure you have too) who claim that by following God, they've been kept from illness, from calamity, from poverty and everything else. Blessed, blessed, blessed, that's the only way they know how to describe themselves. It's like they started sneezing and can't stop,and so they keep getting blessed over and over.

I'm always wary of snake oil faith. I can't speak for other religions, but truth is, Christianity presents a danger in being open to the things of God. Up until the point the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, her life was safe and ordinary. She knew whom she was getting married to, knew where she would live, had a solid reputation, and could comfortably predict what life would bring her.

She could have smacked the angel upside the head with a skillet and told him where to take his announcements, or calmly informed him that he had the wrong address and wanted her next-door neighbor, Bertha.

But she was open, and even if she had the sense not to run down the street excitedly screaming that she was going to have a baby and he would be the messiah; her life still got overturned.

Pregnant before she got married? There goes the reputation.

Joseph insists he's not the father? She'll be lucky to get out of this alive.

In a couple years she'll even be a refugee, running for her life from the king in the middle of the night, hoping they can find someone who will shelter a growing family and not send them away empty-handed.

Being open to the works and wonders of God is a dangerous thing.


Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Regarding the Nashville Statement

I'm going to say something that may shock you. Being gay isn't about sex.

I swear to God.

That's not the impression you would get from the signatories of the Nashville Statement, freshly released by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The Nashville Statement -- so called because it was written and signed in Nashville -- is an attempt by certain prominent evangelical leaders to draw a line in the sand over the cultural shifts in the United States the past 50 years.

It makes the sort of strident condemnations that we've come to expect from such groups: adultery is bad, polygamy is bad, premarital sex is bad, transgenderism is bad, homosexuality is bad. The whole thing is couched in a series of 14 affirmations and rejections that focus on what the signatories presume is the "clear meaning" of the biblical texts, all focused on the configuration of people's genitals and what they do with them in private.

"Clear meaning" becomes more suspect once we consider cultural and literary context in an attempt to understand what the biblical authors actually were talking about, and how to apply those principles in our society. But that doesn't seem to matter here.

What the Nashville Statement and its signatories miss is that gay people are, well, people, with the same desires and life goals as other people.

Being gay isn't about whom you have sex with, it's about whom you love. Like heterosexuals, gays want to be with someone they love, to spend their lives and grow old together. The little things that matter in a straight relationship -- reading a book or playing a game together, sharing a meal, having a conversation when you come home from a day on the job, sharing what matters to you, making plans together, the touch of a hand, and having someone to hold you when you're upset, scared or lonely -- those are things that matter in a same-sex relationship as well.

Article X is the killer, though. According to this statement, it's not possible to be a Christian and support your best friend's decision to transition from male to female, nor to affirm the happiness another friend has found with her fiancee. Do these things, and you've left the fold. You're an apostate.

This is some serious stuff. It requires a response.

I thought about all the great times I've had with my best friend, who was born David but is now Jennifer. There's the time Chicken Soup for the Soul threatened to sue us. One afternoon at college as she was listenig to "The Acapella Project 2," I opened her door just to say "This is really cheesy" and then shut it just as quickly. I stood at her wedding, and she stood at mine. We've been there for each other through divorce, head injury, three kids apiece, and even an unfortunate escapade with white Christian rap.

I thought about another friend and our late-night conversations over the Internet when she was working and I couldn't sleep. There's been snark, there's been laughter both out of control and out of bounds, a cascade of puns and an exchange of books. She's been there when I've stood on the brink and the void threatened to swallow me; and I've seen the high cost that can be exacted by the attitudes celebrated in this Nashville Statement, when her family discovered she was gay.

Or there's Darren, one of the friendliest and most drama-free people I've ever worked with in the theatre world. I've found him to be a rock: supportive, professional, flexible and a joy to work with as an actor, as a stage manager and as a co-producer.

These are the people the authors of the Nashville Statement say I have to reject in order to go to heaven with them.

But I think of all that I've been through with them, and the kind of people they are, and I find that I must borrow a sentiment from Huck Finn.

"All right, I'll go to hell then."



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Naked before the throne

It's getting late, but there is a murmur of restless expectation in the air. Across the valley, people are gathering to hear the prophet.

