Eight-year-old Kanakaraju looked up at me with dark, pleading eyes and tugged on my skirt. “Akka, akka,” he said urgently. Akka means “sister” in Telugu, and Indian children use it as a term of endearment.
I couldn’t understand what Kanakaraju was trying to say, so I asked Amanda to translate.
“He’s asking you to pray for his mother,” Amanda said, pointing to the corner of the schoolroom, where a skeletal woman lay curled on the floor, a faded red and gold head scarf covering her face. I hadn’t even noticed she was there.
“He wants you to pray for her to get better,” she said. “Kanakaraju, can you say that to Rachel akka in English?”
Kanakaraju crinkled his brow in concentration. “Akka,” he finally said, “pray for my amma . . . my mother . . . please.” A shy smile slowly spread across his face as Amanda praised him for listening so well in class.
Amanda explained to me that Kanakaraju’s father had already died of complications caused by HIV, and things weren’t looking good for his mother. Her death would leave Kanakaraju and his sisters orphaned.
I knelt and wrapped my arms around Kanakaraju’s small body. He felt fragile, like a bird. “I will pray for your amma, Kanakaraju.”
“Thank you, Rachel akka.”
I hadn’t been praying as consistently as I used to, but India changed how I did a lot of things, so I prayed for Kanakaraju and his mother every day. As I did, I realized just how petty and insignificant my typical prayer requests were in comparison. How could I ask God to heal me of a mild case of Delhi-belly when I’d seen children wading through garbage-chocked rivers, their ribs poking through their skin? How could I ask him to provide me with an air-conditioned hotel room when Kanakaraju’s mother lay crumpled like a forgotten doll on a concrete floor?
After my return to the States, when my pastor asked the congregation to pray for the funds to repave the church parking lot, I privately asked God to take care of Kanakaraju’s family first. It wasn’t that I thought God was incapable of doing both. I guess I just figured that if prayer made any difference at all, it was more important that Kanakaraju have a mother than that my church have new blacktop.
But just a few weeks after I left India, I got an email from the missionary family saying that Kanakaraju’s mother had succumbed to her illness. They planned to take Kanakaraju in themselves and start training his older sisters for sewing jobs so they could earn a living. The email said that Kanakaraju was struggling to accept his mother’s death, that he was crying for her every night.
Not long after I got the message from India, my pastor announced that God had provided the funds for the parking lot.
“Isn’t it amazing how God blesses his children?” he asked.
The first time I heard someone call something a “God thing” was in 2005, the Saturday after Hurricane Katrina hit. A friend of mine was getting married in Dayton and expecting family from all around the country to attend the wedding. At the reception, I spoke with a member of the family who expressed thankfulness that the entire family had made it to the ceremony, despite some major airport delays across the South.
“It was such a God thing,” the young man said as we waited in line for a piece of the groom’s cake. “It was like God had his hand on the weather. Clearly, he intends to bless this union.”
I’d just spent the entire morning watching news footage of desperate families trapped on their rooftops awaiting rescue, so I couldn’t help but bristle at what he said. God had his hand on the weather? If God had his hand on the weather, then why didn’t he stop the hurricane from coming in the first place? Why didn’t he keep the levees from breaking? Why would he go out of his way to help this family get to a wedding on time but leave thousands of people stuck in the Superdome without food or water?
Over the years, I’ve heard all sorts of things described as “God things” — scholarships, job opportunities, new cars, remodeled kitchens. Appealing to God things has an effect similar to appealing to “God’s will.” When a friend tells me that it’s God’s will for her to date a certain guy or buy a new car or go to a specific school, it’s difficult to object or ask questions without looking like I want to pick a fight with the Almighty himself. Similarly, when my friend hails her low interest rate or her airfare or her concert tickets as a God thing, it’s nearly impossible to get away with asking if she really needs a new house or a vacation or yet another Dave Matthews experience without seeming to rain on God’s parade. Every good Christian knows that the best way to insulate yourself from criticism or input is to say that God wants whatever you want. It has been done for centuries, from Constantine’s military conquests, to America’s ethnic cleansing in the name of Manifest Destiny, to the televan-gelists’ “love gifts.”
Dan says I’m far too cynical. He says that Christians talk about God things in an effort to show sincere gratitude to God, to remind themselves and others that the good things in their lives are not earned or deserved but are gifts. After all, the Bible says that “every good and perfect gift is from above.”
I tell him that I’m not convinced that boats and cars and stainless-steel kitchen appliances qualify as “good and perfect gifts.”
