Month: February 2024

“Buried in the Past; Captive to What Was”: National Chaos

For the audio and visual of this sermon:

Psalm 22:22-23  Praise God, you that fear God; stand in awe of Abba God, O offspring of Israel; all you of Jacob’s line, give glory. For God does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty; neither does Abba God hide God’s face from them; but when they cry to Abba God, God hears them.

Introduction

Last week our focus was on the world and its mess. In this global chaos and tumult, it’s easy to lose sight of our own national crises. Sometimes, we will find some sort of macabre comfort casting our gazes outward toward wars located across the planet because we it allows us to ignore what’s going on here within our own boarders (or just outside of them). We’re eager to support causes and advocate for cease-fire, we quickly gather money and supplies and send them across oceans, and we pray and plea for an end to the loss of life and carnage. We throw our weight in the ring backing organizations uphold our personal values, sending aid and assistance to war-torn countries.

None of this is wrong; and I am not criticizing it. However, the error comes when our attention is so solidly fixed elsewhere that we forget our nation is also quite chaotic right now. All I have to say is, “election year”; I bet I solicited a cornucopia of feelings and sensations as 2024 begins to draw its political battle lines—each side suiting up to take the victor’s seat. Each election draws these lines darker and deeper. Each election creates new mythologies and falsehoods burying the truth—whatever that is—deeper in the ground. An election year reminds all of us that our bodies and our lives do not really matter in battles for the seat; many of our bodies are just collateral damage in the debates about legitimacy and alterity. Anyone here feel certain they’re seen, heard, and truly represented? Or are we just chips in a wager on the political poker table where winner takes all?

So much feels hopeless. Anyone feel safe? Our classrooms (from preschools to universities) aren’t safe, not with easy access to military weapons. School bathrooms aren’t safe, not with antiqueer and homophobic rhetoric inspiring violence against our queer children. Grocery stores aren’t safe; roads aren’t safe either. We live in a world that is caught on a seesaw of anger and fear; each time one side drops to the ground it sends out tumultuous waves and ripples of violence, death, and chaos killing, maiming, and disorienting everyone. Every day feels like a gamble, will we all come home tonight or will sorrow and grief darken my door? I feel as if I’m striving to cling to anything, but it’s all slipping away from under my fingers. There’s a pit in my stomach that yells and screams: Go back! Run back to what was! Go back to that shore that was once comfort! Go back to not knowing, go back to when it was easier, go back to when things were better…I don’t care where, just go back to where it’s safe to just live…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

…God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.’…“As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

In our story in Genesis, Moses tells us about the third statement of the covenant between God and Abraham. The first one takes place in Genesis 12 where God initially summons Abram to follow God and God will bless him making him into a great nation. The second time is when this covenant is made more specific in chapter 15. Then our text in chapter 17 is another statement with no reference to the previous statements but incorporating two new aspects to the covenant: a sign will accompany this covenant (circumcision) and a direct mention of Sarai.[1] This iteration of the covenant between Abram and God bears more resemblance to God’s covenant with Noah than it does to the other two summons and covenants.[2]

Moses records God’s discourse to Abram opening with “‘I am El Shaddai.’” This name may appear out of nowhere, but it illuminates the dating of the text. There is some belief that this name means, “‘God, the One of the Mountain,’”[3] and is the way the patriarchs (not Moses) would have experienced God; YHWH—the four-letter word translated as the Lord—would be the word for God known among Moses’s era.[4] So, El Shaddai shows up and speaks to Abram. Abram, at 99, throws himself on his face in the presence of God. And God continues to speak by restating the previous pacts with Abraham. However, this time God changes Abraham’s name because of the future fulfillment of this pact; thus, Abram’s name change to Abraham and Sarai’s change to Sarah mark out their shared destiny: they who are childless will be the progenitors of nations and royal dynasties.[5] This is God’s eternal covenant with Abraham and Sarah and all their offspring and this everlasting covenant will not only bless Abraham and Sarah and their descendants but also all the nations.