They file out of their homes, they leave their businesses unattended, and they abandon the market. As the crowd builds, it flows uphill like a storm breaker on the shore toward the mountain, where the prophet has gone with his students. The water rises, and then it crests at his feet, and the people grow quiet. The prophet is speaking.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," the prophet says, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Poor in spirit." A susurrous like falling leaves ripples through the crowd as the phrase tumbles past Jesus' lips. These are a people who know poverty. The fishers among them may catch a hundred fish in the morning, and be left with only ten to sell by the time the tax collectors have taken their ill-gotten share.

The carpenter or stonemason may work all day, six days a week to provide or his family and his wife may labor all day caring for the children and buying and selling at the market, and still every day is a struggle to survive. Poverty is an old, familiar and unwelcome guest in their lives. He eats their best food, wears through their sandals, and leaves holes in the roof so that the rain gets in. They know poverty.

But poverty of the spirit. Do they know that?

There's Miriam, told at the age of 13 that she would marry a man three times her age and not the boy whom she loved, so that she ran away to the house of her father's sister and caused a scandal that her community still hasn't forgotten. Three years later, she is still not welcome in her father's home and continues to live with her aunt. Yesterday morning she heard that the boy she gave all for has married her worst enemy. Poverty has been eating away at her insides ever since.

Or there's Eliezer, who had studied for years under Rabbi Zecheriah to become a rabbi himself. He had studied Torah for years, memorized the Books of Moses, the psalms and even the scroll of Isaiah, only to be found that he could not become the rabbi he had dreamed of, and would have to become a scribe instead. His spirit is as impoverished as they come.

Then there's old Noach, named for the famed prophet on the Ark. He's a dissolute drunkard who wakes up every morning ashamed of what he has made of his life, and drowns his shame once he has begged enough coins to buy a fresh skin of wine. Poverty of the spirit is all he has left.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The words are more than an invitation to follow, to believe, or to have faith. They are a declaration. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them, because they know their need for love and restoration, for peace and a new dream to replace the one that failed, and even for forgiveness. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them because they have lost everything that matters to them, and now they are finding that what matters is taking hold of them.

Miriam may never see her father or mother again. But in her aunt's house and afterward, she may discover a contentment and a level of support that she never knew was possible at her father's house. Eliezer may never become the rabbi he had hoped to be, but he may discover a new dream that will allow him to wonder and discover truths he had never imagined.

And Noah? He may always remain a besotted drunk in the alleyway. But he'll never be turned away or shunned by anyone who loves him.

Knowing spiritual poverty is only the first step. It's the beginning of a journey, yet it's a place that they will return to again and again. We first become aware of our poverty when we become aware of need to follow Christ, whether for forgiveness from sin or just because we realize that he has the answers we're looking for.

Our sense of poverty is renewed later when we encounter teachings that are difficult to come to terms with, even true ones. It deepens once more when we realize the inadequacy of our understanding, and how our faith structure fails to comprehend the world, such as when we see and comprehend the suffering of others.

At some final point, everything collapses before our eyes, and our spiritual poverty is complete. St John of the Cross called this the Long, Dark Night of the Soul. I've heard other people call it being ruined for life. It's the point where there is nothing left, except a voice that says "Follow me" and you have to decide if that's enough.

This is only the first, the least of the Beatitudes, and it is more than I can handle. Kyrie leison. Christ have mercy upon us.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Racial reconciliation is not what we need

Here come the renewed calls for an end to racial animus and healing. Oh, how I am tired of them.

A recent motion to condemn the alt-right died in committee at the Southern Baptist Convention. Predictably, following the outrage, the church issued a statement condemning the alt-right and all forms of racism. Because it's important, you know, to remember that it's just as wrong for black people to hate white people as the other way around, and what we need is healing, not this division over race. What we need, church leaders would have us believe, is that there has been a lot of wrong committed on all sides, and we need reconciliation of the races for the healing to begin.

No. No. In Jesus' holy name, no Racial reconciliation is a misnomer, as reconciliation suggests equal fault. We do not need racial reconciliation. What we need is racial repentance, and racial justice.

Blacks in America are not to blame for the state of race relations in this country; whites are. Racial oppression and white supremacy began on this continent before the country was even established. Let's look at the issue honestly and fairly.