Here he usually suggests that I tone down the snarkiness and consider tending to the massive log sticking out of my own eye before I start going at others with tweezers.
I know that he’s right. I know that, deep down, my problem isn’t really with Christians who celebrate their blessings but with a God who seems to bless arbitrarily. What bothers me about God things is that they remind me of the cosmic lottery — that sobering dichotomy between the world’s rich and the world’s poor, between the lucky and the unlucky — which has always been a sticking point in my own fitful walk with God. If God’s goodness is qualified by how much stuff he gives out, I reason, then he’s not especially good. He might be good to that family that made it to the wedding on time, but he’s not especially good to orphans like Kanakaraju.
I couldn’t quite piece it together at the time, but in India, I began to suspect that perhaps the problem lies not in God’s goodness but in how we measure it. Laxmi and Kanakaraju and the women and children at the AIDS ministry, they prayed for basic things — food, shelter, health, peace — and they did not always receive. Yet I saw in their eyes the kind of joy and spiritual connectedness that most Christians I know long for. They spoke of Jesus like one speaks of an intimate friend or lover, as if they had just returned from a long walk by his side, their faces still flush from the movement, their breathing still labored from trying to keep up. The children, though robbed of much of their childhood, showed no sense of entitlement. The women, though burdened, displayed unfailing strength.
Maybe we aren’t the lucky ones after all.
Once, when he was eating with a group of religious leaders, Jesus told a fascinating story:
A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is now ready.”
But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, “I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.”
Another said, “I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.”
Still another said, “I just got married, so I can’t come.”
The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”
“Sir,” the servant said, “what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.”
Then the master told his servant, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.”
— LUKE 14:16 – 24
From the start of his ministry, Jesus had a special relationship with the poor and the oppressed. He even singled them out as special recipients of the gospel, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18 – 19). It is impossible to read the Gospels without noticing that the sick, the downtrodden, the ostracized, and the marginalized were always the first to respond to Jesus’ invitation to join him at the banquet table of a new and strange kingdom, what he called “the kingdom of God.”
While earthly kingdoms belong to the rich and powerful, Jesus spoke of a kingdom that belongs to the meek and the gentle, the merciful and the peacemakers. Whereas earthly kingdoms usually start with a sovereign leader taking control, Jesus said his kingdom would start small, like a mustard seed, and grow from the bottom up. While earthly politicians associate with the rich and elite, Jesus associated with outcasts. While earthly kings prefer liberty by conquest, Jesus spoke of liberty through forgiveness.
Perhaps most disconcerting for those of us who enjoy relatively affluent lifestyles, Jesus said that his kingdom is more accessible to the poor than to the rich. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” he said, “than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When his disciples protested, asking, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus responded by saying, “What is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:25 – 27). (You can get that last part printed on a canvas tote bag for twenty-one bucks online.)
It seems that in the kingdom of heaven, the cosmic lottery works in reverse. In the kingdom of heaven, all of our notions about the lucky and the unlucky, the blessed and the cursed, the haves and the have-nots are turned upside down. In the kingdom of heaven, “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt. 20:16).
In India, I realized that while the poor and the oppressed certainly deserve my compassion and help, they do not need my pity. Widows and orphans and “untouchables” enjoy a special access to the gospel that I do not have. They benefit immediately from the good news that freedom is found not in retribution but in forgiveness, that real power belongs not to the strong but to the merciful, that joy comes not from wealth but from generosity. The rest of us have to get used to the idea that we cannot purchase love or fight for peace or find happiness in high positions. Those of us who have never suffered are at a disadvantage, because Jesus invites his followers to fellowship in his suffering.
In fact, the first thing Jesus did in his Sermon on the Mount was to mess with our assumptions about the cosmic lottery. In Luke’s account, Jesus says,
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. . . .
But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”
— LUKE 6:20–21, 24–25
It seems the kingdom of God is made up of “the least of these.” To be present among them is to encounter what the Celtic saints called “thin spaces,” places or moments in time in which the veil separating heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material, becomes almost transparent. I’d like to think that I’m a part of this kingdom, even though my stuff and my comforts sometimes thicken the veil. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control — these are God things, and they are available to all, regardless of status or standing. Everything else is just extra, and extra can be a distraction. Extra lulls us into complacency and tricks us into believing that we need more than we need. Extra makes it harder to distinguish between “God things” and just things.
In another interesting reversal of the cosmic lottery, Jesus seems to give the spiritual edge to the nonreligious over the religious. This is not especially good news for someone who won the Best Christian Attitude Award four years in a row.
