Waiting to Light the Darkness

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

So much of our encounter and journey with Christ feels passive. God comes to us: God’s Son is born among us, lives with us, dies as one of us, is raised by divine power, and ascends to be on God’s right hand to advocate for us. As Protestants we believe our faith is received as a gift from God by hearing the word of Christ and believing it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our membership in the body is based on hearing (in whatever form that occurs) our name called and God giving us the Holy Spirit so we don’t royally 🚒 everything up. Even our existence in time is addressed by God: our future is secure because of what Christ did on our behalf, in our stead; so, too, is our past secured, washed clean as we are adopted as Christ’s siblings, receiving on his past. We are given divine righteousness because we are, according to the Second Testament witness, in union with Christ by faith; what’s his is ours and what’s our is his all through imputation.

The most active role we have within this story about God seems to be as foils to what God is doing or trying to do in the world. I won’t belabor that narrative, we all where it leads (Good Friday). We get it wrong; God gets it right. We exclude; God includes. We hold everything and everyone captive; God liberates everyone and everything. We are indifferent; God is love. We bring death; God brings life. So it goes. Even when we are exhorted toward neighbor love, we end up, again, the foil. Given explicit directions on how to love God and neighbor, we make those things about us and find ourselves all knotted and coiled up that we cease to be any earthly (or heavenly) good and need rescue. We’re cacophony; God is symphony.

Caught in this existential and narrative binary, it’s no wonder that Gospel passages like the one we read this morning present a bit of a check in the spirit, a drop of the gut, an…oh 💩… But the good news is that the gospel passage has a practical offering to give us, if we are willing to be both humble and honest…

Matthew 25:1-13

In chapter 24, Matthew tells us that Jesus left the temple (v1) and sat down on the Mount of Olives (v3). When his disciples came to him, he tells them about the end of the age (vv3-8), coming persecutions (vv9-14), desolations of the sacred (vv15-28), the coming of the son of humanity (vv29-31), and the need to be watchful (vv32-44) and faithful (vv45-51). Thus, we can assume that our gospel passage is part of these things he tells his disciples on the Mount of Olives.

Jesus begins,

Then the reign of the heavens will be like ten maidens who took their own torches and went to meet the bride groom. Now, five of them were foolish and five were sensible. For the foolish ones took their torches and did not take with them olive oil. But the sensible ones took olive oil in vessels with their own torches (vv1-4).

By describing the ten maidens, five of whom are foolish and five who are sensible, Jesus is moving the disciple’s focus from the signs of the times toward what to do between now and then. Considering what Jesus had (just) been describing, we can be sure that the disciples have them some anxiety. So, Jesus soothes that by switching to practical ways the disciples can navigate life for the time being:[ii] vigilance.[iii]

Jesus uses the imagery of ten maidens (bridesmaids) who go out to meet the bridegroom. According to custom, the bridegroom would be met in such a way and escorted by the bridesmaids to pick up the bride and then take them both to the wedding feast.[iv] For the disciples this made sense. It was both custom and Jesus has already used both “bridegroom” and “wedding banquet” imagery to talk of himself and the eschaton.[v] It would also make sense to hear Jesus break the maidens up into two groups one wise and one foolish. Even though we might bristle over calling some of the maidens foolish (or “silly”), for the disciples, it was a “conventional device used in wisdom literature.”[vi]

The foolishness and sensibility of each group is determined by the presence of a vessel of oil for the portable, outdoor torches the girls used to welcome and usher the bridegroom to the bride. In most cases the bridegroom would have shown up when expected; in that case, all the maidens would have been just a group of bridesmaids doing their job, lovely lamps all aglow![vii] However, Jesus has a point for the disciples, something to take away. So, he goes on,

But while the bridegroom was delayed all the maidens fell asleep and were sleeping. But in the middle of the night an outcry happened, “Behold! The bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” Then all those maidens were awakened, and they trimmed their own torches. But the foolish ones said to the sensible ones, “Give us from your oil because our torches are going out!” But the sensible ones answered, saying: “Never! No, it will not suffice for you and us. Go to the ones who sell and purchase more for yourselves!” And while they were out to purchase oil the bridegroom came and the prepared maidens entered with him into the wedding, and the door was shut. Now, later, the remaining maidens came, saying: “Lord, Lord, you open [the door] to us!” But the bridegroom answered and said, “Truly I say to you, I have not known you” (vv5-11).

The story is told. Then Jesus tells his disciples the moral: Therefore, you keep watch because you have not perceived the day and the hour (v13). Thus, the disciples now know what to do: keep alert, watch for the coming of the bridegroom, and don’t…fall…asleep…oh wait a minute…

That’s not the point; or, rather, it’s not that simple.[viii]

Looking at the parable there’s tension between the content of the story and the moral. The maidens do fall asleep, all of them—both foolish and sensible. So, the rejection of the five foolish ones isn’t because they didn’t stay awake; and the moral about “keeping watch” isn’t about not falling asleep. It all comes down to preparedness[ix] and readiness.[x] The “keeping watch” that Jesus exhorts his disciples toward is a watchfulness that occurrs way before the maidens left the house with the torches. Five of the maidens thought, Well, just in case something happens, maybe I should bring extra oil for the torch… These torches—carrying sticks with bundled cloth at the end[xi]—would only burn, once soaked and lit, for a quarter of an hour. It is possible that the foolish maidens did not light their torches until they arrived at the meeting spot; but, once they fell asleep after having lit their torches, there’s no way the torches would have stayed lit, they would’ve burned out. Thus, when the bridegroom’s arrival is announced, all the girls wake up and relight their torches. Unfortunately, the torches would go out immediately because the oil had been used up in the initial burn. The sensible maidens, having brought their jar of oil with them, can resoak their torches and light their torches successfully. The foolish maidens had no such oil; thus, why they demand oil from the prepared five and say that their torches are going out.[xii] For the foolish maidens, it is their lack of foresight and preparedness that causes them to miss the closing of the door to the wedding feast and endure the judicial verdict of the bridegroom, Truly I say to you, I have not known you; they are locked out. Those who were prepared entered the wedding feast; those who weren’t did not. Thus, Jesus concludes with an exhortation to “stay awake,” or rather, be prepared because you do not know when the bridegroom comes and you can’t prepare at the last minute and no one else can help you.[xiii]

Conclusion

This is a hard word Jesus gives to his disciples; but preparedness and foresight will be crucial to the disciple’s survival after he’s gone and the survival of the fledgling church that will follow in his resurrected and ascended wake. Remember, parables aren’t meant to be comforting;[xiv] they are meant to bring the hearer and the ideology of the kingdom of humanity into a collision with the Word of God, the Gospel, the reign of God. According to Matthew, Jesus wants his disciples to embrace that their discipleship is a life-long endurance journey; it’s not a last-minute thing. Jesus wants his disciples to know that to follow him means to hear the divine Word so deeply that one can do nothing else but follow by faith and with love; there’s no waiting until the last minute—that’s not how relationships of love work, right?[xv]

And it is all about love.[xvi] Pulling this parable through the concept of love, those who love the bridegroom will prepare by having more oil. Just like a mom and her extra-large purse. Love is so oriented toward the beloved that the concerns of the beloved are the concerns of the one who loves. Therefore, if it is dark out, the lover brings not only a torch but enough oil to keep it lit until the beloved shows up. The lover is humble and honest that they do not know when the beloved will show up, so they will take all the precautions they need to take.

So, for us, in 2026, this preparedness for the arrival of the bridegroom looks not like constant prayer and worship or seeking to be pure and holy, isolated from those who are not. Rather, it looks like having our eyes and ears so fixed on Christ that we can, right now, hear him call us. It looks like being honest about who we are and that we need Christ, that we can’t do this “salvation from ourselves” thing on our own. It looks like regular long looks in the mirror and brave self-inventories to see where we are and how far we’ve strayed from the image of Christ whom we are supposed to emulate. It looks like release of our own western autonomy and return to the Cross from where we begin every day. It looks like regular and consistent care and love for God that is nurtured through prayer and worship but doesn’t end there. It looks like the love of God taking hold of us by faith every day and moving us toward our neighbor in loving deeds for their wellbeing and God’s glory. This is what it means to “keep alert”: being regular humble Christians who are honest about who they are and what they need, those who are ready and able to light their lamps to bring light where there is darkness at a moment’s notice.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 274. “Jesus’ next teachings serve to redirect the disciples’ focus of attention. The important thing is not the signs and the times—as preoccupied as the disciples (and we ourselves) may become with such matters. It is far more important to know what to do between now and then. Such a focus of attention delivers the faithful from anxiety on the one hand yet can deliver them from apathy on the other.”

[iii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 274. “The example and the three parables that follow all reflect the situation of ‘not knowing’ and focus attention on vigilant waiting, faithfulness, preparation, and diligence.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 275. “In the wedding customs of first century Palestine, it was common for the bridegroom to be escorted by such a company of bridesmaids/virgins to the home of the bride. They would then escort the couple to the house where the wedding and the wedding feast were to take place.”

[v] Case-Winters, Matthew, 275. “The earlier motif of Jesus as the bridegroom (9:15) and the eschaton as a wedding banquet (22:2) is picked up once again here.”

[vi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 275.

[vii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 479. “‘I’ve wondered about one thing: why does the bridegroom of this parable get to the feast so late? The appointed time must have been earlier, since the girls who were waiting for him fell asleep. I think it must have been because the feast, for some reason, was delayed. This seems to be trying to tell us that the marriage of God and the people has also had a delay in history. We don’t know why, and it will take place later than it was programmed. And that’s why we’re still int eh darkness of the night, sleepy, hungry, cold, waiting for the bride and groom to arrive and for the feast to begin.’”

[viii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 949. “But the story does not develop as the call to vigilance in 24:36-51 might have led us to expect: the sensible girls did not stay awake while their companions slept. All were equally disappointed by the delay, all fell asleep, and all were equally taken by surprise by the eventual shout.”

[ix]Cardenal, Solentiname, 475. “I said … in the parable the girls weren’t reproached for having fallen asleep. It seems that, once the bridegroom didn’t come, there was nothing to do but go to sleep. What is says is that some had good supply of oil and others didn’t.”

[x] France, Matthew, 946. “The second parable about being ready adopts a more social setting for its story. Weddings provide one of the high points in village life, and the question of who was an was not included affected one’s social standing.”

[xi] France, Matthew, 948-949. The “torches” “…would be bundles of cloth mounted on a carrying stick and soaked with oil. The jars held the oil into which the torch was dipped before lighting. A torch without a jar of oil was as useless as a modern flashlight without a battery.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 949. “We do not know whether the torches had been lighted when the girls first set out, but, if so, they would not have stayed burning while they slept; even a well-soaked torch would not burn for much more than a quarter of an hour…So the sensible girls now had to resoak and light their torches, while the attempts of the silly girls to light theirs were of course futile…as they lighted the cloths they immediately went out again, having no more oil to keep them burning.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 947. “But the point is simply that readiness, whatever form it takes, is not something that can be achieved by a last-minute adjustment. It depends on long-term provision, and if that has been made, the wise disciple can sleep secure in the knowledge that everything is ready.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 949. “…in a parable things do not always happen according to real life, and the hard-nosed realism of the sensible girls invites the reader to reflect that spiritual preparedness is not something that others can provide for you: each needs their own oil.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 950. “The comparatively trivial lapse of a failure to be provided with oil has come to symbolize an ultimately false relationship; they are not part of Jesus’ true family (12:50).”

[xvi] Cardenal, Solentiname, 477. “I: ‘I suppose that when all of humanity loves one another, then we’ll have the wedding of humanity with God, which is love: the marriage of God with the people, as it has been said here. But this parable also makes us see that inhumanity there are those who love and those who do not love, those who unite humankind and those who divide humankind. Some enter and the others stay outside, and the door closes.’”

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Neither Father nor Rabbi

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Humans love power. We do. We get a little bit of—even if we swear it will not change us—and it changes us. A little bit of vested authority goes a long way toward bloating our egos. Doesn’t really matter the size of the realm in which one has authority; once one has any authority, one is now in possession of power and the temptation to use that power as one wills and wishes grows strong.

