February 22--Alone With Jesus

. . . Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on a high mountain by themselves. While they watched, Jesus’ appearance was changed. His clothes became shining white, whiter than any person could make them. Then Elijah and Moses appeared to them, talking with Jesus. . . .

. . . Peter did not know what to say, because he and the others were so frightened.

Then a cloud came and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’

Suddenly Peter, James, and John looked around, but they saw only Jesus there alone with them . . . (Mark 9:2-4, 6-8).



It is Transfiguration Sunday, and we have been here before. Some version of this story from one of the synoptic gospels proclaimed every year on the Sunday before the church enters the season of Lent. We take it for granted.

The disciples do not.


What Peter and James and John see on this high mountain alone with Jesus frightens them to the core. The disciples are so frightened, in fact, that they actually follow Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone what they have seen . . . a command they have no trouble breaking earlier—and later—in Mark’s gospel. Even Peter, who is normally eager to express his opinion or make a prediction about who Jesus is and what the Jesus movement should be doing “d[oes] not know what to say” in this moment of terror. He can only tell Jesus, “It is good that we are here,” and then mumble something incoherent about making tents for the three luminous figures who have just appeared in front of him.

To these three disciples—who think they know Jesus pretty well by now—the transfiguration of Jesus, in which he takes his place among the giver of the Law and the prototype of the Prophets, is a terrifying experience. They spend the rest of their lives trying to make sense of it, not even telling the story until after “the Son of Man had risen from the dead” (Mk. 9:10).


To many churchgoers today, this story is commonplace, another one of those “miracles” we either accept on faith or explain away as an interesting metaphor for our own “mountaintop experiences” of feel-good spirituality. But there are a few people among us who have experienced something dramatically similar to this moment of transfiguration—this moment of seeing the human face of the living God right in front of us and being told to listen!—in all its glory and all its terror.


A good friend of mine felt it in church last Sunday . . . and no, she was not delusional! She just knew she was experiencing something deeply profound, something that felt like the voice of God telling her to listen, something that felt like a “call” . . . but she had no idea what it meant. She was afraid, but she was calm in her fear. It was as if something was falling into place, something was being revealed that was deeper than anything she had ever known, something was being asked of her even though she could not articulate what it was.

And after talking with her, I realized that it may actually be more important to focus on the moment after the transfiguration, as powerful as the original event may have been for the disciples and for my friend. Because when it is all over, when the voice of clarity fades, when the shimmering robes evaporate, Peter and James and John look around and see only Jesus, there, alone with them.


They do not understand that Jesus will die and that they will abandon him. They do not understand that this time “alone” with Jesus is so very precious . . . that it will not last forever . . . that they will become even more frightened than they have been just now.


But they are alone with Jesus, for just this brief moment . . . and I like to imagine that they are at peace, even though they have not understood anything that has or will come to pass. They simply know it is a big deal, that God is with them, and that they will not ever be alone without Jesus.


They will not ever be alone “without Jesus.”

It is a terrifying thing to confront the power of God that transcends the ages, to follow Christ to his death, to hear the voice of God demanding that we listen without clear guidance about what is being said.

But I would suggest that the power of the transfiguration, as it leads us into Lent, as it leads us into crucifixion, as it leads us through the lonesome valley of death and darkness and despair is that we will never be alone without Jesus. We will never be alone without the physical presence of God in our midst. We will never be left without some reason to hope, without some reason to trust, without some reason to expect a future resurrection.


With this assurance of God's eternal presence, then, may we enter boldly into this season of Lent, this time of repentance, this time of transformation, this time of releasing what needs to die within us and among us in order to allow the spirit of God to rise again. We are not ever alone in our calling.

Not ever.

Not ever.

Not ever.

Amen.



Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts for this week: 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6)


Dear friends, it is with great joy and a twinge of sadness that I announce my departure from these pages. I will be leaving Boston at the end of the month in order to accept God’s call to serve as the next Co-Pastor of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona (pending the election of the congregation, the approval of the presbytery, and my subsequent ordination). I have been grateful for this time to share my thoughts with you and even more grateful to those of you who have shared your comments with me.

My sister Harvard Divinity School alumna, Elizabeth Fels (MTS ’08) will pick up the blog beginning next week.

February 15--Running to Win

"You know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. So run to win! All those who compete in the games use self-control so they can win a crown. That crown is an earthly thing that lasts only a short time, but our crown will never be destroyed. So I do not run without a goal. I fight like a boxer who is hitting something--not just the air. I treat my body hard and make it my slave so that I myself will not be disqualified after I have preached to others" (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

I just love it when Paul gets competitive.

