Like a Human Being...

John 18. 33 – 37

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’

Daniel 7:9-14

⁹ As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One^* took his throne;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
¹⁰ A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousand served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgement,
and the books were opened.
¹¹I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. ¹²As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. ¹³As I watched in the night visions,
I saw one like a human being^*
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One^*
and was presented before him.
¹⁴ To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed.

For my field ed experience, I’m an intern at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community. I get to hang out with people at their ministry called “The Table.” It’s about as simple as it sounds. If you’re hungry, come to The Table at about 5:30 on Tuesday and Thursday nights and you’ll be treated to a free hot meal, a place to sit, and if you listen hard, some pretty interesting and eclectic and heartbreaking conversation. People from all ages and backgrounds and perspectives come to The Table. The place is so full of sticky, sweaty, hungry humanity that I leave exhausted, completely drained. It’s all I can do to drive home, give my son a bath, put him to bed and then collapse on the couch to play Plants Vs Zombies or watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A lot of homeless people come to The Table. Some who could use a good “drying out” and others who are just down on their luck and looking for work. Sleeping under bridges has hardened some, has made others just tired. We also get a lot of lonely older people. They are estranged from their children, or never had children, or their children just live far away. Their bones hurt; their joints ache. We also have a table of widowed men. They meet at the McDonald’s on Mount Oliver every morning for coffee and Egg McMuffins, and then meet up again at The Table in the evening. Some of them are homeless, some are living off of social security, and others got out of the steel business just in time and are doing quite well living off their pensions, but they’re all just hanging on, holding on to this daily routine, holding on to each other. Then we have our “Occupy Table.” They’d been sleeping in tents in Mellon Park before they got kicked out, and have since formed their own little communities, sleeping on friend’s couches or in vans in Walmart parking lots. They’re tired too, and now just looking for jobs as baristas or sous chefs or freelance photographers. Some are still trying to hold on their idealism; others are just worn out and want to be able to afford a burger and a pack of smokes.

This place is chock-full of humanity. You’re in the thick of it. On any given night, you’ll see the broken families, the worn out day laborers, the dirt caked fingernails, the matted hair, the broken teeth, the guys still suffering with PTSD from the Vietnam War. You’ll see the hunger. The deep hunger of humanity. You’ll see people scramble to the free bread table, almost knocking each other down just to get the biggest loaves. You’ll see people get into arguments, debating politics, or the recent Port Authority cuts, or the Ref’s call from last Sunday’s Steeler game. They’re waving their arms, cussing at each other, raising their voices, and mostly, it’s just so they’ll be noticed. Here are people who are longing, aching, for community, for a place to belong, a place to call home. A place to be truly human. A place to rest their bodies and their minds and their hearts from the constant attacks from the media, from the failures of the government, from our social and economic systems, from the bigotry and the heartache of humans failing each other. They are longing for a break from the beasts of our day. And aren’t we all?

For Daniel, the beasts are the kingdoms and rulers that have threatened Israel’s very existence and way of being. They are far from human. In chapter 2, they are clay and iron and silver and gold. In our passage, they are bestial hybrids, horns and wings and tusks and teeth. They are the oppressors, the powers and the systems and the structures that force Israel to be who they are not.

We may not have foreign nations commanding what we eat or changing our names or throwing us into dens of lions, but we have beasts here. They’re the advertisements that tell us that we’re too fat. They’re the culture that tells us that violence is the answer to our problems. They’re the society that believes that money can make us happy. They’re the religions that isolate and control.

These systems, fears, failures, and prejudices are the beasts of our day. They’re the things in our society that make us think that we are somehow less than human, that we are simply the sum of our parts -

• I am just a drunk who sleeps under a bridge,
• I’m only this broken, arthritic body that my children have rejected,
• I was once just a soldier in a failed war, and now I’m nothing but migraine headaches and alcohol addiction, or
• I’m this collection of master’s degrees and grade point averages,
• or I’m these publications and awards and professional accolades,
• or I’d be somebody if only my boss would notice me, or if I could afford this car, or if my children would get good grades, or if I could just get married, or if I could quit smoking or eat organic or lose weight or...

The beasts want us to forget that we are made in the image of God. The beasts try to distract us from the very truth that we have been made just a little lower than the angels. But Daniel’s vision reminds us that it isn’t another beast who comes to deliver us. It’s “One like the Son of Man” - which just means “one like a human being.” The enemies are those who are sub-human, the ones who deny their own humanity, the things that oppress us and keep us from being who we are truly made to be.