God summons Abram and Sarai to walk in a new way, to follow God and walk in God’s ways. This is not a backwards motion. They are called further forward and further into the covenant with God. “Abraham threw himself on his face and laughed, as he said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man a hundred year sold, or can Sarah bear a child at ninety?’” (v. 17). They are asked to walk forward by faith and love, to take hold of God’s hand and descend into the mysteriously impossibile so that God can birth divine possibility through them. They are summoned to die to what they know, all that is comfortable and familiar, even die to that which is scientifically possible, so that they can proceed headfirst into the void of uncomfortable and unfamiliar, into the unknown. Abraham and Sarah must cling to God and descend into this profound mystery.

Conclusion

God is not stuck in the past; God is not captive to what was. God summons and coaxes forward God’s beloved—all creation, from the teensiest, weensiest critter to the biggest, ziggest beast; from the ones that live deep in the oceanic abyss to the ones residing on the peakiest of mountains. God woos the beloved forward, into something NEW, into something new and of God because backward is the stuff of humanity that has long ago expired, gone sour, become septic. For Abram and Sarai, the only way is forward by faith with God as Abraham and Sarah. God does not desire to do an old thing with God’s people; God desires to do new things with his people in a new way and to have them be known by new names.

For us, in our situation, facing what we are facing in our land, the chaos and tumults, the death and destruction, the fear and the anger, we who follow Christ, follow a new and different way of God. Our land is deeply threatened by the old narratives, desperately trying to keep themselves relevant; but they’re not. To follow in these ways is to walk in the way of hopelessness. Rather, we are exhorted to walk with God, to follow in God’s ways, to follow Christ, to live according to the Spirit of love, life, and liberation so that we can bring God’s liberation, life, and love to everyone caught in captivity, death, and indifference as if their lives were expendable (both young and old). However, we cannot do it if we are dead set on going backward, desperately clinging to our comforts and ease. We must let faith lead us down into the darkness, into the impossible so that God may bear through us God’s divine possibility.

Beloved, God calls, may our ears perk up. God comforts, may our souls be soothed. God speaks, may our ears delight in comforting words. God comes, may we run to Abba God. God is doing a new thing in this man from Nazareth, Jesus, the beloved, in whom, by whom, and through whom we are being coaxed forward, released from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Jon D. Levenson, “Genesis,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 37. “Nothing in ch 17 indicates any awareness that the covenant mandated therein has, in fact, already been established two chapter earlier. In our chapter, the two chief innovations are that the covenant acquires a sign (circumcision, v. 10) and that it is Sarah who, despite her advanced age, shall bear the promised son (vv. 15-16, 19).”

[2] Leveson, “Genesis,” 37. “The closest parallel to ch 17 in style and diction is 9.1-17, the account of the covenant with Noah.”

[3] Leveson, “Genesis,” 37. , “El Shaddai is believed to have originally meant ‘God, the One of the Mountain’ and thus to have expressed the association of a deity with his mountain abode well known in Canaanite literature.”

[4] Leveson, “Genesis,” 37. “…the four-letter name translated as Lord was disclosed only in the time of Moses (Exod. 6.2-3), and El Shaddai was the name by which God revealed Himself to the patriarchs.”

[5] Leveson, “Genesis,” 37-38. “The change of name here and in v. 15 signifies change in destiny: The Childless couple will become the ancestors of many nations, including royal dynasties (v. 6).”

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“Buried in the Past, Captive to What Was”: Global Tumult

Psalm 25:7-9 Gracious and upright is God; therefore God teaches sinners in God’s way. Abba God guides the humble in doing right and teaches God’s way to the lowly. All the paths of God are love and faithfulness to those who keep Abba God’s covenant and testimonies.

Introduction

Our world is a mess. Or at least that’s what it feels like. I know we have more access to news via our news feeds, time-lines, and favorite broadcast networks and maybe this could be the reason it feels like our world is such a mess at this moment. But I’m not sure about that. While I know that the average person has more access to knowing what is going on in the world than in eras past, I’m not convinced that’s the reason why it all feels like so much right now. I think it is a lot right now.

I don’t claim that this era is unique in comparison to other eras. I’ve studied the history of the Reformation and know that the 15th and 16th centuries were familiar with kingdoms and kings battling other kingdoms and kings for various reasons—often to serve their own vainglory (in the name of God) to assert one’s power over another kingdom to increase their own territory and reign. The only thing I can claim is that with the advancement of weaponry at human disposal, world-end feels prescient, like it really could happen at any time given the right set of conditions and circumstances, and the right wounded egos. The world feels precariously balanced between life and death. Can this earth and its inhabitants handle one more war? Can it actually put up with one more people group being put under the threat of extinction? Can our world stand under the growing and surging weight of hate and violence?

