On the Outskirts of Heaven

THE LAST SUNDAY IN FEBRUARY is the first Sunday of Lent. We are asked to prepare for Lent by searching our souls and repenting of our misdeeds in order to walk with Jesus on his road to the cross. After writing the final reflections below, I felt unfinished. Repentance is easy to talk about but exceedingly hard to do. We justify and excuse our actions when we’ve hurt a friend or made a bad choice. It’s usually someone else’s fault anyhow—they started it!

The most striking example of human resistance to repentance I’ve ever read was in C.S. Lewis’ little book The Great Divorce. The “divorce” is the huge gap between heaven and hell. Hell is not fiery but filled with people who can’t get along with each other and keep moving further apart in the darkness. Eventually, a few make their way to a bus stop where they get a ride to the outskirts of heaven. There everyone is met by someone from their past they’d rather not meet, and who begs them to repent, make restitution, or whatever is necessary to enjoy a joyful eternity of loving relationships. For almost all of them, it’s not worth it. They fear losing the bit of ego they have left. They’d rather go back to hell than repent and be reconciled with someone they love to hate.

No wonder repenting is the first step to entering the kingdom of God!

ONE FEBRUARY, during my college years, a professor remarked that this month is the hardest to get through. Ice has turned to slush and we’re tired of winter, but spring is (or used to be) weeks away. Years later in Chicago, my husband and I took our children to a nearby nature preserve in late February to look for signs of spring. There they were—little green shoots hidden under layers of dead leaves and snow puddles. Tiny manifestations of spring in the dead of winter.

On the church calendar, Epiphany refers to “a visible manifestation of a hidden divinity.” Psalm 111 declares that YHWH’s presence is made visible by the ability to call out a people from the nations and make an everlasting covenant with them. But our other readings struggle with questions about how to interpret the signs we do see. In the paragraph before Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Moses forbids sacrificing children or consulting the sorcerers, soothsayers, and psychics used by other nations. The people will not find YHWH through these methods.

On the other hand, the Hebrew people fear a direct encounter with the living God. “If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more ... I will die,” they say in verse 16. So Moses promises human conduits of God’s voice—prophets who speak in the name of YHWH. Listen only to these special people. Those who speak in the name of other gods will die.

Judging by Israelite history, the plural “prophets” makes more sense, as the NRSV footnotes suggest. However, after the coming of Jesus, both Peter and Stephen (in Acts 3:22 and 7:37) refer to him as the prophet (singular) who is like Moses.

In Mark 1:21-28, Jesus’ first public action demonstrates his prophetic power and wisdom by banishing an evil spirit inhabiting a man and refusing to allow it to identify him. In 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Paul recognizes the fears that newly converted believers in a polytheistic culture still have of “so-called gods,” but he asserts God’s oneness and Jesus’ lordship over all other powers.

[ February 8 ]

Grasshoppers or Humans?

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

THE ASTRONAUTS who circle the Earth in the International Space Station have a view of the Earth none of the rest of us will ever see firsthand. The first photos of Earth beamed back from space confronted us with both the wonder and the fragility of our little blue planet. Neither Isaiah nor the psalmist ever saw such a photo, but what they say sounds as if they had. In his mind’s eye, Isaiah sees God sitting “above the circle of the Earth,” where “its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” Space itself is stretched out “like a curtain” (verse 22). The Lord of Psalm 147 binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted and at the same time numbers and names all the stars!

But our New Testament texts portray two human beings who walk or trudge upon small patches of our spinning Earth, bringing good news to those who can hear it. Though Jesus is endowed with God’s Spirit (see Mark 1:9-11), there are no fireworks, just a crowd of sick and tortured people asking for help. Day after day, only prayer will get him through (1:35).

Jesus’ apostle, Paul, is in a similar situation, but without the miracles. Throughout 1 Corinthians 9, Paul argues that, though he has a right to be supported financially for his preaching, he refuses it and instead performs lower-class manual labor (Acts 18:3). This money would come from the elite patrons of his house churches, who would consequently expect him to honor them more than the low-income laborers and slaves who make up the majority of believers. This Paul refuses to do, despite the patrons’ resistance. He insists that he must become weak and poor—become even a slave—in order to bring good news to those in such situations (see 1 Corinthians 9:22).

Would that we had more religious and political leaders so willing to identify with the poor of today’s world.

[ February 15 ]

Shame and Glory

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

SINCE I WAS a child, I have known the story in 2 Kings of Elijah’s journey to heaven in a chariot of fire, mainly through pictures in Bible storybooks. Reading it now, with its repetition of movement from place to place and its suspension of natural law, the first word that comes to mind is “bizarre”! Perhaps the main point in its original context was the persistence of Elisha to follow in the footsteps of his wonder-working master.

But to the author of Mark’s gospel, the presence of never-dying Elijah conversing with Jesus made perfect sense. Perhaps he alone could stand with Moses, the supreme prophet of Israel, to meet the “prophet like Moses” who was promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. Whatever happened on that mountain, it was full of symbolism to the disciples steeped in their Israelite history.

The word “transfigure” comes to us from the King James Bible. The Greek original is metamorphoō, which simply refers to a “change of appearance,” like a tadpole metamorphosing into a frog. Today we might call transfiguration “shape-shifting”!

We must not overlook the topographical setting for this shape-shifting event—on a mountain, the place where heaven meets earth and where Moses received the Torah. The literary setting likewise contributes to both its majesty and its irony. It follows Jesus’ first prediction to the disciples that he will be rejected, shamed, and killed by their religious leaders (see Mark 8:31). Small wonder that Transfiguration Sunday precedes the beginning of Lent!

In light of the juxtaposition of shame and glory in Mark, Paul’s comment in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 says it well: The gospel is veiled to those who are perishing, but to us it is “the good news of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (verse 4). Missionary Paul understood well the irony of the cross as the way to glorification.

[ February 22 ]

Come to the Mercy Seat

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

AS LENT BEGINS, our readings circle around the themes of repentance for sin, water as a symbol of baptism and cleansing, and the suffering necessary for salvation.

Psalm 25 presents a picture of a prodigal son or daughter bowing before the mercy seat of YHWH. Struggling against his or her own folly, battered by critics and enemies, the penitent begs for mercy and pardon. “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me” (verse 7).

Centuries later, John the Baptist provided a ritual of cleansing for those who wished to repent and live a different life (Mark 1:4-5). As noted in the same reading last month, Jesus identified so deeply with our human condition that he was also baptized by John. Though the Spirit named him a beloved Son at that time, the Spirit also drove him into the desert to figure out his particular mission. Proclaiming the coming kingdom of God, his message echoed Psalm 25: Repent!

The text in 1 Peter 3 ties us to Noah’s flood and the ark of salvation. Biblical writers often used typology to communicate theology. Those who ridiculed Noah and ignored God’s warnings perished. (The strange idea of Jesus preaching to “spirits in prison” probably harks back to the inter-testamental apocalyptic writing of 1 Enoch, where Enoch visits evil spirits and fallen angels.) The flood story is repeating itself today, as scientists warn of climate change amid the scoffing of climate-change deniers.

Setting aside its puzzles, the 1 Peter text is especially poignant. Writing to marginalized immigrants and refugees, Peter acknowledges that their faithfulness to Jesus has caused suffering. But he asks them to endure without retaliation, just as Jesus suffered. Baptism is the outward sign of their submission to the One who now sits at God’s hand and has ultimate authority over all their oppressors.