It was white Christians who enslaved blacks from the 1600s and for the following two centuries. It was white Christians like George Whitefield who saw blacks as worthy recipients of the gospel but not of their freedom. Likewise it was white Christians who stole the labor, the health and the safety of blacks throughout the South, and who fought a bloody war in defense of their right to own black people.

It was white Christians who replaced slavery with Jim Crow, prison camps and segregation following the Civil War; and when the courts and the federal government finally demanded an end to those things, it was white Christians who fled public schools and closed public resources rather than share them with blacks. These actions even found sanction from the pulpit, where ministers taught that it was God's intent to keep the races separate.

Every bit of progress our nation has made toward racial equality and justice the past 150 years has been fought at every step by white people, often self-identified Christians. Blacks in America today can't even protest a justice system that targets them more regularly, sentences them more harshly and kills them more frequently than it does whites, without being scolded that All Lives Matter.

Statements disavowing the racist history of the past are not enough. For any denomination, for the church as a whole in our country, or for our nation itself to rise above our legacy of racism, we need to own up to what we've done, and we need to correct the fault that we have inherited. It's not reconciliation that's needed. It's repentance.

We can begin by elevating black America: its art, its poetry, its literature, its leaders, its history, and its economy. This is the example we see in the Christian Scriptures. Faced with prejudice against Grecian Jews, the Jerusalem church handed over the welfare programs of the church entirely to those suffering the prejudice. Through humility, the dominant church saw that the minority church was empowered and its widows protected.

Can we follow suit? We should. Can we study church history from the perspective of black America? Can we learn how the enslaved church flourished amid slavery and the abuses of the empowered church?

Can we learn to see the heroism of Nat Turner, and remember the deep moral flaws of white leaders who saw white supremacy and black subjugation as the ordained way of things, or who never gave it a thought? Can we demand black chancellors and presidents at Liberty University and Bob Jones University, and black-majority boards?

Will we throw our moral authority, weakened though it is, behind the efforts to stop honoring the Confederate veterans who defended slavery with their lives, and instead shame them and everyone in the North and South who benefited from slavery?

Will we speak out against the policies and actions of President Trump and Jeff Sessions that threaten the well-being of the African American community?

The Southern Baptist Convention has made steps in the right direction. But what is needed are seven-league boots.

I pray we have the faith to wear them.


Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Praying with your back to the wall

It must have been May 1993 when I found myself stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

I'd been living in Petionville, Haiti, for the past six months and was on my way to Pittsburgh for a visit with my parents, and to Minneapolis, Minn., to visit the mission's headquarters, before going to visit my church in Easton, Pa.. During the next weeks I was expected to raise my missions support, but first I had to get home. And that was proving to be something of a problem.

I'd left Port-au-Prince on time and arrived in Miami when I'd expected, but that's where my plans had broken down. A downpour had delayed flights leaving Miami, and now here I was at JFK, my connecting flight long gone and the airport terminal closing for the night.

“I'd like American to provide me with a hotel voucher for the night,” I told the service agent behind the desk.

“It's not the airline's policy to provide vouchers for delays or missed flights caused by weather,” she said for the tenth time.

“I understand that,” I said for the tenth time, matching her polite tone and professional demeanor for polite tone and professional demeanor. “But I'd like you to make an exception and give me one anyway.”

“I can't help you,” she said.

“Then is there a supervisor who can?” I asked.

My request may have been impertinent, but it wasn't like I had much choice. Depending on how you looked at it, home lay either 1,000 miles south, six hours to the west, or two hours away, but in the day before cell phones, there was no way to get there and no way to contact anyone. I had less than $50 in my wallet, no credit cards, and a duffel bag full of clothes and personal possessions.

Either American Airlines was going put me up in a hotel room, or I was going to be outside the airport in twenty minutes, trying to stay awake all night in the streets of New York. I'd lived the previous six months in a country under military rule, and even I had no desire to try that. My situation was that desperate.

Desperation can drive us to uncanny levels of audacity. My chief recollection of my interaction with that customer service agent is how utterly calm I was as I acknowledged that I had no right to ask for the break I was asking for, but I was asking for it anyway. Unlike other passengers on the flight with me, I never once lost my cool.

This encounter with the airline came to mind recently at a Bible study where we were looking at Luke 11 and Jesus' teachings on prayer. This being Jesus, he never could just give a straightforward answer to a simple question. No, he had to tell a story.