At times it all feels so helpless. What am I to do? If World War III happens, it happens; and, most likely, many of us will only know it started and not if it ended because the threat of annihilation on a global scale is not unlikely (to use a negative to put it as positively as possible). There’s a pit in my stomach that yells and screams: Go back! Run back to what was! Go back to that shore that was once comfort! Go back to not knowing, go back to when it was easier, go back to when things were better…I don’t care where, just go back to where its safe to just live…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Genesis 9:8-17

God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

This week, Moses tells us of a tale of human behavior gone rancid. Righteousness upon the earth was non-existent save a small family. According to Moses, the world was in such a state that God sent a flood to wipe all unrighteousness from the earth; God wanted to start over. And God did start over. After finding Noah and Noah’s family and after the ark was built carrying two of each kind of animal, God sent heavy rains and flooded the earth. Not a piece of land was left dry when the rains were done. Water covered the entire earth, much like the beginning in Genesis 1 when the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.

This story is hard to swallow and engage with; the cruelty of God is palpable. I mean, weren’t all those people just living as they were taught to live, accustomed to their social situations, and going about their normal lives? Isn’t this response a bit dramatic? A bit violent? A bit much? Would a God of peace and love blot out an entire generation of creation in the blink of an eye because none of it was up to God’s self-defined divine standard?

I don’t blame anyone for focusing on that aspect of the story, and I welcome it. And being aware that the violence of the flood is a part of the story, I want to stress that it’s not the only part of the story: God does not wipe away all humanity but saves a remnant and then proceeds to make a covenant with them. It’s this part of the story that functions as the modus operandi for this sermon. Without ignoring the violence, we can ask: why did God save this family and wipe out the entirety of the human kingdom, thus alleviating the world of such pestilence? Well, God doesn’t tolerate human hubris run amok that threatens life on earth—even the life of the earth itself. God also isn’t stuck in the past but is eager to walk forward into the future with God’s beloved, the righteous remnant, and to continue to establish covenants with them,[1] “everlasting” pacts stitched on the hearts of God and God’s beloved by a sign: this time, a rainbow.[2],[3]

An interesting aspect of this everlasting pact/covenant is that it’s not strictly with Noah and his descendants, as if this specific family alone benefits from the promise embedded in the technicolor bow in the sky that God will never again send the waters to cure the world of human hubris. Keeping in mind the totality of the divine cleansing of the earth, Noah, like Adam before him, now represents all humanity. [4] Thus, God vows God’s extraordinary love,[5] God’s self, and God’s eternal promise to all humanity, all flora and fauna, all the earth.[6] And not only for those present, but the bow ringing the sky—bringing assurance and comfort to all eyes resting upon it[7]—is for all generations from Noah onward, for “all their offspring until the end of the world,” to quote Martin Luther.[8]

Conclusion

God is not stuck in the past; God is not captive to what was. God summons and coaxes forward God’s beloved[9]—all creation, from the teensiest, weensiest critter to the biggest, ziggest beast; from the ones that live deep in the oceanic abyss to the ones residing on the peakiest of mountains. God woos the beloved forward, into something NEW, into something new and of God because backward is the stuff of humanity that has long ago expired, gone sour, become septic. As the waters recede for Noah and his barge of beasts, the only direction is forward into God, eyes fixed on the rainbow of divine promise, into the faith.

Beloved, we are being addressed by God in this story. We need to hear and harken to the call of God’s loving voice, beckoning us forward through this global tumult and chaos, forward into God. Martin Luther writes in his commentary on Genesis,

“We, too, need this comfort today, in order that despite a great variety of stormy weather we may have no doubt that the sluice gates of the heavens and the fountains of the deep have been closed by the Word of God. The rainbow makes its appearance even now, to be a sure sign that a universal flood will not occur in the future. Hence this promise demands also from us that we believe that God has compassion on the human race and will not rage against us in the future by means of a universal flood.”[10]

