A Bit of Turbulence

At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

The first time I flew on a plane with my wife was in 1989; we flew from San Diego to Newark. The flight was uneventful, direct, and we experienced the now lost form of fine dining where you are served a hot meal on small plastic plates. All was well until we reached New Jersey. There was a backup for landing and thus a holding pattern. Which was fine except for turbulence.
The plane pitched and yawed, dipped and rose for quite a while and with great force. The turbulence was so great Kathy grew worried. Part of her worry was that her two young children were not with her. What if something terrible happened? In this moment of dread she turned to me for comfort.

What do you think is happening,” she asked?

“Turbulence, I guess. I am not sure. But it is what it is. Can’t really worry. If we are going down, we are going to go down.”
My maudlin declaration was still hanging in the air when a hand reached between our seats from behind us. The hand patted Kathy on the shoulder. All of a sudden there was a calm voice with the hand. “It’s going to be fine. I am a pilot and I can tell you this is not something to worry about. It’s bumpy, but the plane is designed for this.” And then he continued to talk to Kathy about the scientific phenomenon of turbulence: its causes and effects.

When we finally landed Kathy thanked him for the help and the assurance. He said it was his privilege. And then he shot me a glance that seemed to suggest I need to work on my crisis hotline skills.
I blame the Soviets for this.

Growing in southern California in the time of the Cold War and nuclear arms race, there was an ever-present atmosphere of dread. As children we were taught to hide beneath our desk when directed so to endure global thermal annihilation. It didn’t take long for most children to realize this was not a good response to the apocalypse.

No. The end was always nigh. Either the Soviets would strike or Jesus would return. This was the culture and the time of our childhood. Be it Ruskies or the Lord, there was a sense that you need to be fine with cataclysmic cosmic forces. Fine in the sense of resignation. Like the coffee cup says, be calm and carry on.

So in the moment of great turbulence as we circle Newark and Kathy was worried for the future of her children, my words of assurance were simply the fault of the Soviet Union. Any one can see that. I was simply working with the material I was given.

Many years later, after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviets were no more, I was privileged to be trained in trauma, especially the form of trauma were you persist in worry and dread. What I learned in the training was that we are made to endure it. Like the plane is made to endure turbulence, the brain, our bodies, and our soul is formed to be resilient. We are designed to cope, endure.

Although we are made for this, we don’t always handle trauma well; this is true; and sometimes we break. But, for the most part, it is as if we are wired to handle stress and threat, even catastrophe.
For quite some time I have worked from the simple premise or theory or idea that all of the teachings of Jesus are a kind of rewiring of this, rewiring of this resilience. I don’t mean rewiring like brainwashing or indoctrinating. No. My theory is that the life and teachings of Jesus are meant to fundamentally change the way we respond to threat and danger. With him we are recalibrated from being people who respond with fear or anger or violence to people whose impulse becomes hope and faith and mercy and compassion. It is as if we are born anew.

For the most part we cope with stress and challenge by gritting our teeth or hunkering down or fighting our way through the problem. And this is how human life seems to get through. We go to war; we go to the mattresses. We hide out or fight the fight. The ones who fight the hardest and the longest are heroes and saints. This comes naturally to us.

This natural proclivity is changed when we follow Jesus. When faced with threat we are to be peace makers; when there is anger we are to distrust it; when there is bravado or arrogance, we are to trust humility. The burning desire to retaliate becomes when we turn the other cheek. Jesus will teach us to not resist the evil doer, when every part us wants to fight back.

Working from this perspective, this theory, our reading today from Matthew makes more sense. The Pharisees grumble about hungry disciples gleaning a field (because this is not how we please God). Jesus gives us three responses, each is a kind of rewiring about how we respond to challenge.

The first is the reference to David and the bread of the presence. To us this seems like a kind of a legal loophole. If David did it, it must be alright for the disciples. But what Jesus is saying to the Pharisees is very ominous. The priests who gave David the bread of the presence were all killed for this. Saul had them all put to death for helping David.

