Author: laurenlarkin

“Rescued from Danger…Sealed for Thy Courts”: The Path of Easter!

Psalm 118: 14-16a Abba God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!

Introduction

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!

This morning, our calcified hearts prone to wander from God find rest in divine sealing made known in the unsealed, empty tomb. We who are enticed and attracted to the shiny bobbles and fluffy lures of the kingdom of humanity are now ushered into something truly new, truly beaming, truly spectacular, truly built of the divine, eternal, never tarnishing substance that is the love of God for you, the Beloved. This morning, despite our wandering, we come face to face with God in Christ, the one who lives and doesn’t die.

Even when we decided to wander from God, to turn our backs, to forget the ancient and good story, to tread and tromp on everyone and everything, to estrange ourselves, to misjudge and prejudge others unto their condemnation, and even when we preferred acts of violence and death, God sought us and found us as we were wandering “from the fold of God”[1] and set us right. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the warm blanket of the Holy Spirit. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.

Today we’re a people set back on course, eyes lifted, faces turned, fleshy hearts thumping with divine love, hands and feet eager to spread the liberation we have received, and voices ready to call forth life even when all that surrounds us in the world is death. Today we become a people who dares to believe this crazy, far-out story because today become a people brought to life by this good and ancient word of God.

Luke 24:1-12

Now after the women were made full of fear they bowed their faces to the earth; [the two men in clothing shining like lightening] said to the women, “Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead?” (Luke 24:5)

At the end of chapter 23, Luke mentions that the women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and some other women (24:10a)—saw, from a distance, where Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’s body (v.55).[2] It’s these women who now take center stage in the reception of the good news that Jesus is raised. As the men fled, the women held their ground initially in the distance and now the first ones on the scene in Luke’s resurrection story.[3]

Having seen where Joseph placed Jesus’s body (23:55), and it being the first day of the week and still in the depths of early morning, these women went to the tomb bearing the spices they prepared on Friday night (v.1 and 23:56). Keeping in mind that they prepared spices on Friday night, these women are not examples of blind faith despite the facts; for them, as well as for the men, Jesus was dead—very dead. They planned to anoint his body,[4] which wasn’t done in the rush getting his body down from the cross and into a tomb before the sunset and curses arrived (cf. Dt 21:23).

Now, when they arrived at the tomb, they found the stone having been [mysteriously[5]] rolled away from the tomb (v.2). Curious to see what happened, the women entered the tomb. And after entering the tomb they did not find the body of Jesus (v. 3). Luke then writes, while the women were perplexed/in doubt about what had happened, behold! two men approached the women [dressed] in clothing shining like lightening (v.4). The women were confused, and now they became full of fear; upon being approached by two men in dazzling clothing, Luke tells us, they bowed their faces to the earth (5a). In other words, they suddenly dropped to the ground because they were full of terror. While this is a natural and biblical response to angelic visitors, it’s also a human reaction. These women came to anoint Jesus’s body, and not only is it missing (stolen, maybe?) but now two men show up and approach them (Are we in trouble? Are they going to harm us?). Luke does a marvelous job wedding together the spiritual and temporal realities of this story growing in dramatic tension.

Luke then writes that the two gleaming men said to the women, “why are you seeking the one who lives with the dead? He is not here but was raised” (v.5b-6a).For one moment, suspend your judgment and how well you know this story. Stay here with the women hearing, for the first time, that Jesus—whom they saw crucified on Friday and sealed up in a tomb—is not dead but alive because he is risen! Instantaneously, your world is turned upside down…again! As they looked at each other (now more in astonishment and less in fear) they begin the journey of faith as it dawns on them (in their hearts and minds) that death itself has a mortal weakness: God…Is it possible? Is  Jesus alive? Imagine the grief they carried giving birth to hope…hope daring to rise to life in the depths of a tomb meant for the hopelessness of death…

Then Luke tells us that the two men exhort them, remember what he spoke to you while he was still in galilee, saying it is necessary that the son of humanity be betrayed into the hands of sinful humanity and to be crucified and on the third day to be raised up.” And as the men remind them, these women remembered [Jesus’s] words and after returning from the tomb they announced[6] all these things to the twelve and to the all the remaining people (vv. 8-9). That which they hadn’t fully grasped they did as the celestial men spoke to them;[7] they heard,[8] they believed, and they went.[9] If there were ever three phrases that sum up good discipleship, these are they.[10] The women didn’t linger, tarry, hesitate, debate, and didn’t dismiss because this message didn’t align with their social, political, or religious status-quo. They ran home and immediately told the disciples what they heard. Good news arrives!