And for the first time in the book of Daniel, this seventh chapter gives a glimpse of Daniel’s fear. Daniel is completely freaked out. If we just read a little further to verse 15, we’d hear “As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me.” In chapters 1-6, Daniel is depicted as a confident hero, one who knows all the answers and has worked the “system” well. But here, Daniel is scared out of his mind.

What is this fear about?

- The beasts frighten him. But he’s seen beasts before.

- The judgment in front of the Ancient One frightens him, but he’s been pretty familiar with the judgment of God before.

But what he hasn’t seen yet is this “One like the Son of Man” - someone or something, a community perhaps, that is so real, so vulnerable, so very fleshy and messy, and complicated and hungry and broken, terrifying and exhausting and so very very human. It’s to this humanity that is given dominion, and glory and kingship. And that’s scary.

When Pilate asks if Jesus is the King of the Jews, Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And I see him gesturing to the flags of the Roman empire, the eagles on his standards, and the swords and armor and military guards surrounding him. He says, “If my kingdom were from this world,” this world of fear and control and suppression, this world of power and exchanges and rigid definitions, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews;” they’d be playing your game. “But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

This is scary, ‘cause this gets him killed. And this is scary because somehow, in his weakness, we are saved.

Jesus’ kingdom isn’t a kingdom of beasts. We have got to remember this. Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom made of lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and friends who doubt and fear and run away. Jesus’ kingdom is a human kingdom.

And isn’t that the mystery of the incarnation? Isn’t it strange and scary and wild that God should come to us in our humanity?

There is a wonderful ambiguity in the text for today. According to scholars, the Aramaic could mean either “One like a human being coming from the clouds of heaven, or with the clouds of heaven.” These two simple prepositions, “from” or “with,” give us two pictures of what could be going on here. Is the Son of Man coming down from the clouds, coming down to us from the heavens? Or is the Son of Man ascending, going up, coming from this earth and joining to God? I don’t think anybody really knows. And maybe that’s how it should be. God comes to us in our humanity. We come to God in the same way, through our true humanness, through our connection to Jesus Christ.

To paraphrase Simone Weil, 20th century mystic and philosopher, when we come before God, we don’t need to have all the answers, we don’t need to shed all of our doubts, we don’t need to get rid of our fears; we only need to know that we are hungry. We are hungry for real food. For real nourishment. Longing to rid ourselves of the beasts of our day who try to manipulate and control us into being something other than who God has made us to be. May we come to this table today in our true humanity, with real hunger, with an honest desire to be fed by the one who was hungry himself, the one who defeated the beasts of Daniel’s time and of our own, and the one who invites us into the kingdom of true, full, real humanity. Thanks be to God.

Tit for Tat

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

I’ll do almost anything to get a good deal. I cut coupons, I shop around, I buy generic, and you’ll see me in the back of the store, rifling through the clearance rack, but only if it’s an extra 50% off. I’ve also joined that “Groupon” website - you know the one where you get special deals for restaurants and museums and movies. Some people call me “cheap,” or “stingy,” others “smart,” and still others just understand that, yes, I’m a poor seminary student. I don’t let go of the few dollars in my pocket easily. I want to receive a lot in exchange for what I give.

And unfortunately, I find myself doing this in other ways, too, in ways that aren’t directly connected to my finances. I want to know what I’ll “get” from that long drive to visit my family, or what will come out of my time spent having coffee with a friend.

If I work hard in my classes, it’s not good enough that I’ve learned the material or grown spiritually; I want the A. If I spend “quality” time with my son, he’d better be learning a new skill, like learning to count, or learn to recognize the difference between green and yellow, or know the ABC’s by the time I’m done. Heck, I often find myself coming to church and thinking, “Gee, I wonder what I’m going to get out of the service today.”

In our world, everything seems to have to have some “point,” some purpose. I have to “get” something out of it, or it’s a waste. A waste of time, or of resources, or of money, or energy or whatever.

And I don’t think I’m alone here. I think that we all live our lives in a frenzied consumerist economy. We all have this expectation that If I give you something, I should expect something from you in return. We give our time to our workplaces, and receive a paycheck in return. We give money to charities, and we expect them to use it wisely, sure, but we also expect a sense of self-satisfaction to come over us after we send that check in the mail.

If I tell my husband, “I love you,” I have this expectation that he will respond in kind by saying, “I love you, too.” We live in a “tit for tat” world, one where there is “no such thing as a free lunch” and where everything comes with a price of some kind.

