It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me, and for Methodists across the globe, and because of that, I’ve gotten quite behind. The last episode in Matthew that I posted was the day before a special called session of the General Conference in the United Methodist Church wherein delegates from across the globe were to find a “Way Forward” for our denomination in its 47-year struggle around LGBTQ+ inclusion. Full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons in the UMC (and the Christian Church in general) is vitally important to me to the degree that it’s become a non-negotiable for me, and this conference did not go well. It did not go well for me personally because inclusion didn’t happen, but I think objectively speaking it did not go well for anyone. The UMC is a divided church with a dysfunctional polity, and there seems to be no way out.

I say all this here to say this: This situation in my denomination has thrown me off center like I don’t think I ever have been in my ministerial career. And I regret that. I’m actually angry about that. I’m frustrated with myself, but I’m also frustrated with my denomination. In all honesty, I’m kind of done trying to be a “good soldier”, be hopeful, and trust the system. Trying to be a good “UMC soldier” has become a distraction to the work to which I have been called. Last Sunday and Ash Wednesday last night have kind of served as my recentering moments. So I’m moving on. We’ll wait and see what happens at our regular General Conference Session in 2020 before I make any big decisions, but mostly I’m moving on in my life, my work, and my church with or without the UMC.

So with that, let’s get caught up.

We left off on February 22 with the Parable of the Sower. Throughout the rest of chapter 13, Jesus teaches about the Kingdom in parables. The Kingdom of God is wild, it’s thorough, it divides cleanly, and it is precious.

In Chapter 14 tragedy strikes. Herod has John the Baptist killed. John the Baptist is near and dear to Jesus, and so Jesus looks for some space to grieve. But the crowds are present and press in, and his compassion is too great. With a mere five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus feeds 5,000 men, plus the women in children. The point here is this: Whatever it is we have is enough for us to do what God has called us to do. Too often we operate out of a “but all I’ve got is…” mentality. God says, “Don’t give me ‘but all I’ve got’ excuses. Just give me all you’ve got and watch what I do.”

Then Jesus sends the disciples on the boat, and he tells him that he’ll catch up. The winds and the waves pick up, battering the boat and terrifying the disciples all night. In the morning Jesus walks on the water out to them. They think he’s a ghost and he says, “take heart, it is I”, which more literally translates, “be of courage, I AM”. This “I AM” statement is a recollection of the name for God that God gives Moses when Moses is unsure of his call. It is a way of saying to the disciples, “I AM is still with us.” We take our five and loaves and two fish, we give them to God, and we watch what God does with them. But when we take our eyes off of God and give the storms of our lives around us too much power, Jesus reminds us that God is still with us, parting seas and walking on the water. We just have to take our next step.

In Chapter 15 we go right back to Jesus and the religious leaders arguing again, but this time a curious thing happens. They ask Jesus “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?”, and Jesus responds, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of tradition?” If you recall in chapter 13 Jesus began to speak in parables partly because he’s done arguing. Those who are willing to listen, come and listen, but otherwise, go away. And we can see that here as well. Jesus is done having the conversation with the religious leaders. He ends this section of chapter 15 quoting Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” From here he will continue to simply do his work of breaking the Kingdom wide open by healing, feeding more thousands, and even being influenced by a woman beyond the borders and scope of Israel. The kingdom is indeed breaking open.

It’s hard to keep your current context from influencing what you’re seeing in your reading. Always keep that in mind. But I can’t help but notice how these chapters of Matthew that I dropped the last couple weeks speak so directly into what I’ve experienced the last couple weeks. Just as Jesus has grown fatigued of battling with the religious leaders about “who counts” in the Kingdom, so too have I. And just as Jesus decides not to even bother having this debate with the religious leaders because an honest debate about “who counts” is no longer possible, so too have I. And just as Jesus moves on, so too am I moving on.

I’m taking my cue from Jesus, and I’m going to simply do the work I’m called to do of creating a community where the traditional borders and boundaries are continually pushed outwards and ultimately broken down. We’ll see how things shake out over the next year or so. But that’s the work I’m called to do, and I’m will do it with or without the United Methodist Church.

That gets us caught up to chapter 16. Stay tuned later today for the post for today’s scheduled reading. 

Now enter the parables. We’re about to get a lot of them. Parables are tricky and often quite misunderstood. A question I hear a lot is, “what are parables?” The trick to this question is that they are not necessarily one thing. Some would say they are word-pictures meant to teach us in understandable ways. Well, there may be some that are that, but definitely not all. What parables are is hard to pin down, and the reason for that may be that they aren’t meant to be pinned down. With this in mind, it’s perhaps better not to talk about what parables are as much as what they are meant to do.