And then it’s dismissed. Luke informs us, [the women and their words] appeared before [the men] as if silly, idle nonsense; they were disbelieving the women (v.11). The good news the women brought falls flat at the feet of the men they told; [11] save one. Peter is the only who listened and is intrigued enough to run to the tomb, and after stooping to look he saw only the piece of fine linen and then he departed toward home marveling at what had happened (v.12). According to Luke, Peter not only denied Jesus but then didn’t tell the others that the women were correct; he just remained silent and amazed. [12]  Here, Luke draws purposeful attention to the faithfulness of the women who proclaimed the good news even when it sounded ludicrous.[13] They didn’t linger among the dead; inspired by faith,[14] they ran straight into (new) life, spreading the good news of the one who is living, the risen Jesus the Christ. In this moment filled with swelling divine life, the women were resistant to wandering. They ran toward the risen Christ boldly entering a new reality and order where death succumbs to life.[15]

Conclusion

For us who are prone to wander because we forsake and forget the way of the reign of God, this morning we are given Christ himself—all of him—so that we never forget or forsake the way. For us who are addicted to treading on and tromping about the land and on others, we have received a new way to walk in the world demonstrated by the running feet of the women: swift and sensitive, eager to bring good news rather than pain! For us who find ourselves estranged by our own doing and having become strangers to God, to our neighbor, to creation, and to ourselves we are beckoned out of the oppressive col of self-imposed tombs of isolation and are given a community with God, with others, with creation, and with ourselves built on and by the love of Christ. For us who know the pain of being caught in the captivity of misjudging and prejudging others according to our own human standards, we are refused that plumbline and, instead, we are given divine love, life, and liberation as our new metrics of good and right. For us who are drunk with violence and death, we receive what we do not deserve this morning: peace and life eternal.

This morning we’re given something completely new, completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. The women who were encountered in the empty tomb were charged to stop looking for the living among the dead; their lives were never ever the same.[16] So it is with us: our call to be disciples taking up their cross and follow Jesus isn’t gone, it’s the only way we have because the path we learned from the kingdom of humanity is forever blocked off.[17] This morning, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; this morning, we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the celestial realm: he is not here he is risen! How could we ever live in the old way? Everything is now new.

Today, our willful and chaotic wandering collides with the steady path of Christ that is dangerous and not careful, that is risky and not safe, that is radical and not status quo, that will afflict and not always comfort.[18] Today we live under the weight of the question, Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead? (v. 5). Go, Beloved, and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.

[1] Fom the hymn “Come Thou Fount”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 272. “In 23:55 Luke directed our attention to the women who were present at the burial, and now he continues telling us about the activities of these women once the Sabbath rest had passed.”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 272. “It is interesting to note that here again Luke will tell parallel but different stories about the women disciples and the men…These women have been present, but have remained mostly in the background of the story, even since Luke introduced them in 8:2-3. In the narrative of the passion and burial, even while others deny Jesus or flee, these women stand firm, although at a distance. Now they come to the foreground as the first witnesses to the resurrection.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 272-273. “They, no less than the rest, believe that in the cross all has come to an end. It is time to return home to their more traditional lives. But before they do that, they must perform one least act of love for their dead Master: they must anoint his body.”

[5] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 837. “How was the stone removed? Luke’s account neglects such detail, for he wants to move quickly to the pivotal discovery of an empty tomb.”

[6] Gren, Luke, 838-839. “‘Luke underscores the faithfulness of their testimony by noting that they announced ‘all these things’—that is, what they had observed, what they had been told, and the new significance they attributed to Jesus’ passion and the absence of his corpse.”