It seems like our brains are just wired for this. We live in a world that seems to define for us what we should want, and then tells us what we have to give up in order to get it. Do you want a slimmer body? Just take these pills, or follow this exercise regimen, or eat our specially made menu of food items, and for $195 a month you can look just like Angelina Jolie, or Brad Pitt, or any one of the other celebrities that the media has told us we need to look like. Do you want to be respected and admired? Just put down $3000 and with a $500 lease you, too, can drive the fancy car with the shiny rims, and finally get the respect you deserve.

Or maybe you can go to school for years, spend your time studying and take out mountains of loans and tack your walls full of diplomas. Or you can just spend that extra hour a night at work so your boss will finally recognize all your hard work.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, in and of themselves, there really is nothing wrong with going on a diet, driving a nicer car, or going to school. But it is when we live our lives with a kind of economic expectation, when we expect an exchange of goods or feelings or whatever in every encounter, I think we’re missing out on something, something big.

We’re spending all our time acquiring stuff and accolades and friends and culture and lawn tools and power machines and purse collections and fancy shoes that we’re missing life altogether.

This is what our passage is about today.

Maybe that’s why we feel so uncomfortable with this passage. This is Jesus acting the opposite of what we expect. This isn’t the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” that we’re comfortable with. Jesus is angry here, really angry. Something absolutely wrong is going on, and John wants to emphasize it, which is why he places this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. So what is it that has Jesus so riled up?

It’s not about Jesus’ rejection of the “old” way of worshipping God and replacing it with some “new” way. It’s not about Jesus rejecting Judaism or the Temple, or even sacrifices themselves. Jesus is challenging the same element in his own culture as is in ours. It’s about our economic brains or culture or logic or whatever you want to call it. It’s about our insistence that we have to “get” something out of everything we give. It’s about how we feel like we don’t deserve something if we haven’t “paid” for it in some way.

John places this at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. John wants us to know that Jesus’ actions here are foundational to everything he is going to do afterwards.

Let’s take a closer look at what is going on in this passage:

This passage reveals a series of exchanges. The time for celebrating the Passover is near, and so Jews from far and wide are coming to this central place, to the Temple, to offer their sacrifices to God. The Passover was and is the holiest time in the Jewish calendar, a time for remembering the Exodus from Egypt - a time when the Hebrews, enslaved by the Egyptians, were granted freedom.

This celebration is about God’s liberation, God’s absolute Grace toward the Hebrews, the amazing Gift of freedom for God’s people.

But when they prepare to enter Jerusalem and go to the temple, their economic brains are put into high gear. They are locked into a system that will enslave them, and will enslave us, if we’re not careful.

First, they must exchange their coins. For a small fee, their local coins would have been exchanged for a “purer” Tyrian shekel. This wasn’t because their coins would have had images on them and the Tyrian shekel wouldn’t. Both had pagan images on them. But the high priests of the Temple only accepted the Tyrian shekel for the Temple tax because it was considered to be made of the purest silver. The moneychangers would charge a small fee for this service. This is their first economic exchange: their own local currency in exchange, for a small fee, for the “purer” Tyrian shekel.

This Temple Tax was expected of all good Jews, with exceptions for the poor. Many Jews did this because they believed it was just the right thing to do. And tithing, I think, is the right thing to do. But so often we do it with expectations in mind. We give, but we still want something in return, even if its just the good feelings that come when we write that check. We can imagine that these people felt this way too: “I’m a good Jew because I have paid the tax.” This is similar to how many of us may feel when we tithe to our church or donate money to the local public radio station or buy girl scout cookies.

We want to give without expecting anything in return, but so often, we do expect a tit for our tat. This is yet another exchange: Paying the Temple Tax is an exchange for the feeling that you are doing your duty, you’ve met expectations, you’re in “good standing” with your faith tradition.

Then we have another set of exchanges: the purchase of the animals needed for their offerings to God. So they’d exchange their Roman denarii or local currency for cattle and sheep if they were wealthy, or for a pair of doves if they were considered poor.

Ideally, these animals were considered gifts to God, an offering of love and an expression of worship. But I can picture myself in this situation. I’d want to think of these animals as being offered as sacrifices to God because I’ve done something wrong. I’d want to look upon my doves or my lamb and think of them as replacements for what I deserve. After all, I’ve worked hard for the money to buy this, and I want something tangible to come out of all my hard work.

