In the previous Treehouse post “Leaning Into Hope” I wrote, “When we began this journey over a year-and-a-half ago, I invited you to join me as I try to rediscover and articulate what I believe about God, Jesus, the Church, Christian faith, and so on.”

Honestly, I hardly know how to begin these days, but it feels more urgent than ever to put forth as clearly as possible a vision of love, grace, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, hope, welcome, wideness, a vision of fierce justice, abiding wonder, unfettered curiosity, and holy uncertainty that can not only stand against the twisted version of Christianity currently being peddled1 by far too many, but that can begin to render it obsolete. 2

So let’s get right into it.

My starting point is that there is a God or a Someone or a Something, because I have to start somewhere. I tried atheism, but I was no good at it, so I’m back, or actually forward, with this simple foundation that I hope is flexible enough to build and expand on (just like a really fantastic treehouse would be), because I don’t know that I’m ever going to be done wondering and doubting and reframing and reclaiming. And I’m finally at peace with that.

So, for me, today, God is. Of course, the next question ought to be, “What kind of God?”

I keep thinking of the first of the two Creation Stories in Genesis, when the Spirit, the Breath of God was hovering, brooding, over the surface of the waters.

Then God speaks. From the beginning, creative power emanates through Divine’s word and thought. There is nurturing power in Their attentive hovering. Add that to humankind being created “in our image,” and I’m unable to escape the deeply relational and even interdependent nature of the Divine.

The center of all this relatedness, the nucleus that holds all in its dynamic, is Love. Love as the initiating impulse of Creation, Love as the sustaining activity of tending and mending Creation, Love as the evolutionary direction forward for Creation.3

There is nothing that will cost you more than the full-on risk of Love. Therefore, God’s creative power is unavoidably interwoven with Their naked vulnerability. This theme is borne out in cycles in the Old Testament when God sounds like They’re lamenting in a Country Western song — “You’ve done me wrong, I wish I could quit loving you, but I just can’t.”

Enter Jesus, who opts for well-known words from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read from to announce the beginning of his work in the world:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”4

He concludes with “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, Jesus comes on the scene as literally embodying the promises of God as announced by Isaiah and other prophets. (I do love Luke’s dramatic touch of Jesus rolling up the scroll, giving it back to the attendant, and sitting down. “And….scene.”)

What is enormously significant to note is the fact that Jesus’s proclamation immediately follows his experience in the wilderness where he was offered5 ultimate power, an offer he rejects in favor of continuing to announce the incoming kingdom/reign/new reality of God. Here’s the thing. Power does not like to be challenged. It pushes back, and hard. Yet Jesus never yielded, teaching and healing and gathering all manner of people around him, ignoring the accusations and aggression coming from all sides, continually walking straight into the fray. (Vulnerability: check.)

In my mind, the coming of Jesus and his brief ministry is like watching walls being knocked down and gates being blown wide open. One of my former pastors flipped the old script for me in such a beautiful way. “What if, instead of imagining that heaven is a place you have to get into, we imagine heaven as something that gets out, that right now is beginning to flow all around us, that we are ankle-deep in it already.” That the kingdom/reign/new reality of God is already here and is beginning to work its way into and altering the very fabric of the world. Jesus’s teachings about forgiveness offer a way forward out of the brokenness that is so often part of the human condition.

We could say, “If you want to know what God is like, watch what Jesus does.”

But here is the truth. I’m starting to feel like theology might be like a really good joke — the more you pick it apart, the more you kill it.

Karl Barth, 6the noted Swiss Reformed theologian who wrote heaps of books on Christian theology was asked by a student during a lecture series at the University of Chicago if he could sum up all of his writings. Barth’s response? The song his mother had taught him at her knee. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” (This story makes me wonder if I’m making this whole enterprise harder than it needs to be.)

We know from the ancient historian Josephus that Jesus actually was crucified by the Romans. Do I believe he was resurrected? In truth, I’m not sure I do, not in the sense of the Biblical stories of being raised from the dead and hanging out with his disciples and eating grilled fish. At the same time, Jesus has twice appeared to me in dreams in powerful, necessary, healing ways, leaving me stunned and weeping. Jesus showed up in the suffering children when I served as a chaplain at the Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And once, very early on an Easter morning, I woke in my darkened room to the distinctly spicy perfume of lilies, and as I lay in my bed, barely daring to move, I breathed in the scent until the sun was well in the sky. Jesus is still who I turn to in hope, because in him I sense a friendship, even kinship. So maybe I’m just splitting dimensional hairs here.

Do I follow Jesus? Yes. I try to.

I try to follow Jesus’s ways. I try to keep in mind every single one of us contains divinity. I try to keep in mind we are all made of the same wondrous stardust. I try to remember the poor with my money and prayers. I try to remember how many suffer with loneliness and despair and tragically difficult lives and to hold hope for us all through the promise of Love, that it might keep stirring us to be Love and to act with Love and to embody Love, to show up for each other, either as hands and feet of Jesus or whatever divine name we want to give it. I try to remember to receive Love when it comes my way and to acknowledge and name and offer gratitude for grace when it falls over me.

The third and final movement that I make in building this thing I’m trying to embrace with really open and flexible arms is the inbreaking Spirit (breath, wind, pneuma) that arrives (Acts 2) to stir the followers of Jesus into action, that action being to point to and emulate Jesus in living out God’s kingdom/reign/new reality and bringing it to fruition wherever and however and whenever we can, and to knit us in a loving community that encourages one another in the faithful lives we’re trying to live by moving in and through and among us. Is the Spirit still active in the world today? I believe yes, undoubtedly. So many congregations and Christians and Christian leaders are doing so much good in their communities. So many who are part of other faith traditions as well as those who don’t identify with any faith tradition are stirred to profound, world-changing acts of lovingkindness and courage. I try to keep all this in mind when things in our country and the world feel overwhelming and discouraging. The Spirit of Love is still moving, maybe more powerfully than ever.

Am I a universalist? I am. I believe the true scandal is that Love wins everything, all is redeemed, and everyone is in. I cannot believe the wasted and too often spiritually violent energy spent by Christians trying to determine who is out and who is in. Number one, not our call. Number two, grow up. Number three, what difference does it make? Is our mission as humans to police the kingdom/reign/new reality of God, to literally gatekeep Love? I assure you, it is not. I think of Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard who came at various times in the day, some right before quitting time, and all were paid the same as the workers who labored all day. When they complained bitterly (“Waaahhhh, it’s not fair…”) the landowner (hint, hint, God) challenges them with “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I’m generous?”7

Today this is what I can say about what I believe, while fully admitting there is so much more I don’t know than I do, and I am fine with that. (That’s why the descriptor of agnostic lingers.) What I’m opening more and more to is exploring and experiencing the neglected, mystical side of this story, leaning into uncertainty and learning to hold it honestly and forthrightly, willing to see there is more unexpected reality to be revealed.

I thank you for coming along on this journey of raggedy, messy faith-ing. I hope it’s been helpful, maybe even clarifying for you from time to time. I find even when I disagree with someone, it helps me better understand what I think and believe.

The Treehouse is as complete as it’s going to be. I’m sure there will be repairs and updates, but I’ll take care of those quietly, as I’m able to get to them. Before you go, be sure to sit and relax for a while, take in the view, the leaves turning, the sun slanting, and have some tea or a glass of wine. Savor the moment.

But…I don’t think the conversation is over, at least it’s not for me. So look for a new section, coming soon.

Please know I wish you deepest blessings on all of your spiritual journeying. May the roads be as adventurous, wide-open, wondrous, challenging, surprising, and mystical as possible.

With love and so much gratitude,

Your fellow traveler, Rebecca

Good afternoon, Treehousers, and others who have wandered in. Please come on out to our beautiful treehouse porch and help yourself to some mint tea, freshly-brewed coffee, water or wine, and find a comfy seat. I have some things to say, and it might take a minute.

When we began this journey over a year-and-a-half ago, I invited you to join me as I try to rediscover and articulate what I believe about God, Jesus, the Church, Christian faith, and so on.

On Monday, July 28th I quietly noted the 32nd anniversary of my ordination as a pastor in the ELCA. I clearly remember kneeling on the hard brick steps of Trinity Lutheran Seminary’s sanctuary as the bishop invited me to make my promises and fellow pastors’ hands alit like birds on my shoulders. It’s weird to think I’ve been out of that pastoral role longer than I was in (14 years of service) and yet the joys and sorrows, struggles and gifts of being a pastor still have a powerful, beautiful hold on my heart and spirit.

It was in 1983, three years after my sister’s death and a year-and-a-half after our baby boy Cooper died, pregnant with daughter Maggie, that the first church I’d ever belonged to began to be torn asunder by serious conflict. I was newly arrived to the practice of Christian faith and was surprised that during this time of strife I was experiencing intense grief. My newfound faith had revealed to me a vision of wholeness, healing, and reconciliation, of mystery and wonder and hope and the movement of grace in the world, and I’d fallen for it hard, and I mean all the way. It was becoming one of the great love stories of my life, and that hot passion for what the Church could be was likely the first clue I was headed for ordained ministry, but I didn’t know that then.