[7] Green, Luke, 837-838. “These women come looking for Jesus, but they want to minister to him, and as they quickly discover, because they lack understanding, they are looking in the wrong place. The angels first admonish them, employing language that is reminiscent of Jesus’ rejoinder to the Sadducees in 20:38: God is not the God of the dead but of the living! That is, in spite of their devout intentions in coming to anoint Jesus’ body, these women have failed to grasp Jesus’ message about the resurrection and, thus, have not taken with appropriate gravity the power of God.”

[8] Gren, Luke, 838. “The antidote for this miscalculation is remembrance. The women are addressed as person who had themselves received Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and the angel’s message fuses Jesus’ predictions during the Galilean phase of his ministry…Thus they are reminded that the career of the Son of Man blends the two motifs of suffering and vindication, and that in doing so he fulfills the divine will.”

[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The women do not see the resurrected Jesus. The two figures at the tomb (presumably angels) simply tell them that he has risen just as he had foretold, and they believe. Luke does not even say, as do Matthew and Mark (Matt. 28:7; Mrk 16:7), that they are instructed to tell the rest of the disciples (an injunction they follow in Matthew, but not in Mark). They simply hear the witness of the two men at the tomb, and apparently on their own initiative go and tell the others.”

[10] Gren, Luke, 838. Seim qtd in. “Their reception of the resurrection message ‘confirms their discipleship and the instruction they have received as disciples.’”

[11] Green, Luke, 839-840. “The gap between male and female disciples widens, as the faithful account of the women falls on the cynical and unbelieving ears of the men. Nothing more than useless chatter—this is how their announcement is evaluated and discarded. This can be explained in at least to aways. First, the earlier situation of the women disciples is being repeated int eh case of their male counterpart; failing to grasp Jesus’ teaching regarding his suffering and resurrection, they cannot make sense of the news share d with them. At the same time, however, Luke’s ‘all this’ (v 8) cannot but include the message they had received form the angels, so that the men were given access to the significance of recent events. The dismissive response of the men is therefore better explained with reference to the fact that those doing the reporting are women in a world biased against the admissibility of women as witnesses.” Peter’s response is all the more positive.

[12] Green, Luke, 840. Amazement is not faith nor does it hint at the eventual genuine faith. “Unlike the women, [Peter] returns home with no new message to share.”

[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The contrast is such that one cannot avoid the conclusion that it is purposeful, and that Luke is stressing the faith of these women who have traveled with Jesus from Galilee, and who were the only ones who remained true throughout the entire story of the betrayal. Even though the later course of church history, with its expectation of entirely male leadership, would lead us to think otherwise, it is they who bring the message of the resurrection to the eleven, and not vice versa.”

[14] Green, Luke, 836. “The Evangelist has repeatedly noted the incapacity of the disciples to grasp this truth…but now he signals a breakthrough on the part of the women. If the male disciples continue in their obtuseness, and thus lack of faith, at least Peter response to the witness of the women by going to the tomb. His behavior portends at last the possibility of a more full understanding of Jesus’ message on their part.”

[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 274. “The resurrection is not the continuation of the story. Nor is it just its happy ending. It is the beginning of a new story, of a new age in history.”

[16] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “But the truth is that the resurrection of Jesus, and the dawning of the new with him, poses a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story. The women on their way to the tomb were planning to perform one last act of love for Jesus, and then would probably just return home to their former lives. Peter and the rest would eventually return to their boats, their nets, and the various occupations. But now the empty tomb opens new possibilities. Now there is no way back to the former life in Galilee. Even though Luke tells us that Peter simply went home after seeing the empty tomb, we will soon learn that this was not the end of it: Peter himself would eventually die on his own cross.”

[17] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The resurrection is a joyous event; but it also means that Jesus’ call for his disciples to take up their cross and follow him is still valid. The road to the old ways in Galilee is now barred. The resurrection of Jesus impels them forward to their own crosses, and indeed, we know that several of the disciples suffered violent death as the result of their following and proclaiming the Risen One.”