It doesn’t help that we have very few examples of what it means to use power well, in a way that serves others and not oneself. Looking around the world today, we might feel quite abandoned by such leaders. (Have they all been raptured?) Most likely, at this stage in the existential game, we probably look back in history to find examples of human beings who understood the intoxication of power and were disciplined against it. Our minds may conjure up memories of various religious people, political people, family, friends, co-workers who embodied such leadership; this is fitting today, the day of All Saints. Recalling and remembering such people who led with humility and self-discipline—those who refuse the temptation to use power to serve themselves and their own (financial, material, spiritual, emotional, physical, etc.) interests—reminds us that the world and humanity have known such people to exist therefore, we can surmise, they will and can exist again. We find hope looking backward so we can proceed forward. Maybe we ourselves can become such people…

The thing is, though, we, as Christians, technically, must be these people. There is no place in the body of Christ for those who use their power to serve themselves. And I don’t mean just here in this physical structure we call our church. Christians out there in the world should be so inspired by Christ, the gospel, and the power of the Holy Spirit, that when it comes to positions of power and authority, we see not an opportunity to serve ourselves and our egos, but a brief moment to be Christ for our neighbors.

Matthew 23:1-12

While still in the temple,[ii] Jesus takes a moment to speak to the crowds and his disciples (v1), saying,

Upon the seat of Mοses the scribes and the Pharisees sat. Therefore, whatever things they might say to you, you do and you heed, but according to their deeds you do not do; for they say and do not do (vv2-3).

Matthew tells his audience that Jesus begins by pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. The Pharisees were instigators of a well-intended movement meant to address Israel’s failure to remain “pure” regarding the law; with an eye to reform, these Pharisees (of whom the scribes were the leaders within the movement) wanted the lay people to have access to the same purity demands normally reserved for the priests.[iii] Jesus’s current condemnation does not stem from complete opposition to the concerns of the Pharisees and scribes; he (generally) shared their concern.[iv] (He was aligned more with the Pharisees than he was with the Sadducees and the Essenes. [v]) Where Jesus opposed the Pharisees and scribes was where the emphasis of law-obedience and purity fell: were the children of Israel made for the law or was the law made for the Children of Israel?[vi] Jesus believed the intention toward the law and not just the doing of the law was important. This is why he then says to his audience,

Now, they tie up heavy loads and impose them upon the shoulders of the people; but they, they will not lift their finger to remove these things. And they do their works for the purpose of being noticed by people; for they widen their phylacteries and make great their tassels (vv4-5).

The very ones who sit (metaphorically) on the seat of Moses, the one through whom God liberated Israel from slavery and oppression under Egyptian, are the same ones now imposing heavy burdens on the people and forcing them into a new type of bondage to the law of Moses (a thing meant to be life-giving).[vii] These religious leaders—charged to care for the soul and spirit of the people of Israel—are failing miserably,[viii] and they have (clearly) gone too far with their rigorism as the Israelites waste away under this new oppression and reified slavery.[ix] Ironically, the scriptures they make big and bold and wear about are the very scriptures telling of prophets speaking out against errant leadership oppressing the people.[x] Yet, these leaders present themselves as pious and pure; they desire to be seen as such,[xi] but, according to Jesus, this is the furthest thing from the truth, and it’s killing Israel.[xii] These leaders have forgotten themselves, they have become wrapped up in their power and authority; they have, sadly, left the role of being a prophet of God and have conflated themselves with God. As Jesus continues to (negatively[xiii]) describe them, And they love the chief place at the banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues and the salutations in the marketplace and being called “Rabbi” by the people (vv.6-7). As a man of the people for the people, Jesus must call out this hypocrisy; it’s a matter of liberation or captivity. For Jesus, God is a God and God’s Word is a word of liberation not captivity.[xiv]

Matthew’s Jesus then turns this descriptive tale of the errors of Israel’s leadership into an imperative for the crowds and disciples so gathered around him (the Pharisees become a foil to life-giving, loving, and liberative community[xv]),

But you, you are not to be called “Rabbi,” for there is one teacher of you, and you, you are all siblings/students. And you do not call anyone on earth “father,” for there is one heavenly father of you. And you, you do not call anyone “mentor” because there is one mentor of you, the Christ/Messiah (vv8-10).

Jesus strips away the inflated titles used by the religious leadership of Israel and puts them back where they belong: in the throne room of God. It’s not that, for Jesus, there are no “teachers” or “fathers” or “mentors” (“instructors”/ “guides”) in the world; clearly, there are those who teach and those who learn, those who are “fathers” and those who are children, those who mentor and guide and those who are mentored and guided (i.e. apprenticeships). What Jesus is rejecting is the elevated status given to the ones bearing these titles.[xvi] The greater the title, the more obeisance is expected and even demanded; therein the community fractures into hierarchies and those vested with power and title lord it over those who do not have such power and authority. In the religious life of Israel, this means that regular people are restricted in their movements and funneled through human beings posturing themselves as gateways to God to access God. Thus, God comes to the people, to love them, to bring them life, to liberate them and to be with them (Immanuel). The Christ/Messiah, very God of very God, comes to show them a new and better way to live as a community of God’s people, a community living for the wellbeing of the neighbor and the glory of God and not for performative human beings playing at demagoguery. The son of God comes so that human beings may be liberated from themselves for their neighbor. Thus, why Jesus then says,

Now, the greatest among you will be your servant. And whoever exalts themself will be humbled and whoever humbles themself will be exalted (vv11-12).

The community of God is non-hierarchical (even if it does have different roles and callings); there are no power-trips, no lording-over, no-better-than-thou, no kiss my ring, no avert thine eyes. Everyone in the community is, like Christ, to serve the other thus, in that service, they will be lifted up; those who lift themselves up will find themselves humbled by the power and authority of God vested in the Messiah. For Jesus, the ones who are true leaders, true Rabbis, true Parents, true mentors will be those who elevate others and serve them no matter who they are, what status they have, and even when they have no title to hang their honor on;[xvii] for Jesus, just being human, made in the image of God is the source and dignity of every human being and not the titles we adorn ourselves with.

Conclusion

We know that Jesus lives into what he says; we have many accounts that Jesus—who did have the power and authority to reign in the style of the kingdom of humanity—refused to do so. We know, too, that he shrugged off his divine authority to become as we’re even willing to suffer and die to identify with us in our plight. This is our example. Jesus is our true Rabbi, Mentor, and Son of the “Elder.”[xviii] Because Christ is our head, we’re always the students to Jesus the Teacher, we’re all mentored by the Mentor, the Holy Spirit, and we’re all children (thus siblings) of God the loving Parent/Elder/Father.[xix] In light of this, Jesus envisioned a community built on him and representative of him where equality and equity reigned, not power and authority, not title and elite salutation. No matter what the title, there is always a double risk: the risk of over inflating the title and ending up endowing whoever has that title with too much power and authority; and, 2. The risk that those who defer to such titles and stations of power and authority will lose their alterity and integrity as they accommodate, like children, those holding such titles, power, and authority.[xx] This is not a life giving, loving, or liberative situation.

And yet… Here we’re.

We may find ourselves called out like the Pharisees. We’re guilty of using our titles, honorifics, financial status, birth privilege (race, class, sex), age for our own self-aggrandizement; who doesn’t love to be honored and throw about their authority? But this is the very thing that is forbidden in a community daring to call itself Christian. It seems we may have the same illness of the scribes and Pharisees; the good news is that Jesus came for ill and not the well; there’s hope for us.

Inspired by Christ and indwelt with the Holy Spirit, we can dare to shrug off these titles and statuses and serve each other no matter who we’re or what we do. We’re equal, we’re siblings, we’re loved by one Abba God, and we all follow one big brother, Jesus, by the power of the one divine Holy Spirit. No matter where we find ourselves in this moment, tomorrow, or next week, remember: our titles are just titles—crowns to be cast to the floor—never used as weapons against our neighbor to harm them. Rather we’re exhorted to bring our neighbor life, love, and liberation; may we each learn how to use our power for the wellbeing of our neighbor to the glory of God as representatives of Christ.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 261. “While still in the Temple area, Jesus delivers a bitter diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees.”

[iii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 262. “The Pharisees were part of the ‘lay reform movement’ within Judaism, and the scribes were leaders among them. Their good intention was to breathe new life into the practice of Judaism by extending into the life of the ordinary Jew the laws of purity usually reserved to the priests.’…”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 262. “Jesus shared the concerns of the Pharisees.”

[v] Case-Winters, Matthew, 262. “He was closer to their thinking than to that of the Sadducees or the Essenes.”

[vi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 262. “However, he differed from Pharisees in his understanding of the relative importance of such things as ritual purity, tithing, Sabbath, and what he considered to be the ’weightier matters of the law” (23:23).”

[vii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 446. “I: ‘But [the Bible] can be good for us if, as Christ says, we put into practice its freedom message that they didn’t put into practice. Moses brought the people out of Egyptian slavery and took them to another land to found a kingdom of freedom, and the chair of Moses means the temple of freedom. Now just like then there are people in that temple preaching the Gospel and defending oppression. What they preach is false, but only because they don’t practice it. If we put that into practice we change the world, we make a revolution.’”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 263. “Jesus’ condemnation is directed at religious leaders who, charged with the role of leadership, fail miserably.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 263. “In their teaching they might be termed rigorists. They go further than what the law requires.”

[x] Cardenal, Solentiname, 447-448. “William: ‘You notice Jesus’ scorn when he describes those adornments. It’s very ironic when he talks to them about the pieces of Scripture used as adornments of their clothing to show off: what they attached to themselves were writing s of the prophets denouncing their oppressions, And Jesus probably wasn’t talking just for those people, he was talking also for the Christians that were going to go on doing the same thing in other ways.’”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264. “Another criticism of the Pharisees is that they make a show of their religious practices.”

[xii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 447. “Olivia: ‘It seems to me it’s like when the priests preach to the poor that they must be content with their poverty…And they didn’t live like that. They lived on board fancy yachts that some rich man lent them because they were friends of the rich. They piled a heavy burden on the people, the burden of misery, and they wouldn’t even touch that misery with a ten-foot pole.’”

[xiii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264. “Also objectionable was the Pharisees’ predisposition to be self-important…”

[xiv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 446. “There’s nothing evil in the Bible, says Jesus, because the whole message of the Bible is freedom. The evil thing is that in teaching the Bible some people, in practice, are defending the exploitation.”

[xv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 265. “In this chapter, the Pharisees here become a bit of a foil. Jesus teaches what the new community is to be like (indirectly) by his delegitimation of the objectionable practices of the Pharisees.”

[xvi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264. “‘Father’ (Hebrew ab) was sometimes used as a term of respect for a revered elder or teacher. This also is forbidden as signaling a heightened status.”

[xvii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 450. “Felipe: ‘The leaders don’t become leaders because other people name them leaders, or because they name themselves=, but through their own actions: because they serve the others.’”

[xviii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 448. “‘We’re all equal. The only teacher is Christ, who is identified with the poor. The only teacher we have is the people.’”

[xix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264. “In the new community, titles are eschewed, and egalitarian nonhierarchical patterns are advocated instead. There is a ‘leveling’ in relation to one another as all stand together before God. No one is to be called ‘rabbi’ for they are all ‘students…”

[xx] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264-265. “Members of the new community should not seek heightened status reflected in titles but rather humble themselves and seek to serve—aiming low instead of aiming hight (23:11). The use of titles is not conducive to the wellbeing of the new community. Titles—whether ‘rabbi,’ or ‘father,’ or ‘instructor’ (or ‘Reverend’)—have their dangers, both for those who hold them and for those who call others by these titles. Those who hold titles maybe lured into a sense of self-importance and all the other pretentions and temptations of power. Tittles are equally problematic for persons who bestow them on others. In doing so, they may be tempted to childlike dependence on designated leaders and authority abdicating their own responsibility and agency.”

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By Faith We Are Healed

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Through nearly every outlet of our socials, we are bombarded by health and wealth influencers, bio and cash hackers promising us sure fire ways to get and stay fit and rich. Whether it’s a food to avoid or consume in high quantities, an elixir or potion to drink no matter how noxious, or a revealed secret that this or that industry doesn’t want you to know, these influencers and hackers will sell you whatever you want to hear except the truth. They will focus on you, making your ill health and unwell-being, your lack of prosperity and thriving your fault, and if you can just do this one thing, consume that one ingredient, you will change your life and, even, refuse the grim reaper his visit. Keeping you consumed with yourself and what you lack while convincing you that success is just one root vegetable away, allows these charlatans to keep you asleep and numb to the real problems of the human condition.

The problem is neither one’s inability to secure health and wealth nor the natural occurrence of death. Our issue, fundamentally, is our obsession with power (domination)[ii] and violence.[iii] We are obsessed with consuming: we consume creation, we consume each other, we even consume ourselves. And by “consume” I do not strictly mean our insatiable hunger for things, but our insatiable hunger for power and domination wherein we use war and violence to “secure” our privilege and greatness. There is nothing that can stand in our way that we can’t and won’t destroy, even ourselves and the very ground under our feet.

