Teaching Jesus

I was sitting in the kitchen Wednesday when I overhead on Zoom the pastor at my wife's church tease the next week's Bible study with a question: Is it possible for someone else to teach Jesus?

As questions go, that one’s a no-brainer. I haven’t seen set foot in the church for two years, but I couldn’t help myself. I answered immediately.

“Yes.”

The proof lies in Mark 7, and in a parallel passage in Matthew 15. Mark explains that a Syrophoenician woman came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter, whom the distraught mother said was afflicted by an unclean spirit.

If you've been paying attention to the gospels so far, you probably can guess how this will play out. Jesus will rebuke the spirit. He'll embrace the girl in a hug and breathe on her. He might be dramatic, or he might be matter-of-fact, but this story is going to end with the girl better and her mother relieved and grateful. One thing that will not happen, is Jesus will not say no.

Except no is exactly what Jesus does say. In fact, he doesn't just give the poor woman a paper cut; he pours lemon juice on it and delivers a biting insult.

"It is not right to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs."

This is the sort of thing that can sink a political campaign. Over the years I've heard lots of attempts at damage control by God's PR team. None of them has been especially convincing.

"Dogs are beloved pets," goes one. "Jesus was basically calling this woman a member of the family."

Except the gospel comes from a culture without $70 bags of Purina dog food for small breeds. Jesus was not comparing the Syrophoenician woman to a toy poodle named Fifi. Dogs in ancient Galilee were unclean animals that inhabited the city dump. They known for their viciousness. not their adorable penchant for sitting on your lap.

"Jesus was testing the woman's faith."

By calling her a dog? We've already seen Jesus heal lepers and blind people without such tests. Luke reports that a woman simply touched the hem of his robe and was healed with no effort on his part.

Here's the simple explanation, in Jesus' own words: "I was only sent for the lost sheep of Israel." He wasn't going to provide the healing because the woman and her daughter weren't Jewish.

But this woman was determined. Her daughter needed help,, and she was confident Jesus was the one to help. Don't give your children's bread to the dogs? OK, then. She had a quick wit and a ready response.

"Dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."

One imagines Jesus stopping, stunned. Of course she was right. The Bible was filled with stories of favored Gentiles. Ruth the Moabitess, a woman from a people so reviled that the book of Genesis recounted a crude ethnic joke about their origins. Rahab of Jericho, who hid Israelite spies scouting out the land. Naaman the Aramean. whom Elisha the prophet had healed of leprosy.

Blown away by the response, Jesus turned and fed the dog a whole loaf of bread, straight from the oven.

“For such a reply, you may go," he said. "The spirit has left your daughter.”

It's a stunning moment, mostly because it goes against our notions of Jesus as a perfectly enlightened bodhisattva, but the gospels note that Jesus' whole life was an odyssey of learning. It began with his birth , when he had to learn to latch on to his mother's breast in order to eat. From there he had to learn to crawl and then to walk, and somewhere along the line he picked up Aramaic, along with Hebrew, Greek and probably some Latin. The evangelist Luke notes that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, while John reports that he could write as well. Someone had to teach him these skills, along with the trade he learned at Joseph's knee.

This should be no surprise to us. The gospels describe Jesus as one with the Father, and to look at God in the Hebrew Bible is to see a God who is eager to try new things, to see what happens.

God plays in the dirt and sculpts a man. Then he breathes life into this new creature and names him Adan, (There's a first time for everything.)

He brings the animals by. What's Adam going name them? ("Well, this one is a frog. I'm calling this thing a badger. This one is an oliphaunt, and this useless lump over here is called Kevin.")

Any suitable companions to be found? ("Well, the capybara is kind of funny, the way it eats watermelon and soaks in the hot tub; and it's really cute the way the hamster stuffs its cheeks just before we say grace. But the bananaquit seems kind of vicious, and none of them is a big conversationalist...")

The adventure plays out over the years. "Come, let us make bricks," man says, and God drops in for a closer look. "Well, what have we here?' he asks, and then he finds out.

God learns.

Sometimes what we teach him isn't what he wanted to know. "You're doing things that never even occurred to me!"

Sometimes God is impressed by our ability to change, and a great city (and its cattle) are spared judgment.

Sometimes it even seems people manage to teach God about himself.

"Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right?" Abraham asks. And God blinks, and he changes his mind.

