A Fresh Perspective

How long, Lord? I suspect we have all asked that question haven’t we? We may have asked that question after weeks or perhaps months or maybe even years of our own struggle or a loved one’s struggle with a serious illness or debilitating pain. We may have asked out of the despair of a deep betrayal by a spouse or a friend. Or it may have been after months of trying to find work related to our skills and training. How long, Lord? The widow in our story who was a victim of injustice must have felt that way? She keeps crying out to the unjust judge, “Grant me justice!” It’s interesting that Luke introduces this parable as a call to pray always and not lose heart. I very much doubt that in its original setting Jesus intended this story to be about prayer. Luke’s application of the parable as a call to persistent prayer is an example of how these stories can connect with us and impact us on different levels. How we understand and apply these stories depends a lot on our own context and ...

In the summer of 1942, before the civil rights movement, Clarence Jordan, a Ph.D in New Testament, a Southern Baptist whom Southern Baptists came to hate, on 440 acres of worn out farm land in southwest Georgia launched what he called a “demonstration plot” for the kingdom of God. He named his experiment Koinonia Farm. The Greek word koinonia is the word used to depict the Christian community described in the fourth chapter of the book of Acts that shared their resources and held everything in common so that no one in the community did without. I suppose Jordan wouldn’t have had much opposition if it was an all white community. But this was in interracial community where whites and blacks lived and worked as equals, as family.   Being a Baptist he was often invited to preach in little Baptist churches, that is, until they heard his message of equality for all people. Then he was rarely invited back.  After one sermon where he bemoaned and denounced the country’s practice ...

In our Gospel story today Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple. Interpreters point out that Luke collapses two different Jewish rituals into one – the purification of the mother and the redemption of the first born. These were actually two separate rituals observed at different times, but in this story Luke combines them, reminding us that for the Gospel writers the proclamation of good news was always more important than getting history and the traditions right. The offering that is presented by Jesus’ parents tells us something about the economic conditions in which Jesus was raised. The law required a lamb for the offering, but it had a poverty clause that permitted the offering of turtle doves or pigeons for those who could not afford to bring a sheep. And this is what Mary and Joseph bring. I suspect growing up poor helped to nurture within Jesus a real passion to help the poor. He knew how systemic poverty entraps and diminishes people. When Jesus sets forth his agenda ...

Biblical interpreters call this passage in Micah a lawsuit oracle. It is a proclamation of indictment or judgment against the covenant people, most likely the leaders of Israel toward the end of the eighth century BCE. The prophet rails against religion that is awash in liturgy and ritual, but devoid of substance. When we turn this in on ourselves the truth of it is that we might never miss a worship service, we might give a full tithe of our income to the church, we might serve in various capacities within the church structure and organization, and still, we might completely miss doing God’s will. What is God’s will? How does true religion express itself? Micah is quite explicit. O mortal, cries the prophet, what is good? What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. The three things Micah highlights that God requires are mentioned specifically in three of the beatitudes in Matthew 5. One could easily make the cas...

In my little book, Being a Progressive Christian (is not) for Dummies (nor for know-it-alls) , I share a story to draw a distinction between acts of mercy and acts of justice. They are not the same thing. Once there was a town built just beyond the bend of a large river. One day some of the children from the town were playing beside the river when they noticed three bodies floating in the water. They ran for help and the townsfolk quickly pulled the bodies out of the river. One person was dead, so they buried that one. One was alive, but very sick, so they put that person in the hospital. The third turned out to be a healthy child, who they placed with a family that cared for the child and took the child to school. From that day forward, a number of bodies came floating down the river and every day, the good people of the town would pull them out and tend to them—taking the sick to the hospital, placing children with families, and burying those who were dead. This went...