In this septic and toxic atmosphere, it’s no wonder that we can barely keep our relations intact. When each person is a consumer, consuming what is necessary to stay on top, no one is safe and everyone is a potential threat. This very mentality and orientation in the world causes fractures in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with creation, and, most importantly for us, with God. (Yes, even God becomes an ideology to be consumed and, if God gets too big, someone to be dominated and forced to do our will.) It is not so much our bad habits and our good ones that will bring us closer to or farther from death; it’s our relationship with power and violence; it’s our willingness to see everything and everyone else as a means to an end, a crumb for consumption.

Isaiah 25:1-9

O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you, I will praise your name;
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah’s opening words here are a song of thanksgiving offered from the broader community.[iv] Even though Isaiah speaks in the first-person singular, he speaks for the great Israel and Judah—as the prophet does in their prophetic role as representatives of both God and the people. Isaiah credits God with great and beneficent action, action that is so strong that human made fortifications, palaces, and human manufactured security cannot withstand God’s action, especially God’s action on behalf of the people who need God to act.

For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.

When the poor and needy cry out, God is there, says Isaiah. Make no mistake, this includes the flora and fauna of creation. Isaiah does not resort to pleas for the rulers of the kingdom of humanity to act right because these very ones are spiritually ill because their politic is driven by consumption and their weapons are violence and war;[v] Isaiah knows there is stronger medicine needed to correct this sickness[vi] plaguing Israel and her people, especially the widow and orphan, the hungry and thirsty, and the ostracized and marginalized.[vii] There is no political alignment with another nation or people that will solve Israel’s problems and such alignment will only prove deadly;[viii] alliances with other nations provoke more consumption and goad those so allied into more violence and war. In other words, alliances are not part of the cure, but the disease.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.

Israel and Judah have (repeatedly) turned to their own devices, wisdom, and strength to try to build a (false) sense of security through deals with other peoples and nations; according to Isaiah, they must only turn to Abba God who is the one who will establish and make for God’s self a people who walk in God’s light. Isaiah makes it clear that these ones—the elect of God—are to live by faith (even if it is difficult); faith is the basis of Israel’s and Judah’s life—life with God, life with themselves, life with creation, life abundant.[ix] It is not by alliances within the kingdom of humanity that will bring the desired security and prosperity; these will only bring war, violence, and death. Faith in God anchors the one who believes in the God who cannot fail to provide comfort and security for God’s people.[x] God is the only one who can inoculate Israel and Judah against the infection of consumption and her children (violence and domination). How? Faith renders the one who has it dependent on God and not on their own strength; once the believer is here in this humble space, the desperate need to be on top, to dominate, to consume, to use violence clears up and out. In this way, faith makes space for something new because it demands the one who has it to release the old, tried, and failing ways of the kingdom of humanity; therein space is made for an interruption by the divine Spirit bringing long awaited redemption from this human sickness.[xi]

Then Abba God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God;
we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

God will bring God’s justice; human made alliances and pacts with other human-made kingdoms will not, these will only bring more war and violence, more death of human beings. God heals God’s people, God soothes those who weep in sorrow and sadness, God cloths those disgraced by human violence in divine garments of mercy and righteousness.[xii] God will bring justice where humans within the kingdom of humanity bring only injustice and therein God is exalted and glorified.[xiii] As the irregularity of human injustice is interrupted by God’s justice, human beings are liberated from the captivity to violence and domination, born into love out of consuming indifference, brought into new life out of death.[xiv]

Conclusion

On this day we take a moment to reflect on the way our sickness has ravaged both the land and the people who were cared for and worked this land before us. This is a day that reminds us how much we need and are dependent on Jesus and our faith in him; he is our cure, he is our comfort, he is our way in this world as we work with him to keep human life human (Paul Lehmann). Today, it makes the most sense to give those whom we’ve harmed the final word about the destructive power of consumption, how it plagues humankind, and the divine food that brings life.

Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out.

Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last, he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth, they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated.

After a time the eagle sent the Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: “They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.”

The eagle said: “That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.”

The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.[xv]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] See Carter Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism, 49-64.

[iii] See Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins, 127-139.

[iv] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 183. “The opening verses are classified form-critically as a psalm of thanksgiving.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962), 73. “Politics is based on the power of the sword. But Isaiah as waiting for the day when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Alliances involve preparation for war, but Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4).”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 172-173. “Dislike for the world or disparagement of civilization is alien to the prophet. His attachment to God calls upon him to be involved with humanity. Yet in the face of idle and false imposition, he announces the contingency and insecurity of civilization, the sickness and liability of man. Israel is under judgment; the covenant with God must not be taken as immunity from judgment.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Isaiah could not accept politics as a solution, since politics itself, with its arrogance and disregard of justice, was a problem. When mankind is, as we would say, spiritually sick, something more radical than political sagacity is needed to solve the problem of security.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “For the moment a clever alignment of states may be of help. In the long run, it is bound to prove futile.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Indeed, it is hard to live by faith. But Isaiah insisted that one cannot live without faith…faith is not an easy or convenient path. There are frustrations in store for him who expects God to succeed at every turn in history.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (25:8…). Israel’s security lies in the covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt or other nations. The mysterious power of faith maintains: God alone is true protections. Such power will not collapse in the hour of disaster…”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 94. “Something new, an outburst of the Spirit, will initiate redemption.”

[xii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “The grandeur and majesty of God does not come to expression in the display of ultimate sovereignty and power, but rather in rendering righteousness and mercy.”

[xiii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “Isaiah’s declaration does not speak about values, and its intention is not to assert that holiness and justice are very much alike, or that justice is holy, or that holiness is just. Isaiah speaks about God, and his intention is to say that the Lord of Heaven and earth, of nature and history, finds His true exaltation in justice.”

[xiv] Heschel, Prophets, 215. “If justice is but a category, a conformity, then injustice must be regarded as an irregularity, a deviation from the norm. But justice is like a mighty stream, and to defy it is to block God’s almighty surge. The moralists discuss, suggest, counsel; the prophets proclaim, demand, insist.”

[xv] http://straightarrow.org/stories/indigenous-stories/yokut/the-beginning-of-the-world-wukchamni-yokut/

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Broken and Ground, yet Raised

Introduction

Jesus’s parables, spoken to a targeted audience of an ancient society, are meant to interrupt those who are listening. The imagery intwined with the story line, the twists and bends, the upheavals and reversals, create a verbal encounter for the hearer. As mentioned before, the goal Jesus’s parables are to bring the hearer to a conclusion that they would not have come to on their own. The parable is an encounter with God in the event of faith; the one who is addressed by the parable (slowly) begins to realize that the reign of God and this man called Jesus are different. In uttering a parable, Jesus is bringing the kingdom of humanity into conflict and crisis as it collides (head on) with the reign of God; in loosening a parable into the world, Jesus is bringing those who hear—their common sense and ideologies—into conflict and crisis with himself (the word of God). In other words, if one really does have the ears to hear they will hear what Jesus is saying; in hearing, they will be forever altered and changed precisely because they have heard and, by the power of the Spirit, have understood. And we all know that once that happens there’s no going back; bc #iykyk.

The issue for us; we have history in the way. So, when we read the parables of Jesus either we have enough Sunday School to apply the right conclusion, or we have the events of Christ’s life past tense providing the right framework through which to come to the right conclusion. And, we have access to the times where Jesus speaks a parable and then, gazing upon his confused band of disciples, proceeds to explain; therein, for us, is lost the power of the parable to sit and linger, festering images and words creating an infection in our spirit of divine proportions, something only the great celestial Medic could heal by their Spirit. So, are the parable of Jesus the Christ lost on and for us, today?

No, I don’t think so. Like the first audience, there is plenty in the parables to challenge us, to bring us into a head-on collision with God in Jesus Christ and the reign of God in the world, to bring us to their conclusion even if we know how it makes sense and what happens. All we need to do is allow our curiosity a front seat as we listen and hear as if this story is being told to us (because it is). Rather than being lookers-on, let us be addressed…

Jamie reads the gospel

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Matthew 21:33-46

In this portion of Matthew, Jesus is sharing parable upon parable to describe the reign of God and of heaven. Jesus must use parables because there is nothing on earth controlled by the kingdom of humanity that is like God’s reign. (God’s reign being interruptive and disruptive to the kingdom of humanity.) Thus, Jesus speaks in story and narrative to communicate the radical and otherworldliness of God’s reign.

Jesus begins, writes Matthew, telling the chief priests and the elders of the people (21:23) to listen to another parable (21:33a). This parable is the second of three parables meant to bring his audience to the conclusion that the chief priests and elders of the people refuse to come to when Jesus asks them, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (21:25a).

There was a person, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, and leased it to vinedressers; he then went abroad. Now, when the time of the fruit came near, he sent forth his slaves to the vinedressers to receive his fruit. And after the vinedressers received his slaves, they thrashed one, they killed one, and they stoned one (vv33b-35).

Jesus begins this second of three parables speaking telling of rebellious vinedressers against the land/vineyard owner. In a desperate event of violence, the vinedressers—the ones under contract to care for and harvest the fruit during the (familiar and common[ii]) absence of the vineyard owner—reject the slaves and the authority invested in them to retrieve the owner’s portion of the harvest. Considering the details of the story so far, we can assume that the vineyard owner is wealthy:[iii] 1. He builds and plants a vineyard, 2. It takes a few years to produce financially productive crops, 3. He can hire vinedressers to care for the land and crops for years before they can earn their portion of profit from the fruit, and 4. He can live abroad without needing a harvest to satisfy his economic needs.

Something must be up when the landowner never receives his slaves (and the harvest). So, he sends another but bigger group of slaves, and, according to Matthew’s Jesus, the vinedressers did to them in like manner (v36). Again, this group does not return; no slaves and no harvest. Curious. Now, the landowner decides to take serious measures[iv] to secure his portion of the harvest from the vinedressers. Jesus tells the crowd of religious leaders,[v]

Now, finally, he sent to them his son saying, “They will give respect to my son.” But after seeing the son, the vinedressers said to themselves, “This one is the heir, come! Let us kill him! Let us have his inheritance!” And after receiving him they threw him outside the vineyard and killed him (vv37-39).

The vinedressers have gone too far; the son is the representative according to law who can literally stand in for the father, the landowner. In an impulsive moment,[vi] the vinedressers decide to take matters into their own hand to seize the land from the landowner via insurrection;[vii] they decide to take over ownership of the vineyard and take the son’s inheritance as their own by killing the son. The owner of the vineyard will have to respond penally.[viii]

And like a spot light, this dark narrative is directed at the religious leaders of Israel, the ones who were covenanted to care for the people and the land for God and for the wellbeing of all the nations.[ix] The fruit of being a blessing to the nations and the work of righting wrongs has gone ignored by Israel’s religious leaders; Israel, the vineyard, has been hijacked by those who have decided to seize the blessings for themselves and redefine who gets the inheritance.[x] Jesus is pointedly telling them what they are going to do to him. But this targeted and dark address doesn’t stop here. Jesus goes on,

Then, whenever the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers? (v40).

We can imagine a pregnant pause, a contemplative silence, an oppressive quiet as those whom Jesus addressed consider their answer…carefully. Maybe after a moment of looking askance at each other they quietly discussed their answer and came to an agreed upon response,

They say to him, “He will utterly destroy those wretched, and he will lease the vineyard to other vinedressers, ones who will return to him the produce in the season of the fruit” (v41).

Let’s imagine another moment of pause, silence, and quiet as Jesus lets their answer sit in for a minute before going on with his comments. They have just pronounced their own verdict and sentence. Then Jesus intensifies it all and makes it crystal,

Have you never read in the scriptures, “The stone the ones who build rejected, this one has become the corner of the head; this has happened from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes”? Therefore, I say to you that the reign of God will be lifted up from you, and it will be given to a people producing its fruit. And the one who falls upon this stone will be broken to pieces; upon whom it might fall it will grind him to dust (vv42-44).

The chief priests and the elders have the moral of the story spelled out for them. If they didn’t get it before, they get it now and are ticked (v45): they are the ones who are the vinedressers and they are the ones who will kill the Son and be the ones who forfeit the reign of God.[xi] But Jesus’s Psalm quotation lets the audience know that there is vindication for the son in death just as there is vindication for the stone rejected by the builders:[xii] God wins over human sin, life wins over death.[xiii] God is coming, says Jesus, to take the vineyard (Israel[xiv]) away from the chief priests and elders and give it to another people,[xv] an entirely new entity (not the church but a people a varied people group lead by Christ) who will be grounded in God, do what God desires, and who will participate in the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation.[xvi]

Conclusion

We are left with a divine gift of self-reflection and awareness. While we know (and have known) this parable is about Jesus telling the chief priests and the elders of Israel what is going to happen, we have a moment to be self-aware in this space and currently and reflect. How much are we like the murderous vinedressers, rejecting the will and desires of the vineyard owner? It might be tempting to see how we, like Israel, are held captive by both the rulers and ideologies of the kingdom of humanity, forced into awkward and compromising positions of complicity. This is true, in part. It is also true that sometimes we blatantly and intentionally act in ways aligning us more with the wretched vinedressers. So, we, honestly and humbly, must ask that question and look long and hard in the mirror.