It strikes a deep inner chord in me to know I am not the only follower of Christ who likes to win.

I know we Christians preach the need to curb our ambition, to love others beyond our own achievements, to want what is best for everybody, to put the needs of others before our own. I know the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

But there is just something deeply fundamental in me—perhaps cultivated from the earliest days of childhood—that wants to be the best! That strives to be the best. That feels a fleeting but still potent flash of pride in winning an earthly crown. In the words of Ricky Bobby from that great film sensation Talladega Nights, "If you're not first, you're worst!" And who wants to be worst?


Even Ricky Bobby, however, has a serious conversion experience once he realizes how much his competitive drive has been based on the fear and pain of a childhood lacking in paternal love . . . and how carelessly he has hurt his best friend in his pursuit of greatness. By the end of the movie, “racing to win” has become more about Ricky’s integrity than about his victory lap around the NASCAR track. In order to “win,” once Ricky has changed his mind and heart, he has to be willing to lose. And he has to be willing to love his neighbor as himself.


This, of course, is more along the lines of what Paul had in mind when he encouraged the first century Corinthians to “run to win.” It is a spiritual discipline he is talking about . . . of being willing to “lose” for the sake of our integrity . . . of risking failure in order to love those who desperately need our care . . . of resisting the temptation to let anything in our lives distract us from responding to the grace of God . . . of training our hearts and minds—and yes, even our bodies—to the lifelong work of living in the Spirit.


But it is a communal race! We cannot win it alone.


Paul did not have the same concept of team sports that we do, but he surely understood the church as the “Body of Christ.” And this communal body, I think he would claim, must run the race together, must win the race together, and must do this by undergoing rigorous conditioning, just as the individual bodies within it must set measureable goals toward achieving that crown which will never be destroyed.

It is a victory in this life when we in the church really do live out good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed. And it is a victory in the life to come when we place every part of our lives into the hands of a loving and challenging God and allow these lives to be transformed.


So what does the “conditioning” for this race look like?


Some believers have taken Paul’s words about “treating the body hard” quite literally . . . adopting an ascetic life or even engaging in self-flagellation as a way of knowing the suffering of Christ.

Others of us lift up the inherent goodness of the body and its capacity to perform great feats—athletic or otherwise—when we invite God to cultivate and guide its energy as we would cultivate and guide a garden, as a trainer would cultivate and guide an athlete.


In either case, we know that God cares about our bodies and how we discipline them and how we use them to promote justice and peace . . . and we know that God cares about the hearts and minds and spirits that accompany our bodies . . . and we know that God is inviting every part of our being into a race we can only win if we let go the competitive desire for an earthly crown and be willing to “lose” for the love of the world.


So our invitation this week is to hear clearly the voice of the Holy Spirit training us and cheering us on, whether our next practice session is at the local soup kitchen, in our daily devotional life, or in advocating for peace in the halls of Congress.


May God grant us the victory, may we "run to win." Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist



(additional lectionary texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Mark 1:40-45)

February 9--The Reason He Came

As soon as Jesus and his followers left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever, and the people told Jesus about her. So Jesus went to her bed, took her hand, and helped her up. The fever left her, and she began serving them.

That evening, after the sun went down, the people brought to Jesus all who were sick and had demons in them. The whole town gathered at the door. Jesus healed many who had different kinds of sicknesses, and he forced many demons to leave people. But he would not allow the demons to speak, because they knew who he was.

Early the next morning, while it was still dark, Jesus woke and left the house. He went to a lonely place, where he prayed. Simon and his friends went to look for Jesus. When they found him, they said, 'Everyone is looking for you!'

Jesus answered, 'We should go to other towns around here so I can preach there too. That is the reason I came.' So he went everywhere in Galiless, preaching in the synagogues and forcing out demons. (Mark 1:29-39)

I am struck in reading this passage from Mark's gospel by the reason Jesus gives for his presence in Capernaum: to preach.

I should not necessarily be struck by this particular raison d'etre of Jesus. His preaching is, after all, well documented throughout the gospels, particularly in the long discourses of the Sermon on the Mount as described by Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.

What strikes me about Mark's version, I think, is the simplicity of the message, at least in these early chapters: "The right time has come," Jesus says. "The kingdom of God is near. Change your hearts and lives and believe the Good News!" (Mk 1:15).

Surrounding this short three-sentence sermon (wish I could get away with THAT on any given Sunday!) are the stories of healing, the stories of casting out demons, the stories of people desperate for someone to give them real, tangible hope. The stories of forgiveness of sins.

This is what changes people's lives!

