From Anger to Zion

An Alphabet of Faith

Porter Taylor

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780819225931
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

Anger, judgment, forgiveness, wisdom. All of these and more are biblical words we've used so often that they have very little meaning for us anymore. For others--seekers and those who are coming to church for the first time--these words sound like jargon. They are words that divide new church members from those who have been there a lifetime. In From Anger to Zion, Porter Taylor reflects on an alphabet of biblical words in ways that will help newcomers understand and speak the language, and that will encourage those familiar with these words to rethink them.

A wonderful storyteller and writer, Taylor's essays, each based on a biblical text, take ancient words and ideas and bring them into contemporary life. Egypt of old is today's broken place in our lives—the place where, like Moses, God is most likely to call us to go. Forgiveness is explored as a way of unfreezing time; without forgiveness we cannot grow. What does Isaiah's and the Israelites' homesickness have to do with today's homeless and lost people?

These beautifully written essays are wonderful devotional material, but they also can serve as material for preparing to preach or for small-group discussion within parish reading groups.

C

CALLING

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

—Jeremiah 1:5

The day it happened was a homecoming because the words came into his heart from somewhere outside yet seemed absolutely familiar. It was as if he heard his own voice for the first time. He touched his mouth to see if he had spoken. In that moment, he could see. The confusion that so often clouded his world lifted. So often he had wondered, Will we get the Assyrians off our backs for good? Can we trust the Babylonians? Are we going to be free? Does God want us to go to the Temple day after day to worship or is there another way?

He wondered about these things. In fact, he thought more about these things than he did about getting on with his life. Everyone said it was time to think about following in his father’s footsteps. It was time to think about marriage, a home, a normal life. But he thought about Judah and faithfulness and oppression.

So when the voice came inside him, at first he didn’t know what it was: “Jeremiah. Go and deliver.” He looked around, hoping there was another Jeremiah. Who me? I’m fourteen years old. I’m a freshman in high school. I don’t even have a license. Go where? Deliver whom?

Even as he said it, he knew. He had always known somewhere in his heart that he was meant for this kind of service. He was just scared and he didn’t want to look foolish. Every time he had heard some little voice saying his name, he had brushed it off. He told himself, It’s just my imagination. Maybe it’s something I ate. But this time it was too loud. This time he felt someone touch his mouth and it burned. That touch ran all the way through him, and Jeremiah knew that he wasn’t alone. He knew that God was with him, and although he did not know where he was going, he was ready to go.

It’s a nice story, isn’t it? And it must be true because it’s in the Bible, but what about us? Are we called or is that just for the Bible folks? If we are, what does it mean? What happens when you are called?

Well, the first thing is you never feel adequate. It’s an automatic reaction. Jeremiah says, “I am only a boy.” Moses says, “I can’t talk very well.” Isaiah says, “I am not holy enough.” When God calls us, our first response is always “Not me. You got the wrong person. Whatever you need, I don’t have it.” Up to a point—and the point is where we give in and say, “Okay, I’ll go anyway.” Up to a point our reservations are actually healthy, because they force us to focus on what God is doing and not on what we are capable of doing. Jeremiah looked at Judah, who had been captive to the Assyrians forever, and he could not image how he—only a boy—could do much about his country’s plight. Moses looked at the Israelites, captive to Egypt, and he could not imagine how he could do much. However, in a strange sort of way, the sign of being called is this sense of inadequacy.

If someone comes up to you and says, “God has called me to save the world and I am completely prepared to do it,” run, because that is a clear sign the person is not called. In The Lord of the Rings, those people who think they are the best person to carry the ring are exactly the ones you don’t want anywhere near so much power. Instead, the one who is chosen is the small hobbit, who only says, “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” We do not know the way, but we don’t need to so long as we are connected to the One who is the Way.

Of course, Jeremiah doesn’t know how to bring Judah back into righteousness, but God isn’t asking him to know. God is asking him to participate in what God is doing; Jeremiah goes not because he knows what to say, but because God assures him that God will put the words into his mouth.