The good news is that Jesus is born, lived, died, raised, and ascended to the right hand of God. And, like the woman at the well, when we are thusly exposed as the vinedressers, we are received and not rejected. This is Jesus’s promise at the very end of this parable (as bad as those words sounded in our ears). Our exposure in the divine light of truth is a falling on and under the cornerstone (Jesus), and we are both broken to pieces and ground to dust in that exposure and encounter. Ye, because of Easter morning, we know that light triumphs over darkness, liberation collapses captivity, God’s grace and mercy over human sin, and life wins over death. We do not stay broken and ground, but rise in new life now and in the future because Jesus Christ is both risen today and tomorrow.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 808-809. “The story of an absentee landowner reflets a familiar economic situation at the time; some of the chief priests and elders to whom Jesus is speaking would probably have owned land away from Jerusalem.”

[iii] France, Matthew, 809. “The landowner must be a wealthy man in that a newly planted vineyard could not be expected to produce fruit for at least four years, during which he would have no return on his capital outlay. Once the vines began to produce fruit, there would be an agreed proportion of the crop due to the owner, leaving the tenants to derive their living from the rest.”

[iv] France, Matthew, 813. “Within the framework of the story the sending of the son is clearly a last resort, short of the owner returning himself (as he will eventually do in v. 40).”

[v] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 255. “Jesus’ ‘target’ is the religious leaders, not Isael as such. It is unlikely that Matthew of his (predominantly Jewish) community would have promoted this idea, setting Jew against Gentile in their shared community of faith.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 813. “As a bid for independence and an attempt to gain possession for themselves it was hardly likely to succeed in a society under the rule of law, and it reads more like a spontaneous and ill-conceived impulse than like a calculated policy.”

[vii] France, Matthew, 813. “When the son goes as this father’s messenger, he goes with all his father’s authority, and so deserves ‘respect’ and obedience. To reject the son’s demand is therefore the climax of rebellion. But to kill him is to add injury to insult.”

[viii] France, Matthew, 814. “To kill the son is an act of defiance to the father, and he cannot be expected to let them get away with it.”

[ix] France, Matthew, 809. “The fault of the tenants in withholding the due produce (and in the violence perpetrated on the slaves) is massively compounded by their decision to murder the owner’s son and so to attempt to take over the property. At this point the story has moved away from everyday reality…and…apparently invaded the story line: the murder of the son represents the forthcoming execution of Jesus.”

[x] France, Matthew, 812. v.33 “Israel’s Failure to produce the fruit God required in Isaiah’s day is now being repeated, but on a more disastrous level, as the parable will go on to explain.”

[xi] France, Matthew, 817. “Israel, they have assumed, is where God rules, but they have rejected his will and so will find themselves outside his domain, while he will rule over a reconstituted ‘Israel’ which acknowledges his sovereignty.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 811. “In that case the psalm quotation adds an element which is missing from the story: if the same stone which is rejected will become the cornerstone, then the son who is rejected may also be expected to be vindicated and to replace the present leadership.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 811. “There is thus inherent in this parable with its appended psalm quotation a bold Christology of rejection and vindication, of death and resurrection, and it is focused in the parable character of the owner’s son.”

[xiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 255. “There is much more reason to believe Matthew is associating Israel with the vineyard itself…It is a change in the leaders that is needed; replacing the unfaithful with faithful leaders. The landowner in the parable seeks more obedient sons and better tenant for the care of his beloved vineyard. He does not go seeking a new vineyard.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 808. “This last is the most significant of his adaptions: the mention of another ‘nation’ to replace ‘you’ in the tenancy of the vineyard takes us to the heart of the issue of the true Israel which underlies this whole section of the gospel, and in conjunction with the other two parables in the group it enables the reader to reach a more far-reaching understanding of what the vineyard parable implies than is possible from Mark and Luke when they record it alone.”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 811. “The addition of this quotation thus points us beyond the death of Jesus to his resurrection, which is the amazing thing which the Lord will do. In that case the new ‘nation’ of v. 43 may be understood as the people who follow the risen Jesu, just as the ‘something greater than the temple” in 12:6 appears to point beyond Jesus himself to a whole new regime focused in him.”

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God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The adage, God’s ways are not our ways, comes in handy when we are faced with hardship and tragedy. When things go awry, when that message comes, that phone rings, that letter arrives, that event happens, we try to make sense of it. And when we can’t, we resolve to comfort ourselves with a bit of spiritual and intellectual surrender as we reluctantly whisper, God’s ways are not our ways. This small and meager confession brings us some answer and comfort to our desperate whys (all of them). When we do not understand—in our grief and sorrow, our anger and frustration, our loss and suffering in the midst of emotional and physical chaos and tumult—considering that God might know and (somehow) still be in control provides us a relatively safe space to process and move through what we are experiencing and feeling.

Interestingly, I rarely hear this adage used when something good happens to us. When someone gets good news, accomplishes the daunting task, finds acceptance into this or that, receives promotion, not many of us would even think to say, God’s ways are not our ways. We may say Praise God! Or, What an answer to prayer! Or, You worked so hard for ________! But not, God’s ways are not our ways. Why? Because that little adage casts a big shadow of doubt over whether one really earned this or that good thing. And we, who live in the west and especially in America, really like thinking we’ve earned the good things that come our way. We like to think that this or that good thing is fair, because, well, I’m kind of a good person or I’ve been working really hard or and well my lack of good things means it was my time to get good things so I still earned it by not having anything good for a while…

Now, I’ve been a bit hyperbolic here. In the temporal realm and according to the ideological leanings of the kingdom of humanity and the way natural law works, surely, many good and bad things happen to us that actually are products of our effort. But there’s a point to be made, God’s ways really are not our ways. In what seems good or bad, in what feels fair or unfair, in what seems earned or not earned, God’s ways are not our ways. As our Matthew passage tells us, neither the ways of God nor the ways of the reign of God operate according to our ways.

Matthew 20:1-16

According to Matthew 19, Jesus is in the region of Judea beyond the Jordan (v1) where pharisees challenged him about divorcing one’s wife for “any cause” (vv3-12), he blessed little children (vv13-15), and aggrieved the rich young man with the truth about it takes to be “perfect” and store up treasure in heaven (vv16-22), adding the admonition that it is harder for a rich person to get into heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle—an answer that terrified the disciples (vv.23-26). Then, Peter (desperately?) asked for assurance of reward for leaving everything and following Christ; Jesus responds that they will have thrones and will receive a hundredfold and eternal life (vv27-29). But then Jesus adds (cryptically), But many will be last who are first and first who will be last (v30).[ii]  

V30 is the reason for “the Kingdom of Heaven is like” of chapter 20[iii] (a story found only here in Matthew[iv]). Matthew’s Jesus explains what he means by reordering first and last in the Reign of God[v] by telling the story of a wealthy vineyard owner and day-laborers. According to Matthew, Jesus began,

For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a person as master of the house who went out early in the morning [6am] to hire workers for his vineyard. Now, after agreeing with the workers for a denarius for the day’s work, he sent them into his vineyard (vv1-2).

(Obvs.) Everything seems on track at this point in the story. A “denarius”—a Roman Coin—was also the standard wage for a full day of labor. The vineyard was a common agriculture setting in Palestine (as well as within in FT imagery). But then Jesus goes on. The vineyard owner continues to go to the marketplace and fetch laborers for his vineyard. He goes out at the third hour (about 9am) and sees others standing unhired in the place of assembly and he said to them, You, you also go into the vineyard. And I will give you whatever is right (vv3-5a). And they go into the vineyard and work (for an unknown wage). (Coolcoolcool.) Then, the vineyard owner in like manner did it again three hours later at noon (the sixth hour) (mmmkay); and again, in another three hours at 3pm (the ninth hour) (huh…) (vv5b). While Jesus’s story became curious, it’s not all that wild considering the amount of work that might be needed in a vineyard. But then, Jesus continues; the man goes out again at the eleventh hour (5pm) and…

…found others standing there and he says to them, “why have you stood so here the whole day unhired? They say to him, “No one hired us.” He says to them, “You, you also go into the vineyard” (vv6-7).

(Wut.) Here, Jesus’s story flirts with the ridiculous. Who, in their right mind, hires anyone at the last hour of the workday let alone hires the ones no one else wanted[vi] to hire? But then, Jesus’s story jumps over ridiculous into wild.   

Now evening came and the lord of the vineyard says to his administrator, “Call the workers and return to them their wages beginning from the last ones until the first ones.” And they came, the ones [hired] about the eleventh hour received at the rate of a denarius. And when the first came they supposed that they will receive more; they each also received at the rate of a denarius (vv8-10).

All expectations are thrown out the window here. Jesus has not only turned the tables but has just flat out (metaphorically) flipped them. When Jesus goes on to say that they muttered against the house manager giving a list of burdens endured while working as long as they did and the injustice[vii] of making those who worked only one hour equal to they who worked twelve (vv11-12), both Jesus’s audience and Matthew’s side with them.[viii] The offense and frustration at this financial injustice is the point.[ix] The Reign of God, according to Jesus, is nothing like the kingdom of humanity. Those called into the vineyard, no matter how early or how late, cannot hold the lord of the vineyard hostage to what is considered, in human terms, fair; the lord of the vineyard is no one’s debtor. As Jesus tells his audience,

But the house manager answered one of them and said, “Friend, I do no act wickedly toward you. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go; and I wish to give to the last as I also give to you. Is it not permitted for me to do what I wish with what belongs to me? Or is your eye evil because I, I am good? In this way, the last will be first and the first last (vv13-16).

Rather than going out to the marketplace to find workers to give him what he pays for, the lord of the vineyard has gone out to find all the vulnerable—whose bodies, lives, and livelihood are dependent on precarious work conditions[x] and capricious employers[xi]—with the goal not to extract labor from them but to provide for each of them, whether they earned it or not.[xii] The lord of the vineyard is foolish and uncalculating; according to Matthew’s Jesus, so, too, is God (especially in comparison to human standards and systems of evaluation).[xiii] Where the kingdom of humanity operates (barely) within the metric of a meritocracy, God’s reign does not; “God rules by grace, not by desert.”[xiv]

Conclusion

The story Jesus tells is a story about God and not about humans. It is a parable, and it’s meant to bring the hearer to a conclusion about the reign of God; it’s not (solely) an object lesson on how to run vineyards or how to manage employees. This is a text neither about capitalism nor socialism—no union boss is going to, rightly, settle for such behavior between employer and employee. We should not reduce the power of this parable by making it into an action plan; we, in the temporal world, must keep an eye to what is fair and what isn’t, where provision is needed and where reward is earned, where exploitation and negligence is happening. To keep the power of the parable is to allow it to bring us to its conclusion, to expose us and our preconceived ideas and assumptions about God and God’s reign, and to remind us that we have more in common with those whom we deem unworthy than we do with God, our creator, the master of our house. And this is the point: God’s ways are not our ways. We definitely need Christ.

Jesus’s parable is about God (full stop). It tells us something about God and how God delights to give beyond what any human can imagine, beyond all human defined fairness, beyond human merit, and beyond human captivity to envy[xv] and ideals of deserving; [xvi] God delights to give not according to what is deserved but what is needed.[xvii] God is good and just and gives to all beyond expectation;[xviii] none are more deserving of the reign of God than others.[xix] This insight into God and God’s reign reminds us who we are (creatures) and keeps us humble, refusing the tendency to make God and God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love based on merit. God’s ways are not our ways.[xx]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] πολλοὶ δὲ ἔσονται πρῶτοι ἔσχατοι καὶ ἔσχατοι πρῶτοι.

[iii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 245. “Although Jesus accommodates Peter’s ambition with a vision of reward ‘at the renewal of all things,’ he finishes with a caution that ‘the first will be last and the last first’ and proceeds to tell the parable of the generous employer by way of illustration. It is yet another instance of shocking reversals.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is found only in Matthew.”

[v] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 747-748. “It thus stands as a comment on the discussion of rewards for discipleship in 19:27-29 and on the saying about the last and the first which concluded that discussion and which is repeated after the parable in v.16. It is therefore about the reversal of human expectation in the kingdom of heaven—which, in various ways, has been the dominating theme of the whole of ch. 19.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 750. Maybe the later laborers came to the marketplace later and missed early morning hiring (not lazy).[vi] “They are victims rather than culprits…” and maybe (especially considering the very last group) “least desirable workers, passed over by other employers; they are thus the ‘last’ in more than a purely temporal sense. Which makes it the more surprising when they are eventually rewarded as well as any.”