And so I find myself reflecting again, as someone called to preach, on what this actually means for those of us who now "preach Jesus" all these centuries later, who have the responsibility of connecting a contemporary community of faith with this first century preacher from Nazareth who healed and cast out demons and forgave sinners.

It should not come as a surprise to any of us who preach the gospel that the crowds gathered around Jesus seem far more drawn to his pastoral care than they are to his words from the pulpit. At least that is the case in this particular passage at this particular stage of Jesus' ministry in this particular gospel.

It is, in fact, his manner of forcing out demons, of healing the sick, of forgiving sins that draws people in to his verbal message. And they really do change their hearts and minds.


Preaching is such a humbling calling for those of us in this business, whether we are speaking the words from the pulpit or whether we are living the words in all the other aspects of our ministry. I have described it as the ultimate act of submission, begging God for a word.

But it is so much more than that, isn't it? It's about all the other things we do beyond the pulpit: the teaching, the pastoral care, the gathering of community around bread and wine. It's about seeing the kingdom of God right in front of us and helping to make it a reality.


So my prayer for all of us who preach this week is that our preaching of the good news will come from our living of the good news . . . and that God will grant us the grace to know what that means.


Amen.



Gusti Linnea Newquist



(additional lectionary texts: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23)

February 1--The Problem of Evil

Jesus and his followers went to Capernaum. On the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught like a person who had authority, not like their teachers of the law. Just then, a man was there in the synagogue who had an evil spirit in him. He shouted, "Jesus of Nazareth! What do you want with us? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are—God’s Holy One!"

Jesus commanded the evil spirit, “Be quiet! Come out of the man!” The evil spirit shook the man violently, gave a loud cry, and then came out of him.

The people were so amazed they asked each other, “What is happening here? This man is teaching something new, and with authority. He even gives commands to evil spirits, and they obey him.” And the news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere in the area of Galilee (Mark 1: 21-28).


When I was talking with a pastor friend of mine last week about the process of spiritual formation and discernment the topic abruptly turned to the problem of evil. “The closer we draw to God,” I told him, “the closer the devil draws to us.”

I was quoting from a conversation with my spiritual director about my call to ministry, and this comment had lingered on my heart for several days. But as soon as I said it out loud to another person—another pastor—I knew I was in for a long discussion. It is not the kind of phrase that would normally come out of our liberal, intellectual, overly-rational theologically educated mouths. We gave up a long time ago on the “blame Satan” ideology with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other tempting us toward a good or evil impulse.

Or did we?

The problem is that evil really is all around us—not just confined to one shoulder—and we do well to acknowledge this problem with heavy hearts. Whether we mean evil to be a catch-all phrase for poverty and racism and systematic torture or whether we imagine something closer to spiritual warfare and a demonic entity, we cannot deny that evil is all around us, that evil is crushing us, that evil is us. The story of the fallen angel Lucifer may or may not be the most accurate representation of this thing we call evil, but at least it helps us think about the fact that it exists, that God allows it, that God sometimes—too many times, in my estimation—seems overpowered by it. And we do, too.


So imagine what it must have been for an evil spirit possessing this first-century man of Capernaum who comes to the synagogue when Jesus is teaching. This thing we call evil—whatever it was—overwhelming this man, acting with impunity, accustomed to winning, accustomed to delighting in destruction. And here comes Jesus, drawing closer to God, drawing others closer to God, and thereby drawing evil to himself from the very beginning of his ministry. Throughout his entire ministry. At the painful, crucifying end of his ministry.


“What do you want with us?” the evil spirit says. “Have you come to destroy us?”

And of course we want the answer to be yes. We want evil to be destroyed once and for all and for justice and peace to reign forevermore.

But Jesus has not (yet!) destroyed the evil spirit, at least in the lectionary text for this week. It has not gone away forever. He has only cast it out. But it has come out!


And I imagine that the same is true for us—I know the same is true for us—when the evil and the pain and the abuse that still dwells within us and among us is confronted by the living Christ in our midst, teaching and preaching the good news of grace and liberation and healing. The bitterness, the anger, the trauma, the greed, the pride, the persecution, the death, the destruction . . . it is not (yet!) destroyed forever, but it can be released when we see the face of God in front of us, who has promised to be with us through it all, when God sees the pain and bitterness and warfare and greed within us and commands it to come out of us. And it does.


It is not always a quick process, this casting out of the evil that grips us, and it is not always painless. The scars, the anger, the pride, the greed will cry out along the way, even when we invite God to cast it out. But God is casting it out!

And so we draw closer to God, even when we fear evil, even when we fear being cured of evil. Because we also know the end of the story. Evil really has been overcome, once and for all. Easter is a taste of the final reality. Whatever crucifixion we suffer, whatever crucifixion we cause is not the final answer. Resurrection is!