Now, as Christian Nationalism spreads its twisted and toxic version of faith, one that rejects empathy and compassion, forgiveness, love, and justice as core ingredients, and instead sidelines Jesus Christ, in his place elevating the golden calf of power and money to be worshiped above all else, I’m revisited by those same powerful emotions. In other words, it still matters to me that the Church be the Church, that it should bear witness to and impart Divine Love to the world, and as if this even has to be said, have the person and teachings of Jesus Christ as its foundation and cornerstone. (To be honest, I’m a little stunned to realize how deeply invested I still am.)

We are living through dark times right now, and I believe it is going to get a lot darker, a frightening and sobering prospect. Yet, something powerful is stirring, and I don’t think it’s just in my heart, my spirit. Some enlivening breeze is moving us together, drawing people of many faiths and people of varying beliefs and people of no specific faith to lift together the banner of Love over all and to put forth the imperative of justice and compassion as we work alongside one another for what is good and true and right.

This vision of the Church at its best — knocked-down walls, bigger tables; less dogma, more blowing the doors clean off; less isolationism, more ecumenism; less judgment, more no-strings-attached love, lots and lots more love — is overwhelmingly alluring to me, and in some wild way still seems achievable. (Listen, it’s the untamed wildness of the Spirit that to me is one of Her most attractive features.)

So here I am, somehow having made a giant circle, coming not exactly back to but more like forward to this new faith, an updated, refashioned, renewed faith, a fresher, wider, less naïve yet paradoxically more hopeful faith. Because hope, that stubborn, muscular, little terrier-like thing, won’t let go of me. I’ll be sharing my new constructive theology as it’s coming together — be warned, it’s pretty pliable and isn’t very concerned with orthodoxy, but then outside the box seems to be where a lot of us encounter and celebrate the Holy, and it seems the Holy is pretty comfortable there, too.

In the end, I suppose for me faith is as simple as choosing which story to live into — the one without hope where we’re left to our own devices, or the one where hope not only resides but against all odds, the Divine causes to flourish and grow.

Today, I’m choosing to lean into hope.

It is difficult to know where to start.

I’ve been putting off writing about Jesus and the Crucifixion event. It gets all tangled up with this whole horrible system of “a debt paid,” what’s called Atonement Theology. I’m unable to go there, and I’m not alone. Let’s leave it at that for now.

As far as the historicity of Jesus being crucified, extra-biblical corroborations matter. One such mention given a good deal of weight comes from Josephus, a 1st century historian. A recent book provides an extra boost by pointing out that Josephus possibly drew on primary sources who had attended the trial of Jesus and later the apostles.

I accept the likelihood that Jesus was crucified. But rather than focus on theological statements I can’t even say I believe, I want to turn to Luther’s always piercing question, “What does this mean?” and instead look at the motif of crucifixion in the long story of a broken relationship being mended.1 Not the “how” but the “why.”2

Previously, I’ve pointed to the “withness” of God as being key to my own theology. That may be because I grew up almost like an only child, an “add-on” with sisters who were eight and ten years old when I was born. Landing in an already established family (they even had their own theme song), by the time I was eight both sisters had gone to college, and I grew up wandering the woods and meadows of our northeastern Ohio farm, supremely happy to wander off by myself and stay gone for a whole day. I still tend toward those loner journeys. I relish them. But also, it can get quite lonely. So it’s no surprise I’m drawn to a theology of “God with us” (Immanu-el).

In my years as a pastor, as I walked with those in grief and despair, my belief that we are powerfully accompanied by Divine Love in our human vulnerability, our broken places and our mortality, was what I could offer. It’s not a system. It doesn’t “solve” anything as far as theological arguments go. But it’s what I could say I believed then, and somehow, on the good days, I believe it now. That in suffering and the emptiness of despair, in times of howling grief, the one who is Love has intimate knowledge of those depths and has chosen to share in our ultimate vulnerability rather than remain distant and impenetrable.

Those words seem paltry and utterly inadequate today as we watch the news coming out of Texas, as we learn of the shattering realities that mothers and fathers and families are trying to absorb, grief too enormous to be named. My heart is heavy. I know that dark place of child loss.

But what I keep remembering today as I rail for the zillionth time, “Where are you, God?” is something that happened during my chaplaincy at the children’s hospital in 1990. At the time, I was at my lowest point there. Toddlers with AIDS, teens with cancer, the tiniest infants fighting for their lives in the NICU, and my heart constantly torn between fury and despair.

In the midst of all this, one busy weekend when I was on call, a charge nurse paged me to ask if I could come upstairs to Pediatric ICU and look in on the family of a nine-year-old boy who was dying from complications that had arisen following his latest open-heart surgery.

She told me the family was Roman Catholic. The priest on staff in the Pastoral Care department, who I knew and liked a lot, was on vacation that week. The nurse thought I could offer some support while they waited for their parish priest to arrive.

I stepped into the curtained-off area and introduced myself as the chaplain on call. The mother, in a chair at the boy’s bedside, sat with her arms wrapped around her body as if holding herself together, rocking back and forth. She gave me the briefest nod, then shifted her gaze back to her son and did not look at me again.

The boy lay in the bed, unconscious, light brown hair falling from his smooth brow, his arms outstretched, taped to splints and threaded with IV lines on either side. A strip of wide clear tape covered the long vertical incision down the center of his torso. I stood quietly at the foot of his bed and touched the boy’s feet, praying for peace and comfort to come into the room. I was glad their priest would be there soon, feeling out of place, and glad for the family, too, imagining the relief they would feel when a familiar face arrived to offer familiar words.

About a half hour later, their priest slipped in, but instead of approaching the child or the distraught mother to offer words of comfort, he stood back and off to one side with his Bible open, moving his lips as he read scripture passages in a low voice. I was furious and could not understand why he didn’t go to the mother, to the child. Selfishly, I also was angry he hadn’t taken the weight from me. Exhausted from long hours in the ER with the mother of a five-year-old girl who’d been seriously injured in a car accident and at any moment would likely be declared brain dead, I felt I had nothing left to give.

I moved closer to the priest, inwardly raging. “What are you reading? What possible help could that provide? This child is dying! Have you no heart?”

The God of Presence was conspicuously, horribly absent, and I was losing patience. Then, I looked to see what the priest was reading. Written at the top of the page in his open Bible, the words in bold print jumped out at me — And blood and water flowed from his side.

Jesus dying on the cross as told in John’s gospel. I looked at the child, his outspread arms taped to wooden boards.

I read the words again. And blood and water flowed from his side. Beneath the clear tape over the boy’s wound seeped a mixture of blood and serum.

I excused myself and slipped out of the PICU and paced the empty back hallways, choking on tears. What had I just seen? Was Jesus in the dying boy? Did Jesus walk these halls at night, tiptoe from room to room, inhabit the suffering of all the children? And was God, through Jesus, then truly present in all our sorrows, all our grief? I recalled the night my son died, how the front door opened and friends and neighbors poured in, arriving as if on wings of something that against all odds promised to carry me through.

When I returned to the PICU, the priest had gone. The boy kept dying. The mother kept rocking.

At long last the rest of the family gathered, grandparents and parents and an older brother, and we surrounded the bed in a circle of love, holding hands and praying their dear, sweet boy into the next world as he left this one.

All I can say is, on the days when I do believe, I believe that somehow Divine Love has crossed into our reality — our vulnerability, our despair, our mortality, along with our joys and hopes and dreams — to inhabit all of it with us in a way that will never leave.

I know it’s not enough today. How could there be words that are enough, what could possibly be sufficient to the horrors of these past hours? There are no words for what is unbearable. There is only love, so that no one has to bear it alone.

PLACES TO DONATE FOR VICTIMS OF THE TEXAS FLOODS:

Loving with your dollars counts as love. Southern Oaks Church is in Kerrville and is mobilizing response. World Central Kitchen is en route to Texas. Austin Pets Alive is helping with injured and displaced animals. Feel free to add other suggestions in the comments.

Today is Pentecost1 Sunday, which is basically the birthday of the Christian church. The book of Acts (The Acts of the Apostles2 ) tells the story of the followers of The Way, which later grows into the Church. Luke/Acts should be read as two parts of one story, as the author is widely accepted to be the same for both books. At the end of Luke’s gospel, the disciples were told by the resurrected Jesus to return to Jerusalem and stay “until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)

At the beginning of Acts the disciples are doing just that, waiting together in the same house, when suddenly a “sound came from heaven like the rush of a violent wind” and then “there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.” (Note the qualifiers — like the rush of a wind, tongues as of fire.)

Pnoe is the Greek word used, meaning breath or wind. And, yes, I believe we are to feel the vibration of the plucking of the thematic string of the breath, wind, Spirit, ruah (Hebrew word) of Yahweh Elohim brooding over the waters at Creation in Genesis 1.

