Down to the Hard Work of Reconciliation – Part 3

Regardless of the precise meaning of Jesus’ instructions on how to progressively confront the unrepentant sinner in the body of believers, we are still left with the tax-collector-gentile conundrum: what on earth does Jesus mean when he says to treat the unrepentant one as a tax collector or Gentile?
The traditional interpretation over the centuries is that Jesus is instructing his followers to shun, to have nothing to do with, the one who will not repent.  

Is this what Jesus means?

Consider earlier in Matthew, as in Matthew 11.19, where Jesus is reproached, accused of being a drunk and a glutton who was a “friend to tax collectors and sinners” and in Matthew 9.10, where it is noted that “many tax collectors and sinners” came and ate with Jesus and his followers.  The Pharisees objected and Jesus replied, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Maybe treating the unrepentant has nothing to do with shunning. 

It seems to have to do with expecting more rather than less from fellow believers (as we do with family).

But to treat the unrepentant as ‘tax collectors and Gentiles’ might well mean to treat them more gently rather than less. . . especially if we consider Jesus’ earlier statement that they are to be viewed as the ‘sick’ – as those with additional need for care, as those who require the help of a physician rather than the condemnation of a judge.

In practical terms, it might mean that you don’t put that person in a leadership position simply because they’re not up to the job.  But at the same time, you do continue to care for them. . . for as long as it takes – just like we do with the one who suffers a serious illness.

In 12-step programs, members learn a helpful slogan: I’m not a bad person trying to get good; I’m a sick person trying to get well.  Maybe Jesus is talking about going the distance with someone in great need of him – someone whose need is so great they cannot see it for themselves.

And maybe there does come a time when someone must be ejected from the fellowship with the hope that such an extreme measure will bring them to their senses, turn them around.

But I keep coming back to the witness of the desert fathers and mothers – early Christians who went into the desert and away from the cities in order to pursue more closely the life Jesus had called them to live.  Their stories are stories of extreme living, extreme sacrifice, extreme love – extreme Jesus.

Consider the time when a brother who had sinned was turned out of the church by the priest.  Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner."

In one monastery, if any committed a fault, many of the other brothers would seek the offending brother’s permission to take the matter to the abbot and to accept both the responsibility and the punishment.  When the abbot found out that his disciples did this, he inflicted easier punishments, in the knowledge that the one punished was actually innocent.  And he made no effort to discover the real culprit.

One brother leaves with the sinner, knowing himself to be a sinner too.  Others take on the punishment for the offender – like brothers and sisters do for each other all the time.

Maybe the tax collector-Gentiles among us are not the ones kicked out, but rather the ones held all the more tightly to, the ones we walk with because we recognize ourselves in them.

Maybe they’re the ones we make room for at the table for we are them.

Maybe as Jesus sees us, so we are to see them.  

Road Food: Sometimes Tradition Ain’t All That

From 100 things NOT to do for Christmas, this had to be my favorite . . .

DO NOT make "old family recipes" for christmas dinner
The key word there is "family." As in only family, and no one else. Old family recipes tend to be dishes that the immediate family has been exposed to for generations, and as a result, they have developed a taste for something that no human should enjoy.  I have seen people serve foods anywhere from pickled carrots dipped in raspberry sauce to mashed potatoes mixed with spinach and spam. These foods are not natural! Nobody likes them (although they are likely to pretend to), so just stick to the regular turkey dinner.

When I shared this yesterday at church, one little girl actually said yum about the idea of pickled carrots with raspberry sauce (which I can scarcely say out loud without wincing) – turns out she absolutely loves anything pickled.  And there were a few who thought spam in the potatoes might not be that bad.

But we were all pretty much agreed that fruit cake has to be the worst.*

What are the worst family recipes at your table?

For me, it has to be candied sweet potatoes or yams – that ooey-gooey mess of a concoction that has sweet potatoes covered with brown sugar and butter and marshmellows . . . makes me shiver in disgust just to think about it.  But that’s just me.

When it comes to traditional holiday food, I keep wondering where the traditions come from, especially for Christmas.  There really isn’t any theological significance to candied sweet potatoes.  I could make some up, but what would be the point?

That got me to wondering what Jesus’ family ate for Jesus’ birthday?  Did they base it on what they ate along the way to Bethlehem?  After all, traditions have to start somewhere and they’re often a reenactment of something from a meaningful time in the history of our tribe.

So I wonder what Jesus’ family had to eat during that trek?

They were on the road and had to stay in a barn.  They probably ate their version of McDonald’s (if they stopped along the way to eat) or snacks (what we bring with us – in my case, a candy bar and some cheetohs or bbq potato chips).

I wonder whether Jesus’ family served him their version of road food for his birthday ever after.  I don’t know about Jesus, but I’d hate to be stuck with a cheetohs and Hershey bar birthday just because my mom happened to be eating them when I was born.

Sometimes traditions make sense.  Sometimes they don’t.

Which leaves me wondering which ones in my own life to keep and which to let go of.

In some parts of the
world, this is
considered to be food.

For sure, you can spare me the fruit cake and definitely take the leftover candied yams with you if you don’t want them to go to waste.  Throwing away those left overs is part of my tradition too.


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*I started to say ‘we Americans’, but turns out fruitcake isn’t restricted to Great Britain – Canadians like them some fruitcake too and there’s even one site that offers fifteen different ways to make fruitcake.  Canadian Living  Why anyone would come up with even one way to make this atrocious brick of a thing, we simply cannot understand.  Maybe that’s the difference when you get down to it between breaking free from the motherland by revolution or staying a commonwealth – and here, we thought it was all about the tea.  (To my Scots friends – you know I’m kidding, right?  Well, maybe not totally.  And those candied chewy bits are not fruit!  Admit it – that’s where the idea for gummy bears came, isn’t it?)

God, You Are When

God, You are
     when the wind blows
     through my life,
     through this land

God, You are
     when the greening comes

God, You are
     when I stand in Your calm
     in the center of the chaos –
     let it be now, let it be so

God, You are
     when the birdsong is
     more real than lawn
     mowers and passing cars

God, You are
     when standing in a circle
     of love and friendship new
     or old as the one tells the
     all what cancer and dying
     and kindness are like
     amidst the setting of the
     sun and the honking waves
     of the passers by the circle
     expanded to include their
     speeding sent love – or not

God, You are
     when tears fall and shaking
     broken bodies are held

God, You are
     when . . . ever


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*Taken from the book Traditions by Sara Shendelman and Dr. Avram Davis