And what parables are meant to do is trouble us. They are not meant to teach us as much as to get us to honestly reflect on our lives and evaluate ourselves. One of the greatest mistakes we make is using parables to teach other people about how they are living their life and why they need to change. Parables are not for your neighbor. They’re for you. They are designed to work on you. Keep that in mind as we head into numerous parables over the next few days. The question to be asking is not “what does it mean” but “what is it asking of me?”

So what is Jesus doing here? Well, this is what I think is one of only two times when Jesus explains a parable. Parables are rarely explained because the understanding of them is meant to come through our own wrestling and reflection. Nevertheless, Jesus explains this one, and when it comes down to it, it’s quite simple:

God wants to work on us and grow things in us and out of us. And one of the most used metaphors in Matthew is that of a plant or tree, and the soil out of which it grows. Our lives are like soil, and God wants to grow something out of it. The question this parable poses is “what kind of soil am I?” It’s asking us to reflect on the ways in which and the degree to which we are open to God’s work. Is the structure of my life such that God’s work in my life can actually take root and grow into a strong, good fruit-bearing, life-giving tree in the world? It’s not as much a question of if that is happening as much as “is the structure of my life conducive to that happening?”

About ten years ago, I was in a difficult time in my life, vocation, and faith. I started seeing a counselor, and it was tremendously helpful. As we talked about spiritual growth and the ways in which I felt like I was drying up, I looked to him for answers about how to fix it. He said to me, “I’m not going to tell what you to do. You know what you need to do. I’m just here to help you discover why you don’t do it.”

May we each enter into deep wondering about these questions for our own lives. May we have the courage to look at what’s true. And may we have the strength and discipline to make the changes we know we need to make.

“Who is my mother? And who are my brothers [siblings]?” This is one of those moments when I want to respond, “you do know, don’t you, Jesus, that this is a side of you nobody likes?” There’s a bit of a smug smarm here, at least in how I, a 21st century American, hear it. There’s a way in which that endears me to Jesus, but in this case, it’s also a little annoying. But what is he getting at?

Well first of all, let’s be clear that Jesus is not necessarily denying his mother or brothers here. He has just come off of going after the religious elite exposing the ways in which they are missing the point of the whole thing. It’s not about rules and regulations, it’s about bringing people into a life-giving Kingdom. Or perhaps better said, breaking a life-giving Kingdom wide open to the people. This claim here about who Jesus’ “mother” and “brothers” are is yet another way of bringing the clean and clear cutting sword he talked about in chapter 10. His “mother” and “brothers”, that is, those who are so close to him that he would call them “kin” are those who “do the will of his Father”.

That is, Jesus’ kin are those who do the work which the God of us all desires. God’s children are the ones who do God’s work. To flash back to the Beatitudes, God’s children are the peacemakers. And in this is the great paradox, because Jesus said he did not “come to bring peace, but a sword”, right? The peacemaker is the one that works to bring life to those for whom the systems of the age squash out life. The peacemaker is not the one who strives for passivity in the name of us all “getting along”. The peacemaker is the one who works for wholeness in the world, but this wholeness is polarizing work as those who would rather keep humanity divided fight against it.

Those who want to be “Children of God” and sibling to Jesus do the hard work bringing wholeness to the world. Being a “child of God” is not a mere intellectual assent to some belief or belief system. It is doing the work of making the world whole again. And wholeness cannot exist when we put up walls that divide us. To be Jesus’ is kin is to do the hard work of making the world whole in our homes, our neighborhoods and across the globe. That’s who Jesus’ “mother” and “siblings” are.

Well, this sure is a confusing passage. I’ve said this before about other passages, but I think it warrants repeating: Passages like this are the reason people give up on reading the Bible. It’s simply confusing. I want to encourage you to press on. I liken these kinds of passages to scenes in long epic movies that leave you confused. The key is, don’t turn off the movie. Keep watching. If the movie’s any good one of two things will happen when you get to the end: Either that scene will make sense later or it just won’t matter. Either way, keep reading!

