Jesus at the Margins– Part 2  Shame

Jesus made being marginal central.

He did it primarily by his meal-time practices.

In Jesus’ day the Jewish culture operated on the power of shame. Social relationships were arranged hierarcially with those closest to God–the High Priest–then priests, Levites, obedient Jews on down to those most removed from God–Gentiles, shepherds, tax-collectors, prostitutes and generally the am ha ‘aretz, the “people of the land,” the illiterate human trash. You were kept in your place by stringent social shaming.

For example, Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus into his home and then immediately proceeded to exert the power of social shame (see Luke 7: 36-50). By deliberately humiliating Jesus before all his guests, Simon sought to put this upstart “prophet” from Hicksville, Galilee in his proper place.

Oops. Shame does not work on Jesus. Rolling with Simon’s shame punch, Jesus proceeds to interpret a redeemed prostitute’s actions for Simon and the guests. All the shame meant to slime Jesus boomeranged onto Simon. At a meal.

To be marginalized in Jesus’ day meant to be shamed. Publicly humiliated and socially ostracized and spiritually scorned. You were considered, not just someone who did bad things, you were a bad, unclean person. To up the ante, the social shame declared that you were cut off from God. You had no place at the holy table. You were an outsider. You were gutter trash. You had no identity other than to be the foil for “the righteous ones” who said things like, “God, I am so glad I’m not like that tax-collector/same sex-oriented person/abortion-minded woman/alcoholic/Hezbollah terrorist over there.”

Jesus prepares his table. The thing you never felt in his presence was shame. You felt welcomed. You felt honored. You felt joy. You felt included. You felt valued. You felt family. You heard “my friend” and looked up and saw that Jesus meant you.

“But I, I am…a very rich tax-collector.”
“I am a…furious zealot with blood on my hands.”
“I am…am an unclean woman with an issue of blood.”
“I am a smelly shepherd.”
“I am a desperate prostitute.”
“I am a lonely leper.”
“I am a hated Roman centurion.”
“I am a despised Samaritan and immoral woman.”
“I am am ha ‘aretz.”

Jesus looks at us and smiles. He raises his hands and blesses the bread from the earth and the wine from the grape. He blesses as only a Good Host can bless. By the time he stops, we really don’t care what we are, but who he is. And one thing he is, he’s for us, not against us.

Jesus, as host, says, “Hey, Deborah and Matthew, separate a little bit. We’ve got to make room for father Abraham when he shows up. Good. You guys, there, make a place for Isaac. Alright. Let’s eat.”

Dark shame flees into the night in the presence of Light. Sadly the fleeing shame seeps into the crevases of graceless hearts turns into homicidal hatred. Shame hates being shamed.

“This is my body given for you” …and they felt no shame.

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Jesus at the Margins- Part 1 (from the archives)

I’ve been ruminating again about Jesus’ life with the marginalized of 1st century Judaism. I’m going to ponder in print some of my thoughts.

We often think that Jesus left his surburban bungalow on the green hillside of Galilee and went into the big city and sought out the disadvantaged. How good of Jesus to condescend and go to the marginalized, the outcasts, the rejects, the down-trodden. What a model of servant-leadership. I wonder if my shiny Hummer can navigate the narrow inner city streets?

Wait a minute. Jesus, himself, was born into and lived in the margins of his society. He was the ultimate outcast, the “sinner,” the man with disreputable beginnings and unholy (read illegal) practices.

Good news. Jesus changed the margins. He dared to draw new lines of acceptance with God the Father. Jesus paradoxically made being marginal central.

Imagine that I announce to my Northview neighborhood that teenagers on the verge of getting their driver’s licenses can meet me in a local school parking lot at a certain time. I will train them for free how to start a car, drive and park a car, learn to operate a manual shift, change a flat tire, check the oil, etc. I get approval from every authority interested and the area folk think, “How nice. That old, grey-bearded guy is helping our kids prepare to drive. And he’s doing it for free.”

One day, however, the teens come home, jumping for joy.

“Mom, Dad, I got my driver’s license today!”

“You what? Let me see that.”

“Yeah, the old guy who’s been training us issued our licenses today. Isn’t that wicked?!”

“Hey, settle down. This 3 X 5 card with a polaroid picture taped to it isn’t exactly a driver’s license.”

Word gets out and soon the Michigan Secretary of State sends some authorities to check out this unusual and illegal behavior. Teens are being arrested for driving with a lumpy 3 X 5 card as a valid license.

