Category: Lectionary

Trinity Sunday, Year B (RCL)
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

Early in the history of the American Episcopal Church, there was a controversy over whether to include the Athanasian Creed in the American Prayer Book. The proposed book of 1786 did not have it, and the English Church was afraid we had gone off the rails. 1789 included it. Now, it’s in small print at the back as one of the “historical documents” along with the 39 articles. The problem with the Athanasian Creed is it leaves you with the impression that the Trinity is “incomprehensible,” which, in a way it is, but that’s not very useful.

At the very least, we can say that community is at the heart of the deity. One of the first christian trinities was Father/Mother/Son. I like it. Gives the impression of human love, and not just two people mooning over each other, but a creative and expansive kind of love. If this is the love that we find at the heart of the deity, creation makes sense. The divine love seeks expression.

The readings for this Sunday are wonderful. In the John passage, we have the famous John 3:16. It does really stand out in its context like a sore thumb. The whole discourse up to this point has been about authority (you are a teacher come from God), possibility (no one could do the signs you do; how is it possible for a person, grown old to enter into the mother’s womb) and about the Kingdom (it is not possible for anyone to see the kingdom without being born of water and spirit). It’s about knowledge and testimony, and ascending into heaven. And all of a sudden, you have: “For God loved the world so, that he gave his only begotten Son.” In the words of Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it?

This is the only instance in John’s Gospel where God ‘gives’ his Son. In all other instances, God sends his son into the world. Nicodemus thinks the discussion is about authority (by what authority do you cleanse the Temple?). In the fight between John’s community and the Synagogue, the question of Jesus’ authority would be paramount. Jesus indicates that Nicodemus has asked the wrong question. It’s not about Jesus’ authority, but about seeing the kingdom (what we know, we say; what we have seen we testify). The question becomes, how do we live seeing the kingdom.

The answer is that God loved the cosmos so, he gave his Son, that who ever trusts him has the life of the ages (now). The life of the Trinity is one of self-gifting, and of gifting the divine life to the cosmos. The godhead is a constant dance of the giving and receiving of self, and of gift to the cosmos.

When we receive the spirit, we enter into that divine life, giving and receiving self. That same spirit cries with our spirit, Abba, Father, and we take our place as joyful children within the divine household, not slaves of fear.

And it all happens at worship. When we cry, “Holy, holy, holy” with the seraphim and with all those who have gone before, and all those throughout the world who sing it with us, we enter that divine dance. We may think we are not worthy to be part of the dance, but God assures us otherwise. Our lips have been made worthy of singing that song, and we respond with a willingness to be given to the world to include the world in the divine household (here I am, send me). Worship includes the world in the divine dance of giving and receiving self.

Easter 6B (RCL)
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Last week, I preached about the eunuch, who wouldn’t have been allowed in the temple, but whom Philip baptized, showing that the christian community was open to those considered “unfruitful” by the rest of the world. I went on to talk about the passage from John’s first letter, about how hard it is to live in community. It’s easy to love God, because God will never annoy me, but you on the other hand . . . So John tells us that if we say we love God, but don’t love our brothers and sisters, we are liars. We must learn to love in the real world. The passage from the gospel then talked about fruitfulness, and being grafted into the community as the only way to be fruitful. Advent, not unlike many other pastoral sized congregations, ties up much of its identity in size: we like the fact that the rector knows everyone’s name. Consequently, we don’t grow any bigger. Fruitfulness usually means making more of something. Evangelism means getting more bodies in church. I suggested that if we changed our identity to being mission oriented, we’d stop caring what size Advent was, and others, like the eunuch, could find their way in. We needed to concentrate on living sappy, juicy, fruitful lives by ministering to others (doing the works of God, as John says so often in the gospel).

So, now, we have more fruitfulness language, and love language. Bearing fruit and being disciples is the same thing, and if we are bearing fruit, then whatever we ask God, God will do. And the commandment that gets us to this point is, “Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, than to place one’s life in the trust of one’s friends.” (to lay down one’s life for one’s friends is a really bad translation — the Greek says literally, “to place one’s life (or soul) over (or on behalf of) one’s friends.” Julian Hill says it comes from Greek military poetry and accompanied the act of surrendering one’s sword to one’s comrade, hence entrusting one’s life).