In this particular story, a man whose guest had arrived at an unexpectedly late hour, had nothing to feed him. This put the host in a bad situation. In ancient cultures having a guest carried with it a serious obligation to provide for their safety and well-being. It didn't matter if the guest had arrived after sunset, failing to provide a meal would be more than merely awkward or unfriendly. It would be unspeakably offensive, a devastating failure to meet an obligation.

So, unwilling to dishonor himself and offend his guest, the host ran to a friend who he knew could lend him enough bread to cover his failing. Of course, things never run smoothly. The hour was late, and the friend already had shut the door and gone to bed, and did not want to get up.

But need compeled the host, and so he barraged his friend with requests for help until the friend, mindful that the entire village could overhear the pleas for bread and his own steadfast refusal to help, finally gave in. He got out of bed, grabbed the loaves of bread and gave them and anything else the host needed, just to get him to quiet down and not shame the friend in front of the entire community.

With this story, Jesus taught a pretty simple lesson about prayer. Be persistent. Don't give up. Don't be afraid to be pushy. There's even a suggestion that God will feel put on the spot by your need and actually may change his mind about how he responds to your request. (I always did wonder if the relationship was strained afterward, due to the scene the two men made.)

In my experience, that's often where the lesson ends. A former pastor of mine often cited this passage in his sermons in which he encouraged us to ask God for what we wanted. His point: God loves us, and wants to give us good things. We just need to ask.

In this vein Pastor Weber loved to cite an exchange between Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Scott Raleigh. “Why do you ask for so much?” Elizabeth asked Raleigh in this conversation. “Because your majesty keeps giving me what I ask for,” Raleigh replied.

With no disrespect meant to my former pastor, nor to Sir Walter Scott Raleigh, there is something missing from such a lesson: a sense of desperation born of need.

It is desperation that drove the host in Jesus' story to plead for bread late at night. In the culture Jesus lived and taught in, failing to give his guest something to eat wasn't just a faux pas. It was a massive insult. When Nabal refused to give provisions to David and his men, it was an act of war. It wasn't just a kind favor that the host was asking his neighbor to help with, it was a stark necessity.

The same extremity of need is evident in other examples of prayer earlier in the gospel of Luke. Parents brought children afflicted with unclean spirits to ask for healing because the seizures threatened the lives and health of the children. A woman had spent a fortune trying to find relief from nonstop menstrual bleeding that had made her miserable, left her ceremonially unclean and kept her husband from her for years, and so she hoped just to touch the hem of Jesus' garment. Lepers wanted to return to the communities they had been driven from, the leader of a synagogue ruler was watching his daughter die before his eyes. These weren't people asking for gravy on their potatoes. They were people driven by extreme need.

Of course, this story being one of the parables of Jesus, it's not enough that it illustrate his lesson in a memorable way that we can still talk about thousands of years later. The story also has to end in a jarring way that makes us wonder if we're even talking about the same thing Jesus is.

After he finished his story, Jesus asked his listeners two interesting questions, and then made an astounding statement.

“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?” (No one.)  “Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Don't be ridiculous.)

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Where did that come from? During the Bible discussion and study meeting last Tuesday one attendee suggested that Jesus was saying that he would send the Holy Spirit to people who believed in him. That may very well be true, but it feels like it's beside the point. This entire passage has been rooted in concerns such as meeting earthly needs such as bread for the body, and avoiding the snares of money by avoiding debt and forgiving debtors.

This isn't a pivot to a more spiritual theme or an appeal for an individual decision to have faith. It's Jesus cutting to the chase in the way that he does and drawing the line of connection between our faith and the earthly need of others. It's a reminder to us, who like to separate spiritual things from practical matters, that the two are inextricably linked. The Lord's Prayer, which includes a request for the day's bread, begins with the pledge “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

So what is Jesus saying? The first time the gospel of Luke mentions the Holy Spirit, is when the angel Gabriel promises the birth of Jesus, after telling Mary that her son will re-establish the throne of David forever. There are more prophecies, linked to the Holy Spirit, that promise that Jesus will overthrow the established order of things as he ushers in the Kingdom of God. The writer even claims that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism.

When he returns from wandering in the wilderness for 40 days, Jesus declares the purpose of his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

The connection between the Holy Spirit and the acts of mercy and compassion that Jesus performs in the gospel could not be clearer.