God, it appears, is always willing to learn about showing mercy. The real question is whether we have anything to teach him.

teaching ii

I was sitting in the kitchen Wednesday when I overhead on Zoom the pastor at my wife's church tease the next week's Bible study with a question: Is it possible for someone else to teach Jesus?

The answer lies in Mark 7, and in a parallel passage in Matthew 15. Mark explains that a Syrophoenician woman came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter, whom the distraught mother says is afflicted by an unclean spirit. Jesus' response is shocking. He doesn't just say no and give the woman a paper cut; he has to go and pour lemon juice on it too, with a biting insult.

"It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs."

It's the sort of misstep that can sink a political campaign, and over the years I've heard lots of attempts at damage control by God's PR team. None of them has been especially convincing.

"Dogs are beloved pets," goes one. "Jesus was basically calling this woman a member of the family."

Except the gospel comes from a culture without bags of $70 Purina dog food for large breeds. Jesus was not comparing the Syrophoenician woman to a toy poodle named Fifi. Dogs in ancient Galilee were unclean animals that inhabited the city dump. They known for their viciousness. not their adorable penchant for sitting on your lap.

"Jesus was testing the woman's faith."

By calling her a dog? We've already seen Jesus heal lepers and blind people without such tests. Luke reports that a woman simply touched the hem of his robe and was healed with no effort on his part.

Here's the simple explanation, in Jesus' own words: "I was only sent for the lost sheep of Israel." He wasn't going to provide the healing because they weren't Jewish.

But this woman was determined. Her daughter needed help,, and she was confident Jesus was the one to help. Don't give your children's bread to the dogs? OK, then. She had a quick it and a ready response.

"Dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."

One imagines Jesus stopping, stunned. Of course she was right. The Bible was filled with stories of favored Gentiles. Ruth the Moabitess, a woman from a people so reviled that the book of Genesis recounted a crude ethnic joke about their origins. Rahab of Jericho, who hid Israelite spies scouting out the land. Naaman the Aramean. whom Elisha the prophet had healed of leprosy.

Blown away by the response, Jesus turned and fed the dog a loaf of bread.

"For such a reply, you may go," he said. "The spirit has left your daughter."

It's a stunning moment, mostly because it goes against our notions of Jesus as a perfectly enlightened bodhisattva, but the gospels note that Jesus' whole life was an odyssey of learning, beginning with his birth and had to learn to latch on to his mother's breast in order to eat. He had to learn to crawl and then to walk, and somewhere along the line he had to learn Aramaic, along with Hebrew, Greek and probably some Latin. The evangelist Luke notes that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, while John reports that he could write as well. Someone had to teach him these skills, along with the trade he learned at Joseph's knee.

This should be no surprise to us. The gospels describe Jesus as one with the Father, and to look at God in the Hebrew Bible is to see a God who is eager to try new things, to see what happens.

God plays in the dirt and sculpts a man. Then he breathes life into this new creature and names him Adan, (There's a first time for everything.)

Bring the animals by. What's Adam going name them. ("Well, this one is a frog. I'm calling this thing a badger. This one is an oliphaunt, and this useless over here is named Kevin.")

Any suitable companions to be found? ("Well, the capybara is kind of funny, the way it eats watermelon and soaks in the hot tub; and it's really cute the way the hamster stuffs its cheeks just before we say grace. But the bananaquit seems kind of vicious, and none of them is a big conversationalist...")

The adventure plays out over the years. "Come, let us make bricks," man says, and God drops in for a closer look. "Well, what have we here?' he asks, and then he finds out.

God learns.

Sometimes what we teach him isn't what he wanted to know. "You're doing this that never occurred to me."

Sometimes he's impressed by our ability to change, and a great city 9and its cattle) are spared judgment.

Sometimes it even sees people manage to teach God about himself.

"Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right?" Abraham asks. And God blinks, and he changes his mind.

God, it appears, is always willing to ;earn about showing mercy. The real question is whether we have anything to teach him.

This coat I wear

I don't remember when I first got this coat. It must have been when I was very young, because I've had it for almost as long as I can remember. I've no idea how someone else might have enjoyed it; for my part, I have found it to be perfectly suitable for long and meandering walks.

It didn't mean much to me for the longest time. I wore it like I was expected to, but it wasn't until I was almost 17 that I really began to appreciate what having a coat like this means, and what it could mean for me personally.

For a while I ran with a crowd that wore coats like it, but they were a fairly unpleasant group: a little snobbish, very cliquish and carrying a huge chip on their collective shoulder. I took the coat off for a while, but discovered on the eve of college that it was worth more than I had realized. Over the next four years, I patched it up, made alterations and tried to get it to fit but it never did.