My experience in Lui is the most profound instance of this for me: I had to entrust my life to the other missioners and to my friends in Lui. Once I did that, I had a fruitful time there, learned and taught many things, made deep relationships and had a transformative (one could even say, conversion) experience.

As we minister to other people, especially those outside our safe community, we are forced to give up our false sense of security, and entrust our lives to others and to God. When we have aligned ourselves with others in this way, could we even say that we have invested our lives with them? That our fruitfulness or salvation is tied up with their fruitfulness and salvation? Is that what it means to love one another as Jesus has loved us, and to “lay down one’s life” for others?

This is a very different kind of messiah than we often expect, a very different kind of ministry than we often expect to do. We expect the messiah to “save” us and others, and we expect to “save” others through our ministries, to improve their condition. But Jesus doesn’t “save” us in that way. He invests his life with ours, surrenders the divine life into our care. That’s why the writer of the letter has to say, “Whoever trusts that Jesus is the messiah” conquers the world. It takes trust to see things this way, to entrust ourselves to others.

Peter is speaking to Gentiles when the spirit falls on all who were in the conversation. First Samaritans, then a eunuch, now Gentiles! Where does it end? When we are engaged in holy conversation with others about salvation, theirs and ours, when we have entrusted our life alongside theirs, the Spirit will fall on all involved in the conversation, no matter where we may have drawn the line.

Easter 4B (RCL)

Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

More of Peter’s nasty preaching in Acts. Not at all sure why we’re reading this.

In the other two readings, lots of mention of “laying down one’s life for” one another. In Divinity School, we were puzzled by the Greek expression, which translates literally, “place one’s soul over” one another. The preposition “hyper” can me above, on account of, for — a whole range of meanings. We called our preceptor over, and asked him what the expression meant. He wasn’t aware that we were reading scripture — we just asked him what “tithein ten psyche hyper” meant. He said it was an expression taken from Greek military poetry. Soldiers were encouraged to have “friends” in the army, lovers, whose backs they would watch carefully. They were said to place their souls in the care of their friends, sometimes accompanied by an actual exchage of swords. So, I translate it now as “entrust one’s life to” one another.

Jesus entrusted his life to us, the flock of sheep in his care. That’s a pretty up-side-down image, and then expects us to do the same for one another. And ultimately, for the purpose of bringing other sheep not of this fold into the one flock. Learning to see the world from another’s perspective requires a kind of love that entrusts self into the care of the other, stepping out of our perspective can be fearful. The various flocks cannot coexist without this willingness to entrust ourselves to the other’s point of view.

Easter 3B (RCL)
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36-48

O.k., so one drawback of the RCL is no option for the Acts of the Apostles during Easter. I know we are supposed to read the Acts to learn of the infant church in the light of the resurrection, but could Peter preach any more inflammatory sermon? “You killed Jesus!” he thunders. Oh, I know you did it in ignorance, but that hardly softens the blow. Of course, by the time Luke is writing, all that’s left of Judaism (at least in the headlines) would have been the violent hold-outs. Perhaps Luke is trying to tell his Greek readers, “We Christians are not those kind of Jews.” Still, what a legacy.

So, what to make of the other readings? The passage from Luke’s Gospel follows (literarily) on the heels of the story of the road to Emmaus. In this reading again, Jesus opens the eyes of the faithful to understand the scriptures about the messiah, and then eats with them. There are many parallels here to John’s appearance stories: Peace be with you; see/touch my hands and feet; even the fish lines up with the barbeque on the beach in John. These must have been messages the new community needed to hear.

The bread of Emmaus and the fish of this appearance remind me of bread and fish in the wilderness — perhaps an early christian eucharist associated with the resurrection rather than the passion. Bread and fish, according to Jewish literature of the time, was to be the messianic meal at the end time. God would destroy Leviathan, the sea monster, and feed it to his people. Also, no sacrifice involved (no blood). Jesus’ community is already eating that meal.