God calls, may our ears perk up. God comforts, may our souls be soothed. God speaks, may our ears delight in comforting words. God comes, may we run to Abba God. God is doing a new thing in this man from Nazareth, Jesus, the beloved, in whom, by whom, and through whom we are being coaxed forward, released from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Jon D. Levenson, “Gensis,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 24-25. “Having rescued the righteous remnant from the lethal waters, God now makes a covenant with them, just as He will with the people of Israel at Sinai after enabling them to escape across the Sea of Reeds. The closest parallel to our passage, however, is Gen. 17 (the covenant with Abraham)…”

[2] Levenson, “Genesis,” 25. “In each case, God makes an everlasting covenant or ‘pact’…memorialized by a distinctive sign the rainbow in the case of Noah…and circumcision in the case of Abraham and the Jewish people who, he is promise, shall descend from him…”

[3] LW 2:144. “Moreover, this passage also teaches us how God is wont always to link His promise with a sign, just as previously, in the third chapter, we called attention to the garments of skins with which He clothed the naked human beings as a sign that He wanted to protect, defend, and preserve them.”

[4] Levenson, “Genesis,” 25. “…‘descendants of Noah’—that is, universal humanity…”

[5] LW 2:145. “When the same matter is repeated so many times, this is an indication of God’s extraordinary affection for mankind. He is trying to hope for blessing and for the utmost forbearance.”

[6] LW 2:143-144. “…because the covenant of which this passage is speaking involves not only mankind but every living soul, it must be understood, not of the promise of the Seed but of this physical life, which even the dumb animals enjoy in common with us: this God does not intend to destroy in the future by a flood.”

[7] LW 2:145. “For this is the particular nature of signs, that they dispense comfort, not terror. To this end also the sign of the bow was established and added to the promise.”

[8] LW 2:144. “Careful note must be taken of the phrase ‘for all future generations,’ for it includes not only the human beings of that time and the animals of that time but all their offspring until the end of the world.”

[9] LW 2:145. “It is for this reason that God shows Himself benevolent in such a variety of ways and takes such extraordinary delight in pouring forth compassion, like a mother who is caressing and petting her child in order that it may finally begin to forget its tears and smile at its mother.”

[10] LW 2:146.

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“Buried in the Past, Captive to What Was”: Ash Wednesday

Psalm 103:20-22 Bless God, you angels, you mighty ones who do God’s bidding, and hearken to the voice of God’s word. Bless Abba God, all you his hosts, you ministers of God who do God’s will. Bless God, all you works of God, in all places of God’s dominion; bless Abba God, O my soul.

Introduction

We are about a month away from hitting the fourth anniversary of Covid_19 shutting down the world and turning it completely upside down. I can simultaneously believe and not believe that it’s been that long and only that long. It feels like yesterday and so long ago. Time feels thin right now, caught in a paradox of fast and slow, so close and yet so far away, here and not here.

But it’s not only time that feels caught in such a paradox. The atmosphere surrounding our bodies feels caught in its own paradox of familiar and strange. I don’t think I feel all that different than I did on March 12, 2020, but then I feel completely different, like maybe I don’t share one genetic similarity with that woman. But I do! She and I are one, and we did go through and are still going through that massive event that plunged the world into chaos.

And it’s more than just a personal sensation, something unique and private to me. It’s impacting all of us. And not only those of us here in this room, but in our community, in our state, in our nation, and in our world. This entire ball of matter orbiting its sun feels submerged in tumult. One global event after another arises, reminding us viscerally that our lives are short and our bodies fragile and vulnerable. We are not in control, are we? War and violence, genocide and extermination, hate and rage are the fuel motivating bloated egos consumed with power toward global extinction. Our own country grows continually divided over who has liberty and who doesn’t, xenophobia is (re)peaking (if you are not just like us then you are against us), our neighbors are becoming our supposed enemies to our own private freedom and liberty blinding us to the fact that we might be the enemy to ourselves; in short, everything and everyone is a threat. Our many places of worship, those once deemed sacred and safe places, are now battle-ground-zeros for so many people who are sure they know exactly what God thinks and wants, drawing lines thick and dark in the sand, meanwhile fighting terribly to keep their institutional heads above the waters of financial ruin and destitution, afraid to let death come and claim its victims and houses.

Almost four years ago we were thrown into a rupture in time and space, and—I don’t know about you—but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been rescued from it just yet. In fact, I’ll say it boldly, we have not been rescued; we’re still in the rupture. We are further in and further down, but not up and not out.