With that in mind, what might be going on here? There is potentially a lot but suffice it to say this: I think Jesus is saying that a response is necessary. He’s come to “break the kingdom wide open”, which means the expelling of bad stuff that has kept the kingdom from breaking wide open (For example, the boundaries on the kingdom that have excluded people need to go). But it’s not enough to merely expel the bad stuff. We also need to let God in and let God take up residence in our souls. Otherwise, the bad stuff will merely find its way back in.

I think there’s a compelling message about repentance in here: Repentance is a two-part move: One, we turn away from a path of spiritual destruction, but, two, we also turn toward a life of spiritual vitality. Or to put it in terms we’ve been using throughout Matthew, we uproot ourselves from polluted soil into which we’ve planted our lives (or our lives have been planted in), but then we intentionally plant ourselves into the soil of the Spirit.

Six years ago when I led a similar series to this one, this passage fell on Ash Wednesday. What a strange but also a great passage for Ash Wednesday- a season of taking inventory on our lives, repenting, and choosing to plant our lives in the soil of the Spirit. We don’t just turn away from bad stuff, but we intentionally move toward Jesus again. We enter into practices to open our lives to the workings of the Spirit. We practice what we call in Methodism (and other churches as well) “The Means of Grace”, which Wesley described in his sermon called The Means of Grace as “the ordinary channels whereby [God] might convey to [people], preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.” The movement of God’s spirit to its fullest degree doesn’t just happen. We have to respond.

This, of course, likely doesn’t answer all of our questions about this strange passage. But it is to say that when we repent, if we don’t intentionally move toward Jesus, or begin to plant our lives in the soil of the Spirit, the “unclean spirits” will say, “I will return.” This is not meant to be some kind of shaming fear laden manipulation. It is merely to say, Jesus requires a response from us. It is to say, be intentional with your life.

Immediately following this nice stuff about it “being about the people”, things get hard. Jesus says some hard words here, though it’s not the first time nor will it be the last. In challenging the Pharisees, he comes back to the discussion he had toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount about trees and fruit (Matthew 7:15-20), where he said, “you will know them by their fruits”. Here he says, “the tree is known by its fruit”, and he takes it a step further than he did in chapter 7 by defining what the “fruit” is. He says, “for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks”, and he continues in this passage to talk about the words that come out of our mouths. This too refers us back to the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus said, “…and if you say ‘you fool’, you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22), and here in Matthew 12 he concludes with “for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned”.

I Matthew has made it apparent that what comes out of our mouths matters to God. But the running theme is not that we should simply try to say nothing bad about other people. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing to strive for, but Jesus is not after the old adage, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”. That’s a good start, but if our words are the fruit, what Jesus is saying is, “be the kind of tree (that is the kind of person) that doesn’t bear bad fruit”. Don’t just try to say the right things, but become the kind of person that doesn’t have to try to say the right and good things. Become the kind of person who naturally bears beautiful life-giving fruit in the world.

In this context, however, Jesus is also talking about blasphemy against the Spirit. My question is what does that really mean? What is blasphemy against the Spirit? Backing up even more, this diatribe of Jesus begins as a response to the Pharisees saying, “It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons that he casts out demons” (MT 12:24). Is the “blasphemy of the Spirit” labeling a work of the Spirit as evil? And why would anyone ever do that? Because a work was done that challenges their current system, comforts and way of living.

Turn on any of the 24 hour news channels, and you’ll see a good thing get spun by its opposition as an evil thing because sometimes a something that is good works in opposition to something else that merely works for me. Therefore I must make that good thing out to be evil. We have seen this throughout chapter 12. The Pharisees have a system in place in which they are comfortable and from which they gain both power and wealth. When Jesus starts doing things that upset that system, such as healing outcasts on the Sabbath, the Pharisees are forced to begin to attach evil to this work, for if it is not evil, it follows that it must be good; and if it is good, they must then endorse it, which leads to the upsetting of their system. In the end, this leads them to call something which is good “evil”.

It is not so much their system that Jesus says is unforgivable, however. What Jesus labels as unforgivable is their marriage, their unbreakable union, to this system that leads them to label good things as “evil”. It’s not the system itself but their relationship to the system that is the problem, for it is a system that ultimately lends itself to squashing out the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is moving. The question is, will we move with her? Or are we so locked into our systems that the movement of the Spirit appears so threatening that we refuse to hoist our sails into her wind and we let her pass us by?

Okay, short and sweet today. There’s no need to belabor the point.

