The Golden Ass

In group discussion on Michael Gonzalez’s sermon on Matt 23: 1-12, he noted that, in election season, he sees a lot of pastors saying things like, “God is sovereign and in control.” They are trying to be helpful, but that can often serve to avoid entering into the struggle of shared life together, which involves and requires shared struggle, shared grieving, and shared endurance (Michael is African American, btw). What Jesus actually calls, beckons, and invites - in other words, ELECTS - us into is his “sovereignty over” and faithfulness to a people joined to one another. For more on this, see my reflection on Day 1, Sunday.

Of course, this provoked me to imagine how to relate to my white friends, and to my white community, in relation to Matthew 23.

“And, the greater among you shall be your servant. And whoever will exalt himself will be humbled, and whoever will humble himself will be exalted. But alas for you, scribes and Pharisees…” – Matthew 23: 11-13

So, if I consider my own place in relationship between Matthew 23 and my white friends more as my entering into the narrative voiced by Jesus, as our placing ourselves inside the story, and less as my speaking at and criticizing my white friends for not entering, then what? Can distant criticizing become invitation and beckoning into divine joining? Can we enter in, with fear and trembling, with sacred awe? With the practices of confession and lament, along with repentance?

It is with this context and these questions in mind that I have a reflection on a portion of Matthew 23 for each day of the week of “Election 2020.”

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Monday, Day 2:

But do not let yourselves be called Rabbi…Neither let yourselves be called instructors… – Matt 23: 8, 10

Entering into the story requires translation. And, I don’t simply mean translation from Greek to English. I mean translation between one world and another. As Michael said it in his sermon, the terms “Rabbi” and “Instructor” were part of their set of interwoven systems by which one was centered and honored, and another was excluded and shamed. But who among us desires to be called “Rabbi,” or “Instructor”?

So, what are such systems for us? I desired to be called “Architect” or “Nurse” rather than “waiter” or “server.” Our systems are based on commodification driven by revenue generation. In our consumerist system, the first choice of the consumer is of which identity her or she wants to be branded with by and in the market. And, in order to participate in the system, this choice is always to reach upwards toward the social and economic capital of the column which is our territory and our personhood.

By what consumer identities have you sought to reach upward towards economic and social capital in our marketplace of desire? I did it with “Architect” and “Nurse.” Frank Lloyd Wright, pictured here in his nobility, was a model of this for me. I had to be laid off three times, get fired basically twice, and then purposefully go work as a server again for a year, before I even began to learn to embrace God’s “election” into His role for me as his disciple. In grace, I was able to accept those circumstances as divine pruning. "Discipline begins in the house of the Lord."

So, in the midst of this system of our choosing upwards, what does Jesus have to say to us? What is that role that he has for us in our world as his disciples? Don’t reach upwards like the world does, he says. “because you have one instructor, who is the Anointed. And the greater among you shall be your servant.” “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for…” He is not calling to any place to where he is not showing us the Way in his very own flesh. This became especially poignant for me when, after working as a “servant,” I later realized that the people I was working with and didn’t want to be like were mostly black. And, the people I wanted to be like – the people who had more honorable and prestigious identities with greater social and economic capital - were mostly white.

Do we seek to be “instructor” or “Rabbi”, where Jesus calls you to be servant? How? What does that mean for you? Can you hear it as Good News as God beckons you to enter into shared life of divine joining, of shared struggle and endurance with those who are not like you? Is that the voice of freedom from a burden that’s not yours to bear? Can you, do you want to submit to learning from and hearing the witness of fellow African American brothers and sisters rather than presuming to be their “instructor” and “Rabbi”?