So, what do we do? Well, the tendency for human nature is to go backward, return to the shore of familiarity and comfortable, swim back to what was, and to ignore that our memory of the past silences malicious secrets and covers over terrible deeds. Humans are convinced that what we know is easier to battle than what we don’t know. We love to look backward with rose colored glasses and reminisce with fondness about things that, frankly, never truly existed as remembered. Our minds lie to us, lure us backward toward images of yesterday that are (actually) images of never-where and never-when. We are easily seduced by thoughts that somehow the past was better, more vibrant, simpler, without difficulty; wasn’t it easier back then…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

It seems Joel’s ancient, prophetic words ring true today. There is trembling among the people, darkness and gloom feel real while clouds and thick darkness taunt us from above. The day of God comes, and we’re yet to be saved from it. There is fear here, in Joel’s words. The people should be afraid of God, says Joel, but not of humanity.[1] But this fear is not because God’s principle characteristic is anger or wrath because God’s character is foremost longsuffering and patient, forgiving and merciful. [2],[3]

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

The people should fear this day of God’s arrival because God will come and expose that what the people have created as a sham: mere phantoms of good; things built in the image of humanity and not by the divine inspiration of God’s loving and gracious Spirit. Joel’s pronouncement of God’s coming judgment and anger summons the people out of themselves—their egos, their power, their pleasure, their comfort—and redirects them to a proper relationship to God (one of dependence and trust, one of reverence and forgiveness). Joel makes it clear, the people have gone astray, they must return to God because in this return God’s displeasure is (potentially) fleeting; it is a moment in time that happens, it will not last forever. [4]

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

God loves God’s people; however, according to all the prophets of Israel and including Joel, God does not love it when the people forfeit their relationship with God for a relationship with power and privilege thus obstructing the wellbeing and livelihood of their neighbors. God does not deal kindly with such mischief. Thus, with their society on ethe edge of judgment and being engulfed by the divine pathos for the Beloved, according to Joel, God’s people can do something to mitigate this coming moment of wrath: they can turn to God because God is merciful and gracious[5] and this turning to God will turn away God’s displeasure,[6] especially if they return in time before God’s day of judgment arrives.[7]

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'”

The Spiritual Leaders of God’s people, according to Joel, are to weep and pray. This is the beginning of a restored orientation toward God. The Spiritual Leaders petition God for God to spare the people and to honor God’s “heritage” thus establishing God’s people among the nations from this time forward. Therein God’s presence among the people will be sustained, letting the world know that God has not abandoned God’s people. Thus, Joel’s question posed by the mouths of priests, “Where is their God?” is moot because God is with them. However, if there is no return to God, then the bitter question remains on the mouths of Israel’s adversaries: where is the Lord your God?[8]

Conclusion

What direction should God’s people turn to return to a right relationship and orientation toward God? Not backward. Israel must not turn backwards to seek God because God is not located in the past, like a relic, stuck in the time and place of yesterday. By going backward, Israel would be betray just how deep is their alliance with their own image. To return to what is known and familiar is always to return to what is human, comprehended with the eyes and ears, to that which is known. To return to what is familiar to deprive God of faith and honor, trust and glory. Thus, it is the way of stagnancy and the status-quo, the way of fearing humans and not God. Going backward, for Israel, will seal their death sentence, hammer in the last nail in their coffin.

To return to God is to move forward into the unknown, to jump into the void, to dive into the rupture. It is all about facing the chaos and discomfort of that which is unseen and yet held by faith and hope. To hear the summons of God from the void, to sense the prophetic summons of God beckoning from the rupture, is to trust and to account to God that which is God’s: worthy of trust and faith; it is to proclaim that God is the truth and the way, thus God is the life. To move forward by faith and trust is to declare to the people and the world that God has not abandoned God’s people; to dive into the void is to affirm that even in this chaos God is present and able to bring order; to jump into the rupture is to render trustworthy God’s promises that all things are possible with God and that God can and will create out of nothing, once again.