“Uh, Reverend Frye, you can’t just issue driver’s licenses like this. We appreciate your help getting the teens road ready and all that, but you can’t issue a license to any of them. That is the job of the State of Michigan.”

Jesus is famous for his meal-time habits. His eating habits are one of the most reliable and uncontested features of his life. Jesus ate with people in the margins. For a God-fearing Jew, he ate with the wrong people. But that in itself could be tolerated. “Birds of a feather flock together. He eats with ’sinners’ because he’s a ’sinner.’ “

What got Jesus in trouble was issuing licenses, so to speak. He said, “At my table, you are sitting right in the middle of the Kingdom of God. Eat up. Drink. Laugh. The kingdom is for you!!”

“Uh, Rabbi Jesus, we’re from the Temple…you know, the big one in Jerusalem. You just can’t go around telling people, especially these people, that they are in the kingdom of God. That’s the priests’ job.”

Jesus with a furious twinkle in his eye says, “Oh, no, my Temple friends, you’ve got it all wrong. It IS my job. And I’m doing it.”

At Jesus’ table Deborah, the prostitute, passes a bunch of grapes to Matthew, a tax-collector, and the cups of wine spark laughter (for Anne Lamott laughter is “carbonated holiness”). Deborah and Matthew wonder aloud what they will ask Abraham when they sit at the table with him. Jesus had said that they would eat with their ancestors in the faith.

“I never knew there was a place at this table for me,” Deborah says quietly. “I don’t look like a Pharisee. I don’t talk like one and I, for sure, don’t act like one. I never did learn to talk ‘Pharisee.’ “

“Nor I, ” says Matthew, “but here we are! In the middle of the Kingdom of God.”

Bread, fruit, lamb and wine. Laughter. Heaven and earth meet at the table.

Who’s marginalized?

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Milly Bauer is one sharp lady. One day when a friend and I were sipping coffee and crunching on mouth-watering Milly cookies at her kitchen table, she told about a loving practice she maintains to celebrate her love of Don. Don Bauer and Milly were married for 51 years before Don passed away. Each year that they were married Don, of course, gave Milly a gift on her birthday and at Christmas. Are you ready for this? Milly told us that each year on her birthday she buys a gift for herself from Don. At Christmas, she buys a gift for herself from Don. This sweet ritual has become so routine that when Milly’s children gather for her birthday or at Christmas, they expectantly ask, “Mom, what did Dad get you this year?” My friend and I sat amazed as she told us, seeing the twinkle in Milly’s eyes and hearing the fondness for Don in her voice.

Is this not one of the most creative ways to keep an enduring love enduring? Milly says that she doesn’t know of anyone else who does this. My friend and I had never heard anything like it, either. Just think: this gift exchange is not just between Milly and Don, but between a beloved father and thoughtful mother and their children. “What did Dad get you this year?” Milly says the upside of this ritual gift-giving is that she now gets exactly what she wants from Don. Funny lady. I don’t know if Don can see this simple, but significant ritual twice a year, but if he does, “I can only imagine,” as the song goes, the smile on his face as he laughs and the love for Milly in his heart blazing strong.

A regular practice keeps the fire of love alive. Once a month, on the first Sunday, we, Fellowship Evangelical Covenant Church, enact a similar practice of love. The gift-giver is Jesus and he hands to us the broken bread and offers to us the redemption cup. As we celebrate the Lord’s Table, the Giver reminds us of how much he loves us and what he did to demonstrate that costly love. Though I am privileged to speak at the Table, I must never forget that the True Host is the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is truly present and active. At the Table, grace is the air we breathe and forgiveness and life are the gifts we enjoy. Jesus’ invitation is as enduring as his love. “Come, eat this bread and drink this cup in remembrance of Me.”

