It started with Boy’s Life magazine, but it certainly did not end there. In the back of the 1980s version of the scouting magazine was always the advertisements. And, in the advertisement section was a small ad that promised a secret solution to getting bulging biceps. For a small fee, you too could have huge, sculpted, 10 year old boy arms. I did not have any money, so their secret was safe with them. Apparently, huge, sculpted biceps were for the rich and powerful.
I said that it started then, but it certainly did not end. There was the local country club into which my struggling family could never hope to set foot. I did not really understand what golf even was, but it was obviously a game for doctors and business owners, and not people like my family.
Then there was the book called “The Secret.” It was right there in my local Barnes and Nobles Bookstore. Its price tag kept everything inside a safe secret from me. Oprah Winfrey and the likes obviously were able to crack it open, and look where she is today! The fact that it could be found a year later in bargain bookstores was, in fact, lost on me at the time.
But, do you see where I am going with this? So much of this world is about access. You need to know the right people and be in the right places and be around the right resources in order to accomplish anything grand in this mediocre life. My parents had no connections with Ivy League schools, so I did not even try applying. I was not a member of the powerful and well connected.
When writing about Jesus’ ministry, Luke begins the story with the powerful and well connected of the world.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah…”
Like the opening scene to a movie, the camera floats through the city streets of the rich, panning to reveal the faces of a Roman Emperor, moving to reveal a governor, a couple of kings, the High Priests, and even John, son of Zechariah. Remember that John’s father was once High Priest in God’s holy temple, so he comes from no small social pedigree.
The story on Jesus' ministry seems to start where all stories of the great start, in a place of inaccessibility…in a place of privilege where the lowly are nowhere to be found.
Unfortunately, I think that this image of inaccessibility often shapes our own beliefs in God.
Often, God is imagined to be like one of the rich, inaccessible, powerful figures of our world. We envision God on a throne, looking down upon us, an ant-sized and unimportant people. The god of our imagination can be distant, unmoved, and full of judgment.
Now, I am not saying that this image of God cannot be found in the Bible. It most certainly can. It is an image that has been imprinted on people for years and years, and will for years and years to come.
But, one day God decided that the world needed to see something different. God decided that we needed to see God in a way that was truer to who God really is.
So, yes, the camera pans over the great and powerful of the world in the start of Jesus’ ministry, but it moves low and focuses on John the Baptist who is ministering “in the wilderness.”
This is not the first time the camera has fallen on an unexpected low place or an unexpectedly low person. Previously, the camera moved over Zechariah and fell at the feet of a poor, teenage girl who gets an unexpected heavenly visitor.
It will make the same movement again as it moves into the fields on the edge of town and falls on the minimum wage earning shepherds.
The camera will then follow them to a stable where we first get to glimpse the savior of the world in a bed of hay. And, that savior will not favor the rich and powerful, but will eat with the sinner and heal the poor.
This is all because the greatness of God as described in the Christian scriptures is rarely found in the great people and places of the world. Instead, we will have to strain our eyes a little harder to see the Word of God at work.
We should not look to the national news to see God at work. As 1 Kings 19:11-12 describes Elijah’s interaction with God:
"Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence."
Other translations say that God can be found, not in the grand movements of the world but in the “still, small voice.” Do not be dismayed, God is at work in our world, but we will see God’s handiwork most easily in the unexpected and lowly places.
“In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, while Tom Wolf was governor of Pennsylvania, and Garret Miller mayor of Towanda, while the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton was bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Rev. Samuel Zeiser was bishop of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod, the Word of God came to a mentally challenged man on the main street of Towanda who saw a woman crying on the sidewalk. He stopped, and asked if she was OK. She did not answer, and he looked around, searching for a answer to this problem. Finally, he dug in his coat pocket and pulled out a Dum Dum Lollipop. He handed it to the woman and the offer put a smile on her face. The love of God, through this small act of care and sacrifice, immediately filled the street.”
Of course, it is not like he saved her life…unless he did. That is the way God works after-all.
Certainly, God can use kings and rulers to affect change in the world. We see it happening all the time in scripture. But, I think that Luke does not want the likes of 10 year old boys and the mentally challenged individuals to feel as if they are out of the club.
Quite to the contrary, surprising encounters with the Word of God happen all the time, as theologian David Lose says in his December 7th In The Meantime article. These encounters are “hidden in plain sight, appearing on the margins and in places you’d not normally expect because… because that’s just the way it is with God’s Word.”
When God encounters us, it is as if the insurmountable mountains have been made low and the canyons raised up; the roads made straight and the rough areas made smooth so that even someone in a wheelchair might be able to roll forward and greet God as God comes along the path.
Jesus is the savoir of the world, and he enlists the help of even you and me and the lowest of the low in his ministry. That is just the way it is with our God who loves our entire world.
No comments:
Post a Comment