So, today we stand at the edge of the void, on the precipice of the rupture, daring to hear the divine summons to enter this darkest of dark nights, and to hold on, by faith, to the presence of God as we tumble into what appears as death and nothingness. All the while we are beckoned to keep looking forward, holding God’s hand as God brings us to God and God’s new thing in the world—not an old thing, not a familiar thing, but a new thing. Tonight, we are brought deep into the divine womb to be born again of God by faith (trust) with thanksgiving into the divine light, life, and liberation. Born again as God’s people resurrected from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[2] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “It is impossible to understand the meaning of divine anger without pondering the meaning of divine patience or forbearance. Explicitly and implicitly, the prophets stress that God is patient, long-suffering, or slow to anger…”

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “Patience is one of the thirteen attributes of God,’ yet never in the sense of apathy, of being indifferent. Contrary to their thinking was the idea of a God who submits to the caprice of man, smiling at the hideousness of evil The patience of God means his restraint of justifiable anger.”

[4] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Anger is always described as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides. The feeling expressed by the rabbis that even divine anger must not last beyond a minute seems to be implied in the words of the prophets.”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Merciful and gracious, rahum ve-hannun…are qualities which are never separable in the Bible from the thought of God.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “As the text leads the readers to sense that human society and culture in Judah are at the brink of obliteration, it asks them to identify with a prophetic voice that calls on them to return to the Lord, to fast and lament. Then the book moves to Judah’s salvation and the rangement of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” 1170. 2.12-17, “On the need to turn back to the Lord, and for a communal lamentation. This must be done before the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which is near or close…otherwise Israel too will be the victim of God’s power.”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 292fn17. “Anguished by the blows of enemies, Israel was the butt of stinging sneer: ‘Where is the Lord your God?’”

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The Paradox of Christian Existence

Psalm 147: 1, 3, 12, 21c Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God! How pleasant it is to honor God with praise! Abba God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. God has pleasure in those who fear him, in those who await God’s gracious favor. Hallelujah!

Introduction

When I became Christian, I remember feeling liberated. Really and truly free, living in the light of God’s love for me in Christ that I felt—truly felt—by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was like being in love for the first time, nothing could dampen that sensation of liberation. Everything felt great. Until.

One day I was driving down 1-95, going somewhere to fetch something, and my eye locked on to the speed-limit sign. For the first time (ever?), I felt compelled to check my speed and slow down. When I normally wouldn’t flinch towards 5-10…ish miles over the speed limit, but this time I did flinch, I did care.

I wish I could say that was the only and last time that ever happened. It wasn’t; it kept happening. I started noticing more and more laws. But it wasn’t like I was noticing the laws and that they infringed on my liberties, but that I saw the law doing something bigger than condemning me (how could it? I was free in Christ from the condemnation of the law!). What did I see? The people being protected by these laws. I remember my heart growing heavier; it was no longer just me on those roads or in that place, I was very aware there were others. My liberation in Christ was now tainted with a burden. A burden to give a heck about my neighbor; a burden to resist myself; a burden to love like I was loved by Christ.

Everything felt different, shifted, big, heavy, real. While I knew and felt that my liberation in Christ wasn’t gone, it was now yoked to this burdened-ness. My inner world shifted from levity to serious. Why hadn’t I seen this before? Why am I seeing it now? 1 Corinthians explains this well,

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

For being free/not under restraint of all things, I am brought under subjection to all, so that I might gain more of them.…For the ones under the law [I made myself] as one under the law, not that I myself am under the law, so that I might gain the ones under the law. For the ones who are lawless, [I made myself] as a lawless one, not being lawless of God but subject to Christ, so that I might gain the lawless. I made myself as the [socio-politically] weak[1] for the [socio-politically] weak so that I might gain the [socio-politically] weak. For all people I have become all things, so that I might save some by all means. Now, I do all things through the good news, so that I might partake jointly of it. (1 Cor. 9:19, 20b-23)[2]

How does this explain what I was experiencing all those years ago as a new Christian? Let me show you. First, Paul tells the Corinthians that his boasting is not in his preaching the gospel. The reason why he doesn’t boast is because a constraint is pressed upon him. He doesn’t have a choice, he is compelled to preach the gospel not for vainglory but for the glory of God which imposes itself on him.[3] Because Paul loves Jesus, he is compelled to proclaim Christ crucified and raised to everyone who will listen, to spread the announcing of God’s good tidings for the beloved.