I realized eventually how bad a job I had done with it, and I took it to a tailor. He didn't say anything about the alterations I'd made to it, but he took them out and mended the coat properly so that it fit comfortably for the first time that I could remember.

Some years ago, I took a bad spill in the coat, right down the rocky side of a hill, all the way to the bottom. The coat was shredded on the way. The buttons came off, I lost one of the sleeves, and a few pockets ripped open. A few people thought I'd lost it for good.

Nothing doing. Some people don't like the way it looks, or think that their coats are better than mine, which is fine. I've found that the raggedy look suits me. It's certainly not too stiff and uncomfortable, and if I'm cold sometimes, at least I know why.

The coat's got me through a lot. All those tears, those holes, those stains and those missing pieces remind me of places I've been, experiences I've had, and even things that I didn't need after all. I've worn this coat for years, and I expect I'll wear it for many more.

See you on the trails.

A grief observed: a year already

 It’s been a year since my mom died.

I can’t wrap my mind around either one, quite. Mom’s dead? For an entire year? It doesn’t feel at all believable. I talked to her just yesterday, and saw her not long before that.

A year? Without mom? Inconceivable.

A mother is one of the fundamental building blocks of life. She was there when I came squalling into the world, she was there when I suffered the indignity of my little brother moving into the room, and she was there for a thousand other triumphs and humiliations.

Mom, dead? How?

She was there to bear witness my every school concert, to watch me lose games of soccer and baseball on teams I’d been forced to join against my will. She was at the airport when I left in 1987 for a year with AFS, and she was there when I returned.

Mom saw me leave for college, and though she worried, she saw me leave for Haiti. She saw me join my life to my wife’s, and she welcomed the arrival of her first granddaughter sixteen months later.

She was a part of my life for so long, and witness to so many of its highs and so many of its lows that I still can’t wrap my mind around the idea that she’s not there anymore. Does the earth vanish? Does the sun disappear? It defies expectation.

She died on a riverboat cruise, reading a book because she couldn’t sleep. One imagines her eyes growing heavy as she begins to drift off, and she realizes the Angel of Death is standing patiently to one side.

“I’m sorry,” she says, thoughtful to the last. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not a problem,” says the angel. “We have all the time in the world. Do you need a few more minutes to finish the chapter?”

A year.

A mother is many things in our life. A cheerleader. A coach. A voice of hope when we’ve given up. A bottomless well of love when we’ve none left for ourselves. A signpost that points us to God.

We are all rivers, and Mother is the source from which we flow. Her passing when it comes is a loss that threatens to turn us dry.

Yet here we are, a year later, and the river still flows fast, deep and full of life.

That’s how deep a mother’s love is, and always will be.

Lent: Consume

CONSUME

I was into stories about Thor long before Chris Hemsworth picked up the hammer and started wearing a cape for Marvel Studios.

The stories I knew were written in the 13th century by a man named Snorri Sturluson. In one story, Thor takes Loki on a trip to Jotunheim and Loki boasts that he can eat faster than anyone. He's soon put to the test: a wooden platter is laden with meat, and as Loki starts eating at one end, his opponent begins at the other.

They meet in the middle, but Loki loses because all he ate was the meat. His opponent ate meat, bone and platter alike, leaving nothing. It was all consumed.

Consumed.

There's something so final, so total about that word. A consuming desire is one that devours you, overthrowing wit, wisdom and any semblance of self-restraint. It brooks no distraction, permits no other recourse. It's as relentless as fire itself, and ultimately as destructive.

Years ago in church we sang a tune by Hillsong, "Inside Out," that expresses the longing that drives worship: "In my heart and my soul, Lord, I give you control. Consume me from the inside out." One can almost see the worshiper drawing closer to the Eternal Flame, until they are lit from within, and holy fire consumes them beginning in their chest and spreading outward until nothing is left but embers that soon are gone themselves.

In the end we're all consumed by something, but be comforted. The experience is only as glorious or as terrible as the consuming fire that we choose to be caught in.

This is not about 7 Wonders

Most of my family loves to play "7 Wonders." I never learned.

Part of it, I will admit, is the complexity of the game. When I sit down for a tabletop adventure, it's to relax and enjoy myself. D&D is fun when there's a story unfolding with a chance to roleplay and use the imagination; it's not as much fun when the rules require special certification and if Chris and Tom spend every round of combat consulting three different sets of rulebooks on how to do the grapplechecks.