[18] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The full message of Easter is both of joy and of challenge. It is. The announcement of unequaled and final victory, and the call to radical, dangerous, and even painful discipleship.”

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“Prone to Wander”: Into the Tomb

Psalm 114:7-8 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of Abba God, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.

Introduction

A day of silence. A day of eyes dampened with doubt, confusion, fear, anger, and even despair. It’s not just the women who cry; the men cry, too; no one is exempt from the overwhelming barrage of emotions that comes when hopes are dashed, expectations go up in flames, and faith feels shattered. The one whom they loved, the one whom they followed, the one whom they would die for—so they claimed—had been killed, and his body lay in a sealed tomb, guards flanking the massive stone. They didn’t even have time to prepare his body properly before the Sabbath moon rose gently in the sky reminding them that what was was no longer …

In the silence of that Sabbath, thoughts of what happened, how could this be, what was it all for, is this really it paraded about the minds of the disciples as they forced themselves to rest, no recourse to business of banal tasks to keep their minds occupied. They were stuck in this moment of death, like Jesus in that tomb. The extra layer for some (all?) is that they didn’t stick around, defend, follow Jesus all the way… They ran, denied, hid, betrayed. Their consciences were plagued with loss and confusion and burdened with the uncomforting, weighted-blanket of failure and guilt—heavier for some, lighter for others. These precious souls (no matter their guilt and failure, their denial and betrayal) had to endure the sun-down to sun-down plus a few more hours to receive the actual ending of the story. On this night, all those years ago, the disciples of Christ sighed, wiped away tears, and wondered what it was all about… Death, and all its children, held them hostage like Christ sealed in the tomb.

On this night, all those years ago, the disciples died with Christ. What they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t as over …

Romans 6:3-11[1]

In Romans 6, Paul anchors the silence of Saturday into the death of Good Friday and the life of Easter Sunday. For Paul, those who follow Christ follow him in the ways they speak and act and through deep identification with Christ even if it means going into the tomb with Christ on Good Friday. For Paul, this identification with Christ in Christ’s death is the key to the identification with Christ in his resurrected life. For Paul, this is how believers participate in the entirety of the Easter event, from beginning to end, from death into new life. In other words, our Romans passage is a clear distillation of what is happening as we transition from death to life through the silence of Saturday.

Paul begins with a question (v. 1) that he then (passionately) answers in v. 2: What therefore will we say? Should we persist in sin so that grace might superabound? Hell no! How can we who died to sin still live in it? In this portion, Paul addresses the new life believers have in Christ: this is absolutely not a continuation of what has gone before and is something completely new! There is a clean break between what was sealed up in the tomb with Christ on Good Friday, and the new life the believers step into on Easter Sunday Morning.

Because there is no continuation between what was by deeds of the flesh and what is now by faith in Christ, Paul feels compelled to ask the Romans, Or, do you not know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (v.3)Meaning, there’s a lie floating about that those who believe in Christ don’t suffer Christ’s fate, that we are exempted from that death. For Paul, while we weren’t nailed to the cross in literal terms, we do suffer a death like Christ’s, and this is actualized in our participation in the waters of baptism. (Being submerged under the water is to buried with Christ, to come up out of the water is to be raised with Christ.) For Paul, it is imperative that we take seriously the reality that we die like Christ; for Paul (and thus for us), THIS IS GOOD NEWS! Paul writes, Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of Abba God, in this way we, we might also walk in the newness of life (v.4). Through what God did in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, death that leads to life is the only path for believers. What is ruled out? Death that leads to death. Why? Because those who journey through a death like Christ’s receive resurrection into new life that cannot die like Christ cannot die (and this new life is both internal and external, spiritual and temporal!).[2] Thus why Paul can then write, For if we have become united together with him in a death like his death, we will also [be united with him in his] resurrection (v. 5). We live unafraid of another death because we live eternally in and with Christ.