The Greek word for tongue, as in tongues of fire, is glossai. And, Acts says, then “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Greek: pneumatos hagiou) and began to speak in other tongues (glossais). Out in the streets of Jerusalem are “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.” When the newly-minted apostles began to loudly proclaim about Jesus, everyone heard and understood in their own language.

Genesis 11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel when “the whole earth had one language” and cheeky humans planned to build “a tower with its top in the heavens” leading God to nip that hubris in the bud. For, “this is only the beginning of what they will do,” so God confused their language and the people scattered.

Thematically, in the story of Pentecost, there is a complete reversal3 of that scattering, and we see instead an ingathering, a language of good news that unites.

But more than that, we see a new Creation, the whole love story blown wide open. Reading through the rest of Acts, you see the promises of Jesus extended to all of humankind.

Okay, what part of all this do I believe? What part informs the raggedy thing that I tote around with me that passes for faith, that like a worn and tattered blanket from childhood I can’t quite seem to give up?

What I can tell you is, I’ve seen wondrous things happen, both inside and outside of my church life, leaving me with the clear sense of Something at work. Probably why Luke is my favorite gospel (did I ever confess that before now?) is that more than any of the other three, Luke speaks most about the Holy Spirit, that wild, free thing that is the dynamic, the power, the energy of the whole God enterprise.

Think all the way back to Genesis 2, when Yahweh Elohim breathed Their own breath into ha-adam (literally, the earth creature) and suddenly he went from being a lump of clay to being made alive. I see the Church in the same way, that in this re-creation the same wind/breath/spirit that brooded over the waters in the beginning and that same wind/breath/spirit that fell upon Jesus when he was baptized and that same wind/breath/spirit that Jesus surrendered on the cross is the same wind/breath/spirit that came over those who waited to see what would happen next and formed them into this new Body that was to — that is to — take the story of Jesus and the love of Jesus and the healing power of Jesus and the kindness of Jesus and the righteous anger of Jesus and the power of Jesus and the friendship of Jesus and the justice of Jesus everywhere to everyone.

And…I don’t attend any church. I think about it a lot, I do. I just can’t seem to find my footing. I’m not really sure where I’d fit in anymore. I will say that whenever I do attend, I look for communion to be part of the service, and when I receive it I weep. Every time, something wells up inside me. Hope, I guess, of what we could be and do together. Or a kind of homesickness, perhaps, for a belonging I no longer feel. It’s a journey. I’m not done yet.

And…there is also this.

For years, practically since my ordination in 1993, I’ve followed the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr (Treat yourself to this stellar 2020 piece in the New Yorker, “Richard Rohr Reorders the Universe.”) I love how “outside the box” he has always been, how he looks for what connects and unifies rather than what divides. I moved to Albuquerque in late December of 2019 in part to be close to his Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org) there, having attended his CONSPIRE conference in 2018. (The conference was held at a big hotel and I stayed at an Air B&B about a mile away and walked to the daily presentations, and that’s when I fell in love with ABQ, a smoldering torch I still carry, even though I’m back in the mountains of North Carolina.)

Back to that New Year’s Day of 2020. Not yet settled in to the house I’d be renting, I drove over to the CAC hoping to walk the labyrinth there, a practice of imaginary untangling and reweaving I try to do on the first day of the year no matter where I am. I couldn’t wait to see the place. It seemed such a powerhouse of ideas and exciting theology, and I wondered what the center would look like. A gleaming building of glass and steel? A brick edifice? Big things were happening there!

I should have known better. The small, modest, adobe style compound is located on a side street in one of the poorer areas in the city. The CAC is part of this neighborhood, woven into the lives of their neighbors not as occupiers of property but as loving friends who are there to help and support, to love and be loved.

The center was closed that first day of 2020, and the labyrinth was behind a locked gate, so I turned off my car and rolled down the windows and sat for a while breathing in the clean January air, grateful for the radically wide-open work being done in this place.

To be honest? I toyed with the idea of inventing a Pentecost drink for today that I’d call the Cosmic Christ. It would have involved something like coconut cream and edible glitter and some kind of spirits and maybe a drop of a faintly floral enhancer, and we’d sip it together on the Treehouse’s wide screened-in porch, relaxed in our comfy old overstuffed chairs with the wide view spread out before us.

But I’ve realized a Cosmic Christ libation should be the simplest, clearest possible thing, like ice-cold spring water that’s just bubbled up from deep in the earth, sharp on the tongue with minerals, then laced with a fragrant sprig of mint or bright slice of lime. And after clinking our glasses and toasting to the power of Love to heal and unite and mend and remake this broken world, what we really need to do is climb down out of this tree and get to work.

Next time: a summation of my Constructive Theology as I hold it today, and a little bit about Process Theology.

I’ve purposely waited until after Easter to dip a toe in these waters, in part because the secular imprint of bunnies and chocolate and spring flowers and fancy hats is so deep it can get in the way of what for me is the core emotional impact of the story of Resurrection. But also, in truth I’ve been struggling with how to articulate what I believe about this basic and most essential raison d’être of the Christian church.

I’m not sure where to begin, so I’ll just jump in. What happens below might get a little circular.

As we’ve gone along this past year in these conversations about God, I’ve found myself more and more impatient with my own academic and scholarly approach to my theological reconstruction. I’ve felt a certain obligation to at least show why I believe what I believe, and scripture (what we have of it, which please remember is copies of copies) at least can give us a good look at what early beliefs and practices were, before Empire co-opted the polity, if not the message. (We’ll dig into this another time.)

I still believe that the academic approach is good and responsible practice. But it’s not the only approach with validity. I came through seminary at a time when the “authority of experience” was beginning to be considered alongside the authority of scripture. (When I speak of scriptural authority, please remember I absolutely don’t hold to a literal reading or inerrancy of the Bible.) Feminist Theology, Black Theology, and Liberation Theology put people’s experiences and life stories in dialogue with scripture, leading to new insights, interpretations, and perspectives.

That’s the vantage point I’m writing from today…my personal experience. I want to reframe Resurrection through the lenses of my own deep hunger, my own profound longing. And it may come about that I end up saying I believe in the possibility because I want to believe in it. Because I want to believe more things are possible than the small purview mortality affords me.

The “how” and “why” and “what” of some kind of life beyond death is not a topic that I spend much time with anymore, because there are no answers. Those who try to give them to me are wasting their precious breath. I know nothing more than at the end of my life will be the door that swings only one way, an exit beyond which…

Yeah. So. Knowing is head stuff. Answers have to do with reason and logic and what is quantifiable and measurable.

Now. Let me tell you what happens to my heart when I read the gospel accounts which all tell a version of the same story, that grief-stricken women came to the tomb early in the morning after the Sabbath observation had concluded, anguished over the hasty placement of their beloved friend’s body in a borrowed tomb. Both to honor the life of their friend and to preserve his body from rapid decay, they came before the sun was fully up with aromatic oils and spices to place inside the shroud in this final gesture of love. Sometimes I weep to read of it.

***

The night my father died, our angel of a hospice nurse asked if we wanted to bathe his body. I remember my mother and I looking at each other in wonder and surprise, and recognizing in one another’s eyes a deep, sad joy in the chance to tend to him in this last loving act.

The hospice nurse had shaved my father’s face, so that it gleamed in the half-light, and I could not believe he did not move, so naturally did his naked body rest there on the bed. She brought us a bowl with warm, fragrant, soapy water, and we took terry cloths and slowly washed his long legs and big, bony feet and his strong arms, washed his torso that bore pale surgical scars. We patted him dry with soft towels, and the hospice nurse helped us dress him in the sky blue trousers and sky blue short-sleeved shirt that was one of his favorite outfits and that matched the color of his eyes.

What followed was the arrival of the funeral director and his assistants. They transferred my father’s body into a black body bag and onto a gurney, and let us all take one last look before zipping the bag closed, then wheeled my father’s body through the apartment door and down the hallway and outside, into the back of the hearse, which took him to the funeral home where, per his wishes, he would be reduced to ash.

“Behold, I am making all things new,” the risen and enthroned Jesus says in the much-misunderstood and often misused book of the Revelation of John, chapter 21, verse 5.

I’ve had several dreams about my father since the night he died in the spring of 2009, but in only one has he ever spoken. In the dream, I opened a door to a room I did not know existed, and there stood my father in his summer shortie pajamas, folding up something that he laid on the bed, a shirt, maybe. He turned and looked at me with a surprised joy, and said, “Well, hi, Bec! Where have you been?” In my dream, I went to him and he gathered me in a warm embrace, and I wept and said, “I’ve missed you so much.” Then he leaned down and put his mouth next to my ear and began to speak, saying things I could not decipher. When I woke, I still felt his arms around me, wishing I’d been able to understand what he was trying to tell me.

I will never not believe that somehow my father came to me. Alive. Whole. I don’t need to know how. I don’t need an explanation. I’m okay with simply accepting the wonder of it and holding it, as he held me, as treasure, and perhaps as promise.