Yes, we are hesitant; yes, we do resist, but we go because in going we become more of who we are. God tells Jeremiah, “Before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Our calling is not so much about what we do; it’s about who we are. One day we hear a voice deep within and we remember what we were born for because that voice within us beckons us to step out. At first, we don’t know what the voice is, but if we listen, it’s our voice saying our name. If we listen, our voice has the echo of God’s voice and we know if we do not follow, we will never be completely alive.

Somewhere in his soul, Jeremiah has always known he is a prophet. Because there is no market for prophets, he hasn’t listened to that voice. Of course, in his heart, he knows his deafness makes him a little less alive. Every time he looks at the Assyrians, he knows in his heart that he should speak out. Every time he looks at his fellow Israelites, part of him dies as he stays silent.

Each of us is called to follow that voice within that beckons us to manifest as who we are; that voice is actually our meeting place with God. There is a great joy in following God’s call—because, for the first time in our lives, we fit. If you are a painter and you have embraced your calling, you’d paint for free. As a matter of fact, you probably do paint for free. It’s who you are. As the poet William Stafford writes, “Some time when the river is ice ask me / mistakes I have made. Ask me whether / what I have done is my life. . . .” He means that the greatest mistake is to live what is not your life.

Jeremiah feels inadequate, then he embraces that voice as his own, and finally he is called to go out on behalf of God. Isn’t it amazing that no one in the Bible is called to go shopping or go to Super Bowl parties? God doesn’t call us to serve ourselves. We are called to play our part in what God is doing; we are called to serve in the transformation of the world. Jeremiah is given power to pluck up and to pull down, to build and to plant, because it’s God’s plan to pluck up, pull down, to build and plant. When our inner calling is true, it is always matched by service to the world. Frederick Buechner has a wonderful definition of vocation: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”¹

However, following your call by going into the world is always hard. The world is not really excited about being plucked up or pulled down. Many people did not want to hear Jeremiah or Amos or Jesus or St. Francis or Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King Jr. In like manner, many people were not excited when Pablo Picasso gave his first exhibit, and many were not excited when William Faulkner published The Sound and the Fury, either.

Many people will not be excited about your call, either. They’ll say to you, “You’re just a girl; you’re not ready; it won’t work.”

When that happens, remember the best part of the call. Every time you step out to follow that inner voice, God whispers in your ear: “I am with you; I am with you; I am with you.”

CHILD

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

—Mark 9:37

When Robert was in high school, the world was in his hip pocket. He started on the soccer team. He played guitar in a rock band. He scored 1530 on the SATs. Not too many people were surprised when he got into a prestigious university. Clearly he was headed for great things. People said, “Remember that boy’s name because he is going places.”

He went to college and did fine his first semester. But then, in the spring, something happened. The dean of students called his mother and said, “Your son hasn’t been to any of his classes in a month. Something could be wrong.” However, they hadn’t actually seen him. No one had actually seen him. He had stayed in his apartment for weeks. It turns out that at nineteen he had a schizophrenic break.

So he moved back home and tried to hold down a job. But it was hard. He talked to himself. He wouldn’t bathe. He seldom changed his clothes. The young man who had the world in his hip pocket now couldn’t keep a job taking care of the carts at the grocery store.

Here’s the point. In less than a year, he had become invisible. Now when he walked down the street, people looked the other way. No one was mean; no one said anything to him. No one said anything to him because he no longer fit into the power structure. He was no longer worth knowing. He had gone from being somebody to being nobody in four months.

It is so easy for us to misunderstand the radical, upside-down gospel. However, this isn’t a new problem. Throughout the gospels, Jesus teaches the disciples about the cross and his future suffering. He warns them that to follow him means to take up their own cross. Yet, their response is to get into an argument about who is the greatest. Clearly, they are clueless.

Jesus must know that words are not going to bring the point home. He can talk until he is blue in the face and they will still be asking who can sit at his right hand in heaven. So he shows them. He takes a child in his arms and declares, “Whoever receives one such a child in my name receives God.”

You know who it was he embraced, don’t you? It wasn’t the Gerber baby. It wasn’t a Harry Potter look-alike. It was Robert. It was the boy everyone overlooked.

When we hear of Jesus taking a child into his arms, we make the story too cute for our own good. We think it’s about Jesus telling his disciples not to be too worldly but to preserve their childhood innocence. That’s nice and in other places he does say that. But not here.