If the poor were the most receptive to Jesus and his message, then the religious were the most repelled by it. They benefited too much from the status quo to tolerate the radical teachings of Jesus, so they tested him with trick questions, criticized him for hanging out with sinners, and ultimately helped arrange for his crucifixion. The Pharisees in particular pestered Jesus constantly. When he healed the sick, they attacked him for doing it on the day of rest. When he ate and drank with his friends, they called him a glutton and asked why he didn’t fast as often as they did. When he offered forgiveness for sins, they called him a blasphemer. When he taught, they questioned his credentials. When he cast out demons, they claimed he did it with Satan’s help. Once, when Jesus healed a lame man and instructed him to pick up the pallet to which he had been confined for years, the Pharisees actually chastised the poor guy for carrying a heavy object on the Sabbath! No wonder Jesus repeatedly said to the highly educated Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice’ ” (Matt. 9:13 NASB).
The irony is that of all the first-century Jews, the Pharisees knew best what to look for in the Messiah. They had combed the Scriptures for years, searching for clues about his arrival. But as Jesus marveled to Nicodemus, the religious folks just didn’t seem to get it. They were so confident in their own interpretations and expectations that they missed the fulfillment of Scripture altogether, so convinced they already had God figured out that they didn’t recognize him in the flesh. To the Pharisees, Jesus just didn’t fit the mold. His theology was too edgy, his friends too salacious, and his love too inclusive.
In return, Jesus publicly criticized the Pharisees for being hypocritical and self-righteous. He warned his followers against imitating them and stressed the condition of the heart over outward acts of righteousness and sterilized, airtight orthodoxy. Jesus told the Pharisees that the tax collectors and prostitutes would get into the kingdom of heaven before them. Imagine the surprise of the people when Jesus said that in his kingdom, their righteousness could surpass that of the Pharisees.
I’m afraid that just as wealth and privilege can be a stumbling block on the path to the gospel, theological expertise and piety can also get in the way of the kingdom. Like wealth, these are not inherently bad things. However, they are easily idolized. The longer our lists of rules and regulations, the more likely it is that God himself will break one. The more committed we are to certain theological absolutes, the more likely we are to discount the work of the Spirit when it doesn’t conform to our presuppositions. When we cling to our beliefs as children cling to their favorite toys, it is hard for Jesus to take us by the hand and lead us somewhere new.
In a surprising prayer, Jesus says, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure” (Matt. 11:25 – 26).
When I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that the people I most identify with in all of Scripture are the Pharisees. Like the Pharisees, I know a lot about the Bible and am familiar with all the acceptable -isms and -ologies of orthodoxy. Like the Pharisees, I am skeptical of spiritual movements that don’t conform to my expectations about how God works in the world. Like the Pharisees, I like to try to cram the Great I AM into my favorite political positions, theological systems, and pet projects. Like the Pharisees, I am judgmental, crave attention, and fear losing my status as a good believer.
It is natural for most Christians to assume that had we lived in Galilee two thousand years ago, we would have dropped everything we owned and followed Jesus. But I’m not so sure that those of us with expensive Christian educations and deeply religious backgrounds would have fallen in line. I’m beginning to suspect that most of us would have joined the Pharisees and enrolled in the I Hate Jesus Club.
Jesus drank wine with sexual deviants. He committed major social taboos. He spent a lot of time among contagious people, crazy people, uneducated people, and smelly people. His famous cousin wore camel hair and ate locusts and honey. Those most familiar with Scripture called his views heretical, and his own family questioned his sanity. Jesus introduced new teachings not found in the Scriptures and claimed his authority came directly from God. He asked his disciples to sell all their “blessings” and follow him, when doing so could get them excommunicated from the faith or even killed. He was too liberal, too radical, and too demanding. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure that I would have followed the guy, and that really scares me sometimes.
Fortunately for us Pharisee types, Jesus offers hope in the form of his conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was himself a Pharisee and a member of the prestigious Sanhedrin. He had a lot of questions for Jesus and seemed a bit skeptical, but Jesus assured Nicodemus that if he was willing to start all over again, willing to let some things go and think a little differently, he could experience this new kingdom himself. Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3). (You can get that printed on a bumper sticker for just a dollar.)
In India, I learned that among Hindus, the goal of reincarnation is to be reborn into nobler circumstances. And in India, I learned that in the kingdom of God, the goal is to be reborn into humbler ones.