In modern terms, “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” have shown up in all kinds of places. Shortly before Christmas in 1996, I saw this tabloid while standing in the check-out line at Wegman’s, and I knew it was a keeper. (Tabloids generally are on the side of scaring you to death.)

They’ve shown up elsewhere, though, and I find this appearance fascinating and helpful. They’ve shown up in the work of clinical Psychologist John Gottman, an expert in human relationships, especially intimate ones.

Gottman has something he calls “the love lab.” It’s basically an apartment. Couples who are struggling with their relationship stay in the lab for 48 to 72 hours, and all their conversations are recorded. By the end of their stay, Gottman can predict with something like 98% accuracy whether their marriage will make it, or whether their relationship is unraveling. He predicts this based on the presence or absence of four dynamics in their interactions. He calls these, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of relationships. The Four Horsemen are always a sign of death, destruction. Their appearance in communication reveals a brokenness that can lead to the death of the relationship…

Image: Eugene Delacroix, Horse Frightened by a Storm, 1824. Courtesy of Wikiart.org

And this goes on—Job’s friends accusing him, Job defending himself. He stands firm. He has not sinned. He has done nothing to deserve any of this. For 24 chapters this goes on, and Job will not budge. And we know he’s right.

And we know his story is a true story. We look around us and we see its truth in the stories of family and friends, in the stories of strangers. We see good people suffering. We have been their witnesses.

And the question remains: Why? We ask this question when we see the suffering of strangers. We ask it when we see the suffering of those we love. We ask it when we suffer ourselves. And when there is no answer, we struggle to make sense of it….

Image: A Sanctified Art, used with permission.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. ~Romans 12:4-5

Image: Riverside Cemetery, Endicott, NY . P. Raube, 2014

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
~Romans 13:8

Image: P. Raube, (c) 2020.

Every time I read those words of Jesus, I cringe. How can it be? It hurts to hear him speak like this.

But this is tribalism. Tribes? They can function for good: they can help you to know who you can consider family. They can be a source of strength, identity, pride. But tribalism? That is no longer about what is good and strong. That is about who’s in and who’s out. Who we care about and who we consider expendable. For whom we will rush in, and who we will pass on by. Whose lives matter, and whose lives don’t…

Image: Juan de Flandes, “The Canaanite Woman asks for healing for her daughter” (ca. 1500), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55921 [retrieved August 1, 2020]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juan_de_Flandes_-_Christ_and_the_Canaanite_Woman_-_WGA12050.jpg.

In this morning’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew, we continue with the text, picking up right after Jesus’ enormous, extravagant picnic of last week. Jesus is, finally, taking the time he needs after everything that has happened. The death of John the Baptist. His own grief and, yes, fear, unrelieved as he continues to pour out his energies and compassion in healing all those who come in need, and then, feeding them, too.

But immediately after that, Jesus knows he has reached his limits.

I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that, if Jesus has limits, so do we. Generosity and compassion are beautiful and a part of our calling, but so is sacred Sabbath, holy rest, and time in prayer and connection with the One who made and who called us in the first place.

Jesus has reached his limits, and so he climbs a mountain to pray. (I know)…

Image: Jesus Walks on Water by Ivan Aivazovsky (1888), Public Domain, courtesy of Wikiart.

… The crowds want Jesus. They go the long way, rushing around the coastline, and they beat him there, and they meet him there.

And when Jesus sees them, he is moved with compassion.

For us, the word compassion derives from the Latin word; it means “to suffer with.” When we see someone who is suffering, we feel their pain. We are wired that way. If we don’t feel compassion, it has been trained out of us, and more’s the pity. The scriptures tell us, over and over, what psalm told us this morning: The Lord is gracious and full of compassion.

And the biblical understanding of compassion—in both Testaments—is connected to our bodies. We feel others’ pain in our guts; in Hebrew, it’s the word for womb. Compassion is womb-love.

Image: La multiplicité de pains, by James Tissot (1886-1896), the Brooklyn Museum, courtesy of Wikiart.

You think a kingdom is all about the power of the king. But how about the power of a little flour left to ferment… to get a little funky, a little smelly, but which, hey look at that, makes bread rise, feeds a crowd. This feels like a good time to mention that the word kin-dom seems to work better than “kingdom” to describe what Jesus is talking about… a way of living that sees mutual care and concern at the heart of the gospel, at the core of what it means to be close to God…

What is Paul saying here? Is suffering meaningless? Is it evidence of an indifferent, or even absent God? Is it not worth considering at all?

Well no. Not when your God knows what it is to suffer. Which is, after all, exactly what Jesus came to show us: A God willing to suffer with us, and suffer for us.