In Jesus’ day and time, people looked at children very differently than in ours. There, a child had virtually no status. A son didn’t officially have his birthrights until he reached maturity. If a famine came into the land, children would be fed last after the adults. In the case of a fire, children would be rescued last after adults. In part, this was because of the high infant mortality rates: 30 percent of infants died in childbirth and 60 percent of children died before turning sixteen. Children were barely seen and never heard until they reached adulthood.

However, Jesus is saying to the disciples, “If you want to see God, stop looking at yourselves and your own reputations. Instead, look at those you overlook; look at the ones who cannot help your career, the ones who cannot build up your reputation. The ones who have nothing but their sheer humanity to offer. When you embrace them in my name, you will embrace me.”

Until we realize this, it’s all just ego. It’s all just the way of the world. We are chasing after what New Testament scholar Marcus Borg calls the three As: achievements, affluence, appearance. What have you done? What do you own? How do you look? The radical good news of the gospel is that the world doesn’t revolve around our egos. The world of grace is not about what we can do or what we own or how we look. It’s about the gifts that God is always trying to give us if we will let go of our clutch on life so we can receive.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, says that we mistakenly assume that discipleship is the way of addition: one more achievement, one more experience, one more book or retreat or sermon. To our shock, discipleship is what he calls the “spirituality of subtraction.” To be a disciple we must become aware of our enormous need for Jesus. Otherwise, why would we be willing to follow him to the cross? The disciples argue about who is the greatest because they are still trying to prove their worthiness. They are still promoting their own egos.

The good news of Jesus always sounds upside down to the world. The world never knows what to do with the spirituality of subtraction. To our great surprise, it’s our wounds that save us, because they show us our enormous need of God’s grace. As St. Paul says, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

All we have to proclaim is the grace of God and the love of Jesus. That’s all. It’s not about our achievements or affluence or appearance. It’s not about us at all. It’s about the grace of God and the love of Jesus. The children of Jesus’ day and of our day know that. Robert knows that. He isn’t cutting a deal. He doesn’t have an angle. He lacks any agenda but getting through the day.

You know what? If you can open your eyes and see him not as a lost twenty-four-year-old with wrinkled clothes and confused eyes, but if you can see him as Robert—simply Robert, a person just like you; one of God’s children, just like you; a human being with a name and feelings and words worth hearing—if you can see him that way, you’ll see the face of Jesus.

I know it’s true. The last time I saw Robert, he shook my hand and said, “I am so glad to see you.” And he was. But I heard him say, “I am so glad you came to see me.” You know what? I was glad too. I was very glad, because seeing him opened a door in my heart that led to a land called grace.

CHURCH

The gifts he gave were . . . to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

—Ephesians 4:11–12

The Christians of Ephesus aren’t sure what they have gotten themselves into. They accept all the creeds; they affirm the dogma; they know the stories about Jesus’ miracles and death and resurrection. They like the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup, and they’ve been baptized. They’ve signed on the dotted line, but there’s still one question left: What does it mean to be the Church?

The news Paul has to tell them is not the news they expect to hear. Being the Church is not just about being orthodox or accepting dogma; it’s not just about what you believe. Rather, being the Church has a lot to do with how you behave and how you believe.

Christianity is not merely a confession of belief. We are not Christians only because the teachings of Christ make sense. We are Christians because we have been grasped by the love of Jesus Christ, and that radical love has changed, is changing, and will continue to change us, not just in our ways of thinking, but in our ways of doing. We are Christians according to how we act as well as according to what we believe. That’s one of the reasons we gather together as the Church: we come together to experience again Jesus’ love in community, which is the hardest and yet the most authentic way of experiencing it. We discover Christ as the In-Between, connecting us to one another in a holy communion.

The surprise for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Anger
• Blessed
• Calling
• Demons
• Equipment
• Fall
• Great Love
• Home
• Idolatry
• Joy
• Kairos
• Love
• Myth
• Newness
• Opened
• Pentecost
• Questions
• Reconciliation
• Salvation
• Transfiguration
• Unbelief
• Vision
• Wilderness
• X
• Yes
• Zion