[vii] France, Matthew, 748. “Why then do we still feel that there is something wrong? Because we cannot detach ourselves from the ruling convention that rewards should be commensurate to the services rendered. When one man is ‘rewarded’ far in excess of what has been earned while another receives only the bare sum agreed, we detect unfair discrimination.”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “When it’s time to pay up he pays the last ones to arrive first, and beyond all reasonable expectation, he pays everyone a full day’s wage—even those who only worked one hour! When those employed form the early morning receive a day’s wage, they grumble….This equalizing is unacceptable. The latecomers do not deserve so much. Readers may sympathize with the grumbling of the all-day workers.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “However the characters in the parable are understood, this is a story of reversals and unexpected equalization. It presents a generosity that goes beyond calculation to grace. Hearers today may make theological connections. Our ‘calculating’ ways are brought up short by God’s incalculable grace.”

[x] France, Matthew, 749. “The day laborer did not have even the minimal security which the slave had in belonging to one master. There was no social welfare program on which an unemployed man could fall back, and no trade unions to protect a worker’s rights. An employer could literally ‘do what he chose with what belonged to him’ (v.15). In such a setting no work meant no food for the family.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “In this ‘forgotten corner of the economy’ workers are very vulnerable. The work is often difficult, strenuous, and dangerous. One if vie reports being injured while working and having no medical care. Their biggest day -to-day worry is getting paid. Employers give them bad checks to hire them at one rate yet pay less when the works is done to vanish when it’s time to pay up.”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “The grumblers seem to begrudge the full day’s wage generously given to everyone—even to those who had not worked a full day to ‘earn’ it.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 749. The vineyard owner, “…he was acting compassionately to alleviate the hardship of the unemployed. It is unlikely that he needed the extra workers, and his excessive payment of them speaks for itself. Commercially, the man is a fool. And God is as uncalculating as that.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 748. “The God who lavishly clothes the flowers and feeds the birds (6:26-29) delights to give his servant far more than they could ever deserve from him. It is that principle, rather than the disappointment of the whole-day laborers, which is the main focus of the parable, but their very natural disappointment and sense of unfairness helps readers to reexamine how far their reactions are still governed by human ideals of deserving rather than by the uncalculating generosity of the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdom in which the first are last and the last first there is no room for envious comparisons.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 751. “By contrast, the calculating comparison of rewards is a mark of the ‘bad eye’ which is a biblical image for stinginess and jealously…”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 748.

[xvii] France, Matthew, 750. “The principle appears to be of payment according to need rather than desert.”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 751. “The God who is generous far beyond what could be expected is also never less than just. But to think in terms of contractual obligations is to miss the point of the kingdom of heaven. God’s ‘goodness’…is fair. More generous than that.”

[xix] France, Matthew, 751. “The blessing of eternal life is the same for all. Some are not more saved than others.”

[xx] France, Matthew, 752. “No one has a right to preeminence or to a higher reward in the kingdom of heaven. In the gloriously subversive words of the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’ It is all by grace.”

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What Now?: Acceptance and Belonging

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The ethical portion of Paul’s Letter to the Romans centers this poignant entreaty: it is less about you and your religious purity and more about your neighbor and your impact on your neighbor. Too often Christian ethics and piety revolve around the self: all the things I do to be (read: feel) holy and good, the sacred acts I do and say to demonstrate my righteousness. In the end, this focus on the self exudes both self-righteousness and self-serving religiosity; as if—because one says all the right religious things and does all the right sacred acts—this one now has this God and religion thing on lock. Once one is here, in this space, both judgment and condemnation of others who “do not do as you do” seep in and infect relationships; then, in this space, hierarchies occur and there are those who are in and out, strong and weak, and those who “get it” and those who don’t.

However, according to the flow of Romans, this is the number one thing that cannot happen in the life of the Christian. In becoming those who have donned the armor of the light and doffed the acts of darkness, how we treat each other is paramount and this includes all infighting that happens in religious spaces over how to do this God and religion thing. For Paul here in Romans, one’s holiness, piety, righteousness, blessedness, saintliness comes not from what you do but from the one in whom you believe. This spiritual reality resists the human tendency to make this about me and my pursuit of holiness and righteousness for my own sake. I am liberated, by faith in Christ, from myself for the wellbeing of the neighbor. I am free, because of faith in Christ and the grace and righteousness given to me, to just love the neighbor as they are where they are without having to use them in my great plot to become good and righteous (because I am now both of those things in and by the declaration of beloved to me by God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit). Thus, For Paul and Romans, the ethics of the Christian, Christian piety expressed into the world, is going to feature the neighbor; this applies to both the exhortations to align the outer person with the inner person and to consider the impact of our actions on others. Everything ethical, for Paul, revolves around the neighbor, the other, the one who (should) benefits from the deeds of the law of love evidencing and born of faith—both in and outside these walls.

Romans 14:1-12

Paul begins with one exhortation and two prohibitions for the Roman Christians,

Now accept and receive the ones who are “weak” in faith, not for passing judgments. Some believe in eating all things and the one who is “weak” eats vegetables. The one who eats [meat] must not treat the one who does not eat [meat] with contempt, and the one who does not eat [meat] must not judge the one who does eat [meat]; for God accepted and received them. (vv1-3)

Moving from the consistent refrain of ethnic diversity and divisions within the body of Christ in Rome to issues (further) disrupting[ii] the communion of believers therein,[iii] Paul picks up an issue that has been communicated to him from the Roman Christians—the label “weak” does not logically flow from what Paul has said thus far.[iv] Most likely, Paul has caught wind of one group considering the other group weak for eating or not eating all things (meat is in mind here). The group considered “weak” would not consider themselves as such[v] because what is at issue here is not food laws per se or one’s liberation in Christ but faithfulness to God and its proper expression.[vi] Refusing to eat meat as an expression of faith indicates that the one who abstains is not lacking in faith; these ones considered themselves to be obedient, and, thusly, faithful.[vii] While the “strong” did not have more faith than those deemed (shamefully) “weak” for only eating vegetables, they did have more power: [viii] power to exclude, power to “name,” and power (access) to eat whatever they wanted. (Weak meant powerless. [ix]) In other words (or the TL/DR of it all), Paul is simply addressing the human tendency to create hierarchies of superiority and inferiority with the intention to divide and disrupt good, Christ centered, faith grounded community.[x] So, Paul beseeches the Roman Christians[xi] to receive each other[xii] as equals[xiii] and make space[xiv] for true belonging[xv] and not include the other so to dispute (argue)[xvi] and thus to shame or judge[xvii] the other which is the categorical opposite of belonging.

Building his case against judging others, Paul goes on to say,

Are you the one who judges the servant belonging to another? They stand or fall for their own lord. And they will be made to stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. One judges day compared with day, and one judges all days [the same]. Let each one be fully assured in their own mind. The one who regards the day, regards [it] to the Lord. Also, the one who eats [meat], eats [meat] to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and the one who does not eat [meat], does not eat [meat] to the Lord and gives thanks to God (vv4-6).

Paul disabuses the Roman Christians of their self-appointment as judge over what does and does not qualify as faithfulness to God. In doing so, via imagery of servant and lord, Paul reminds them who they are: creatures and not the Creator.[xviii] Also, Paul’s use of the word translated as “servants” is a Greek word for “house servant”; all the Roman Christians are equals and members of the same household with the same lord.[xix]  (They are all “house-servants.”) Both groups do and do not do for and to the Lord; both groups are fully dependent on the grace of God[xx] made known in Christ Jesus. No matter what it is (a day observed or food eaten or not) it should be done according to one’s conscience[xxi] and in a way that brings thanksgiving and honor to God (not to oneself[xxii]);[xxiii] therefore, if this is the basis, then coming together either to observe or not observe and to eat or not eat should not be a problem,[xxiv] each one supporting the other in and from divine love[xxv] (the very fabric and thread of Christian community and practice).[xxvi] The Roman Christians, through faith[xxvii] (Romans 1-8) find themselves not only new creations but living according to new (active and intentional) expectations[xxviii] for their new community based on the law of love[xxix] born of faith and established in Christ and God’s work in Christ.[xxx] This is why Paul can then remind them,

For none of us lives to/for themselves, and no one dies to/for themselves. For if we live, we live to/for the Lord; if we die, we die to/for the Lord. Therefore, if we live and if we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this [end] Christ died and he lived so that also he might rule the dead and living (vv7-9).

The Roman Christians are liberated by faith to live, really live without finding themselves trapped by either new laws around days and food or in despising and judging those who do not follow as they do. Recalling Chapter 13 of Romans, their only obligation is to and for love that seeks the well-being of the neighbor and brings glory to God.[xxxi] So Paul then adds,

But why do you, you judge your sibling? Or why do you, you treat your sibling with contempt? For we will all appear before the tribunal of God. For it has been written, “‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bend and every tongue will confess to/for God.’” Therefore each one of us will give word about themself (vv10-12).

Conclusion

Nitpicking, in-fighting, slandering, shaming, ostracizing, criticizing, and judging will always help in making the Christian Church obsolete in the world. Why? Because those very tendencies are the way the kingdom of humanity operates; why would anyone want to add more of that to their own experience and existence? According to Romans and Paul, both the church that claims Christ as its Lord and those who call themselves “little Christs” (Christians) should be different from the kingdom of humanity—not just a little bit but a lotta bit. Whether we despise and judge within our own congregation, other churches, other denominations and even other religions, we are not expressing our righteousness found by faith in Christ but our self-righteousness based on our self-regard. In this way, we express not the glory of God but the glory of our own rightness that is nothing but dirt in the economy of God. Granted, we do these things because we feel threatened and scared—especially now as we experience the shrinking of religion and its place within society. However, what Paul tells us is that our livelihood as Christians and as part of the body of Christ and the Church is not dependent on our being right or doing church and Christianity a specific way but, rather, is dependent on the one who is the founder and legitimator of our faith and existence as Christians and the Church: Christ Jesus. He is the only thing that truly matters in our life of orthodoxy and orthopraxy as church and as individual Christians. It is the divine liberation, divine life, and divine love won for us through his death and resurrection that is the only hill we should ever die on; everything else—e👏ver👏ee👏thing👏else👏—is child’s play and, as Luther says.

“For all of these things are shadows and signs of the real thing and thus are childish. For every day is a feast, all food is permitted, every place is sacred, every time is a time of fasting, every kind of apparel is allowed, all things are free, only that we observe moderation in their use and that love … be practiced.”[xxxii]

Let us eat or not eat, worship thusly or not thusly, observe this day or not this day, do church like this or not like this in such a way that the only thing anyone ever feels is God’s love through us so that God is brought glory through our neighbor’s praise and well-being.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 230. “This change in terms minimizes attention to ethnic differences and allows him to focus on behavior and status.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 229. “…Paul turns to addressing particular behaviors that have disrupted the ability of the Roman followers of Jesus to be in community together.”

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 229. “Paul speaks of two groups: the weak and the strong. These labels may not be Paul’s own designation of the situation because the labels do not really arise from the ideas he is trying to convey to the Romans…He may be adopting labels already in use in the community.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “…it would be unlikely that the person in the group designated as ‘weak’ would have called themselves weak. The group that considered itself to be strong, then, is probably the source of these epithets.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “Rather, the problem in the community may arise because of different understandings of what faithfulness to God means.”

[vii] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “Those who abstained from eating meat surely did not think they did so because of lack of faith, rather, they were trying to keep faithful to their God by being careful about what they ate. Whereas the ones who eat saw weakness, the abstainers understood themselves to be obedient.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “The ones who eat were ‘strong’ in part because they were a group that had the power to name and to exclude. They used a term of honor for themselves and a term of shame for the others.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 230. “In the ancient world, the term ‘weak’ could refer to many ways of being inferior or powerless, such as economic, physical, political or social.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 231. “Even when sociocultural hierarchy is not as closely tied to honor and shame as it was in the ancient world, the inclination to measure and divide others into superior and inferior groups is a constant pressure on any community.”

[xi] LW 25:114fn5. “He is formulating a general rule on the basis of a particular case and opposes both groups, because each judges the other as falling and not standing firm in the true faith, and thus the presumptuousness of both groups must be subdued.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 233. It is a lecture to both the “strong” and the “weak”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “In a situation where lines of demarcation have been drawn to indicate who is superior and who is inferior, Paul instructs welcoming those whom you consider to be inferior as those who share your cause as equals.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “Welcoming should not bring others into coercive situation but rather create space for exchange in the context of mutual respect.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “To welcome someone socially means to extend hospitality to that person, often sharing food at the table.”