In fact, Paul is so compelled that if he doesn’t preach the gospel it is woe, or better yet, it is agony forhim.[4] Paul elaborates further with a relatively awkward comment about wages. For if I do this entirely by personal choice,[5] then I have my wages/reward; but, if [I do this entirely] unwillingly, then I have been entrusted with stewardship. Only those who are able to choose to do something earn a reward or “wages”; those who must, who cannot do otherwise, are called and sent, summoned and wrapped up in the divine pathos like the prophets of old.[6] Paul is so commissioned that he refuses payment for preaching the gospel; he forgoes his rights to serve his neighbor.[7]

Then Paul declares that he’s free, not under restraint, and delivered from obligation. Um, what? Paul is talking about the paradox of Christian freedom and responsibility. By faith in Christ, Paul is free, under no obligation, having no restraints laid upon; he is wrapped up in God’s love, mercy, grace, and good pleasure. However, in being so wrapped up by this God means that Paul is also taken by the Holy Spirit of God and caused to love those whom and that which God loves. By this divine Spirit of love, Paul is liberated unto God to be in service to his neighbor, God’s beloved. In this way, Paul will forgo his right to his own liberty to put himself in service to his neighbor by means of the “law of love.” He loves because he has first been loved and cannot do otherwise.

Conclusion

In the beginning of his 1520 treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther offers this about Christian existence:

A Christian person is a free lord above everything and subject to no one.
A Christian person is a devoted-peer servant of everything and subject to everyone.[8]

I bring this up not because I’ve been trying to process the full extent of what this paradox means for Christian faith and praxis in the world before God and before humanity. I bring it up because Christian existence is a paradox. It is a paradox of real, true liberation that is gifted in Christ by the love of God and it brings the believer into true and real life, consummated by the power of the Holy Spirit. But, it comes with a burden. Because, to be so wrapped up in God’s gift of love, life, and liberation, enveloped in God’s grace and mercy through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit means that I am no longer my own, refused access to the law of autonomy; it necessarily means being for my neighbor, whoever they are, to serve them, to bring them the same love, life, and liberation I have. It means to feel the love of God and feel the love of God for the neighbor. It means to see them as God sees them. It means to feel their pain with them as God so feels their pain through Christ’s identification with the oppressed and lowly.

Beloved, you cannot have freedom without responsibility. You cannot have liberation without burden. To have freedom means to be responsible, to use that freedom to serve others is evidence of your freedom. To have liberation means to be burdened with bringing that same liberation to others. To be loved is to love. To be a Christian and to become as Christ, to follow Christ, is to become as one of these others just as he did. To try to have one half of the paradox and not the other is to remain in captivity—you cannot have just liberation and no burden, freedom without responsibility. As soon as you eliminate either part of Luther’s and Paul’s paradox, you lose everything. Beloved, you have been set free to set others free.

[1] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 705. “…the weak is a designation which derives from how ‘the strong’ perceive the social relationship, in addition to denoting an objective social contrast between the influential and the vulnerable In this context the weak may mean those whose options for life and conduct were severely restricted because of their dependence on the wishes of patrons, employers, or slave owners.”

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 695. “Paul has explained that he can glory of boast only where the principle of ‘freely you received, freely give’ operates, and when a renunciation of ‘rights’ is entirely voluntary. This cannot apply in this particular case to the act of preaching alone or to proclamation itself, for, like Jeremiah, in every account of his call Paul insists that God’s compulsion presses upon him.”

[4] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. Woe to me is more about pain, “misfortune, trouble…or agony for me. It is agony if Paul tries to escape from the constraints and commission which the love and grace of ‘the hound of heaven’ presses upon him.”

[5] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. ἑκών “entirely by personal choice” because it is position against compulsion.

[6] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. “Hence Paul makes a logical point that only acts carried out from self-motivation or self-initiative belong to the logical order of ‘reward’; and thereby his own irresistible commission excludes such logic.”

[7] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 697. v. 18 “This verse explicates the point just made above. Only by gratuitously proclaiming the gospel gratis can Paul go beyond the preaching which God has pressed upon him as an inescapable, not voluntary, task, and thereby go ‘the second mile.’ To do this, however, he must forego a right, as he pleads with ‘the strong’ among his readers to do.”

[8] WA 7:21; LW 31:344. Translation mine.

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