And that is what we see happen over the ensuing chapters. Jesus comes promising to usher in the Kingdom of God and restore things to their intended state. He heals all those who are sick without asking for payment, and without considering whether they are deserving of such charity. He casts out unclean spirits, he welcomes sex workers and immigrants into his company, and he feeds the hungry. There is no one so low that he will not lift that person up.

Receiving the Holy Spirit then isn't just a mark of personal salvation; to receive him is to step into the shoes of Jesus and commit to alleviating the suffering of the world around us. Just as Jesus proclaimed release to captives, healing to the sick and liberty to the oppressed, asking to receive the Holy Spirit is to put ourselves into the spot of the man whose friend came asking for bread when it was inexcusably late to come around asking for favors he had no right to ask for, and who gave it to him anyway.

God's goal, after all, is not for us to be happy. What is happiness, after all? It's a will o'the wisp that vanishes before we even can lay hold of it. God's great dream is not to see us happy and carefree, it is to enjoy a relationship with us.

And however awkward things might have been the next morning between the host and the friend he pulled out of bed, one thing is certain: The host will never forget what his friend did for him, and he'll be sure to repay the kindness whenever and however often the opportunity arises.


Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus": Not Always as Simple as It Sounds

Louisa Stead was a young woman with a husband and a daughter when her family decided to take a picnic lunch on Staten Island Sound one sunny day.

Their lunch was interrupted by the screams of a young boy caught in the current. Her husband sprang into action, and rushed into the water to save the boy. It was a heroic effort, but a doomed one. As Louisa and their daughter looked on, both her husband and the boy he had intended to save, drowned.

This was in the 1800s, and employment options for a woman were limited, even without a dependent.
Without the income her husband provided, Louisa and her daughter, Lily, soon became destitute.

God, however, remained faithful, and with what he provided for them, the Steads moved to South Africa and served as missionaries. In 1882, Louisa published a hymn titled “'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” a simple but inspiring song about a simple faith that is honored and rewarded to the very end.

As Christian folklore goes, this story has all the elements needed for a hearty amen chorus at the revival service. It has a deep, personal tragedy that breaks the heart of anyone who hears and considers it. (How could you not cry at the thought of a young widow having to raise a child on her own after watching her husband drown?) It has a simple, unassuming faith in God that is proved justified time and again.

In the end, that faith even carries the young widow and her daughter into frontier missions work, where one assumes that they lived long, faithful and fruitful lives of service to those around them. Who would like to be the first tonight to dedicate her life to serving God?

Perhaps I mock a little, but only a little. A simple faith that says “I will trust God to provide for my needs” is the faith of children, and it's a not a bad place to start. It gets us through tough spots like “Janine was my friend yesterday but today she says she's not my friend anymore” and “I failed the test” and even “I can't go to the movies today, mom is so mean.”

It's a Golden Book sort of faith, one that tells us that God rescued Daniel from the lions because Daniel kept the faith, or that David was able to kill Goliath because David trusted him. It's a well-intended faith that says that we'll always be safe with God, because God-plus-one is a majority. You never lose, you never suffer, and you always come out on top because God is faithful.

It's a great faith for 4-year-olds, but it doesn't hold up well over the long haul. Sooner or later, the rest of life happens. Your dog dies. A friend betrays you. You get cancer. You lose a child. Your partner leaves you.

I've known people who try to sail through life on that same simple faith that got them through the travails of kindergarten, and it never works out well. Some bury pain deep and insist that things are all right, even when they're plainly not, because they don't want to be found lacking in faith.

So they smile and say they're happy that their child is with Jesus now; or they nurture a quiet revenge fantasy where the errant spouse will return, admit to being wrong, and then beg for forgiveness (which will be granted most magnanimously, once the humiliation has been paid back in equal measure).

That's never a good idea, because pain is real and it happens for a reason. You can plaster a smile over it for only so long until that son-of-a-bitch comes back and demands payment, with interest.

Others flounder on the rocks. Maybe they abandon the ruins of the ship; or maybe they stay there, with the ship still intact, too afraid to try pulling loose and sailing free on the ocean again. You'll see them years later, hollow ghosts of who they once were, identified entirely by the crisis they couldn't handle.

It's good to enter through the wicket gate as a child. It's a bad idea to stay a child your whole life.