And we can be part of it in this life and the next. Amen.

Gusti Linnea Newquist

(additional lectionary texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13)

January 25--From Repentance to Hope

"The Lord spoke his word to Jonah again and said, 'Get up, go to the great city Nineveh, and preach to it what I tell you to say.' So Jonah obeyed the Lord and got up and went to Nineveh. It was a very large city; just to walk across it took a person three days. After Jonah had entered the city and walked for one day, he preached to the people, saying, 'After forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed!' The people of Nineveh believed God. They announced that they would fast for a while, and they put on rough cloth to show their sadness. All the people in the city did this, from the most important to the least important. . . . When God saw what the people did, that they stopped doing evil, he changed his mind and did not do what he had warned. He did not punish them" (Jonah 3:1-5, 10).

Jonah was not the first Hebrew prophet to speak God’s justice to Nineveh. The prophet Nahum also addressed this city of bloodshed, this city of violence, this city of imperial expansion that had led the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel 700 years before the birth of Christ.

"How terrible it will be for the city that has killed so many," Nahum proclaims in righteous anger. "It is full of lies and goods stolen from other countries. It is always killing somebody. . . . Many are dead; their bodies are piled up—too many to count. People stumble over the dead bodies" (Nahum 3:1, 3b-c).


If Nahum is like any one of us who has been deeply wounded to the core of his being by a violent oppressor, he wants God to punish his mortal enemy without mercy. If Nahum is anything like me, he expects justice to look something like vengeance, he wants his oppressor to hurt as deeply as he and his people have been hurt, he feels his justified outrage turn into simmering anger, he puts that anger into the mouth of God.


"'I will pull your dress up over your face,'" Nahum says to Nineveh, supposedly on God’s behalf, "'and show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will throw filthy garbage on you and make a fool of you. I will make people stare at you'" (Nahum 3:5b-6).


Nahum’s language is as bad as it sounds: murder and rape and shame employed as tools of divine justice.

Is this what God tells Jonah to say? Is this the call to repentance that leads all of Nineveh to comply? Is this the kind of punishment God decides to withhold?


It is a shocking message, indeed, for we who claim to worship a God of peace.


But those of us who have suffered extreme violence at the hand of another—whether it be rape or bombing or the insidious damage of mental or spiritual abuse—those of us who have been violated to the very core of our being know that it is just plain honest in the midst of our agony to admit we do pray for this kind of justice to roll down like waters. To admit we do want this kind of righteousness to flow like a mighty stream.


“It is not right what they have done to us!” Nahum reassures a broken people. It is not right what they have done to us, the preacher declares to a broken world.


Nahum did not expect Nineveh to repent upon hearing the news of God’s anger. But Jonah did.


“’This is why I ran away to Tarshish,’” Jonah complains to God when Nineveh repents. “’I knew that you are a God who is kind and shows mercy. You don’t become angry quickly, and you have great love. I knew you would choose not to cause harm!’” (Jonah 4:2b). How could you let my enemy off so easily!


It can be easy to blame Jonah for running from God’s call. It can be hard to understand his frustration with God’s mercy. Unless we understand the modern-day parallels.


Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Ghandi speaking repentance—and mercy—to the British colonialists. Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Martin Luther King speaking repentance—and mercy—to racist White America. Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Sister Helen Prejean speaking repentance—and mercy—to death row inmates awaiting execution. It is really, really hard.


For some of us reading Jonah this week, God may be challenging us to take the hard step of speaking the truth in love to those who have hurt us, asking them to change their hearts and minds, trusting God’s merciful love to restore us all to new life.

For others of us reading Nineveh this week, we hear God’s call to repentance, to acknowledging that others have good reason to hate us, to changing our hearts and minds, to committing to a new way of life.


And for me reading Jonah on this particular day, in this particular week, I cannot help but hear God’s merciful and joyous celebration over the people of the United States, who continue to repent of our racist heritage, who continue to say we don’t want to live that way anymore, and who ask God to continue walking with us to the end.


Surely God’s concern for Jonah, God’s concern for Nineveh, God’s concern for every one of us will correct us when we fail, will applaud us when we succeed, and will sustain us every day of our lives yet to come.


May it be so now and forever. Amen.

Gusti Linnea Newquist

(Additional lectionary texts: Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

January 18--The Beauty of the Body

"You made my whole being; you formed me in my mother's body. I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well. You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother's body. When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed" (Psalm 139:13-16a).