***

The real truth for me is as simple as this: My heart desperately longs for, yearns toward hope, for what leads to not just any future but a certain kind of future where Love has the first and last words and holds everything in between in Its healing, expansive embrace. I crave stories of continuing newness, which is what I believe God in essence is. The One who said to Moses, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be” is Beingness, Becomingness Itself, which is an ongoing dynamic, which is the ongoing dynamic. The infinite universe and everything in it has renewal woven into the very fabric, all the way down to the subatomic level and beyond.

In this process of becoming something altogether new, I rely on the authority of my experience — of times when I was at my lowest, when thoughts of surrender, of self-harm, of utter darkness were closing in, when I contemplated, even relished the thought of Not Being, and then there came some small lifeline of Love that pulled me forward and into the surprise of a future I could not have imagined for myself. A transformed life. A resurrected life. Again and again over these seventy-plus years I’ve been on Planet Earth. Love did that. Keeps doing that. Whatever you want to call it is fine with me. Right now, today I’m calling it Jesus, seeing him as the icon, the image, the logos that embodies and delivers this eternal, surprising newness.

There is lots more to say, and I’m sidestepping what is, as far as the Christian church is concerned, the inescapable other part of the meaning of the Resurrection, which is the meaning of the Crucifixion. (My mentor Walt Bouman1 used to speak of the Crucifixion/Resurrection as one event.) More on that later.

These are not full and conclusive thoughts about Jesus and Resurrection. But for today, they are enough. I’m not sure I’m making much sense, but at least it feels authentic to me. With this different road I’ve taken to talking about my theology, what could have been confined to academic parsing instead expands, soaked through with deep emotion and longing and wonder, into a beautiful uncertainty that draws me ever onward.

Today Western Christianity observes what’s called Palm Sunday. The name is derived from the palm fronds that were waved in acclamation as Jesus entered the holy city of Jerusalem, crowds lining the streets overcome with joy that the promised king had finally arrived, the one foretold, so they believed, by the prophets. Occupied and oppressed by Rome, here was their deliverer coming in power and might.

During the week that followed the voices shouting “Hosanna!” would give way to other cries as people struggled with seeing the king refuse the mantle of power. But what was power for if not to crush your enemies?!

Did you know that the ashes used to mark us on Ash Wednesday as mortal and fallible (“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”) are the burned fronds waved during the previous year’s Palm Sunday worship service? There is something shatteringly poetic about that, I think.

It is impossible for me to separate the journey of Holy Week from our country’s current situation, where values like kindness and mercy and goodness are up against raw power, the lust for vengeance, and the desire to snuff out whatever is just and true. And the most offensive part for me is the utterly cynical use of Jesus — showy group prayers, gold crosses dangling on a necklace, selectively culled Bible verses — all the while loudly justifying actions that are completely opposite of what Jesus calls us to do and be. It’s obscene.

From what I can see, too many Americans who today claim the identity of Christian want to put Jesus in a box and set him up on display to be used as a threat, a means of intimidation, as a lever for their control over others. They want to put an AR-15 in the hands of the Prince of Peace and AI-airbrush him into some weird fantasy beefed-up “alpha male” instead of accepting the mystery of the Alpha and the Omega. Or put Jesus in a Brooks Brothers suit and hand him a suitcase full of cash as he gives two thumbs up in homage to the Almighty Dollar.

How inconvenient the story of and the person of Jesus can be, confronting with The Way that eschews “power over” for “love alongside.”

This Jesus, the one who comes riding along on a donkey instead of mounted on some mighty steed at the front of a military parade, is the one that keeps me with one foot in Christianity, struggling as I am to believe any of…..this (gestures around an imaginary cathedral). It’s the hope this Jesus offers that I can’t let go of, the hope of a new way of belonging to each other, of a new way of being in the world, of caring and tending for everyone and everything.

That’s why I’m not mincing words right now. I’m angry and grieving about so much, and calling it like I see it.

Jesus isn’t here to satisfy anyone’s power needs today, any more than he was 2,000 years ago. This I do believe.

Dear Treehousers,

I’ve been much challenged of late, trying to move forward with construction on my theology in the midst of the world kinda melting down around us.1 I’ve felt paralyzed, if you want to know the truth, in being able to talk cogently about what I believe and why that matters — and about who Jesus is, about God, about faith. About meaning and purpose. About the long arc of the world’s history.

And yet, isn’t there something very clarifying when we hit these kinds of crisis points? What is necessary and good stands out in sharp relief. Keep what is essential for the journey, leave the rest in the road behind you.

Last week a person with too wide a reach and no business with a megaphone said, “The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.”

A pretty crystalizing moment, at least for me. Ah, right. That irksome habit of living with heart and purpose to care about what happens to other people.

That very public statement that I assume far too many agree with (I mean, money and power do talk in exceedingly loud voices that foster soullessness) pushed some buttons that I knew needed pushing. My tap-dancing had to stop. It was time to ask myself the question: Is Jesus, one who practiced and preached radical empathy, essential to my journey? And in some fashion that won’t exactly pass the test of orthodoxy (big surprise, huh?), I think that answer is yes.

Why? I guess I feel like, if there is Divinity, Jesus is a strong contender for what I hope They would be like. I guess because I want to think of the embodiment of that kind of Divine Love fully sharing our humanity and thereby showing us our best possible selves — with compassion that is often tender, frequently fierce. With a heart turned toward justice, meaning what is good and true and right and that builds up and gives life and dignity to individuals and communities. With teachings along the expansive frontiers of forgiveness2 and the miracle of healing that can come from the release forgiveness often brings.

In the Kingdom/Reign/New Dimension of God that Jesus announces and literally fleshes out, there is joy, there is belonging, there is wideness and freedom. There is healing and wholeness. In that new world that is already on its way, business as usual is upended. In parable after parable about the Kingdom (we’ll get into some of those next time and also they’re pretty much all about the Kingdom) Jesus often leaves the good and righteous religious people sputtering in outrage.3

So what does all this mean? To me? For our time now? Because it has to mean something here in these moments, these tumultuous days, or we’ve just been wasting each other’s time.

More to come. Soon it’ll be warm enough for us to go out on the Treehouse’s ginormous screened-in porch and catch up on our construction progress. Hope you’ll stick around.

For new folks here, The Treehouse is my attempt at reconstructing a theology after a long period of distancing myself from the Christian faith. Basically, I’m trying to say, “Here is what I believe now and here is why.” I’ve limited the comment section to paid subscribers to keep our conversations civil. Religion is a hot button, and a paywall keeps out internet trolls who only seek to roam around and spread chaos.

Currently, everything else on my Substack remains free — essays and new Dead Ringer chapters as well as the occasional guest post from writer friends and others.

Today I want to do a quick overview of the four gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — by offering some background about context and the intended audiences, which matters very much. Buckle up. It’s a long one.

Reminder: we do not have any original manuscripts of any books of the Bible. Anything scholars know comes from the earliest copies and fragments of manuscripts.

All four gospels feature similar material. All four gospels also contain material that only appears in that particular gospel account. These similarities and discrepancies help Biblical scholars understand more about possible authorship and dating, the situation in which the gospel account might have been created, and for whom.1

The first three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels, because they basically “see things the same way.” The dates below are “ish.” Scholars hold varying opinions about when each gospel was written, but what I’ve included below are dates that are generally the most widely accepted.2

Mark, likely being the earliest gospel account written down (around 60-70 C.E.), seems to have been used by the authors of Matthew and Luke, or else Mark and Matthew and Luke all used the same source material, since similar stories appear in all three. But…Matthew and Luke (probably written 80-90 C.E.) appear to have a common source that features material Mark does not include. This source is referred to by Biblical scholars as “Q” which stands for “Quelle,” the German word for well or source. No one has ever actually seen Q, but its existence has been inferred by the common material in Matthew and Luke, like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, and the Lord’s Prayer that appears in only those two gospel accounts. (This is called Source Criticism, by the way.3)

Also, whoever wrote Luke almost certainly wrote Acts, so scholars frequently refer to Luke/Acts, and I suggest if you are going to read through Luke, you just continue on with Acts (The Acts of the Apostles) as if it’s the rest of the story, because it is.

John’s gospel, written much later (90-100) is in an entire other realm (literally!), so much of what is in John is unlike the Synoptics. But it is important to know there are stories that appear in all four gospels, and that lends great weight to their significance and credibility.

Because we are geared to think chronologically, we may think the books in the New Testament were written in the order they appear, but that’s not the case. The earliest piece of writing is likely Paul’s first letter to the young baby church in Thessalonica. The earliest possible dating of this letter may be 45 CE, which is a mere 12 years after the crucifixion/resurrection event of Jesus. (I don’t know about you, but 2013 feels very recent to me. That’s the year of the Boston Marathon bombing as well as the birth of England’s Prince George.) Paul’s letters to the Galatian church as well as the Corinthian and Roman churches followed, still likely predating the gospels.

Then, why do we have the gospels first? Well, imagine trying to understand any of Paul’s letters without any information about who Jesus was or what he did and came to mean and why people were literally betting their lives on him?

Also, initially it was believed Jesus’s return would be soon, as in “We’re pretty sure he’s coming right back, you’d better hop on board while you can.” As the years wore on and the movement of followers of The Way grew, the stories that had been told and retold would have been written down to be shared more widely.