“You need meat,” Paul lectures his readers. “Stop drinking milk.”

“Let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity,” writes the author of Hebrews.

God never said bad stuff wouldn't happen. People still lose their parents, and it's always too soon. Spouses still stray, and even when they don't, sometimes the relationship withers on the vine anyway. Sometimes friends act with unspeakable cruelty. Sometimes life is unfair, and sometimes it's positively unjust.

Sometimes, it's true, faith shuts the mouths of lions. But for all the heroes of faith who miraculously were rescued, there are many others who were not:

“Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated — of whom the world was not worthy — wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” (Hebrews 11:35-38)

Faith, real faith, the kind of faith we all boast that we have, even if only to ourselves, affirms that sometimes life is awful. She acknowledges the pain of loss, the grief of separation and the searing burn of injustice. Faith sheds real tears, and she even rages against God in the face of undeserved suffering.

Faith also knows not to offer answers at these moments. She keeps her peace, and simply holds on while the storm rocks the ship and threatens to wash everyone off.

It's also faith who finds the courage to ask the important questions. Is God still worth following – not just believing in, but actually following to the end – when he turns his back on us, or when he leads us into the Shadow of Death and leaves us there? Would Christ still be worth the effort if the lions had eaten Daniel, or if Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had perished in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar?

Is faith still worth having if your husband dies, and you're left destitute with a child to raise on your own? That's not a question anyone can answer until it has been asked in the most personal way, but I think we know how Louisa Stead answered it.

God grant us the faith to do likewise.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus"

’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take him at his word;
Just to rest upon his promise,
And to know, "Thus says the Lord!"

    Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him.
    How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er.
    Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
    O for grace to trust him more.

O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust his cleansing blood;
And in simple faith to plunge me
’Neath the healing, cleansing flood.

Refrain

Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just from sin and self to cease;
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest, and joy and peace.

Refrain

I’m so glad I learned to trust him,
Precious Jesus, savior, friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.

Refrain

Lent: Hope

It's much more fun when my cup overflows, but there are times when it is as dry as a valley of bones.

Hope, as Emily Dickinson once observed, is a bundle of contradictions. It's frail, yet it survives in the harshest lands; it's small and flighty, yet it perches in our very souls where it cannot be dislodged. Its trilling keeps us warm, and yet it never asks even a crumb in return.

Especially today when we remember that all hopes have a day to flounder and even to fail, that little bird looks more like a farmhouse canary whose neck has been wrung than it does like a phoenix whose lament eases the burden of loss.

During times like these, it's easy to believe that selfish and powerful men have won the long game. Through treachery and corrupt tricks, by taking advantage of others' decency and by leveraging their own power, they'll roll back the hardwon progress of people who don't sit at the board with them. They'll get their damnable wars and send the rest of us to fight them; they'll get rid of everyone who's not like them, and they'll teach us to be grateful for the chance to eat their scraps and pick through their garbage. It's easy to believe that we're headed into darkness where there is no sun, no trees, no grass, no moon and no stars.

Screw that. I'm going to keep my hope and keep listening to that little bird singing its heart out, even if the singing is an empty reflex. I'm going to learn wisdom from a marshwiggle.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Lent: Spirit

I read a story 25 years ago about a woman who was made from flowers.

Blodeuwedd's story isn't really the one that was told. She was a character in the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, a mythic Welsh hero who, due to a curse placed on him by his mother, was unable to marry a woman of any race upon the earth. His uncle Gwydion, a slippery sort of person, found a way around that curse fairly easily, by fashioning a body for Lleu's wife-to-be from flowers, and enticing a spirit to enter it.

The story, told in the Mabinogion, soon reveals the shortcoming in Gwydion's plans, namely that a spirit so easily enticed to enter a body of flowers may just as easily be enticed to other courses of action that neither Gwydion nor his nephew intended, nor wanted.

I'd be curious to hear Blodewedd's story, and discover how she felt about all these developments. If that story has been told, I have yet to find it.

I did hear another story, though, about a human who was shaped not from flowers but from clay, and how a spirit was breathed into him, and he became a living thing, animated by the breath of God. There's a story related to that one too, about a bride found suitable for a king. She was fashioned not of flowers, nor of clay, but of all the races of humanity to walk upon the earth. She also was brought to life by the spirit of God.