The Table is more than a Christian history lesson we must not forget. The Table is a place of meeting where authentic love is given and received. The Table is about persons in relationship, just as Milly’s ongoing gift exchanges are about an enduring love between a husband and wife. We ask Milly, “Why do you do this gift exchange?” We don’t expect Milly to say “Well, so I don’t forget Don.” How could she? She does it to experience and enjoy the love that still exists between her and Don. Don is not present, but he is alive. That’s the Christian hope. A wonder of wonders made possible by the body and blood, the bread and cup, of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Craig R. Koester offers both a theologically vibrant and pastorally applicable presentation of Revelation in his book Revelation and the End of All Things.  Koester is professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

I was trained in what has become a theologically obnoxious and pastorally irrelevant view of the enigmatic apocalypse of John–the Book of Revelation.  I was baptized into the dispensational apocalyptic visions of Revelation as a new, Junior High School believer.  U Thant of the U.N. was then promoted to be the anti-Christ, and so was Martin Luther King, Jr. and so was J.F.K. and lately so was Saddam Hussein.  I was led into the insider knowledge about “the secret rapture” and scared by visions of “the beast” and the dreaded “mark of the beast.” The Great Tribulation would be a ghastly time on earth, but Jesus would beam the insiders up before it happened, thus saving us not only from horses of death, bowls and trumpets of wrath, but from the Great White Throne judgment.

I was taught that when John wrote the Book of Revelation he was clueless about its meaning. It had nothing to do with him or with events in his day. Imagine this:  Someone asks John, “John, what are you writing about?” John replies, “I absolutely have no idea.” For example, if John saw locusts, we insiders saw military helicopters. Revelation was a coded message and John Nelson Darby helped break the code.  (Darby was influenced by a young woman who went into an ecstatic trance.)  We were always on the look out for “the ashes of a red heifer” so that Israel (the nation) could rebuild and dedicate a Temple on the Temple Mount. Oops! The Mosque of Omar/ the Dome of the Rock  is there. The Arabs are going to get really, really mad. After years of this ouija board approach, I became allergic to the Book of Revelation.  Eschatology was sadly reduced to an “end times” chart.

Koester gives the Book of Revelation back to me. I enjoyed the way Koester unfolds the inner logic of the Book of Revelation.  From the opening “revelation” to the final “Amen,” Koester presents the brilliant tapestry and interlocking pattern of Revelation. With insights into the conditions and challenges of churches of Asia Minor, Koester unfolds how chapters 4 – 22 address those current realities in John’s day (and those realities as they reoccur in the history of the church until today). It was so refreshing to drink the truth that Revelation was very meaningful to John and to the seven churches of Asia Minor, and thus, with an enduring message to churches all through church history.  The wild speculations I was subjected to within 1950s to 1990s dispensationalism give way to a “way of seeing” Revelation as pastorally- intensive, historically-conditioned, enduringly-applicable for all the church through all time.  John the author was sharp, creative and pastorally-driven to keep the church loyal to Jesus as Lord in times of compromise and oppression no matter when in history those times occur.

Revelation is not an “end times” book; it is an “all times” book. Amen!

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One Pastor’s Eye on The Book of Eli

By John W. Frye

[This review was posted on Jesus Creed hosted by Dr. Scot McKnight.]

Who would have imagined a 21^st century movie made about The King James Version of the Bible? Denzel Washington’s The Book of Eli puts the 1611 Bible dead center in the story. The tag line of the film: “Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.” This is a “battle for the Bible” like I have never seen. Having seen the film [spoiler alert], I am trying to find a way to synchronize its message with anything in the Bible.

Should we be glad a man named Eli (means “my God”) risks his life and slaughters many people in order to get the only surviving Bible to a printing press so that others can have access to it? The story opens 30 years after a global, nuclear holocaust; a holocaust sparked by warring religions. Survivors are living in the grim, chaotic and violent remains of civilization. Values are altered so that KFC wet wipes are exchanged as currency and water is extremely scarce. Eli (played by Denzel Washington) is “a walker” who is commissioned by “a voice” to head west to deliver the literary treasure in his possession. In the story, Eli is the good, yet stunningly violent guy. The Christian Science Monitor review labels Eli “a pacifist warrior” meaning that Eli is a peaceful man unless provoked. Eli’s nemesis is Carnegie (played by Gary Oldman) who is collecting books in his desperate search of copy of the Bible. Carnegie, the bad guy, wants the Bible because he believes he can use it to keep ignorant, bewildered people in sheep-like submission to his power. Carnegie seeks to capture the Bible faithfully carried and zealously protected by Eli. With Carnegie and Eli, we are presented with a post-apocalyptic Satan and a very uncharacteristic, gun-slinging, knife-wielding Messiah. Is The Book of Eli a postmodern, cinematic Pilgrim’s Progress? I don’t think so.