Troubling, however, is that resurrected bodies eat. I don’t think we usually include that in our picture of “heaven.” Bodies are loci for relationships. So what gets resurrected is the whole set of relationships I carry in my body. Food, of course, is perhaps the densest signifier of relationship there is — it connects us to the earth, the sun (all food is ultimately sunshine, water and dirt), with the economies that bring it to our tables, to the hands that prepared it and to the gathering that eats it. It structures our whole universe. All that gets resurrected!

John’s letter tells us that now, we are God’s children, but what we will be, we don’t know. What we do know is that when he is revealed, we will be like God, because we will see God like God is. We will see God reflected in bodies, in food, in the connections that entangle us with the whole cosmos, and all of it will be transformed. How poor is the belief of the immortality of the soul in comparison to resurrected bodies that eat broiled fish.

Easter 2B (RCL)
Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1 — 2:2
John 20:19-31

I think that the first version of John’s Gospel ended after the appearance to Mary Magdalene. Jesus had ascended to his Father and our Father, his God and our God — what was left to say? We knew that the way was now open to God through the tomb, into the Holy of holies, and the garden had been restored.

But, then things changed. John’s community got itself thrown out of the synagogue, and closed in on itself. Jesus had to show up to authorize a change in the life of the community. In each of the string of appearances after the first end of the Gospel, Jesus authorizes some shift in the community. In today’s reading, we learn of two shifts.

First, the community had closed in on itself out of fear, after being thrown out of the synagogue. The doors were locked. Jesus shows up and says “peace.” Then he breathes holy breath on them and tells them that the sins of any they forgive are forgiven, and the sins of any they retain are retained. Time to move on — quit blaming the folks who threw you out and get on with life.

Thomas, however, wasn’t there. John’s community was tempted to veer into gnosticism. Jesus hadn’t really suffered, only appeared to. If that were true, then none of us need to suffer when asked to sacrifice to the Emperor. Just cross your fingers behind your back, burn a little incense, and know that it doesn’t count. Thomas doesn’t doubt. He refuses to believe, without seeing the wounds. Any community of christians, he is saying, that doesn’t have wounds is not the Body of Christ. Only when I see the wounds. When he sees them, he calls Jesus “Dominus et Deus”, just what the emperor was insisting on being called, when receiving cult. Thomas is saying, not Caesar, but Christ. You can’t cross your fingers behind your back. This costs something.

In the first letter of John, the author tells us he is proclaiming to us things that we have seen and heard and handled. Our faith is not strictly a mental attitude, not an opinion we have, but a way of living in the real world. And again, it’s about forgiveness of sin. If we say we have no sin, we’re fooling ourselves. Living in the real world means we are going to wound the Body of Christ. Putting gas in our cars, drinking coffee farmed on land stolen from peasants, eating bananas grown on plantations bought below market value from Central American nations, eating strawberries harvested by underpaid migrant workers, the list could go on. If we say we have no sin, we’re fooling ourselves. But, that’s no excuse for giving up in despair; we have an advocate with the Father, who propitiates not just our sins, but the sins of the whole cosmos (others sins against us?). The Body of Christ is tangible, real and present. How are we living in it? Are we looking for it? Listening to it? Touching it? Strawberries are sweet, and we should enjoy them. But they are sweeter when we see and touch the Body of Christ, and see its wounds transformed, revealing our God to us.

Lent 5B (RCL)
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

I got to thinking about Nathaniel’s sermon last week, and had something of an epiphany. Nathaniel re-told the story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night as a way of framing the famous John 3:16. He then spoke of learning to see Christ in even the worst situation, and spoke of the woman in Wandi getting on her knees to present a gift to Deb, and Deb getting on her knees to accept it. They saw the Christ in each other. When Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he says, “We know you are a teacher come from God, because no one could do the works you do if God were not with him.” Of course, Jesus replies with a complete non-sequitur: Unless a person is born anew/from above, that one will never see the kingdom of God. What?! Finally, after all these years, it dawns on me. John (or whoever wrote the gospel) is saying, “What difference does it make who Jesus was? Unless something happens to you, dear reader, you will not see the kingdom.” Why all this effort into recovering the historical Jesus? he would ask.