Unlike Blodewedd's, this woman's wedding day hasn't come yet. She's still waiting for her groom to come for her. Her spirit is capricious too, and she sometimes has had dalliances with people she shouldn't have.

Hers is a story I'm still learning. I'll let you know how it goes once I understand it better.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Maundy Thursday: Celebrating the ordinary before the storm

Thursday may be my favorite day in Holy Week. Thursday was the day we remember for a meal Jesus ate with his friends.

Formally known as Maundy Thursday, today marks the day Jesus and his disciples shared the Last Supper. On Sunday they threw Jesus a parade. On Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday, he mixed it up all over town, sparring in the Temple and winning accolades for his quick wit and sharp words. Good Friday will be set aside for horror and grief, Saturday is for despair, and Sunday is for celebrating the impossible, but tonight is for celebrating the Passover with those around you.

Dinner with friends. What could be more mundane, more ordinary and more profoundly human than that? We always wonder what we would do if we knew we only had 24 hours to live. The gospels show us what Jesus did. He ate dinner and spent a quiet evening with the people who mattered most to him.

We often think of the Last Supper as a fairly staid affair. The disciples had their little dustup, of course, they always did; but Jesus reclined at the table, serene and above the fray, absolutely stoic and unaffected as he drew the errant children back into good behavior.

I can't see it that way, try as I might. Jesus knew what was coming tomorrow, after all. How could he not? For the past three years he'd been defying social conventions and crossing lines to heal, honor and befriend outcasts in ways that scandalized decent society: welfare cheats, sex workers, immigrants, gays and lesbians, the transgender, adulterers, trained killers and religious people. Even before he looked at Jerusalem from the vantage of the Mount of Olives Jesus already was predicting his death.

When, I wonder, did he know that hammerfall was imminent? Maybe it was the heightened scrutiny. Verbal traps that masqueraded as friendly questions or as mere arguments had been ratcheting up the tension all week, the nets and spears of his opponents drawing closer all the time.Something was going to give, and soon.

Jesus had been on the road with his disciples for three years, and he knew them intimately. When did he first sense that Judas had started to pull back, moving first from all-in support to mixed feelings, and then onward to skepticism and finally to outright rejection? It must have happened quickly, but none of the other disciples noticed it. When Judas left partway through the Seder to betray their teacher, everyone else assumed that he was running out to get something they had forgotten for the meal.

When did Jesus realize that Peter was about to fail? For three years, Peter had been part of the inner circle of Jesus' intimates. Along with the brothers John and James, Peter had been there with Jesus when he raised the daughter of Jairus up from the dead. He'd also been one of the three to witness the Transfiguration.

Peter was someone Jesus clearly had been impressed with. Originally he'd been named Simon, but Jesus had likened him to a rock and renamed him Peter. Over the past week, Jesus had watched as a crack had formed in that rock and threatened to split it down the middle. He'd started praying that the rock would be strong enough to hold together.

Moments of terrible clarity come to all of us at one time or another. We realize that things are about to take a turn for the south and there's nothing we can do about it. The marriage has died, and divorce is now inevitable. Child Protective Services wants simply to close the case, and the girl you love like your own is headed back to the people who abused her. The boss has made his decision, and you're about to be fired. The mob has you at its mercy, and you're going to die.

People who survive such moments often report after it's all over that during the moment of crisis, there was a supernatural calm that fell over them and held them upright and aloft long after they would have given out on their own steam. The future didn't change; they still could hear the march of doom as clear as ever. It just didn't matter right then. These moments of serenity stretch across the surface of simmering trouble. From time to time that calm shakes from the tension of what is happening beneath, but it holds.

Did Jesus' voice tremble when he told Judas to go take care of what he had to do? Did the words catch in his throat when he predicted Peter would deny knowing him, and he described the prayers he had made for his friend's sake? Were there tears in his eyes as he held the Passover cup aloft after dinner and promised to drink it with them again in the Kingdom of Heaven?

All possible. Jesus was human, after all, and he stands squarely with us in our weakness, in our fears and in those secret places where we tremble for what we see coming for ourselves, our loved ones, for our nation and for our world.

The next moment may bring ruin, or it may bring death. Right now that doesn't matter. At this moment, there is only this moment. Right now, friends are gathered around, and it's time for dinner.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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