Here’s the deal: In the kingdom which Jesus has proclaimed to be at hand and within which he is operating and living, people matter. Their souls matter. Their hearts matter. No matter who they are, no matter what they think about God, no matter how they’ve behaved, they matter to God. When we think ill of any human, we think ill of something about which God cares deeply. “How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!” (MT 12:12, NRSV).

Lately, I have wondered if the greatest spiritual discipline into which we can enter is to intentionally look at all humans through the lens of our Creator God. So here’s a practice for you: go to a public place, such as a mall (God help me) or a park, or maybe you’ve got some time in an airport coming up. Find a bench or somewhere to sit or stand that isn’t weird, and people-watch; but people-watch through the lens of God. What would it be like to sit and watch and see people as God sees them? What kind of prayers might I find myself praying? What kind of blessings might I find myself silently praying for them? How might it change my spirit as I exit the crowded the parking lot? How might seeing people through God’s lens change me?

It’s about people- all people. They all matter to God. Let’s find ways to make them matter to us.

What I love about the life of Jesus about which we read in the Gospels is the way in which he always seems to value people above policy, procedure, and program. In the end it is people that win out every time. The overarching principle that I often take out of the Gospels is “when in doubt, guard the dignity, life and value of people”. I served in a church once that was working to offer multiple worship styles for its stylistically diverse congregation. It wasn’t a big church and it wasn’t a big sanctuary. That meant that up on the little stage area of this sanctuary there needed to be room for a choir, a piano, an organ, drums, and other contemporary music elements. This proved to be more difficult than we thought. So what ended up happening was some of the instruments began to creep in the altar table’s “air space” (actual wording from a member), and the complaints began to pour in.

I believe what as happening there is that stuff made by human hands was beginning to rise to a level of greater importance than stuff made by God’s hands. The reality is that the altar is a table. It’s a nice table and a table we use for holy acts. So let’s not diminish it too much. But it’s a table. Someone, a person, a human, and probably a faithful one with beautiful intentions, built that table with wood, glue, hammer, and nail. The people that make up the choir and contemporary music band are “stuff” made by God’s hands. And God had endowed them with the gift of wooing people into God’s presence through music. Those people and the gift they were offering mattered much more than the table- the table which was not going away, it was just going to have to share space with some humans. I believe the defense of something like an altar table over the gift of music from a person (and their respective instruments) is of the same mindset of those who got angry with Jesus about his work on the Sabbath.

People are what matters. Our religious piety must never get in the way of the needs of people. Our religious systems, rules, and regulations must never be lived out at the expense of the well being of people. This does not mean that we never call out destructive behaviors or that we let chaos reign, but it does mean that we must be clear about what the “temple” is. Jesus says “something greater than the temple is here”. It is the breaking wide open of God’s presence. The Spirit of God will soon no longer be confined by a curtain and with it, borders and boundaries. It is breaking forth into the hearts of humanity.

Finally, some words of comfort again! This is one of my favorite passages in all scripture. I cling to it, I hang on it, stand it. It is a mantra for me. It is what I breathe in and out in times of stress, busy-ness, and noise. However, rarely do I ever read it in its greater context. Everything is held in balance, and it is in fact in that balance that we find rest. It is in the tension of a life of fierce discipline and determination pulling us in one direction, and a life of forgiveness and freedom pulling us in another direction where we stand at rest.

We, as followers of Jesus, have a job to do, we have a call; but that work earns us nothing. What we try to earn from it has already been given to us. We step into the work of God not to earn God’s favor, but because we already have God’s favor; not as a debt owed, but as natural living out of that identity.

Jesus is pretty clear that we have work to do. He doesn’t say, “take off whatever yoke you have and come rest in me”. He says, “take my yoke upon you”. A yoke is a tool for a beast of burden [Cue Rolling Stones]. To put on a yoke is to work. So to take Jesus’ yoke is to take on work. Yet with Jesus’ yolk, we find rest. It’s an interesting contrast. There is a way in which up until this point work and rest are opposed to one another: “Six days you shall labor and do all work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:8-11, NRSV). For six days God worked, and on the seventh God rested.

Jesus tells us to take on a tool of burden and with that tool of burden he will give us rest. It seems that this would be counter-intuitive. How is it possible to wear a yoke and have rest at the same time?

I would submit that Jesus is telling us, as I believe he does throughout the Gospels, that there is nothing we can do to earn God’s favor. We already have it. Therefore the yolk we should stop carrying is the yoke of trying to earn God’s favor, acceptance, love, and grace. Stop trying to earn it through our holiness codes, our piety, our mighty acts of service, our devotion to spiritual disciplines. You can’t earn something you already have, so take that yoke off. It’s too heavy and we can’t carry it.