Paul continues to elaborate about this identification between the believer and Christ, Knowing that our old person was crucified together [with Christ] with the result that the body of sin is abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who has died [with Christ] has been declared righteous from sin (vv. 6-7). Paul anchors the believer in the death of Christ so that their body of sin—not their existence as fleshy creatures, but their defective orientation resulting in sin thus death[3]—is put to death and this is liberation because it cannot weigh the believer down anymore. Another way to say this is that by virtue of identification with Christ in Christ’s death, sin and its consequence, death, are put to death.[4] What was ushered in by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, has been put asunder by the death of death that is brought in and through Christ’s death and resurrection. And if this is the case, then with Paul we can say, And if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with him (v.8). Captivity itself is now held captive and the captives—the ones formerly held in captivity to sin and death—are liberated.[5]

Paul then writes, Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead no longer dies, death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God [always]. Thus you, you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin and only living to God in Christ Jesus. For those who follow Christ, to live is to live unbound by death, released from captivity, no longer controlled and threatened by sin. According to Paul, it’s not that believers now no longer sin; they do. Believers will miss the mark, they will shoot and not score, they will mean one thing and do another, they will harm, they will mar, they will wound. What Paul is getting at is that the believer—while still a sinner—is liberated from the effects of sin which is death. The believer—now declared righteous although a sinner still (simul iustus et peccator)—has died once and for all (like Christ) and never needs to die again to sin (though sin is going to happen).[6] In other words, the believer does not need to intentionally sin so that they can die again to sin and again be declared righteous. Doing so is unnecessary and declares the grace of God unnecessary (Hell no!), as if being made righteous can come by any other means apart from grace and faith in Christ.

Because Jesus died once for all, believers in union with Christ by faith will never really die (they will “fall asleep in Christ”) because death has met its own death, captivity its own captivity. [7],[8] Rather, like Christ, they will live by the grace of God and for the grace of God.[9] This is an eternal living because the believer—by faith and God’s grace—lives in Christ and Christ who is now the Lord of life is no longer subject to death and its lordship—thus, those who live in Christ have life eternal because Christ is now eternal even in his raised and ascended body.[10] Even when sin shows up in the believer’s life—and it will—this eternal living is not hindered or hampered. Rather—through easy access to forgiveness and absolution—the believer can get up, wipe the dust off, and try again to live the life that reflects their eternal life in Christ.[11] Here the spiritual can manifest in the temporal, the outer aligns with the inner, God’s will can be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deathly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, waiting for the dawn of second full day after Christ’s death, they died, each one of them died with Christ—in grief, loss, shock, doubt, hopelessness, helplessness. They despaired of themselves, they released all that they thought was, and they came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to the divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound or word, God was about to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are all stuck in our sin, set on a path toward death eternal, forever held captive by its threat and presence, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against death and its fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. As those who are prone to wander, God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to be our new life marked by remembering and not forgetting, walking and not tromping, gathered and not estranged, accepting and not judging, peaceful and lifegiving and not violent and death-dealing. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

[1] All translations from Romans are mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25:309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[3] LW 25:313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[4] LW 25:310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good. It is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated form sin and the body is separated rom corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life. For to this kind of death alone belong in an absolute and perfect way the conditions of death, and in this death alone whatever dies perishes totally and into eternal nothingness, and nothing will ever return from this death because it truly dies an eternal death. This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity…”

[5] LW 25:310. “This is the principle theme in scripture. For God has arranged to remove through Christ whatever the devil brought in through Adam. And it as the devil who brought in sin and death. Therefore God brought about the death of death and the sin of sin, the poison of poison, the captivity of captivity.”

[6] LW 25:314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[7] LW 25:311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive’ means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[8] LW 25:311. “For the entering into life can, and necessarily must, become a departure from life, but the ‘escape form death’ means to enter into a life which is without death.”

[9] LW 25:313. “Nor can he be freed of his perversity except by the grace of God…This is said not only because of the stubbornness of perverse people but particularly because of the extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God himself because of his love of concupiscence.”

[10] LW 25:315. “For just as the ray of the sun is eternal because the sun is eternal, so the spiritual life is eternal because Christ is eternal; for He is our life, and through faith He flows into us and remains in us by the rays of His grace. Therefore, just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace which flows out of Him is from His eternal nature. Furthermore, just because a man sins again his spiritual life does not die, but he turns his back on this life and dies, while this life remains eternal in Christ.”