"You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. You have received the Holy Spirit from God. So you do not belong to yourselves, because you were bought by God for a price. So honor God with your bodies" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).


I spent most of my twenties in ministry with young women in college through the National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW). Over and over again, we returned to both of these lectionary texts, praying with one another for the wisdom and courage to honor our bodies--to honor God with our bodies--in a cultural climate that seems to vascillate wildly between the extreme poles of objectifying our bodies on the one hand and controlling them on the other.

Paul's concern with faithful sexuality was certainly part of our discussion (what college student isn't preoccupied with sex!) . . . but so were other basic physical needs: adequate sleep, proper nutrition, safety from violence, healing from childhood abuse, recovering from eating disorders, embracing a visible ethnic identity in a still-racist society, regulating menstrual cycles, facing endometriosis, getting a new haircut, buying flattering clothes, and generally cultivating the physical beauty required to attract a mate while longing to be loved for a lifetime for our minds and hearts, as well as our bodies.

"Surely you know that your bodies are parts of Christ himself," Paul tells the community of Christ in first century Corinth. "Surely you know that you are the body of Christ," we tell each other over and over in the centuries to come.

The church is the "Body of Christ," we say, and we mean it as metaphor, as a nice way of talking about diversity and the importance of every member.

But this is not a metaphor!

"The body is not just an ephermeral entity inferior to the immortal soul," Eugene Eung-Chun Park writes in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. "Rather, it is the locus of the union with Christ in the present life of a Christian" (259).

Our bodies are literally the Body of Christ. Every one of them. And all of them together. How we treat our bodies--and how we treat the bodies of others--literally is how we treat the body of Christ, whether it is through our sexual relationships or our soup kitchens or our military actions. And our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made!

College women are not the only ones concerned about the beauty of the body. So is God. And our prayer is that the God who breathed life into the first human--formed from the humus and pronounced very good--will continue to breathe life-giving honor into our bodies as we strive to honor the bodies of one another and ourselves. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); John 1:43-51)

January 11--A Baptism of Repentance

“John was baptizing people in the desert and preaching a baptism of changed hearts and lives for the forgiveness of sins. All the people from Judea and Jerusalem were going out to him. They confessed their sins and were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothes made from camel’s hair, had a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. This is what John preached to the people: ‘There is one coming after me who is greater than I; I am not good enough even to kneel down and untie his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

At that time Jesus came from the town of Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Immediately, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven open. The Holy Spirit came down on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with you’” (Mark 1:4-11).


I really love this translation of the baptism story. It comes from the New Century Version of the Bible . . . one I picked up this summer because I wanted something small and light and easy to carry for travel. I had never heard of this version before.

I like this translation because it gives a full meaning to the Greek word usually translated as “repentance.” So often we equate repentance with badness: I did wrong. I confess. I promise not to do it again. But metanoia is about transformation. A new heart. A new mind. A new life. And it is happening all the time.

A baptism of true repentance can be a powerful, powerful thing. A drug dealer can decide to turn his life around. An addict can seek help in recovery. An abused spouse can leave a toxic relationship. An old cynic can learn to love. God can make a way out of no way. God can transform every part of our lives.


The great debate in biblical and theological scholarship around this baptism story has been about why Jesus needed to be baptized. If he was truly without sin, scholars wonder, what was the point?


But baptism is broader, I think, than the individual sins we do or do not commit and our need for forgiveness from them. Baptism is just as much about the sin committed against us and our need to be healed from it.

Jesus certainly did “take on” the sin of the world . . . and not just as a priestly sacrifice on our behalf. He was betrayed, denied, despised, rejected, beaten, oppressed by an occupying power, spat upon, tortured, killed. Perhaps his baptism was about trusting God to transform the sin committed against him. Perhaps his baptism sustained him as he encountered that sin, as he stared that sin down, as he felt abandoned, as he died.


We who follow Christ have a deep, powerful, transforming message to proclaim through baptism. God will not rest until our hearts and lives have been changed. God will not rest until good comes from evil. God will not rest until resurrection comes from crucifixion.

In baptism we acknowledge that we need to be transformed, every one of us, whether we have done wrong or whether we have had wrong done to us. In baptism we accept our human limitations and admit our need for God’s transforming grace. In baptism, we admit that evil exists in the world, that we are a part of it as perpetrators and as victims, and that we don’t want to be anymore. In baptism we bring every broken part of who we are, offer it to God, and ask to be reborn through the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit. Whether we were baptized as infants or adults, and whether or not we have formally participated in that public ritual of transformation, we can trust God to make us new, to change our hearts and lives.


May we experience this kind of repentance throughout the new year. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29:1-11; Acts 19:1-7)