Life is a high stakes proposition. We are invited, if we choose to enter the game, to gauge our options, to build up our resources, and when the moment is right, to move all our chips to the center of the table. Of course, out of fear, we can choose to stand around on the edges and watch.

Jesus (Matthew 7:12) quotes what we refer to as The Golden Rule. “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.” According to Jesus this “rule” sums up all the teaching of the Law and of the prophets. Basically it encourages us to treat others as we would like to be treated. The opposite also applies. Don’t treat others as you don’t want others to treat you. But Jesus also says (Matthew 5:17), “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill.”

Jesus aligns himself, and his mission, squarely and surely with what God has been doing through the Law, that great spiritual treasure, and the prophets, those strong, irritating, and comforting voices speaking out on behalf of God. He has no intention to destroy those pillars of belief and of practice. He has come to bring them to their fullness – beyond anything imaginable. Jesus, in his very being, and in his teaching/healing ministry, sums up and surpasses what went before.

In the light of Jesus, the bar for The Golden Rule is now raised to, Do into others as God has done to you. We are invited and challenged to treat ourselves, others and creation as God has treated us –  with true care. This is the biblical description and understanding of justice – way above and beyond our quid pro quo notions of what’s right and fair. What payback can there possibly be for all God has done, and is doing for us? All we can do is pass the goodness along, to any and all.

At the beginning of Chapter Eight of the Gospel according to Mark (Mark 8:1-21) there are a series of interconnected events. First, Jesus facilitates the feeding of a crowd of 4,000 people. After this, Jesus and the disciples get in boats and cross the Sea of Galilee. When he lands on the other shore, some Pharisees come up to Jesus and demand that he provide them with proof of his credentials from God. “Give us a sign from heaven!” This is a test of Jesus’ legitimacy. Who do you think you are? Where do you come from? What right or authorization do you have to do what you are doing? Show us! Now! Jesus simply replies, “No sign will be given to this generation.” Jesus gets back into a boat with his disciples and leaves those Pharisees to wonder, or to gloat at their ability to get under Jesus’ skin.

When they are away from shore, Jesus gives a warning to his followers (which means us, too). “Beware of the leaven of  the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” As happens so often, the disciples (us?) jump to conclusions and miss Jesus’ point. They (maybe because their stomachs are growling?) assume that Jesus is chiding them because they have only one loaf of bread on board (and what is that among so many hungry people – sound familiar?) This misunderstanding leads, once again, to a deeper, fuller teaching.

Remember that immediately before the Pharisees challenge Jesus, he had orchestrated the operation that fed 4,000 hungry people. Doesn’t that, by itself, hint that God is at work in and through Jesus? The disciples had been there, had participated in that gracious experience. And you, my close followers? Don’t you see? It’s not about bread people! So, what is Jesus warning us against?

Jesus used leaven as a parabolic example of the tiny, subversive, and potent action that brings about the Kingdom of God. But, in popular Israelite culture, leaven had another connotation. Leaven came to signify an agent of corrosive action – indicating an invasive, pervasive source of evil. The leaven of the Pharisees, as Jesus frequently pointed out to them, was their hypocrisy. They had powerful influence, but used it in a way that made things worse for others – especially the little, ordinary people. The leaven of Herod was manifested in his ruthless and amoral behavior – greed, lust, domination, control… He, too, used his role, which might have brought about much good, to make lives more difficult.

This type of leaven is seductive – to use your role, power, influence to try to manipulate or control others. Often, fear, threats, coercion are employed to get your own way. This leaven cannot build anything positive, much less God’s Kingdom. Fear is a powerful influencer. Jesus bet his life that love was even more powerful. Which leaven do we choose?

How many weddings have incorporated the passage, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, to focus on the dynamic which will (they hope) guide and empower the life together of the new wife and husband? St. Paul uses a Greek-style eulogy of “the greatest virtue” to point out the primary place of love in the life of all who follow Jesus the Christ. We know the descriptive flow… Love is patient, love is kind, love is… But there’s (at least) one element of love that Paul omits. Love is inconvenient.

To put it simply: love involves personal relationship; personal relationships are messy and unpredictable. Once we allow another person to have access to our heart, we can count on our life being out of (our) control. Our time, our attention, our care are no longer mine alone – they are ours. Love is always a call to ecstasy – standing outside of one’s self – caught up in the gravitational pull of the other. Love demands availability. My plans, my program, living life on MY terms, all this is up for grabs. How inconvenient! 

We have this ego-tendency to think that I have the right to set my own course, to determine my own fate, to “do it my way.” This might have been true if I was the only creature ever brought into existence……but probably not. J. P. Sartre said it best (from this point of view), “Hell is other people.” We are all (in-laws, outlaws, ancestors, aliens..) in it together. And we need to care for each other, love one another, otherwise there’s no future for anyone. Talk about inconvenient!