So, on to this weeks reading. There were some Greeks among those who went up to the festival. They find Philip and say “We want to see Jesus.” Philip finds Andrew, and together they go to Jesus. Then, the Greeks drop out of the story completely. Jesus replies, “Unless [get ready folks — this always leads into the payoff for us] a seed falls into the ground and dies, it bears no fruit. But if it does, it bears much fruit.” Strikes me we are reading the Gospel in Greek. We are those Greeks.

John’s community could have chosen to stay Jewish, a splinter from the synagogue, bitter about being thrown out. Instead, they chose to fall into the ground and die, and bear much fruit — just what Jesus says over and over is the work of the followers of Jesus.

Jeremiah says in the new covenant, there will be no rules, only a covenant of the heart. We can’t say, “But, we’ve always done it that way!” What cherished aspects of ourselves, of our idenities, need to fall into the ground and die before they can bear much fruit. On the congregational level? On the denominational level? On the personal level?

My sorta smug self-reliance had to fall into the ground and die in a pretty painful way in Lui, but I think that change is bearing fruit. It’s always a scary thing. Pushing Advent always risks pushing some people away, and it sometimes feels pretty arrogant to say, “This is what we need to do.” Then, says John, a voice came from heaven. I guess it’s all part of our baptism.

Lent 3B (RCL)
Exodus 20:1-7
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

All of these lessons seem to me to have to do with the Wisdom myth of the second temple period. Certainly the psalm speaks of Wisdom present in creation and present in God’s way of life for us, and asks that the psalmist might live by that Wisdom. Wisdom, of course, departed from creation at the fall of humanity, and came to reside in God’s people, in the Torah and in the Temple. At the Exile, Wisdom departed again, and returned, some thought, to the second temple. There were many who did not agree, and found the second temple, at least in the Herodian period, far too deeply in bed with the Roman Empire. They were waiting for a further return both of Wisdom and of Jews in diaspora. Jesus’ “temple act” in all four gospels, but especially in John, seems to speak of Wisdom departing the Temple and coming to dwell in Jesus. John’s community makes the claim that it is the true Israel (in which there is no guile), and Jesus is the mode of encounter with God.

Paul also functioned within that second temple universe. But God has made foolish the wisdom of the wise, in the Word of Christ crucified. What a strange way for God to bring about God’s plan of the inclusion of everyone within the people of God. That was the intent from the beginning, and finally only accomplished in Christ, the Wisdom of God.

The Exodus reading gives us the Ten Words. The psalmist speaks of God’s wisdom ordering creation, and God’s wisdom in Torah ordering human community and relationship. The ten words sum up that wisdom for the ordering of community. What strikes me is that the word that gets the most words is the word about sabbath rest. Of all the words, it is the one most obviously present in God’s creation, since God created in six days, and rested on the seventh.

It also seems like the one we may need most to hear. How busy are our lives? We have scheduled ourselves to within an inch of our lives. People who have lost their jobs feel useless because they aren’t busy. If Jesus’ body replaces the Temple, and we are part of the body, we are part of the Temple, the mode of encounter with God in the world (Paul uses the lovely image of us as stones built into a temple). What busy-ness needs to be swept out of our bodies, out of our Body so that it might be a house of prayer? Perhaps our lenten discipline this week should be to take a nap!

Lent 2B (RCL)
Genesis 17:1-1, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

In the adult forum, we have been reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. Much of the discourse of Second Temple Judaism focused on the figure of Moses. Moses was the perfect lawgiver, the type of the King, of the prophet and just about any other category. Wisdom lived in the Law given by Moses, and in the Temple. Of course, after the destruction of the Temple, for many Jews, she lived exclusively in the Law.

Paul, of course, is seeking a new way of being Jewish, or part of the covenant people besides adherence to the Law. He wants to set aside the exclusive parts of the law that limit the possibility of righteousness to those within the confines of the law. Moses won’t serve Paul very well as the type of the person of the covenant. So Paul reaches back over Moses to the figure of Abraham, whom God called to be the father of “many nations” not just one. What to do about those Jews who didn’t join the Messiah’s movement to open the promise to all? Well, there were the descendants of the flesh, and the descendants of the spirit. The descendants according to the flesh would come around at some point in history, but for now, the descendants according to the spirit, whose righeousness looked like Abraham’s, based on God’s faithfulness to the promise and Abraham’s trust in God’s faithfulness, lived in the promise.