Hence Jesus gives the Pharisees a coded message about how dangerous life can be; how even a simple act of kindness can become violent. In other words, how you are living is fine until it is not. The Pharisees are looking at life as something they can control or keep in line. And there are rules to follow and codes to keep and if we keep to them, then all is well and God is happy with us. Jesus says, this works until David needs some bread and Saul needs some vengeance.

The next couple of sayings, again, might seem innocuous to us, but for the Pharisees this was like saying down is up. If only you would live as if God desires mercy not sacrifice. Jesus tells the people, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. In this Jesus is taking a prophetic saying about priests and applying it to everyone. God desires mercy not sacrifice is a saying from the Hebrew Scriptures about priestly practice. But Jesus applies it to how we treat each other, not how we appease God.

Too much of Christian theology is written as if the purpose of Jesus’ life and death is to recast our relationship with a vengeful god. Jesus fixes our broken covenant with the Creator, the God of Israel. Jesus pays for our sins; he dies for us when it should have been our deserved suffering. God was mad and rightly so, but Jesus got it all worked out. This way of looking at life, at Jesus, at faith simply has no place in his actual teachings and the way he lived his life. It certainly doesn’t jive with his third and final claim. The son of man is lord of the sabbath.

Again for us, this might be a nice saying. Hey, you’re the lord of the sabbath! Thanks for that! To the Pharisees though this is blasphemy, scandalous, dangerous. Jesus is talking revolution. What he is saying to the Pharisees is that his teachings will change us, rewire us. If we look to time, of which the Sabbath is the living image of time, if we look to time as if we have dominion, power, and thus freedom, if we look to time this way, then how we are put together is remade, rewired. We are no longer slaves to the sun and the moon; we are not punching the clock or counting the days, we are living in wholly different way. We’re living in freedom.

How much of our life right now is simply far from this? Do the right thing, keep your head down, and play nice. Which is not a bad way of living. Most people try to live this way. For the most part this is the crux of Christian ethics today. Be a good person. And when things are going well and the sky is not falling, when there are no Soviets or turbulence, this is very practical advice. No one will blame you if live this way. Jesus doesn’t. But he does say: there is another way of living.

Not too long ago I listened to a fascinating lecture about the fall of the Berlin Wall. The speaker’s claim was that all of our foreign policy, our political structures and even our economies changed that day the wall fell. It was a watershed moment. And I think he was right. I can remember the night; we watched it happen on the television. I can remember thinking, the world just changed.

I also remember feeling sympathy for all the preachers and politicians whose lives were caught up in and defined by fear of Russia. So many of the calculations and definitions of the day were now in need of being changed, recast. It would appear the end is not nigh. We may no longer not need to confuse children by having them hide under desks. The Soviets were not coming to crush us, anymore.

Yet, even though much has changed since the Berlin Wall fell, the change is more of a shuffling of the deck. There is a different order, true, a different hand, true is being dealt, but the cards are still the cards and the game is still the game. There is not a fundamental change, the type of new life Jesus offers us.

A life that follows the teaching of Jesus, a church that tries to be a community guided by his way of living, is a very simple attempt of becoming altogether new. The baked in impulse of fear and anger and desire and arrogance, they become born anew. This time instead of being wired for survival, we are wired for compassion; instead of being wired to crush our enemies, we are made to love our enemies. The instinct of fight, flight or freeze, even this changes. We take on an instinct of faith, hope, and charity.

You are made to survive. We are wired to endure, to cope. We are resilient creatures. And this is good. The creation story said, God looked at us and called us good. For this reason all the ink that is spilled condemning humankind or listing off our “bread crumb sins” is vacuous rambling born of fear. And the same goes for the history of theology where Jesus is there to pay for our sins, to appease a vengeful god; this, too, is hollow and born of fear as well.

In this little exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees is just one more piece, one more moment to be born anew. If we learn to live this, it will not only change us, it will recreate our soul. To be dear being born anew doesn’t keep us from turbulence, nor are we guaranteed that there will always be a nice pilot whose hand comes through the seats and gives help to my terrible advice born of the Soviets. And the cards are the cards. They’ll continue to be reshuffled. All I can tell you – with certainty- is that you can live in freedom here and now if you live the teachings of Jesus. Amen.