7 Wonders, it must be noted, has a set of rules that require more hours of study than my master's degree did.

But part of is also the difference in how my wife and I learn the rules. She reads the rules out loud, in full, to understand them. To be sure, this approach can work if you're wired for it. Rulebooks can teach everything you need to know to play, if that's how you learn.

I don't. I prefer to play, follow the lead of more experienced players. and then check the rulebook once I'm in the swing of things, to clear up vague points. It's not that I don't take rules seriously. It's because with the way I'm wired, rulebooks work much better as reference material once I'm acquainted with game mechanics than they do as an introduction to the game.

This practice has served me well for years. I learn the game quickly, develop strategies based on experience, and then finesse my understanding as I encounter gaps in my knowledge.

My Black Lives Matter hoodie and me

Allow me to recommend this Black Lives Matter hoodie. It's warm and comfortable.

 

It also makes an important anti-racist message of solidarity. I was wearing it during the blizzard tonight when my car broke down and I needed police assistance.

 

A lot of things went through my mind as I sat in my car and waited for police to arrive. What kind of reception would this hoodie get? What if the responding officer had a chip on his shoulder and took offense at its "anti-police" message?

 

Theater of the mind suggested all sorts of outcomes. Maybe there'd be an unpleasant conversation. Given the scope of officer discretion, maybe there would be charges. Failure to maintain vehicle, careless driving, who knows?

 

"Great night to wear this hoodie," I thought.

 

Police showed up. The officer on the scene was a consummate professional. Friendly, helpful, stayed with me until the tow came. He never said boo about the hoodie, although he did ask what the bumper sticker with the equals sign ( = ) was for.

 

"Marriage equality," I said. (I'm all in as a liberal.)

 

Is there a point to this story? Yes. Tonight was a night I needed police assistance, and I called for it. If I was a little nervous about what would happen, I'm fortunate enough to know that those nerves are a matter of projection and not rooted in personal experience.

 

But those nerves were a product of wearing a BLM hoodie and choosing to identify with the black victims of police violence and oppression. I wouldn't have been nervous at all if the hoodie had featured a picture of Tom Baker and said "You always remember your first Doctor."

 

Tonight I got not a taste, nor a sample, but maybe a shadow of what it's like to be a black motorist. I'd guess most black experiences with police go without incident too, beyond the initial stop and dreaded wait as the cop walks to the window.

 

Most, that is. But not all.

 

Too many of those encounters, and disproportionately far more than with white motorists, end in violence or even death.

 

Jonathan Ferrell was shot and killed by police after his car broke down and he asked for help. Sandra Fluke was pulled over, removed from her car and incarcerated. She was found, hanged in her cell. days later. Walter Scott was shot in the back when he ran from police over a traffic stop. Philando Castille was shot to death in his car while complying with police instructions.

 

Do I need to go on?

 

I hated feeling that shadow tonight, but at least I can always wear something different when I go out in the cold.

 

Black motorists can't change their skin.

 

I'm not changing that hoodie either.

My wishes for you in the new year

 Today is New Years Day. The old year is gone, the new year has begun. Happy New Year!

I hope this year to you is not a second chance to succeed where you've struggled or fallen. I hope instead it's a new beginning on a clean slate, with no record of past wrongs.

I hope someone tells you "I love you," and I hope that you say “I love you” too.

I hope you rediscover the pleasures of touch: on the hair, on the arm, the face, the back.

I hope you're someone's priority this year, not just an option.

I hope that one of your dreams comes true, and another sees progress.

I hope you read, for pleasure, something you really enjoy; and the experience transports you to places familiar and new.

I hope you find your work meaningful and satisfying.

I hope you sing, by yourself and with friends.

I hope you seize the opportunity to dance, in the kitchen or in the living room, with someone you love.

When you cry, I hope you're not alone.

Also when you laugh.

I hope this is a good year for you. one where you make new friends, enjoy the company of old friends, and reconnect with friends whom you've forgotten.

Where you've been hurt, I hope you can extend grace if you can't forgive; and when you're alone I hope you reach out and take the hand of one more alone than you.

The old year is over, but it may take a while for us to escape the shadows it has cast, and longer still until it's been forgotten. But a new year is here, and it offers us a new beginning. That beginning is ours. If we take it. Together.

Happy New Year.