[11] LW 25:315. “He has Christ, who dies no more; therefore he himself dies no more, but rather he lives with Christ forever. Hence also we are baptized only once, by which we gain the life of Christ, even though we often fall and rise again. For the life of Christ can be recovered again and again, but a person can enter upon it only once, just as a man who has never been rich can begin to get rich only once, although he can again and again lose and regain his wealth.”

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“Prone to Wander”: Willingly Killing God

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

Should have done it sooner but I didn’t because
I don’t even know myself
Everything I’m based on is just something I was
And I can’t even sell myself
Oh mirror mirror hanging on the wall
Show me how to love myself
Should have done it sooner but I didn’t because
I don’t even trust myself[1]

We are so prone to wander from the God whom we love that we will willingly choose indifference rather than love, captivity rather than liberation, and death rather than life. We will forget what we stand for, whose we are, and what we were meant to do and be in the world; for what? Short term success? We will throw our friends under the bus, and we will forget our neighbor and let them be dragged by the words and deeds of others; for why? To keep ourselves secure in our peer groups, at work, and hidden from the judgmental eye of our family? We will literally scorch the earth for profit, burn every bridge out of vengeance, and cut off our noses to spite our faces; for whom? No one. In the end no one will be in our corner because their bodies will be casualties in our own personal vendetta against life, love, and liberation.

I look much smaller seen from inside out
Far too small to see myself
Down on reflection, cast in hate and in doubt
Flawed and flaws I add myself
Oh mirror mirror hanging on the wall
Please just show me someone else
My hopes were low and I got so much so less
Nothing left to save myself[2]

I wish I had better news. But I don’t. At the end of the day yesterday, we all imagined that we would do what the Israelites did during the Passover, that we would exclaim with Peter, Wash all of me!, that we wouldstep back from our own weak and faulty judgment and trust God, letting faith work itself out in actions of love and trust in God and in our community. The reality is that our exposure yesterday bleeds into today: we’re not able to suspend our judgement long enough to bring God glory and well-being to our neighbor. In fact, we are dead set on doing the exact opposite:  dragging God down to our level, baptizing God in our image, and driving our neighbor further and further into alienation and isolation.

Each day a broken clock is true at least twice
Twice the odds I give myself
I know it would be kinda easier sometimes
If I felt like someone else
This is my SOS, these are the bridges I’m burning
I never needed such help, this is my SOS
I gave my level best, these hands are drowning, not waving
This is my SOS, this is your heart and I’m breaking[3]

The worst part about all of this is that we’re all captive and complicit in the destruction and death raining down around us. We definitely bring it upon ourselves and of our own volition. To be honest, can we even choose anything different? We’re steeped and marinated in a culture that prizes a dog-eat-dog mentality, where the dog is another human being (our neighbor, our friends, our family). We grow up thinking that our free will is what caused us to become so successful, ignoring the luck of birth year, family of origin, skin color, sex assigned at birth, ability to fit in with the status quo, and the access to funds that open doors. We are bombarded with explicit and implicit messages that human beings are only as good as their productivity, the tautness of their skin, the firmness of their muscles, and the sturdiness of their steps. We’re drowned in a deluge of national and local rhetoric that plays off of our worst fears and provokes our deepest anger, that convinces us to confuse security built by militarized weapons with enduring peace. It’s not only that we have a wandering heart—we do; we’re taught to wander, to stray, to estrange ourselves from God and rewarded with cash to do so…if we’re lucky. In doing so, we are prone to promote death (in all of its insidious manifestations), even to the point of causing it.

Isaiah 53:1-12

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah doesn’t identify who the speaker is here; it could be anyone: rulers of other nations, the Israelites themselves, Isaiah himself.[3] The passage is also silent as to whether this suffering servant suffered and the others did not, or if he suffered alongside the suffering of others.[4] The absence of a definitive voice and the ambiguity of the extent of suffering allows this passage to be a point of brutal exposure. As we take on the role of speaker, we become accountable in this event because the “we” and “our” become our pronouns; we’re implicated, we’re guilty, we’re the ones who transgressed and sinned and put it on an innocent other and then, like narcissistic, gaslighting pros, we turned against him and accounted and accused him of being stricken by God.