[xvi] Lancaster, Romans, 232. “…Paul goes on to specify that the purpose of welcoming them not be for disputation.”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 232-233. “His explicit message (14:3-4) is mutual acceptance of each other—no despising, no passing judgment.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 233. “First, given the authority that a master had over a servant, Paul is reminding them of a point the has already made in this letter; the only one with authority to judge is God, who is the master they all serve.

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 233. “Second, the word translated as ‘servant’ is oiketēn, which was the term used particularly for a house servant. The emphasis, then, is not simply on being a servant but on being a member of the household (oikos). This choice of words reminds them they are members of the same household.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 234. “In their concern to honor a day to the Lord, they should hear this echo of the importance of mindset. They should not be proud but should rather remember their dependence on God’s grace.”

[xxi] LW 25:114fn7. “He is trying to say: ‘Let each be strong in his own conscience and not be disturbed at the action of another.’”

[xxii] LW 25:499 “The apostle is arguing from the greater, that if we do not live to ourselves or belong to ourselves (which is the greater), much less do we eat or drink to ourselves or do or suffer anything to ourselves, but rather all things are the Lord’s.”

[xxiii] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “The conviction he is talking about lies rather in the one’s understanding of what honors God (14:6), and it is expressed in giving thanks to God. Such honor and gratitude are not the property of any particular conviction; they may be present regardless of which day is observed and whether one eats or abstains.”

[xxiv] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “When Paul’s thoughts on the two problems of eating and observing sacred days are taken together, it seems Paul is trying to affirm openness to others without falling into an ‘anything goes’ consequence.”

[xxv] Lancaster, Romans, 235. “A certain generosity of spirit is required to recognize that others are also trying to honor God in what they do, even if what they do is different…In the face of painful disagreement with other Christians, Paul calls us to look beyond the problem itself to the God we all serve.”

[xxvi] Lancaster, Romans, 234. “The problem arises not because of what a person eats in private but rather in the context of eating together. The way these followers of Jesus figure out how to share food will reveal how well they really regard each other as brothers and sisters.”

[xxvii] LW 25:490 “But this must be done out of love and the faith that does not believe that he is doing these things as necessary for salvation but only of his own free will and out of a sense of freedom.”

[xxviii] LW 25:488. “The answer is that it is true on the basis of the new law that none of these things is necessary, but not in such a way that when one thing has been omitted it is permissible to do the opposite or something entirely different.”

[xxix] Lancaster, Romans, 236. “Because through Christ we are connected to each other, our living and dying to God is done together in community. Disruption of our life together tarnishes our living sacrifice to God.”

[xxx] Lancaster, Romans, 236. “He is calling us to see that our sacrifice is in the totality of who we are, so even how we address problems with relatively low stakes matters for what kind of offering we make to God. To take seriously that we have died to sin and entered into a new dominion means that the Lordship of Christ extends to everything that we are and do.”

[xxxi] LW 25:486. “Thus the meaning of the apostle is that in the new law all things are free and nothing is necessary for those who believe in Christ, but love is sufficient form them.”

[xxxii] LW 25:487.

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What Now?: Love is Born from Faith

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Faith and love are intimately connected in the Christian’s life. To have faith in God is to love God; to love God is to have faith in God. How could one have faith in God and not also love God and what God loves? There’s really no argument about the deep and abiding correlation between the two. However, in this intimate connection a confusion occurs between the two, making them synonyms, one able to replace the other. If this is so then one can love God first prior to faith, making faith a product of love. While this seems a rather logical and benign claim, it ignores human history with God and what all of scripture tells us.

The truth of it is this: we don’t inherently love God, at least not the God who self-discloses as God. We do love the god we make up in our heads and hearts, the one we wallpaper on to God. But do we, apart from faith, really love God for the sake of God? No. We don’t. God in God’s own self is too full of awe, God’s love for us is beyond comprehension, God’s actions and mission collide with and contradict much of what we consider reasonable. Jesus, God’s own son, God of very God, the Word of God incarnate, was rejected by his own people because of these characteristics of divine love flowing in and through him to the people. We like to think we’d be different; I promise you, we wouldn’t be.

However, there’s good news here, and Romans highlights it for us: love is born from faith; to love is faith manifesting itself. And, according to Romans, faith is a gift that is given to us by God in the hearing (however one “hears”) the proclamation of Christ crucified and raised so that we may be justified and made righteous by faith and sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is this basis that Paul works from in the last 1/3 of the letter when he shifts to exhortations of right and good Christian praxis in the world.[ii] It is faith established first that affords Paul the space and foundation to exhort the Romans to love with their whole mind, heart, strength, and soul. It is faith, for Paul, that informs and causes loving deeds that are truly about the beloved and not about the one who does the deeds; it is this faith inspiring love that fulfills the law.

Romans 13:8-14

Halfway through Chapter 13, Paul exhorts the Roman Christians,

Owe nothing to no one, except to love one another. For the one who loves has made full the other law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not kill,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love works not evil for the neighbor; therefore, love is the fullness of the law (vv8-10).

Paul has already anchored the Roman Christians in their justification with God by their faith in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit apart from any work, thus fulfilling the entire first tablet of the Big Ten. Now, he turns to the second tablet, the ethical portion, the commands concerning neighbor. First, the Roman Christians were to avoid being in debt to anyone: temporally and spiritually. They were to pay off what was owed to anyone and avoid participating in the obligations of patronage where one’s existence was dependent on another’s wealth and power, potentially bringing the Roman Christian into conflict with their new community of the body of Christ.[iii] According to Paul, the only thing that the Roman Christian should have as debt is the debt of love and corresponding loving deeds toward and for the neighbor.[iv]

For the Roman Christians, to have faith and, consequently, declare that God is trustworthy and truthful means that those whom God loves the Christian loves, too. One cannot declare God truthful and trustworthy, receive divine grace and mercy, and then deprive those things to the objects of God’s love, the neighbor, “your” neighbor. This is so because faith in God produces love of God, to love God means to love that which and those whom God loves; therefore, if the logic is logicing, then to love God is to love the neighbor and to love the neighbor is to love God.[v] This is why Paul can exhort the Roman Christian to be in debt to others in love, because love born of faith is always looking to serve the beloved. This is also why Paul can boldly declare that love both does not do evil and—all by itself—is the fulfilling of the law, it is how the law is made full (not just once but everyday).[vi]

Why?

Because who, in their right mind, would do anything (intentionally) to harm the one whom they loved? Would one betray one they loved? Would one take the life breath of the one they loved? Would one deprive the one they loved of material goods necessary to live? Would one reduce the one they loved to their possessions? Would one do anything directly or indirectly evil to the one whom they loved? While accidents happen in the life of the Christian and these accidents can impact the ones the Christian loves, what is being addressed here is the intention and impact of the Christian’s actions toward the neighbor, toward the other who is also the apple of God’s eye. Therefore, love cannot intentionally do evil to the neighbor, and, more than the absence of doing evil it proactively provides for the well-being of the neighbor.[vii] (Because there is evil in not acting when and where one can.)

This is why Paul then beseeches the Roman Christians to wake up and lay aside works of darkness and put on the armor of the light. He writes,

Also this, having considered the season, that [it is] already the hour for you to wake up out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we [first] believed. The night is almost gone, but the day has come near. Therefore, let us throw off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of the light. Let us walk decently as in days, not in wasteful celebration and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the coveting of the flesh (vv11-14).

Both knowing and being made aware of the impact of their actions toward the neighbor should (and must!) awaken the Roman Christian into the light of exposure and cause them to change their ways, to repent, to turn, and to press more into their faith[viii] that justifies, eager to be molded into those who are like and represent Christ in word and deed, to the glory of God. Paul is eager for Christians to WAKE UP,[ix] act (at all times[x]) as if they are in the light[xi] seen by all,[xii] and to see how important it is, in their present moment, to act according to the reign of God and resist the impulses of the kingdom of humanity privileging status and power at the expense of the livelihood of the neighbor.[xiii] For when the neighbor is thought of and considered, is prioritized, when their needs are met (in whatever form those needs manifest) then surely God is and will be praised and everything comes full circle: loving deeds born of faith return and nourish the very faith from which they come as the one who believes witnesses and participates in the mission of God going forward to bless the people of the earth, the continued fulfillment of the promise given to Israel through Abraham and Sarah. For Paul, the love born from faith curtails selfish desires[xiv] that thrust the Christian further into indebtedness and/to darkness and prioritizes another’s life, love, and liberation.[xv] It is through faith manifesting as loving deeds for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God that the Christian’s allegiance to God and God’s reign is displayed, an allegiance that cannot be shared with the kingdom of humanity.[xvi]

Conclusion

When Paul exhorts the Roman Christians toward love, it is not an exhortation to be nice or kind. It is not about offering a smile or being polite, as great as those things are for human well-being. It is not even an exhortation to the absence of doing harm (even though that is clearly pictured). What Paul is exhorting the Roman Christians toward is a love that actively seeks and brings to fruition the well-being of the neighbor, a love born of faith that brings the very good to those who have not the very good. And by the “very good” I don’t strictly mean the proclamation of Christ (although this is a very good thing). I mean to reach back further to a time when God created everything and called it very good (Gen 1), I mean to bring (in deed) the goodness of the mission of God that results in the robust provision for the neighbor. Thus, to love, according to Paul, is not easy. It’s hard; this is why he speaks of putting on the armor of the light.[xvii] To love the way God loves will square us off and bring us face to face with the anger and resentment of the kingdom of humanity that thrives off death, indifference, and captivity, the kingdom that hates the light preferring the darkness instead (Jn 1). We need the armor of the light as we participate in the divine mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God.[xviii] We need faith by which love and all else is added to us.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 224. “From the concern about one’s obligations to external authorities, Paul moves to a discussion about obligations within the community of followers.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 224. “To tell the followers of Rome not to owe anything may have partly meant to make sure they paid what was due (financially and socially), but it may also have discouraged participation in patronage that would saddle them with obligations outside the community of followers.”

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 224. “Instead of taking on obligations outside the community, the one obligation to which they should commit themselves is to love one another (13:8).”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 225. “It may also be said that one of the ways we honor God is by treating well the ones that God has created, so the two commandments that Jesus named are not unrelated, and Paul understood that.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 224. “We are under obligation to others, and we do need to obey the law, but the obligation and obedience are both carried out by loving one another. This is what God’s authority requires of us and how we are subject to it.”

[vii] Lancaster, Romans, 226. “Many have seen, then, that the kind of love that fulfills the law is not simply a sentimental emotion, nor is it even simply not doing harm; a proper understanding of this commandment calls us to active caring toward those around us.”

[viii] LW 25:480 “Therefore the works of darkness are the works of those who are asleep in the spirit, in the bad sense, that is, those who are snoring away in the desires of the world—not only those works which are popularly thought to be evil but also those which are considered good, and yet are evil because of the inner evil, for men do them without the watchfulness of faith.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 227. Acts of darkness, things done at night, “For people in Rome, excessive behavior at evening feasts was common practice, and excessive behavior often leads to quarrels and strife. Such behavior was common in the order of the empire as it is in other times, and places, but this order is passing away.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 228. “Knowing the time, then, does not mean having in mind a date of a future occurrence but rather becoming aware of how our history is relativized by the eternal God. In every. Moment, we must be mindful of the Day.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 227. “The passing of the old order means that we no longer have the cover of darkness and secrecy, so we should live at all times with the honor and integrity that can bear the scrutiny of day.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 227. “Even in the twilight, they must live as if they day were fully light.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 226. “Paul is telling the followers of Jesus in Rome that the time in which they are living is a critical time, so they should be alert.”

[xiv] LW 25:111fn11 “But it does more good to the one loved, because this is the nature of love, that it favors in a good way and does good, even if it suffers evil and is hated.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 228. “Paul’s point is not about hurtful self-denial. Rather, they say it is about excess and letting the desires rules us so that our aim in life is to gratify them. The desires of the former way of life—and they include mor than physical desires (for instance, desiring honor)—should not rule us. This Lord overturns the expectations and gratifications of the old order.”

[xvi] Lancaster, Romans, 229. “The constancy of this demand requires us to ask in every moment where our allegiance lies, and whether or not we are displaying our allegiance to Jesus Christ in our thoughts and actions.”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 227. “The idea that what one needs to wear for the coming day is weaponry suggests that the dawning of a new day with a new order will bring struggle.”

[xviii] LW 25:112fn14 “He creates a remarkable antithesis whereby the places ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ ‘works’ and ‘armor’ in juxtaposition. And this is surely true, because the life of the new law is a battle and a war, and therefore we need armor.”