The Gospel According to Matthew (probably written 80-90 C.E.) was written most likely by a Jewish Christian for a Jewish Christian audience, and so the book begins with a genealogy intended to prove that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, tracing Jesus’s lineage to Abraham, and emphasizing the fulfillment of OT prophecies. Some stuff only in Matthew: Joseph’s confusion on learning of Mary’s pregnancy; the flight into Egypt; the visitation of the Wise Men to see the infant Jesus; Herod’s slaughter of the innocents; the Holy Family’s return from Egypt; Jesus saying to Peter “On this rock I will build my church.” You can look at the book of Matthew as five extended sermons intended to instruct these new believers.

The Gospel According to Mark (around 60-70 C.E) was most likely written to an audience of Gentile converts to Christianity, and so there are some explanations of Jewish customs and some translations of Aramaic expressions. There’s a lot of Jesus wanting to keep secret who he is, referring to himself only as the Son of Man. Some stuff only in Mark: the young man who flees naked when Jesus is arrested; Jesus explicitly referred to as a carpenter; the Parable of the Growing Seed; healing the deaf man and speaking the command “Be opened” in Aramaic, “Ephphatha.” The final passage of Mark, 16:9-20 does not appear in the earliest manuscripts, ending instead at 16:8, with Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bringing spices to the tomb, finding it empty, and encountering an angel who announces to them that Jesus has risen. They run away and tell no one. There is no post-Resurrection appearance. Those stories appear in later added material, 16:9-20.

The Gospel According to Luke (probably written 80-90 C.E.) was written to a Gentile audience. Luke traces Jesus’s genealogy back to Adam, the father of the human race, rather than to Abraham, father of the Jewish people as Matthew did. Luke incorporates about 50% of Mark’s material into his writing. Some stuff only in Luke: Mary’s Magnificat; details of Jesus’s infancy; the census of Caesar Augustus and the journey to Bethlehem; the birth narrative and the shepherds’ adoration; Jesus’s circumcision; the words of Simeon and Jesus in the temple at age 12; the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son; the Ascension of Jesus. Luke is more interested in the Holy Spirit and prayer than the other gospels, as well as healing. If Luke is actually the physician who accompanied Paul on his journeys, as some think, and the author of Acts, as most scholars believe, then that makes sense. (Acts contains the story of the birth of the church via the power of the Holy Spirit).

The Gospel According to John (90-100) stands alone in its mystical call to enter into union with Christ and his community of believers and its developed Christology. In fact, Jesus himself has the most developed Christology, in that he is open about being the Son of God in contrast to Mark, where he cautioned his disciples not to tell anyone. The Incarnation is of utmost importance in John’s gospel, which begins “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Yes, you are meant to hear the echo of Genesis 1, “In the beginning, God created…” For John, a mystical re-creation/fulfillment is occurring. John was written most likely to a group of Hellenistic Christians to communicate the truth of who Jesus is. There are no parables. Instead of parables, we see Jesus expounding on theological matters. And in John we find the seven I AM sayings, coming directly from Jesus: I am the Bread of Life; I am the Light of the World; I am the Door; I am the Good Shepherd; I am the Resurrection and the Life; I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; I am the Vine. And, yes, you are meant to hear the echo of Yahweh Elohim telling Moses, “I am who I am.” And only in John does Jesus wash the feet of his disciples.

Some stories that appears in all four gospels, giving weight to the veracity of the accounts:

• The only miracle common to all four gospels, aside from the Resurrection? Feeding of the multitude with the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Do with that what you will.

• Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee (the story of the baptism of Jesus appears in the Synoptics, and is implied in John).

• Peter’s profession of who Jesus is.

• A woman anoints Jesus with nard. She is unnamed in the Synoptics. Luke calls her a sinner. John refers to her as Mary, the sister of Martha.

• Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (we celebrate this on Palm Sunday).

• Jesus foretells his betrayal by one of his own (during the Last Supper).

• After Jesus is arrested, Peter denies knowing him.

• Pontius Pilate pronounces Jesus’s death sentence.

• The crucifixion.

• The women who followed Jesus are present for and witness the crucifixion.

• The death of Jesus.

• Jesus is buried in a tomb (hastily, because it was the Sabbath).

• The women come to the tomb when the Sabbath has concluded (Mark says they brought spices to anoint (preserve) the body).

Why does any of this matter? We are trying to get a fleshed-out picture of Jesus — the person, the rabbi, the miracle-worker, the prophet, the foretold messiah, the savior, the friend, the healer, the Son of God — and we are trying to peer through the lenses of those in the ancient world to see how and why in just a matter of years, a movement of devoted followers and believers flourished, a movement that is alive and well4 2,000 years later, as Christians retell the story of Jesus and work to grow in imitation of his compassion, care, empathy, and boundless welcome both as individuals and as congregations and organizations.

Next time, some more Jesus stuff. Also, remember to Breathe. Challenging times.

Last week I read an article in The Atlantic about the right-wing religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that is heavy on power and money and control and light on Jesus’s teachings and actions. I’m mentioning it because I think it stands in stark contrast to the Jesus we are getting to know in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are the only Biblical records of Jesus’s life and three-year ministry.1

Proponents of the NAR talk a lot about bringing God’s kingdom to earth. I suppose the sticking point for me is the working definition of God’s kingdom. For them it’s a militaristic reign of brute power demanding strict obedience to a narrow set of rules and interpretations (theirs, of course).

I’m not sure we can point to an exact definition of God’s kingdom detailed in the Bible,2 but what we do see is God’s vision for a sacred wholeness for humankind, and what we do see are clear signs that with the coming of Jesus that kingdom vision is “at hand.” If we are to see the ministry of Jesus as one continuous announcement that the kingdom is imminent (and I think we are), then every act and every word of his is to be interpreted through that lens.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, does Jesus come down on the side of the power of empire. In fact, in the two narratives we have about the birth of Jesus, both tell a story of a refugee family at the mercy of unjust and dangerous imperial powers, of an infant born in the most humble and even dangerous circumstances.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke as soon as Jesus is baptized by John, he goes out into the desert wilderness and there is tempted by Satan with the promise of ultimate power, which Jesus rejects.

According to Matthew, at the end of his testing in the desert, Jesus begins his official ministry (Chapter 4). And how does he begin? “He went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.” Here we see the coming kingdom is inexorably connected with healing disease and infirmity. You cannot separate one from the other.

In the same way in Mark’s account, Jesus is baptized, is tempted in the desert, rejects the lure of power, and comes out preaching and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent (literally, turn and go a new direction) and believe in the gospel (good news).” Jesus begins to gather his disciples and what follows are a series of healings, and teaching with an authority that astonishes the hearers.

Catching on yet?

In Luke’s version, Jesus is baptized and goes into the desert, rejects the offer of ultimate power as in the other two accounts, but here Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit3” and comes to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and begins his ministry by reading from Isaiah:

"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." (Luke 4:18-19)

After closing the book, Jesus announces, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

John’s gospel differs in many ways from the other three, and for our purposes in this post, we’ll get back to John another time. (Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels, as they contain a lot of the same or similar material.)

In Matthew 11:2-19 and Luke 7:18-23, the imprisoned John the Baptist basically wants to know if Jesus is who he suspects and hopes he is, and Jesus, again echoing Isaiah, sends this message back via John’s disciples:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”

Believe me when I tell you, empire flexing its power over others and people walking around loudly proclaiming they are Christian and you should be, too, or else — these are not signs of the inbreaking kingdom of God. In fact, they are the opposite.

A pastor I follow, Rev. Benjamin Cremer, often tells it like it is so beautifully. He writes, “Remember: in the gospels, Jesus got the most upset with those who use religion as a tool of oppression and self serving power. You don't see Jesus get upset with anyone for showing too much forgiveness, giving too much mercy, having too much generosity or loving others too much.”

Happy New Year, Treehouse people! I thought it was time to give an update on our Treehouse project.

Any theology that is not in conversation with the current cultural moment is not worth the ink that’s spilled to record it. Our current cultural moment has caused me to hit pause and think deeply about what it means to say “I believe…” As I wrote some weeks ago, “ We now find ourselves in a time of ultimate seriousness with regard to what the Christian faith might mean in our country and in our lives. With the drumbeat of Christian Nationalism growing louder by the day (it’s pure, cynical golden-calf idolatry, I said what I said), I feel pressed to discern what is utterly essential.”

As far as the constructive theology goes that we’ve been building, we are just at the point of Jesus having been born. I feel like we have a solid floor — the things we can say about God — as well as erected sturdy walls — the problem of humankind’s broken relationship with God and with each other and God’s attempts at repair by sending the prophets to speak for Them (“Thus says the LORD…”) calling people back as well as forward to the original dream of shalom and well-being and mutual care.

Now, with the Incarnation (enfleshment) of Divine we can say we have added massive front windows and a wide-open door. The new view will become clearer in weeks to come.