We enter the narrative as the ones who scapegoated Christ to appease our own judgments of good and right and wrong and bad. And, whether we like it or not, we are exposed. We cannot have it any other way; as these prophetic words are read to us, we are brought into the prophet’s pain[5] at what is to come for the suffering servant. In being brought into Isaiah’s pain, we’re brought into God’s pain and thus we’re exposed for who and what we are. We’re not given an option to discard the invitation; our RSVP has already been mailed back affirming that we will attend this event of the destruction of the innocent one as our. In other words, we, with Isaiah and God and the Suffering Servant, are invited to suffer, too.[6]

And we do suffer. We suffer because we’re guilty. We might be wonderfully and fearfully made, but we’re guilty; we’re beloved and complicit; we’re helpless and captive and condemned. No matter what justifications and excuses we may throw around, the reality is: we’ve brought ourselves here, to this point, to the depths of the horrors of human existence, to the reality that we would rather harm and kill anyone who comes against our power and privilege. Isaiah brings us into the light of our most dire confession and transfers to us his suffering and agony, [7] transfers to us God’s suffering and agony[8] because of our wayward hearts hardened by our greed, lust, vanity, rage, theft, gluttony, and pride. Here, in the light shining through the suffering servant, the blood on our hands is illuminated. There’s no getting ourselves off this hook.

Conclusion

We’re in agony, we’re suffering, we’re stuck, we’re captive to death, and we’re exposed.

Rather than let Christ’s voice call us, Christ’s actions challenge us, Christ’s presence change us, we clamor for Jesus’s death, and we get it. Because we would rather be violent to reinforce how right we are than suffer the humiliation of maybe being wrong; because we prefer to stay on our own devised course, we refuse to change directions and dare to take an unfamiliar path; because we’re prone to wander because of our own choices and calcified hearts, the judgment of God is surely upon us. Today, in this story, we’re reminded that Jesus bore our iniquity…because he bore our very, very bad judgment informed by the doctrines and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and not the kingdom of God.[9] The weight of that judgment, as we watch and witness the death of God by our hand, renders us to our own death. Today, our incarceration to our own comfort, to what makes our own selves feel safe, to our obsession with violence and death comes to a cataclysmic head-on collision with God; none of us survive.[10]

Today, we get what we want; by our own hands we realize and affirm our captivity to our own fear and our anger. Today, we stop moving and we curve all the way in. Today, we’re dead where we are and as we were, stuck in the thick of violent impulses and submerged in our own human-made culture of death. Because today, we killed God.

[1] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 1.

[2] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 2.

[3] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 3 and chorus.

[3] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 891. “The identity of the speakers who express their shock at the career of the servant is unclear.”

[4] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 891-892. “Either the servant suffered on behalf of the speakers (i.e., the guilty were not punished at all), or he suffered along with the guilty, even though he himself did not share in the guilt of his fellow Israelites. The former idea (i.e., the notion of vicarious suffering) would be unusual for the Bible; the latter idea (the idea of corporate guilt) is not.”

[5] Abraham Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 149.

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 149. “As a rule we reflect on the problem of suffering in relation to him who suffers. The prophet’s message insists that suffering is not to be understood exclusively in terms of the sufferer’s own situation. In Israel’s agony, all nations are involved. Israel’s suffering is not a penalty, but a privilege, a sacrifice; its endurance is a ritual, its meaning is to be disclosed to all men in the hour of Israel’s redemption.”

[7] Heschel, Prophets, 149. “Deliverance, redemption, is what the Lord has in store for Israel, and through Israel for all men. Her suffering and agony are the birth-pangs of salvation which, the prophet proclaims, is about to unfold. In answer to the prophet’s fervent invocation (51:9), the Lord is about to bare His arm or His might before the eyes of all the nations. (Cf. 52:10 with 53:1).”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 151. “Israel’s suffering is God’s grief. In reflecting on what this people has endured, His words sound like pangs of remorse.”