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What Now?: One Faith, One Body, One Ethic

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Paul spends most of his letters to the Romans explaining—in stunning detail—the intricate theology weaving together the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the role of faith in the life of the believer (both Jewish and Gentile), the relationship of the believer to the law and God’s righteousness, and the unity in diversity of the body of Christ being comprised of the adopted Children of God, the ones who are foreknown and called, both the siblings of Paul according to the flesh and according to the Spirit. Now, in the last 1/3 of the letter, Paul turns to speak about the ethics and ethical posture of the body of Christ.[ii]

Christians are justified with God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; all of this is (very much!) apart from any work and deed, both bad ones and good ones. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t now and as a consequence of this event of justification have a robust relationship with works and deeds. For Paul, and according to the logic, flow, and theology of Romans, Christians are liberated from attempts to self-justify so that they can be, in word and deed, the representatives of Christ in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit for the wellbeing of the neighbor to the glory of God.[iii] Tl/dr: Christians are called by God and justified so that they may participate (liberally and voluntarily) in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[iv]

Romans 12:1-8

Paul begins chapter 12 with three exhortations,

I beseech you, therefore, siblings, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and well-pleasing to God, your rational service. And do not be conformed to this age; but be transformed by the renewal of the mind so that you can discern the good, pleasing, and mature will of God (vv1-2).

These three exhortations are strong urgings and neither commands nor polite requests.[v] Both polite requests and commands can be given without love; exhortations, on the other hand, come from the depths of love for the beloved, like a parent desiring their kids to remain safe in various and potentially precarious situations. An urgent pleading or a strong urging comes loaded with heavy love putting the beloved in an obligation to respond and (especially) to respond affirmatively. While there is an option for the beloved to resist the urging or pleading, the resisting won’t come easy because urging and pleading have a direct line to the conscience where they make their home in the heart and mind of the beloved. Thus, the Roman Christians—both Jewish and Gentile—is being verbally moved, by Paul, to begin to conform to the Spriit of God and cease conforming to the spirit of the kingdom of humanity that thrives in the toxicity of its antagonism to the reign of God.[vi] In this way the sinner—in becoming righteous (always and repeatedly[vii]) by faith alone—now becomes the one who moves from non-being to being and, thus, non-doing to doing.[viii] This being and doing means that Christians, according to Paul, no longer offer animal sacrifices to appease God; rather, they are offer themselves over to God, they hand themselves over to be molded and shaped by the Holy Spirit—through prayer and worship—to begin to be like Christ.[ix] The Roman Christians are to be and do in the world in a way that their persons and their being[x] are daily sacrifices to God, midwives and child-bearers bringing forth God’s will and reign,[xi] not concerning themselves with getting it perfect but with getting it aligned to God’s love made known in Christ.[xii] (“Not my will, but they will be done.” [xiii]) According to Paul, this is the only and right (logical/rational) service to God as a response to and out of faith,[xiv] for both individual Christians and the corporate Church, the body of Christ.[xv],[xvi]

How are the Roman Christians to do this? Paul begins,

For, I say by grace being given to me for all people who are among you not to be arrogantly minded beyond that which is necessary to think, but to think with the result of being of sound mind, each one according to the apportioned measure of faith/trust. For just as we have many members in one body, and the many members do not have the same function, in this way we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and members of one another (vv3-5).

The very first thing Paul mentions is the way the Roman Christians view themselves. First and foremost, the Roman Christians are not to think more of themselves than they should. How much should they think of themselves? An amount that accords with the gift of faith and God’s grace.[xvii] But what does this mean? Remember, Paul spent 11 chapters disabusing the Roman Christians of the hierarchies that decorate the kingdom of humanity; none of that is allowed in the body of Christ[xviii] because the playing field is leveled by faith and God’s grace given (by God!) to sinners.[xix] Christians must reject (repeatedly) the temptation to see themselves as better (or worse!) than other people. For the Christians in the church in Rome receiving this letter, it means that the neither the Jewish Christians nor the Gentile Christians can consider themselves to be better than the other.[xx] Concurrently, this means that Christians are not categorically better than those who are outside the church (thus, they are not better than Paul’s siblings according to the flesh (Romans 9-11) and not better than their fellow Roman (Gentile) citizens (Romans 1-3). Every day, and not just on the day of worship, these Christians are to be humble toward others and toward themselves, refusing to elevate oneself because of class, birth, wealth, religion, and occupation (etc.); there’s no better and well-pleasing sacrifice to God.[xxi]

Paul then, in a less organized way than elsewhere in his epistles, speaks of broad categories (not hierarchies) of specific giftings and how they should be performed individually for the corporate good,

Now having gifts that differ according to grace being given to us: if prophecy, then according to the proportion of faith; if service then in serving; if the one who teaches then in teaching, if the one who exhorts, then in exhorting; if the one who gives a share then in liberality; if the one who rules then in diligence; if the one who has mercy then in care and cheerfulness (vv6-8).

As the Roman Christians embrace their justification that is by faith alone and consider what this means for how they view themselves, then the way they perform their various calls will serve to edify and encourage the community of believers. The prophet will prophecy with words that align to faith and the declarations of God in Christ and will not be in opposition to the incarnate Word of God but may be in opposition to the kingdom of humanity (prophecy=proclamation).[xxii] The one who is gifted to serve will serve with their full being. The one who teaches is called and inspired by God[xxiii] to teach so that those who do not know Christ come to know Christ, while the one who exhorts is to help those who already know Christ to grow and mature in becoming more like Christ.[xxiv] The givers are to give with no strings attached, the rulers are to rule invested in the well-being of their citizens remembering that they are the God’s beloved,[xxv] and those who offer mercy should do so not in dourness but with cheer, bringing light where there is darkness.

Conclusion

Our faith, while it liberates us from slavishly trying to fulfill the law, puts us on the hook regarding the will of God in the world. This is the truth that Paul is communicating to the Roman Christians, thus to us all these years later. Faith in Jesus, faith that justifies us with God and ceases our selfish and self-consumed pursuits at self-righteousness that comes from self-justification, liberates us to be in the world in a real and fulfilled way. For Paul, faith is eager to manifest in loving deeds, just like Jesus’s faith manifested in the loving, liberating, and life-giving deeds while he walked the earth all those years ago. We, by faith, become a member of the body of Christ and are, thusly, exhorted and shaped by the power of the Holy Spriit to be as Christ in the World as Christ’s representatives, both individually and corporately. We get to be liberated from our selves by faith and liberated for the wellbeing of our neighbor—to bring love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death. We get to walk, arm in arm, with Christ and with each other; one body serving God and serving those whom God loves, the beloved neighbor in here and out there. We get to stand up and be a person of substance in the world knowing who we are and what we stand for.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “Being baptized into Jesus Christ brings us into life with this faithful and righteous God, so we must consider well how that life should be lived. Paul’s use of ‘therefore’ in this sentence is not merely a word to show a change of subject; rather, it indicates that he is drawing conclusions from all that he has said previously. To understand his reasons for drawing these conclusions, the reader must keep the scope of his previous argument about the faithfulness and righteousness of God in view.”

[iii] LW 25:104fn2. “Up to this point he has taught how to become a new man, and he has described the new birth which makes the new man (John 3:3ff). but now he is teaching concerning the works of the new birth which anyone who has not been made a new man does in vain and presumptuously. For being comes before doing, and suffering comes before being. Therefore the order is: becoming, being, and then working.”

[iv] LW 25:433. “The apostle is about to teach Christan ethics, and so no other concern is of such prime importance up tot eh end of the epistle as to eradicate our own wisdom and self-will.”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 2010-202. In re: Παρακαλέω, “Paul is not giving the Roman followers of Jesus a command or rule, but neither is he simply making a request. He is urging them to demonstrate in their lives their loyalty to the God he has been describing throughout the letter.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “If the followers of Jesus have obligations on the basis of their allegiance to God, it is on the basis of a faithful and merciful God, and it is only through that mercy that they may fulfill their obligations. The counsels that Paul will commend to them are not new laws, but rather they are his idea of the appropriate response to the mercy God has already shown.”

[vii] LW 25:434. “Thus it is most correct to say that man is always in privation, always in becoming or in potentiality, in matter, and always in action…Man is always in nonbeing, in becoming, in being, always in privation, in potentiality, in action, always in sin, in justification, in righteousness, that is, he is always a sinner, always a penitent, always righteous.”

[viii] LW 25:434. “…nonbeing is a thing without a name and a man in his sins; becoming is justification; being is righteousness; action is doing and living righteously; being acted upon is to be made perfect and complete. And these five stages in some way are always in motion in man. And whatever is found in the nature of man—except for the first stage of nonbeing and the last form of existence, for between these two, nonbeing and being acted upon, there are the three stages which are always in movement, namely, becoming, being and acting—through his new birth he moves from sin to righteousness, and thus from nonbeing through becoming to being.”

[ix] Lancaster, Romans, 203. “Although Paul uses common religious language, he suggests something different, though, than offering something representative (an animal or some other girt to stand in our place): Paul tells them to present their own bodies. That is, they. Must give their whole selves to God.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 206. “…[Paul] is pointing to the intimate connecting between them. Logikos worship must include the mind as well as the body. When our minds are renewed after the mind of Christ, we more clearly discern the will of God. Understanding the will of God is the first, necessary stoep toward enacting it with our bodies.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 203-204. “To say that we should present our very selves to God as a living sacrifice is to say that our daily life ought to be a form of worship, an ongoing offering. Everything we do should not only be guided by God but also offered to God.”

[xii] Lancaster, Romans, 207. “Related to telos (end, goal), this fullness does not require that we enact God’s will without any mistake or flaw, but it does requires that we pursue the goal that God wills and not one determined by the present age or our own selfish desires. Discernment of that will is key.”

[xiii] LW 25:438. “For faith itself transforms the thinking and leads us to acknowledge the will of God.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 205. In re λογικός, “This worship is not carried out in a temple as one performs cultic duties, but rather it is carried out every day in one’s living. Both Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus would be challenged by this image to think in a new way about how best to honor God.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 202. “Because they are loyal to this faithful and righteous God, they have obligations to one another.”

[xvi] Lancaster, Romans, 207. “The task of the community to be transformed by the renewing of its mind is every bit as necessary and ongoing as the task of any individual.”

[xvii] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “We see ourselves in a fair and sensible light when we judge ourselves according to the faith that God has given.”

[xviii] LW 25:438. “For whenever God gives us a new degree of grace, he gives in such a way that it conflicts with all our thinking and understanding.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “It is more likely that Paul means ‘measure’ not as amount but as criterion. In other words, we should measure our thinking against faith.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 208. “If we allow faith to form our judgments, then we can see more clearly how we belong together in one body.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 205. “We show our allegiance to the dominion to which we belong through the way we carry out our lives, in all our daily actions. Because the followers of Jesus have left the dominion of sin and accepted the free gift of the dominion of grace, they are obliged to demonstrate their new allegiance daily.”

[xxii] LW 25:446. “in the same way he is trying to say here that prophecy must be in harmony with faith, so that it is concerned ‘with things not seen’ ….lest by change it become the wisdom of the world, which is concerned with things which are seen, either in causes or in effects.”

[xxiii] LW 25:447. “…for without the call of God neither the ministry nor teaching succeeds.”

[xxiv] LW 25:448. “The difference between teaching and exhortation is this, that teaching is directed to those who do not know, while exhortation applies to those who do know.”

[xxv] LW 25:450. “…although everyone who is exalted is exalted for the purpose that he seek nothing for himself nor seek to live for himself, but that he recognizes that he has been made a servant of his servants.”

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In Her Footsteps

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We take for granted the nature of the gospel and the generosity of Christ. Because it’s been well over 2000 years since Christ walked this earth and made an impact causing a Second Testament to be added to the Hebrew scriptures in the 4th century, we take for granted the work of Christ, the things that he did that (intentionally and unintentionally) upheaved the status-quo of the kingdom of humanity, exposed divine expectation, and made God tangible to all who were forced to be without God or convinced they were unworthy to be with God. “Immanuel, God with us,” is met with a modern, “Clearly” or “Obvs” or, a bit younger, “No cap.” The grandeur of God’s descent and condescension to become as and like us even to the point of suffering death on an instrument of state punishment as one who was considered guilty but was completely innocent, is so well known and assumed that it barely solicits awe. That God loves us is presumed to such an extent that we feel that God must love us forgetting that love is, at its root, a feeling that springs from one voluntarily and solicits corresponding voluntary action, that it will even (voluntarily and by choice) obligate itself to the beloved.