Paul wants to draw the circle wide enough to include any who have the obedience of faith to the gospel. No “fleshly” category is sufficient for defining the circle: Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free — these distinctions no longer exist. God’s promise is open to all.

So, what about Peter? In Galatians, Paul tells us he opposed Peter to his face for drawing back from eating with Gentiles. Peter was expecting a Messiah (so Mark would want us to think) on the Jewish pattern — who would set things to rights again for Israel. When Jesus begins talking about suffering many things at the hands of the leaders of Israel, Peter can’t accept it. But Jesus sees this as satanic thinking; a misunderstanding.

So, calling together the crowds and his disciples, Jesus says, “Anyone who wants to follow me, let that one deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Following Jesus is not limited to the disciples, nor to Jews nor any other limiting factor. Anyone who wants can leave all behind, take up the cross and follow.

What does it mean to take up the cross? I’m on this kick after coming back from Lui. It means recognizing our dependence on God and each other, being willing to serve and be served, to let go of our self-reliance. If we hold on to that myth, if we think we can go it alone, if we mortgage our soul for that fine house, if we sell off our future for this quarter’s dividends, and focus only on the bottom line, what will we give in exchange for our lives? There is joy in letting go of all that, in being part of the family God calls into promise.

Last Epiphany B(RCL)
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, before the beginning of Lent, always includes a reading of the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration from one of the Synoptic Gospels. This year, we hear Mark’s version, the first written of which we have a record. I suppose the lectionary is set up this way to give us a glimpse of Jesus’ glory before we enter the long season of Lent — to give us courage to wait for the outcome. There is a general consensus among biblical scholars that the Transfiguration is a displaced Resurrection appearance, anyway. So we catch a glimpse now of what we will see on Easter.

But why displace a resurrection appearance in the first place? Mark surely knew what he was doing. The Transfiguration seems to me to fit into a larger section that runs from 8:27 (Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah) through 9:33 (the second passion prediction) or even 9:37 (who is greatest in the Kingdom). Peter confesses Jesus the Christ, and then as soon as Jesus tells them he must suffer, Peter says, “Never you, Lord!” Jesus rebukes Peter, and then says that the true disciple of Jesus must be ready to lose his or her life, or the Son of Man will be ashamed of that one when he comes in glory. Then comes the Transfiguration. As they are coming down the mountain, the disciples ask why people say Elijah must come before the Son of Man comes in glory. Jesus replies that Elijah has already come (on the mountain? or as John the Baptist?). When they reach the bottom of the mountain, the rest of the disciples have been unable to exorcise a demon from a young boy. Jesus does it, and then predicts the passion a second time.

When Elisha accompanies Elijah out across the Jordan, he witnesses Elijah’s ascension into heaven in a chariot of fire. Elijah, that great prophet, was too important to God’s purposes to be allowed to die. Likewise, Moses after ascending Mount Nebo to see the promised land dies, but no one knows where his body is — a tradition grew up by the time of Jesus that he had been assumed into heaven. So, Moses and Elijah, both taken directly to God, appear with Jesus on the Mountain. Also, both Moses and Elijah had heard the voice of God on the Mountain; Moses in the volcanic eruption, the storm and excitement, and Elijah in the still voice of silence. Jesus also hears the voice on the Mountain from the overshadowing cloud.

I believe that Mark’s Gospel was written as a course in Christian formation. Its purpose is to nerve up potential martyrs. Those who read the book know they might have to suffer just as Jesus did; Jesus makes the good confession, which Peter fails to make. Imagine studying this book during the period before your baptism (say 40 days), and then hearing read cover to cover in the night before you are baptized on Sunday at sun-up. The story of Jesus would map your own story. You are about to be baptized (and driven into the wilderness?). Your tomb likewise will be empty.