Jesus tells us to take his yoke on. The yoke of God’s favor, freely given to us, but still a yoke, which means work. Jesus’ yoke is one that fits and in its fitting we find rest. To be given the favor of God is a great gift of rest, because the work of that yoke is bringing God’s favor to the world. The favor of God was never something meant for us to keep hidden. The rest comes when the work we do is helping people see how beautiful they are, not how “sinful” they are. So take the yoke of God’s favor to the world, take it out into the fields, for the harvest is plentiful.

Also, this…

Are you tired?
Worn out?
Burned out on religion?
Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me
watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy
or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me and
you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
-matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

The Jesus we read about in Matthew seems to get more and more brutal as the book rolls on. It’s important to remember, however, that these hard words of Jesus are not directed towards the masses. He speaks and acts kindly and gently to many throughout this Gospel. He has called the poor in spirit “blessed”. He has called the people “the light of the world” and the “salt of the earth”. He has healed many people and affirmed them for their faith. He did have hard words in chapter 10 that appear to be for a general audience, but those words seem to be not so much a condemnation as they do a bold call to follow.

Here in chapter 11, Jesus is outright condemning entire cities. But it is in those cities that he did some of his kinder and gentler work. So what is that about? Cities can carry great symbolism with them. Think of it this way: When someone criticizes “Washington” they are not criticizing or condemning every inhabit of Washington DC. They are condemning the work done by the political forces there. That’s how he’s using these city names.

Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom were traditionally cities of ill-repute. Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum were cities thought to be more prominent and “clean”. By comparing them to the former cities, Jesus is, once again, harshly cracking open the Kingdom of God again. He is calling out that the traditionally clean or “insider” cities for falling short in a way that the unclean or “outsider” cities would not. And this move would be yet another one to enrage the Scribes and Pharisees. It is hard enough that Jesus has been affirming the faith of individual outsiders, but now he is making these grand sweeping statements regarding entire cities.

Jesus has been breaking the kingdom wide open relationally and now he is doing it civically. This gospel is going somewhere. It’s as though Jesus is on a relentless mission to level the religious playing field. He is getting the insiders to see that they’ve got some serious work to do and he is revealing that the outsiders indeed have something to contribute. We will continue to see this throughout the gospel with the most clear and bold call coming at its end. This is one of the key running themes that I just can’t not see throughout the Gospel of Matthew. The Kingdom that earlier on was said to be “at hand” is washing through the region like a tsunami.

What themes are you noticing? This is only my lens. Theses texts are rich. What are you seeing? What am I not seeing? Isn’t the width and depth of the gospels beautiful?

When I opened my Bible to read this passage I noticed a rather large and pronounced question mark next to it. I read the passage and swiftly made the question mark larger and more pronounced. I’m not sure what to make of it all. Can we just say it out loud? This passage is weird. In order to more fully get any useful meaning out of it, I will need to do further study and research for which I don’t have the time right now. That being said, I think there’s something crucial for us in verses 4 & 5.

John the Baptist wants to know if Jesus is indeed the one for whom they’ve been waiting. Is he the Messiah? And Jesus doesn’t give him a straight yes or no. He tells his disciples “go and tell John what you hear and see”. This, I believe, is a striking statement about the Church today. I think Jesus is giving us a clue as to what he would expect out of his Church. “Do you want to know if I’m the Messiah? Well, here’s what you’ve heard and seen out of me: The blind receive their sight, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them, the marginalized are empowered…”

There are a lot of questions about the Church today. People want to belong to a “good” church. And in that there are a lot of questions about worship styles, theology, social issues, Biblical rootedness, etc. I wonder if we took our church reports to Jesus and said, “Jesus, are we a good church?”, if he would say, “Are the blind receiving sight? Are the lepers being cleansed? Are dead and dying things coming to life? Are the poor being brought good news? Are the marginalized empowered?” That’s what Jesus was about. Is that what we, his followers, are about? Jesus doesn’t talk about people learning theology. He doesn’t say, “well I increased my followership by 29 this year”. He doesn’t brag about his awesome mentorship program that “started with 12 guys in a living room”. None of those are bad. But the mark isn’t great programs and Biblical knowledge. The mark is great programs and Biblical knowledge that produce healing, hope and resurrected life. So might the question for us, as followers of Christ, be “how will I partake in healing, hope and resurrected life today?”