That the Creator of all arriving in a helpless baby who could not even hold up his own head is consistent with the a primary aspect of the character of God — Their complete vulnerability in service of Love.

The implications of all of the above lead me toward a more radical and universal love rather than away from it, toward a freer, more lavish desire to build longer tables and take down more walls rather than succumb to the urge to recede into a protective shell.

A theology that worships power and money and embraces injustice while casting aside the hungry and needy has missed the mark entirely. Dark days are ahead, but so is our coming discovery of what the author of John’s gospel meant by “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Next time we’ll talk about the four gospel accounts, the similarities and differences, and the picture they paint of Jesus and his ministry.

Hello, Treehouse People.

Well, it’s all academic flirtation until things get f*cking real, isn’t it? It’s all fun and games and speculation and playing with possible scriptural interpretations until…well, until it’s not.

From the beginning, this whole enterprise of mine, this notion of constructing a new theology from the scraps and fragments of my old one, along with some new wider insights and perspectives, has been about addressing what I think are fundamental questions of any system of faith, questions that are, in fact, central to the human journey. I once believed any faith system worth its salt would address these fairly basic questions: “What is lasting?” and “Where is our hope?” And I guess that’s still valid if we are talking about, say, an academic thought experiment. We could spin those ideas all day long. Such luxury!

But it’s my opinion we are no longer in a time of luxury where we can argue the finer points of theology. We now find ourselves in a time of ultimate seriousness with regard to what the Christian faith might mean in our country and in our lives. With the drumbeat of Christian Nationalism growing louder by the day (it’s pure, cynical golden-calf idolatry, I said what I said), I feel pressed to discern what is utterly essential.

For me, a theology that doesn’t have love at the center,1 as the gravitational pull on everything that we say and do, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If a theology isn’t about the business of showing us how to make everything better, why bother? Really, what’s the point?

We are in times that demand something beyond mere academic postulations, something granular and meaty.

Which brings us to the Incarnation.

Every love relationship has a trajectory. Every love relationship is heading somewhere. Because love is a living thing, dynamic and active, love relationships don’t just sit and idle. They’re either growing and deepening or shriveling and dying.

In many ways, as I read the story of God and Us and the World, Jesus pretty much seems inevitable. How so? There’s an unsolvable problem, an uncrossable chasm, a seemingly irreparable tear in the fabric of love woven between God and humankind. Not that Jesus is the solution. More like a necessary gesture. God makes the first move to reconcile in this tale of estrangement. Think of Jesus as more like a bridge. A doorway. A portal.

But a bridge to what? A doorway to what?

We have these questions and more ahead of us as we consider first what the gospel stories have to tell us. Who were their audiences? For what purpose were they written? Can we really determine who might have authored them? How do they differ from each other and where are they in agreement? These four books are pretty much what we have to try and piece together a picture of who Jesus was and the local and world stage upon which he appeared.

Even though they are arranged out of order chronologically,2 we’ll hold respect for the literary and rhetorical decisions made to portray a certain story by how the New Testament books have been arranged, so I’ll discuss them in the order in which they’ve been preserved for us — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The rest of the New Testament is the story of how followers drew in other followers by telling a story of impossible, miraculous wonders and an unshakeable and eternal love, and how these people who believed in Jesus as the hoped-for Messiah became the body of people called ekklesia, a Greek word that literally means “called out ones.”

Okay, here we go!

The situation in basically year 0, if we are using BCE (Before the Current Era) and CE (Current Era) to count, is one of Roman occupation in the geographical location of what we call Israel, then commonly referred to as Judea.

Sidebar for a moment: if you look at a map, you can see that relatively small strip of land and understand the constant warring over it was in part because it was the trade route between Egypt to the south and Syria to the north, not to mention all that lovely coastline along the Mediterranean, teeming with fish.

The Roman caesars ruled their empire1 with a brutal hand and levied heavy taxes on the people. (It took a lot of money to build all those roads and wage all those wars.) Also, the caesars were touted as actual divinity deserving of honor and worship, so you can imagine the clash that set up for followers of the One True God.

If I were a Bible scholar, I could give you a clearer picture of the sociopolitical situation at the time, but I’m not, so I can’t. What I can say is, there was clearly an undercurrent of anticipation and hope, as there always had been when the people of Yahweh Elohim were occupied by a foreign power or exiled into foreign lands. They held on to the age-old promises of a king or powerful leader who would come along and save them and restore the people of God back to something like the Golden Era of King David, when they were a power that no foreigners could kick around and they could freely live and worship as they chose. There had been no prophets for 400 years, but, hey, God promised one would be coming who would announce the news of the impending arrival of the long-awaited real leader, the king, the savior who would restore their great nation.

At the time there were plenty of itinerant preachers making the rounds, and there were those who claimed to be prophets bringing a “Thus says the LORD” announcement directly from God.

There was also an undercurrent of resistance to Roman rule and a sort of organized underground (and not so underground) group of Zealots who were damned if they were going to take oppressive Roman occupation lying down. Skirmishes and uprisings were not uncommon.

And…there was also a kind of peace (the Pax Romana) that at least provided stability, and, for not just a few, prosperity, and so a lot of Jews had adapted to the environment and were maybe even making a pretty tidy living in a government job (like tax-collecting).

Much like faith traditions everywhere, there were groups that differed in their approach to, theology about, and practice of their faith. The Sadducees were mainly high priests, wealthy merchants, and well-to-do families of note. They tended to have favorable relations with the Roman rulers and were not above compromise to keep the peace; at the same time, they adhered to conservative interpretation of Jewish law.

The Pharisees were laymen and scholars and came to strong disagreements with the Sadducees over interpreting and applying laws in the Torah. Pharisees tended to take into consideration context and the spirit of the law and sought to democratize worship practices.

The Essenes lived ascetic lives apart from society and adhered to simple lifestyles of manual labor and deep piety. They held all property in common.

Okay, so we are going to try to take a look through eyes that aren’t using the filter of Christianity or Jesus or anything you might have been taught. A challenge, I know, but stay with me here and see if anything lands anew.

Remember that the Bible as we currently have it (both the Old Testament2 which unfolded over centuries, and the New Testament, written during of period of less than 100 years) is a compilation of a whole lot of different myths, legends, poems, stories, and recorded history from many different sources, put together, as one would an anthology or other collection, with an overarching theme.3

The New Testament is a collection from different authors and varying time periods with material written to different audiences for different purposes. In the NT we have the four gospels that appear in this order: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After the gospels come Acts (the Acts of the Apostles), then a series of letters, mostly Pauline, from which we can glean a sort of history of the early movement (The Way) that would later evolve into Christianity, and ending with a letter rife with apocalyptic visions.

Likely dating of the Gospels is as follows: Mark, written down around 60 CE, Matthew and Luke around 80 CE, John around 90 CE. (Paul’s letter to the Romans predated Mark’s gospel by five years or so.)

Most scholars accept we have no direct eyewitness accounts of Jesus. No one was following him around, writing down everything he did and said. You could read any of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) like “as told to” accounts. That doesn’t necessarily mean the stories aren’t factual. It just means they’ve been through some telling, passed along as important enough to remember and urgent enough to share.

Maybe think of this kind of comparison. Woodstock took place in 1969. You’re sort of a music fan, but you didn’t go. You’ve heard some stories, but 26 years later, in 1995, you sit down to read a just-published article in Rolling Stone featuring interviews with attendees who shared what they recalled about the historic event. Twenty-six years isn’t all that long ago, so you’ll get some stuff that’s burned into their memories and is crystal-clear, and then you’ll get some maybe revised memory, as folks draw on fragments of the event to pull some stories together. Maybe someone made journal notes later. Or the tales have been shared enough that they’ve almost been codified.

I’m not comparing the coming of Jesus with an epic history-making (and some say notorious) rock concert. What I am saying is, in retrospect through the lens of Christianity, the Christ story is considered the most important event in all of history, but at the time of his ministry Jesus was likely viewed by many as just another preacher and teacher. Stories of miracle-working in antiquity were not unheard of. It was common for popular preachers and teachers to have followers — disciples who adopted the teacher’s school of thought and philosophy and traveled with him.

But beyond the relatively small circle of followers, the rest of the world wasn’t aware of Jesus’s short ministry at all. In fact, outside of the New Testament, the only evidence that Jesus ever lived at all comes from a Jewish historian named Josephus who in a book written around 94 CE makes brief mention of "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" and refers to Jesus’s crucifixion as well as the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist.

Still, all things considered, for Paul to write to the “church” in Rome just 26 years after the crucifixion/resurrection event seems pretty fresh. Heck, I can still recall the surprising perfume of pine trees coming in through my apartment window right after I moved to North Carolina, which was in April of 2000.

Okay, I think that sets the stage for us a bit. Next time we’ll loop back and begin to approach the unfolding story chronologically.

We’re beginning to pull on some threads that eventually will bring the whole tapestry together.

Hello, Treehouse people. Let’s pick up the thread for this big tapestry we are weaving.