As a viewer I got caught in the story, eager for Eli to fulfill his quest with “the book” and fearful that Carnegie would succeed in his evil pursuit to seize “the book.” Because this film is about the Bible, it is not like Frodo trying to get the (one) ring to the Cracks of Doom. Eli and Carnegie are human beings who, for different reasons, are obsessed with the Bible. If Eli is a metaphor for a committed person who is willing to die for the Bible, then I would rest easy. But Eli convincingly demonstrates that “he will kill to protect it.”

As a pastor, I have questions. Can a Christian person be a pacifist until provoked and then become a killing machine? Does walking by faith and not by sight have room to use keen hearing to kill the enemies of “the book”? Eli is blind. There is a telling line in the movie when Eli confesses that he spent his life protecting the Bible only to realize that he must live its message: to treat others as he wants to be treated. This confession comes after massive bloodshed from his killing expertise.

The Golden Rule? That’s it? Eli is protecting the Golden Rule? This is where I felt the let down. The passion for the story evaporated.  That, and the ending when the newly printed Alcatraz edition of the King James Version is placed next to the Koran. I wonder if Denzel, a professing committed Christian, really wanted this ending or was it the Hollywood, politically-correct thing to include? Or, is The Book of Eli sending a contemporary message to those who terrorize others in the name of Allah that they, too, will be terrorized by those who love the God of the KJV? I don’t know and I hope not.

The Bible is not about the Golden Rule. The Bible presents not a rule, but a Person—the Prince of Peace. The Bible does offer a love like no human love and that love has a name: Jesus the Christ. The closest the movie comes to any relationality about the God of the Christian faith is when Eli recites the opening verses from Psalm 23 to Solara, a young female devotee of Eli’s.

I wrote a novella titled Out of Print: A Novel. In this story, there are no Bibles except for what has been memorized by people. Scot McKnight wrote the Afterword for the book. Out of Print and The Book of Eli have a similar aim: to give the Bible its rightful place in the world. But the two stories are poles apart. For whatever reason if you like The Book of Eli, I invite you to read Out of Print. Eli’s line fits my story and the evangelical church’s story. Have we been so zealous to protect the Bible that we have failed to live its God-incarnate, God-inspired message? Out of Print suggests that the church not only has a Bible, the church is the Bible to a watching world one button away from the apocalypse.

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AIRPORT THEOLOGY

I wrote the following reflections on my way to Ukraine. This was on Tuesday morning, September 22, 2009.

I am sitting at a table for two by the railing on the second floor in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, eating my McDonald’s breakfast (typical American that I am). I look down and I see a pretty little girl, maybe four years old, walking in the light of a spotlighted advertisement for the perfume/cosmetic shop close by. The store proudly beamed their name and specialties onto the floor with a moving spotlight mounted in the ceiling of the airport’s wide walk-way. The little girl would walk into the light that was moving around on the floor. She would be in the light and then out of the light. Her fun-filled task was to chase the light and stay in the middle of it as it moved.

Chewing on a tasty bite of egg mcmuffin, I thought, “The little girl is walking in the light.” Now for us more theologically- and pastorally-minded, my thought had a familiar Johannine ring to it. (Johannine simply means things written by the Apostle of Love: John).  “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” is in John’s first letter. I have known this phrase—“walk in the light”—for many years; I even translated it from the Greek as a student at Moody Bible Institute. For some odd reason I have always considered the light to be static, stationary. It never crossed my mind that the light might be moving. But watching that little girl in the Amsterdam airport, it hit me in a startling way–-the light moves! Even in the rest of 1 John 1, we are immediately introduced to Jesus–the Light–and believe me, he moved! Jesus was a walking-around kind of teacher. The disciples were invited, “Follow me!” Jesus was (and is) on the move. For the disciples to walk in the light, they had to tag along with Jesus in Galilee, Perea, Samaria and Judea, and even over into Decapolis if they wanted to stay in the light.

An older Deliriou5 song states, “We can see God that you’re moving…” God moves, and God is light. How many of us just want to stand still or lie on the couch or sit in the pew and pretend we are walking in the light? God is not like a street lamp riveted in one spot. God is more like a comet, a shooting star, on the move. One of the favorite New Testament words for the Christian life is “walk.” It implies movement, energy, travel to a destination. “Those who claim to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).

As I continue to watch, the mother finally calls the little girl. It was time for them to move on, so she skips away from her play with the moving light. I sip my coffee pondering how an advertisement for a perfume and cosmetics shop can be transformed into sacred text blowing out the edges of my thinking. In the hymn “This is My Father’s World” we sing, “In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere…” I found it to be true in Schiphol airport in a McDonald’s.

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