I’d like to think that if I just offer this one thing to God - maybe my Sundays, or 10% of my income, or if I give up chocolate for Lent, I will have done what I need to do to be right with God, or to be a good Christian. It’s a very human attitude: I will have met the requirements. I will have made a proper exchange. Again, John gives us another picture of our economic brains. Yet another exchange.

Then those who have come to celebrate Passover would take their offering to the priest who would offer it up to God in their stead. The Jews didn’t think just anyone was worthy of offering his or her sacrifice to God. A purer, holier person had to do it. How often do we think that our gifts, our talents, our little pittance offerings aren’t good enough for God? How often do we think that we need something more, something worthier, than what we have? How many of us think that our offering isn’t enough. This is yet another side of our economic brains.

And the reality is that none of us have enough. If we try to keep playing this game, this “tit for tat,” this “this for that” economics, we’re all going to run out of resources, and quick.

And it is this that gets Jesus all riled up. He’s ANGRY. We are not comfortable with this Jesus. We want the Jesus who is meek and mild and accepting. But, it’s clear that the one thing that makes Jesus the most angry, the thing that causes Jesus to react the most dramatically out of all of the testimonies in our Gospels, is that the house of God has turned into a house of trade. A marketplace. A place where you have to come with something in order to get something. A place where you have to have in order to get more. This isn’t what the Temple was about. It was supposed to be a place to meet God. It was supposed to be a place to express your love for God, and that could be where you gave an offering of sheep or cattle or doves. But here, it seems to have become a requirement.

It has become a place where the economic brain and the exchange of “this for that” attitude has been reinforced, instead of a place where God’s grace has flourished and grown and exploded beyond the Temple walls. The offerings were supposed to be responses to God’s grace, but instead, they have become tools of exchange for consumers, a philosophy of supply and demand.

This passage is about Grace. And boy, if we’re totally honest, are we uncomfortable with Grace. We hate the unfairness of Grace. We hate that the prodigal son gets a party when we’ve been good and faithful and working all along. We hate that the workers who started at 5 in the afternoon get paid the same amount as those of us who started at 8 in the morning. And, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we are extremely uncomfortable with the fact that we, too are the ones who don’t deserve all that we have, and so we join in on the rat race to try to prove to everyone else, and even to God, that we deserve what we’ve got.

We try to “pay” for our grace, for our encounters with God. We try to prove to ourselves and to others that we’ve earned it. Don’t we feel so much better about ourselves when we’ve paid that final car payment, or gotten the raise after we’ve devoted our hard work and time to that important project? Aren’t we terrified to come before God with empty hands? I know I am.

This is what Nicodemus asks right after Jesus’ encounter in the Temple. He wants what Jesus has to offer, and wants to know how he can get it, what he can do to achieve it. And Jesus basically tells him that there is nothing he can do. He says, “You must be born from above.” Nicodemus responds by basically saying, “How the heck do you do that? And I think that’s exactly the point. Jesus says that it’s not about what Nicodemus can or should do, but about what He is going to do. It’s about receiving, not about exchanging.

Jesus is so serious about this that when asked for a sign, or for justification for the havoc he is raising, he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Those around him are in a state of disbelief: this is an impossibility. They say, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” They immediately go straight to their own human powers and abilities. They go to their default setting, which is thinking in economic terms.

But Jesus doesn’t think in those terms. John tells us that Jesus isn’t thinking about a place, but his body. This is a temple that has nothing to do with the quid pro quo of economic exchange. This is a temple that has to do with relationship.

And Jesus’ ministry begins in the Gospel of John with this usurping of expectations, with this emphasis on the relationship, and continues his ministry in this same vein. The disciples are expecting great wealth and power and prestige from the coming of the Messiah, but what they get is a broken man hanging on a cross like a common thief. They certainly do not get what they expected. But they are given more than what they expected.

They are given the freedom to live their lives in the arms of the one who loves beyond any economic expectation, any consumer perspective, any system of exchange of goods or attitudes or accolades or anything that can be earned. God’s Grace is that big.

When we give up our “exchanges,” our “tit for tat,” our false assurance that we’ve done our duty and we can check “good Christian” off of our list and then claim to just move on with our lives, when we can do that, then we can live in the freedom that God wants us to live in. We can experience the true joy of grace and peace and love, and then we can respond with our tithes, our talents, our time, our gifts. But the Grace, always, always, always, comes first.

Thanks be to God.