The voice comes to Jesus the first time at his baptism before he is driven into the wilderness, to be tested. Matthew and Luke tell us Jesus was tempted by Satan in exactly the same way God’s people were tempted: all the food he needed by turning a stone into bread (when Israel entered the promised land, and the manna ceased, they had all they needed, and forgot God); invulnerablility (as long as the Temple stood, Israel believed God would never let them be defeated); power (Israel wanted a king, just like the nations around). In the wilderness, Jesus, like the convert, learns that he is not God, is not to change the world in a blinding, magic flash, but by patiently living within its constraints.

The voice comes a second time on the mountain, when Jesus is transfigured. Imagine the baptisand hearing this: the voice will come at my baptism, so I, too, must be transfigured. But unlike Moses and Elijah, Jesus doesn’t just zip off to heaven unharmed. He comes back down the mountain to deal with a demon his disciples haven’t been able to cast out, and of course ultimately, to make his way to Jerusalem, where we all know how the story ends.

We have been (and are) transfigured, but still walk toward Jerusalem. No wonder Peter wanted to stay up there on the mountain — a lot easier than coming back down. How, in our daily journey, do we reflect the transfiguring glory of God? What demons are we to cast out? Why do we have such a hard time believing that we are “little Christs” (Christianoi)? We are not called to change the world in a blinding flash (turn stones into bread, convert the nations by having them bow down to us, be impervious to harm). We are called to transfigure it from the inside. The image of God restored by baptism is precisely the vulnerability necessary to live in community. We forgot that even God had to make the divine self vulnerable in order to be in relationship with us, so we can’t think we are above that. Those heart-breaking moments of real connection one to another transfigure us.

Epiphany 6B (RCL)
2 Kings 5:1-15
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

This story of healing is very strange. Jesus feels compassion for the man with leprosy, and heals him with a touch. That makes Jesus unclean. Then after healing the man, Jesus “snorts in anger at him and immediately casts him out and says to him, ‘See to it that you say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and offer concerning your cleansing the things arranged by Moses as a testimony to them.'” The word that the NRSV translates ‘sternly warning’ is the word used for horses snorting, and when applied to humans means to snort in anger. Why is Jesus angry at the man?

Jesus comes away from the encounter himself unclean, even though he sends the man to the priest to be declared clean. We are told that Jesus, because of the man’s testimony, can no longer enter towns openly, but instead stays out in ‘desert places.’ Desert places are where the action is in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus crosses the sea twice into desert places, and there feeds two multitudes, one 5000 people and one 4000. Maybe he is angry with the man because he wants to go back into settled places, into the town, into the temple. For Jesus, God and God’s intentions for the world are to be discovered in desert places.

Naaman, the Syrian, also has leprosy. He desires to be healed (is there a little bit of irony here, that he is a commander in the Syrian Army — in Israel, he would be outside the camp, not the general). A slave girl taken captive in Israel, a nobody, knows how he can be cleansed. The King of Aram make the whole thing into an international incident. The King of Israel tears his robes when he learns that he is expected to cure Naaman’s leprosy. Finally, word gets to Elisha. Naaman come to the dwelling of Elisha, outside the city, outside the structures of society (a prophet doesn’t live at the Temple). Naaman is angry that God hasn’t done something more impressive through the prophet. Finally, his servant convinces him that he should try, and Naaman “is baptized seven times” (LXX) in the Jordan, and is made clean.

The Jordan, of course, is in the wilderness. The people crossed it to enter the promised land. Elijah crossed it on dry ground on his way out into the wilderness to be taken up by the chariots of God. Elisha crossed it on dry ground on his way back in. John baptized in the Jordan, and after Jesus’ baptism, he was driven out into the wilderness for forty days.

Many people come to Jesus out in the wilderness. The wilderness is a place where community can be structure by trial and error. One is not constrained by existing social forms and structures. That’s why the hermits went into the wild places. They could re-create themselves, and recreate community.

It’s interesting that in the midst of our current economic crisis, we are looking to the same old structures to solve the problem. Congress, the Treasury, the President, Wall Street — these are going to save us. Jesus might be angry at us wanting to go back into existing structures. What would it look like to form a different kind of economy? What wild places should we try inhabiting?