This state and relationship with the love of God made known in Christ is both a good and bad thing. It’s good, because we’ve heard the message and have taken that message in. We know how to spread that message and to make others feel it to such an extent that God’s love spreads from one beloved person to another. But it’s bad because we’ve heard it so much that we assume God’s positive disposition toward us, that Jesus would take us on granting what we so desire. While I know I’m wading in potentially troubling waters, never wanting anyone to feel they are not loved by God (because they are), I want us to take a moment today to think about the what if God didn’t identify with us, what if we weren’t part of the beloved, what if we were considered too far outside the reach of God because we weren’t part of the lost sheep of Isarel, what if we were still the enemies of God and God’s people…

Matthew 15:21-28

Matthew tells us, And Jesus left from there and withdrew to the districts of Tyre and Sidon (v21). Jesus is withdrawing after his confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes mentioned in the early part of Matthew 15. His withdrawal signifies not defeat but a need to go where he is unknown, eager to get some distance from the opposition facing him from and among his own people.[ii] So, where else would Jesus go than the regions that are not Jewish and are, in fact, antagonistic toward the Jewish people (according to the First Testaments).[iii] Surely here, among these who do not care at all about the Jewish people, Jesus would find a bit of reprieve, blend into the background, go unnoticed, and maybe even ignored.

But then…

And, behold!, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was shouting saying, “Please have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is badly possessed by a demon!” In a few words, Matthew informs his listeners that Jesus’s plan to move about in obscurity is foiled. Someone has recognized him. And not just any someone, but this someone: a Canaanite woman. Two strikes against her.[iv] First, she is Canaanite[v] and bears the history of her people being those whom God drove out of the land before Israel inhabited it and those whom God warns against because of their religious idolatry that repeatedly threatened Israel’s religious purity.[vi] Second, she is she. (If “unclean” had the capacity to double, she would be it.) And this Canaanite woman knows exactly who Jesus is; she recognizes him and this recognition solicits her bold[vii] shouting to him using Jewish Messianic titles (not to mention that Matthew uses an aorist imperative here, signaling she is pleading with God[viii]).[ix] In her overstepping,[x] she didn’t care to get the attention of anyone else in that group but Jesus’s, the Christ’s.

Bad news: her plea is rejected. Matthew writes, But [Jesus] did not answer her a word (v23a). Good news: she doesn’t stop shouting. We know this because Matthew continues by telling his audience in the rest of v23, Now his disciples drew near to him and they were asking him saying, “Please dismiss her, because she is shouting after us!” Here is the first #ShePersisted as she makes it difficult for Jesus and the disciples to proceed in anonymity. Her mama-bear like love for her daughter drives her to stay her course, social conventions be damned.[xi] Narratively, she is the first woman to speak in the Gospel of Matthew, and when she does, she openly challenges the limited religious self-conception of Israel.[xii] Her shouting is shrill, unseemly, and unsettling; the disciples are desperate to get her gone so they petition Jesus to just do what she wants, man![xiii]

Bad news: Jesus’s responds to his disciples with, ummm, no. Or, as Matthew tells it, Now [Jesus] answered and said, “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” (v24). Jesus interprets his silence to his disciples: none but the children of Israel have right and access to the ministry of Messiah.[xiv] Good news: she overhears this, dismisses religious (and social) restrictions, and comes closer! (the second, #ShePersisted!) Matthew writes, But she came and was bowed down before him saying, “Lord, please come to my aid!” (v.25).

Bad News: Jesus, according to Matthew adds insult to injury. But he answering said, “It is not good to take the bread of the children and cast it to the little dogs,” (v26). No matter how you spin it, even considering Matthew places the diminutive for dogs in Greek (τοῖς κυναρίοις ,“to/for the puppies”) in Jesus’s mouth, Jesus not only repeats to her what he said to his disciples in a more targeted way, he also insults her, playing up racial stereotypes reserved for those of this region specifically, and Gentiles in general.[xv] Jesus is clear, he only came for his own, the children (of Israel) and not for the dogs, puppies or not;[xvi] they are not the goal of the manifestation of divine revelation in Jesus. Good news: Once again, and for a third time, #ShePersisted! She takes control of the conversations and turns the parable table on Jesus,[xvii] But she said, “Yes, Lord, for even the little dogs eat from the crumbs that fell from the masters’ table,” (v27). This Canaanite woman understands the basic fact that even if Jesus’s first concern is to his people, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the world won’t feel the impact of Jesus’s presence. It seems that this Canaanite woman understands the mission of Israel better than the children of Israel. Israel was elected and called to bless all the nations of the world, to right the wrongs, to bring God’s presence close to those who were not of the chosen people.[xviii] Here, in this bold Canaanite woman’s pleading with Jesus, is one who is great in faith,[xix] faith that Jesus often finds lacking among his own people.[xx] Here and in her presence and challenge, Jesus’s ministry instantly expands.[xxi] Then answering Jesus said to her, “Woman, your faith is great! It was done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour (v28). The impact of God in Christ sent to the lost sheep of Israel finds another home in Gentile territory. The circle of God’s children is broadening,[xxii] foreshadowing what is to come in Christ’s resurrection[xxiii] and the coming of the Paraclete where there are no dogs and only children of God by faith.[xxiv]

Conclusion

This woman had no such assumption of God’s love that we have today because of the broad and bold proclamation of the Gospel. Where we assume God loves us, this Gentile, Canaanite woman didn’t. She put everything on the line to heal her daughter. She very literally risked death to advocate and seek help for her beloved daughter as she ignored both social and religious boundaries. She did everything she could to bring liberation to one held captive.

But we, we take all this divine self-revelation in Christ for granted. And as we take it for granted we forget that we, too, are all Gentiles adopted by faith (Romans). What the Canaanite woman couldn’t even presume, we assume. And in assumption comes comfort and lethargy. No longer do we go to the boundaries and plead for boundaries to move and shift, ready to risk even death itself, rather preferring to stay and remain comfortable and cushy.

When we suspend our assumptions, we can identify with this Canaanite woman boldly challenging even Jesus’s self-identity and religious identity, challenging religious boundaries and social conventions. If you didn’t know God loved you for sure and one of your beloveds was ill, would you do the same thing she did? Would you break all conventions and ignore various social and religious laws to secure liberation for the beloved? Would you put yourself and your body on the line to see captivity obliterated and the captive set free?

This morning, we must remember that we are her heirs; we are in her family. She made the first motions to demonstrate just how far God’s love in Christ can actually go no matter how much religion, doctrine, dogma, politics, society have tried to limit and gatekeep. She has demonstrated for us and set the example for what it looks like to love someone so much, that there isn’t anything you wouldn’t do to secure their liberation and bring them true life. So, on behalf of those who find themselves threatened and rejected by the kingdom of humanity, pushed to the outskirts and margins, isolated and alienated, scared and terrified, may we remember just how amazing God’s love is in Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, dare to demand change from both the temporal and spiritual realms on behalf of these beloved.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 592. “This was not a mission to the pagan cities (like Johah’s to Nineveh), but a retreat to a place where Jesus and his disciples could get away from Jewish opposition and Jewish crowds. There is no indication that he sought contact with the local people…”

[iii] France, Matthew, 591-592. “Galilee was bordered on the northwest by the Phoenician territory of which Tyre and Sidon were the principal cities, both (but especially Tyre) frequently condemned by the OT prophets as inveterate enemies of Israel.”

[iv] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 200. “Given these hostile relations, it is a bit audacious for this Canaanite woman to approach Jesus at all. Her gender as well as her ethnicity is a hindrance. According to Sharon Ringe, in first-century Palestinian society women were supposed to be invisible.”

[v] Case-Winters, Matthew, 200. “They are a rival people, even ‘the enemy,’ in Israel’s conquest of the land. They are accursed dn destined for slavey (Gen. 9:25). Israel’s victory over the Canaanites is, from the perspective of the victors, a gift of God and evidence of Israel’s elect status. It was a conquest celebrated in Israel’s traditions.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 592. “Canaanite” “…by this time was probably not a current ethnic term (like Mark’s ‘Syrophoenician’) but a part of tradition biblical vocabulary for the most persistent and insidious of Isarel’s enemies in the OT period, those whom God had driven out before his people Israel, and whose idolatrous religion was a constant threat to the religious purity of the people of Yahweh. That a ‘Canaanite,’ of all people, would receive the compassionate ministry of Israel’s Messiah would be a potent symbol to Jewish readers of the universality of the gospel…”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 201. “By her society’s standards, she has transgressed the boundaries. She might be called an ‘uppity’ woman.”

[viii] Daniel B. Wallace, “3. Request (a.k.a Entreaty, Polite Command)” in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 487-488.

[ix] France, Matthew, 593. Lord, Son of David, “She clearly has some knowledge of Judaism, and in using a Jewish messianic title she is hoping to attract the interest of a Jewish teacher who would not have expected such a title in this foreign context.”

[x] Case-Winters, Matthew, 200. “At the very least he is at the border within access of the Canaanite woman in the story. Either he is crossing the line or she is.”

[xi] France, Matthew, 593. “That she nonetheless persists in her appeal already indicates remarkable willingness to challenge social conventions (as well as a mother’s desperation).”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 201. “She is the first woman in the Gospel to speak. When she does, she dares to ‘demand her share in God’s blessing,’ challenging the whole ideology of chosenness.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 593. “Twelve strong men could presumably have driven the woman away themselves, so the fact that instead they ask Jesus to take action may suggest that by ‘Send her away’ they meant ‘Do what she wants, so that she will go away’; Jesus’ reply in v.24 suggests that sense.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 594. v. 24 “Jesus is thus putting into words what was implied by his silence in v. 23: Gentiles have no right to the ministry of the Jewish Messiah.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 594. “Not only does Jesus repeat and make more explicitly the restriction stated in v. 24, but he does so now by another metaphor which in any culture would be demeaning to those depicted as dogs over against children, but which in that context also carried the force of Jewish invective which could use ‘dog’ (an unclean animal; cf. 7:6) as a deliberately offensive term for Gentiles.”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 595. “The children are in a position of right and privilege, which the dogs cannot hope to share; what is holy is not to be given to dogs (7:6).”

[xvii] France, Matthew, 595. “Far from being the meek acquiescence which most versions imply, it is a robust refusal to accept the apparent implication of Jesus’ words. She turns Jesus’ own parable against him.”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 595. “If Gentiles are to be ‘dogs,’ then at least let the dogs have their due. The dogs do have a right to be fed, even if all they get is the leftovers. Jesus, as the Messiah of Israel…must indeed first go to his own people, but that does not mean that his mission must stop there. Her reply, whether she knows it or not, thus encapsulates the importantly biblical theology of the election of Israel not for their own benefit alone but to be a means of blessing to all nations, a light to the Gentiles.”

[xix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “She does not deny the distinctive place and priority of the ‘lost sheep of Israel,’ but she claims a place at the table of God’s blessing as well. Her ‘great faith’ stands in stark contrast to the ‘little faith’ demonstrated by Peter (14:31). She is in fact an exemplar of faith for the disciples—thought she is a woman a Gentile, and even a despised Canaanite.”

[xx] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “As the story unfolds the Canaanite woman exemplifies the great faith that Jesus does not find among his hometown folks, or the religious leaders, or the crowds, or even the disciples.”

[xxi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “Her boldness, persistence, and remarkable faith empower the Canaanite woman to cross the boundaries that circumscribe here. In a sense, she empowers Jesus to do the same. Who can doubt that the love and compassion of God extends to one such as this?”

[xxii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 203. “The circle Jesus drew around the lost sheep of Israel is now expanding as he crosses the line into Gentile territory and encounters this Canaanite woman whose faith is so great.”

[xxiii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 262. “Quique: “As I see it, there are two Jesuses here: the mortal Jesus who devoted himself only to the Jews because he was a Jew, and the resurrected Jesus, who’s for everybody, who’s international.”

[xxiv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 261-262. “I said: ‘On another occasion, when Jesus praised the faith of a Roman centurion, in Capernaum, he said that later many foreigners would come from the East and the West to sit down at the banquet of the kingdom of heaven. There are no longer dogs, only children; we are all brothers and sisters. And the bread of Jesus Christ is for all to share…”

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ICYMI from 2018: “Why I Love Preaching”

“Why I Love Preaching”

PS: I wrote this for the student body of Ascension Episcopal School on our first Eucharist/Opening Service of the year (or thereabouts) when I was the theology teacher there (8th, 11th-12th). Walking with those students, even on the bad days, was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had vocationally.

PSS: I could add to this “teaching,” too; teaching also has a strong story component to it but in the sense of story analysis and breaking down the story into various parts, seeing what is moving and hearing what is ticking behind the words of the story.

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