Placed within the context of a suffering savior, suffering no longer looks like screaming into a void. It looks more like childbirth…

Image: “Silhouette of a Woman” by Ilzy Sousa of Pexels can be found here.

The kingdom of heaven is like a preacher who gets into a boat, and pulls away from the shore…

The kingdom of heaven is like seeds thrown around, wildly, extravagantly, indiscriminately…!

The kingdom of heaven is like a beautiful flower, hidden in a seedling…

The kingdom of heaven is like small-town kids weeping for children they’ve never met…

The kingdom of heaven is like a story that leaves us with more questions than answers…

The kingdom of God is like a story that teases the imagination, challenges accepted values, or points beyond itself, into the depths of the soul and the heights of heaven…

Image: JESUS MAFA. The parable of the sower, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48309 [retrieved July 10, 2020]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

And then it’s as if Jesus looks at the crowd again, and it’s as if his prayer has transformed him, has remade him, set re-start on this particular moment.

And he says, Come. Come to me. Come on in. This is the Down and Out Bar and Grille, after all, and you are welcome.

Are you frustrated? Come on in.

Are you downhearted? Pull up a stool. Are you at the end of the very last thread in your very last little piece of rope? Here, sit next to me.

Are you weary to the bone? Just plain tired? Yeah, of course. You can lean. Lean on me.

Jesus talks about a yoke—the kind that binds two animals together for work, for plowing. The kind that’s a heavy burden. The kind that attaches you to the hardest things in your life, and you are not in charge of when you get to take it off.

Here, he says, take on my yoke—here, I’ll help you put yours down. There is no need to carry that load all by yourself. When I share it with you—when you’re yoked to me—it will feel light as a feather.

Image courtesy of Pexels: Alphabet Bar Blue Light

Here’s the thing. Both Sarah and Hagar are caught in interpersonal triangle with the kinds of stresses that make you want to completely cast the object of your wrath out into the deepest darkness. I get that. But more critically, they are also caught in a system, a structure, that controls everything.

Who has status, and who doesn’t.

Who is a full member of the family and who isn’t.

Who can make decisions about her body and safety, and who can’t.

Who can protect her child, and who can’t.

Sarah and Hagar are both stuck in a system that determines all these things. But only one of them benefits from the system. Only Sarah….

Image: Marc Chagall, Hagar in the Desert. Fair Use, courtesy of Wikiart. https://www.wikiart.org/en/marc-chagall/hagar-in-the-desert-1960.

… Then, the Lord appears.

Or maybe, three men appear.

Maybe those are one and the same… maybe the three men are the Lord. Or, maybe it’s the Lord and two friends.

Or angels. Maybe they are angels.

Into a holy place, into a place that is a threshold to another state of being, come strangers whom the text can’t even decide how to describe…

Image: Jan Victors, 1619-1676 (Studio of Rembrandt); Abraham Entertaining the Three Angels. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An amazing set of promises: Abraham (and Sarah… God eventually clarifies this) will be the ancestors of a great people. And blessing will be poured out upon them so abundantly, it will flow through them to the whole world. No wonder they didn’t hesitate!

But wait. God says, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

But God does not say which land that land will be. Not yet.

Image: James Jacques Joseph Tissot, “Abraham’s Counsel to Sarai.” Public Domain, Courtesy of https://www.wikiart.org/en/james-tissot/abraham-s-counsel-to-sarai.

God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. ~Genesis 1:31

Image: Union Presbyterian Community Bicentennial Art Project, 2019-2020. Copyright Union Presbyterian Church. All Rights Reserved.

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
        and they shall prophesy.” ~Acts 2:17-18

Image: Spirit Cloud. P. Raube. Copyright Union Presbyterian Church, 2020. All rights reserved.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ~Acts 1:8-9

Image: Norton, Jay. Ascension, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54144 [retrieved May 10, 2020]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37996904@N00/351895142/.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus, in John 14:15

Image: Schmalz, Timothy P.. Begging Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56182 [retrieved May 10, 2020]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ojbyrne/3386644334.

Thomas is the one who is always ready to go.

Each time we meet Thomas in the gospel according to John, he is either expressing a readiness to go, or a willingness to go, or he has already gone…

…So, it come as no surprise to us that, on the evening of that that long resurrection day—that day full of reports of Jesus and appearances of Jesus—on that night, Thomas is not holed up in the locked room with Jesus’ disciples. He was never one to sit around. He was always ready to go. He’s gone.

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”
~Luke 24:33-34

Image: Jesus, Judas, and the Others, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54139 [retrieved April 11, 2020]. Original source: Flickr Junkie, Flickr Creative Commons.