Did you know that from the time of the prophet Malachi’s ministry (420 BCE) until the appearance of John the Baptist, roughly 400 years elapsed? During these years no new prophets appeared, nor did God bring any new revelations. So…basically, silence. (This period is sometimes referred to as “400 Silent Years.”)

Some very compressed history to reorient you: The First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) possibly stood from the tenth through the sixth centuries and was destroyed during the Babylonian siege (587 BCE), after which the Israelites were taken into captivity.

The people were scattered; the dream was shattered. Their very identity was nearly eradicated.

Okay. So here we are, in that in-between time. Because in-between times are hard to live through, you hold onto whatever hope for the future you can grab. Based on many of the prophets’ messages, the people hoped for a leader to come and save them from oppressive rule and reestablish their identity as those who follow and are loved by and chosen for special favor by Yahweh Elohim.

From my August 5th post:

 And I will make of you a great nation (people group), and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.’”

In my mind, as I lean forward in my overstuffed chair on the wide porch of The Treehouse and survey our ever-expanding view, the operative words are “so that.” It’s the “so that” which every prophet is calling the people back (and forward) to.

As I read the story, there is supposed to be a difference in the world because the created, gathered, and called people of God are in it, and the difference involves fulfilling God’s intentions of holding one another with mutual concern, the obligations to care for each other and to be caretakers of the earth, to offer a welcome to the stranger, to feed and cloth those who are in need, to rely on no other God but Yahweh Elohim as the only source of real Life.

Okay, back to our conversation today. In my constructive theology, “so that” is the springboard for all that has come before and all that will come. The Exhale does nothing without purpose, and in my belief system, with Yahweh Elohim the very embodiment of love that creates, heals, and saves, the “so that” must have to do with the well-being of all of Creation.

Based on the announcements from the prophets when the children of Israel were in dire straits, they heard in those prophecies a hope-filled promised. The original and badly fractured covenant (remember, covenant is relationship-based, contract is a legal and impersonal thing) between Yahweh Elohim and Their people would be renewed.

The prophet Malachi has the last word,1 and it’s a pretty mixed bag. “For behold2, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble,”3 he says. Yet his penultimate statement leaves the door open for hope. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.”

In my last post I pointed out what I believe is maybe the most important part of this whole story, and that is the “so that” part of our being created in Their image, in the image of Yahweh Elohim. It’s the aspect of obligation toward each other and toward the created world, and that obligation is one of care and tending, helping and healing, (tikkun olam = repair of the world) which to me are pretty fine definitions of love.

Love is risky business. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will cost you more. In earlier posts I wrote about the vulnerability of God that love requires, as it does all of us. The very nature of love is that it is freely given. It cannot be coerced, forced, or bought. Whatever is returned under those circumstances, out of fear or obligation, is most certainly not love. In the freedom, rejection is always possible.

As God gives ha-adam the invitation as he hid in the Garden (“Where are you?”), ha-adam was free to ignore the request and remain hidden.

“Here I am,” the man says to Them, stepping out from his hiding place, even though I have a hunch They already knew.

I wrote as well about God telling Moses Their name — YHWH, I Am Who I Am or I Will Be Who I Will Be — and how in the ancient world giving up your name, which contained the essence of your very self, was an act of great vulnerability.

This vulnerability of God to me is perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Divine, and in coming weeks we shall see just how far They are willing to go in order to bridge the chasm that has formed between God and God’s people — greed and injustice, turning to worship gods who are not givers of life, forgetting who and whose they are as they lose their unique identity as those who carry the story and the ethos of the One True God.

The relationship, couched in terms of a marriage covenant, seems irreparably torn. God instructs the prophet Hosea to give his son a symbolic name as a sign to the people. (Hosea 1:9) “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”

What now?

Okay, so the northern kingdom of Israel has been eradicated, and now the southern kingdom of Judah is exiled into Babylonia, with Jerusalem and the Temple1 having been destroyed.

We think of living in exile as something akin to the time of Egyptian slavery, with subjugation, terrible conditions, and abuses, and there definitely was that. But often those brought into exile entered into society, adapted to the polytheistic culture, became tradespeople and merchants, married the locals and had children.

Now, think of the generations over the years in exile and the disappearance of those who cleaved to Yahweh, the one true God, and the worship and observances that were seminally part of the Hebrew identity. 2

And therein lies the most enormous risk, not only the suffering of the people, not simply having to live with the grief of being cut off from your homeland, but the fatally serious loss of identity as the people of Yahweh, the loss of the people who would carry the story forward, of the One True God who created all that is and holds humanity in Their heart.

When you think about it, it’s a miracle the faith and its traditions survived at all.

From nearly the beginning we see there is purpose in every action God takes. In Genesis 12, God calls Abram with this caveat. “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation (people group), and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.’”

In my mind, as I lean forward in my overstuffed chair on the wide porch of The Treehouse and survey our ever-expanding view, the operative words are “so that.” It’s the “so that” which every prophet is calling the people back (and forward) to.

As I read the story, there is supposed to be a difference in the world because the created, gathered, and called people of God are in it, and the difference involves fulfilling God’s intentions of holding one another with mutual concern, the obligations to care for each other and to be caretakers of the earth, to offer a welcome to the stranger, to feed and cloth those who are in need, to rely on no other God but Yahweh Elohim as the only source of real Life.

“Get your sh*t together, and remember who you are” might be a general translation of all the prophetic messages, and, we can add, “Remember whose you are, and because of that remember what is expected, what is even required of you.”

And what is required? Reflect on this well-known passage from the prophet Micah. Following the announcement that Yahweh has “a complaint” (think court case) against Israel, the prophet states, “He has shown you, ha-adam, what is good and what is required of you: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

What is out of balance is supposed to be brought back into balance, thus returning to/moving forward to The Exhale’s original intention of shalom.3

We left the children of Israel wandering in the desert (would have been around 1,200 BCE), making their way to the Promised Land, the land Yahweh is “giving” them (always read the fine print, “giving” meant, “go in and conquer and I’ll be there to help”).

Moses does a second rock trick to get water for the people but this time not in a way Yahweh approves, so Yahweh says, Bud, you can look at Canaan from the top of a mountain but you ain’t a’gittin’ in. A reminder of who actually holds the power, I guess. Confusing story. More here.

(Brief digression: note what will be an ongoing theme — Yahweh’s people thinking they don’t really need Yahweh and, like petulant four-year-olds saying, “No, we can do it ourselves, we want to do it our way!”1 Of course, four-year-olds are developmentally and necessarily adorable little self-absorbed narcissists who know barely a tenth of an ounce of what they’ll eventually need to know and who are not fond of accountability. Fair comparison? You decide.)

Joshua takes over for Moses and leads the people into Canaan, there are bloody skirmishes and battles, a successful conquest.2 Okay, now we have a nomadic people settling in and becoming farmers, and you may recall sometimes the other inhabitants’ gods looked pretty tempting. Like, if the occasional orgy or child sacrifice is followed by badly-needed rain, well, I mean, what are we supposed to think? Ongoing issue.

Now, the twelve tribes organize themselves into what’s called an amphictyony or an agreement of loosely affiliated groups that center around defending each other and are held together by their religious belief. This was the time of “judges” (around 1,000 BCE) who were more heroes and leaders than how we think of actual judges in courts of law, but wisdom and discernment were definitely factored in as necessary qualities.

This was also the time of the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, so think about the new technologies that arose, in particular with regard to agriculture and warfare. (You might also take a moment and consider how new technologies historically drive development in cultures. Uh, AI, anyone? We’ll see where that goes. But I digress.)

Okay, there came a time when the people pestered God for a king, which initially God did not seem to prefer, remembering the whole Golden Calf incident,3 but “the other nations have kings, why can’t we have one” so along comes the judge/prophet Samuel who anoints the 1st king, Saul. Over the generations there come a succession of kings and rulers, during which time the people of Israel split up in a not very amicable divorce (around 930 BCE). The northern kingdom became Israel (10 of the 12 tribes) and the southern kingdom became Judah (the tribes of Judah and Benjamin).

The histories of both are in I and II Kings as well as I and II Chronicles — same basic history, different traditions, so a little like a family saga and the cousins who moved across the country respond with “well, we see it a little differently, so here’s how we tell the story.”

Big picture, Israel gets a worse overall review than Judah, but still, it’s not great for either kingdom — both have turned away from Yahweh and what Yahweh requires by:

• Worshiping other gods.

• Greed and the lust for power bringing heavy taxes to fund lavish lifestyles for those at the top

• Ignoring the poor and downtrodden

• Profound corruption in their systems instead of justice

Some prophets had been sent to announce the coming judgment, that greed and injustice put both Israel and Judah on trajectories of destruction, unless they changed their sinnin’ ways. In the end, their warnings go unheeded and their dire predictions come to pass.

Around 720 BCE Big Bad Assyria conquers and destroys Israel. In 587 BCE the Babylonians destroy the temple Solomon had built and burn and demolish Jerusalem. Into the despair of exile and the loss of their identity and homeland arrive new prophets who bring messages of the promise of restoration and hope.

More history next week.