Here’s a troubling thought. We believe that God is love (1 John:4-16).  Love is particularly inconvenient. It follows, then, that God is inconvenient. God, who invites all into relationship – who, as our lover, claims the right to break into our lives whenever, however love requires – is notoriously bothersome, refusing to leave us alone to stumble forever in the dark. God asks things of us that totally disrupt our “best laid schemes.”  What conveniences do we need to lay aside in order to experience more fully the warm, all-embracing, inconvenient love that is God?

Where would we be, if not for a break now and then from the work of staying alive, of loving, of trying to do good and to make things better? Our Jewish ancestors in faith were on to something! Realize the need for regular time off, and use God’s work of creation as its justification. Make a calendar with space just to be, every seven days. God rested. We rest. We need this. 

It seems that we have forgotten this healthy rhythm. We run non-stop from activity to activity, from one all-absorbing doing to another all-absorbing doing. We collapse, get less than enough rest, get up and race off to the next busyness. What are we afraid of? What are we running from? Is our world any better because of our intense, foot-on-the-accelerator lives? What would happen if we stopped, if we gave ourselves a break, as God proposed?

While we seem to have Sabbath-amnesia, in Jesus’ day, there was often another kind of Sabbath distortion. The religious leaders among the Israelites back then, afraid that the people’s lax, or partial, following of the Law, would bring God’s disfavor again – to the point of losing even more of their religious privileges grudgingly conceded by their oppressors – insisted, demanded, strict compliance. The Sabbath was to be a day of complete rest from any and all work, or from anything that could possibly be viewed as work. It got to the point where ordinary people felt constrained from living their lives on the Sabbath. It was impossible for many to adhere to the various rules used to explain the Law, and they faced condemnation from the authorities.  

Remember how many times the Sabbath was thrown in the face of Jesus, and used as concrete proof that Jesus could not be from God? One instance is found early in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 2:23-27). Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field on a Sabbath. The disciples are clearing a path as they pass through, and picking grains to munch on – to the leaders this equals trail-breaking and harvesting. They are working. When the authorities call Jesus on this, another egregious defiling of God’s holy day, Jesus reminds them that David, God’s chosen ruler, had taken the loaves of bread offered in the Temple, which were only for the priests, and ate them, and even shared them with his companions (literally bread-sharers).

Jesus finishes with the statement, “The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath.” Rules, even the Law, were intended to help us to live well, not to force us to jump through ever-tightening hoops. The Sabbath was a gift to humanity to help us to live more humanely. It is meant to give us space to rest, to remember God and our relationships, to savor creation, to do good, and to engender joy, not to stifle it. We need Sabbath, regular times and spaces of rest, awareness and appreciation, built into our lives, to be fully human.

Did you happen to notice that the Gospel chosen for New Year’s Eve is the Prologue to the Gospel according to John (John 1:1-18)? I hadn’t. Is this on purpose, or is it just the next Christmas-related scripture in line? These first 18 verses were added to this Gospel later, and placed before the traditional beginning where John the Baptist comes on the scene. These verses set the stage for the drama of Jesus’ life by inserting his life into a timeless, cosmic context. 

Jesus is identified as the Word of God that speaks creation into existence. God speaks. It happens. And it is all very good. Before any unfolding, or evolving, or developing. there was God, there was God’s Word. Then God speaks, and that is the beginning of all else, of all that will come. 

This adds to, and contrasts with, the stories of creation in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis, there is some primordial chaos, over which the Spirit of God, the breath of God, hovers. God says, “Let there be…,” and it happens. God brings forth order, and progressively introduces the principal pieces that we human beings recognize as created reality.

John points out that the Word, that takes on flesh in Jesus, has been part of everything since before the beginning. It is God’s Word, the divine, effective Word. This Word is the source of life, and manifests itself as light – which was the first outcome of creation.

This Word becomes flesh, moves in with us, and offers us a choice – the light of belief, or the darkness of unbelief.We can pretend, against all scientific evidence, that creation always was, or just randomly came about (lucky for us!). Or we can accept that God’s desire from before the beginning was that we have all that we need to live well, and to be well.

On the cusp of a new year, we are offered this wonderful message: God wants, and has always (as in eternally) wanted to manifest the fullness of divine love for all of us, for all creation – to the point of entering into creation and becoming one of us. No darkness, real or imagined, has ever, or can ever, overcome the light offered to us. This truth is the source of our hope. Welcome the New Year! May it be abundantly good and richly blessed for all!