My first year of seminary, I was assigned as a “student assistant” to the kind folks at First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio.1 The very cool Sr. Pastor, Dale Rosenberger, who was about 7 years my junior, invited me to preach one Sunday, and with fear and trembling I took him up on the prospect.

I opted to preach from the Old Testament lectionary reading assigned that Sunday, because it was from one of the prophets. I can’t recall which one. In a way, other than to place in historical context for geewhizification (thank you, Jennifer Herman, for that handy portmanteau), it doesn’t really matter. Their messages were pretty much all the same.2 Either it was, “You’re making a royal mess of things, you’re behaving horribly, Yahweh is furious because you’re doing real damage to real human beings who Yahweh especially cares about, so get your shit together and turn things around asap” OR “hang in there, Yahweh has not abandoned you, these terrible days3 are going to pass, things are going to get better, because Yahweh loves you most of all and has big plans for you, and even though They should have dumped you long ago, They cannot bring themselves to do it.” Bringing bad news to those in overly good times and good news to those in overly bad times.

A friend from seminary, Caleb, who also happened to be an actor, had colluded with me to run into the church about two minutes into the sermon and interrupt me, shouting, “Hey! I’ve got something to say!” He then proceeded to give a short, impassioned rant about caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, sheltering the unhoused, and so on. He left the same way, running down the slate stone aisle, hollering, “Repent! Repent!” Classic prophetic witness, yo.

After we’d come clean to the congregation, Caleb returned to give a brief children’s message by bringing out a potted cactus to show them — prickly on the outside, soft on the inside — as an example of what a prophet could be like. I don’t even know what I said that day, I probably could have just sat down then. Bearded, disheveled, brilliant Caleb had carried the day.

The prophets interrupted in the same way Caleb had demonstrated — appearing unannounced with a jolting message — and caused the same reactions. Shock. Irritation. Discomfort. Anger. Embarrassment. A little bit of “how dare you” and “who the hell do you think you are to talk to us like that.” A lot of “we are currently conducting important business and do not need any instructions from you.”

It could be a crappy job, being a prophet. No one signed up for it. You got called. Sometimes a prophet tried to run from that call (Jonah? That you?), but the call followed them anyway. It could also be a dangerous job. Prophets got threatened and abused and stoned (no, not that kind, although if they did, who could blame them?). When the money was flowing and your tables were full, who had time to worry about poor people? With fabulous wealth came fabulous power. Who gave another thought to justice? Siding with the powerful meant it was a risk to go up against them. Who had room for mercy?

Prophets (naw-bi, spokesperson or speaker from naw-baw, to prophesy, speak) were sent by God to announce to people that seismic, upending change was coming. These announcements (they almost always begin, “Thus says the LORD,” which is called “the messenger formula” and is a great tipoff that it’s a prophet who’s speaking) were unflinching confrontations that often called for remaking the social order, and that kind of stuff could get you thrown off a cliff. Besides the greed, there was a lot of following after other gods (there’s a lot of infidelity language used…didn’t I tell you it’s a love story?) and turning away from God and Their clear instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll take a look at some of the prophets and the context in which they found themselves. Get ready for a little bit of history. Again, I’m not a biblical scholar, but I can offer you some very broad brushstrokes of the wider story to show a sort of trajectory and make a case for the beliefs I currently hold, tenuous though they may be.

Much more to come.

We left the children of Israel in the early part of their 40 years (translation: a couple of generations) of wandering in the wilderness. As a kid, this part of the story called up images of hordes of people in long robes trudging around the desert, just walking and walking, moaning, kicking up a lot of dust, moaning some more.

In fact, it was more a time of solidifying a cohesive identity of a nomadic people — of getting organized around certain principles and beliefs, of what their beliefs required of them, of coming to agreement about how to get on together, and most of all about how to become one out of a sort of ragtag gathering-up of related folks (when you read “nation” think “ethnic or people group”).

The first five books are the story of how this people group came into being — the “origin story” of Genesis and the multiplication of the population; Exodus when Yahweh Elohim delivered them from slavery in Egypt and opened the opportunity to become their own people group who worship the One True God; Leviticus, basically instructions about worship, named for the Levites (one of the 12 tribes of Israel)1 who were designated as priests; Numbers, so named because it begins with a census, but actually it’s titled BaMidbar (בְּמִדְבַּר) meaning “In the Desert” or “In the Wilderness”; and Deuteronomy, meaning “the second law” and which is Moses’s farewell address from the stage of the biblical story as the children of Israel prepare to enter the land Yahweh Elohim promised them, Canaan.

Okay, let’s pump the brakes for a sec and remember, this is not history where a scribe walked around and wrote down everything that happened. This is a retrospective that ponders, “How did we get here? How did we come to be who we are and what does it mean to be people who worship One God when surrounded by polytheism?” We all have stories we tell ourselves — as individuals, as families, as nations2 — that are part of the lore of “How we came to be us.”

As in these first 5 books, the ongoing story of the Old Testament is filled with characters who are good and do bad things, characters who are bad and inadvertently do good, and lots of characters who are wildly complex and honest mixtures of both. (Sort of like all of us, yeah?) We see power struggles and intrigue, battles and skirmishes. We see daily life and steamy love stories (cough, cough, Song of Solomon, cough, cough). We see horrific abuse and slaughter. We see gains and losses.

Always, Yahweh Elohim is intimately involved in all of it, sees all, knows all, holds all. Their3 heart gets broken over and over by the people’s infidelity as the people repeatedly turn to other gods.4

This is the seesaw that is the story of the people of Yahweh Elohim — they make promises to Yahweh Elohim, give their worship and adoration, then doubt and wander, are drawn away from Yahweh Elohim and turn to other gods, tragedies ensue, they cry out, Yahweh Elohim takes pity, even when They don’t want to. Like the protagonist in a Country Western song, Yahweh Elohim wails, You Broke My Heart, and I Should Break Up With You For Good, But I Just Can’t Cuz I Love You Most of All.

It’s quite the cycle that rinses and repeats.

A couple of weeks ago in a footnote to the post The Big Bounce I mentioned panentheism, the belief that God is in and through and part of everything, the conviction that God’s essence permeates all creation. (Go here for some thought-provoking articles by Franciscan father Richard Rohr.)

For me and many others, scientific advances like new discoveries in the field of quantum physics and geneticists mapping the genome as events that have created paradigm shifts in how we see the universe and our place in it, which (because I am an existentialist by hard-wiring) I think inevitably leads to shifts in how we think of God, or hearkening back to Barry Taylor’s poetic description, maybe the blanket we’ve thrown over mystery changes its shape yet again.

On the other hand, pantheism is a belief that the universe and nature are God. It’s a fine distinction, I know, but one that matters. Rohr writes about it this way: “Note that I’m not saying God is all things (pantheism), but that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is both greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator inter-penetrates all created things (panentheism). No exceptions.”

There is a wideness to Rohr’s description of panentheism, and the implication of divine agency at work in every atom and every particle and every bit of energy in this infinite universe. I invite you to just sit with that and ponder what it means to you.

Back next week with resuming the journey through Old Testament stories and unpacking big-picture meaning.

This week I saw a quote on social media that really grabbed me, and I admit I am a little gobsmacked by it. These words of wisdom are alleged to have come from Barry Taylor,1 formerly the road manager for AC/DC. Taylor converted to Christianity during the band’s “Highway to Hell” tour and later became an Episcopal priest. He is quoted as having said, "God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape."

God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape. I think that is a pretty powerful image, and it parallels what theologians Phyllis Trible and Sallie McFague (and many others) have alluded to, that in truth all language about God is metaphor.2 We can’t define God. We can’t really say definitively what God is, except that God is Being, God is Is-ness. (I am who I am; I will be who I will be).

But we can and do wonder about the character and nature of God, the qualities of God, who God is. Consider the accumulation of millennia of art and music and poetry and drama, of books and stories and dance and countless imaginings, ways people have tried to and continue to try to express what is ineffable. Over the ages, millions of human beings have been about the work of fashioning that blanket Barry Taylor talks about, and we’ll keep doing it, because the possibilities are infinite. What can be expressed about the mystery I call The Exhale is inexhaustible.

This has been a freeing concept for me, and I hope it can be for you. A way to play with this idea using language, and I invite you to try it if you feel so inclined, is to write down on a piece of paper “God is the one who _______” and then fill in the blank, and just go off the top of your head, don’t overthink it, just start writing and keep going. I’d go for 20 tries just to see what emerges. Usually around 12 or 13 things start to get interesting.

Write your list like this:

1. God is the one who __________________

2. God is the one who __________________

3. God is the one who __________________

…and so on. And then start filling in the blanks with whatever comes to you. You don’t have to use Bible words or stories. You can if you want, but you don’t have to.

It’s officially the beginning of summer, so I’m going to mix up a big pitcher of iced Lemon Zinger herbal tea and find a comfy overstuffed chair out on the Treehouse’s big beautiful deck as it’s beginning to take shape. I think the view is going to be amazing. I hope you’ll join me.