[9] LW 17:221. “It was not for Himself and His own sins, but for our sins and griefs. He bore what we should have suffered.”

[10] LW 17:221-222. “We thought he was suffering because of His own sin, as it were. In the eyes of the world and of the flesh Christ does not suffer for us, since He seemed to have deserved it Himself. This is what the prophet says here too, that He was judged guilty in the eyes of the world. It is therefore difficult to believe that such a one suffered for us. The Law is that everybody dies for his own sins. Natural reason, and divine as well, argues that everybody must bear his own sin. Yet He is struck down contrary to all law and custom. Hence reason infers that he was smitten by God for His own sake. Therefore the prophet leads us so earnestly beyond all righteousness and our rational capacity and confronts us with the suffering of Christ to impress upon us that all that Christ has is mine. This is the preaching of the whole Gospel, to show us that Christ suffered for our sake contrary to law, right, and custom.”

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“Prone to Wander”: Human Judgment, Judged

Psalm 116: 1,10 I love Abba God, because Abba God has heard the voice of my supplication, because Abba God has inclined Abba God’s ear to me whenever I called upon Abba God. How shall I repay Abba God for all the good things Abba God has done for me?

Introduction

Our journey through Lent to Holy Week has brought us to the reality of our situation. We have seen that we’re prone to forsake and give up following the way of the reign of God; we have seen that we’re prone to tromp and tread on the land, on our neighbor, on God, and on ourselves; we have seen that we’re eager to estrange ourselves and become strangers to God, thus to our neighbor, thus to ourselves. While we would love for the exposure of Lent to be over, our exposure is, only now, getting personal.

Maundy Thursday isn’t really about “foot washing” or about finding ways to make yourselves smaller and more servant-like to your neighbor—even though such acts are exposing and can bring a certain (healthy) amount of humility. Rather, Maundy Thursday is about Peter being exposed for what he doesn’t understand about who Jesus is and what his mission on earth is all about. And, thus—if it’s about Peter being exposed—it’s about us being exposed for not really getting what Jesus is truly up to. While we claim all year to know what God’s mission is in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we don’t really know and we often forget what it is once we’re told, and we conflate it and force it to conform with our own desires, and (then) walk away from it completely. Maundy Thursday is designed to drive some of those final and big nails into our coffin of exposure. As we gaze upon Christ in the gospel story, watch him remove his clothes and don only a wrap around his waist and begin to wash the feet of his disciples, we should feel the urge building up to blurt out, with Peter, “‘You will never wash my feet!’” A simple statement meant for respect yet exposing how much we really don’t understand what is happening or why Christ is here. On Maundy Thursday, our judgment is called to account for itself, and it will be found lacking.

We are prone to bad judgment because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Exodus 12:1-14

Here in our First Testament passage from the book of Exodus, Moses and Aaron receive the instructions for the Passover event. The Passover marks the beginning of a new era for Israel. While the exodus event through the Sea of Reeds is the tangible component of Israel’s promised liberation, it is the meal that marks the beginning of the new era defined by redemption. [1] It is this Passover event that is, for Israel, the break in time and space between what was and what will be. Their liberation begins in believing God, trusting God’s word—faith manifesting in action; this is why the Passover event of liberation becomes the mark of a new year for Israel and will always be a mark of a new year: each new year will solicit a new faith to enter the dusk setting on yesterday and dawn rising on tomorrow.[2]

The response of Israel built on faith in God’s trustworthiness and truthfulness is to prepare, eat, and perform a meal in a specific way. God informs Moses and Aaron that on the tenth day of the month all of Israel is to take an unblemished, one year-old, male lamb (one per household or one per a couple of small households), and on the fourteenth day they must slaughter their lambs at twilight. The blood from this sacrifice is to be painted onto the doorposts and lintels of the households where the Passover lamb must be eaten. God then gives very specific instructions regarding the eating of the lamb and the Passover meal:

“They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” (Ex. 12:8-11)

This isn’t any other meal; it’s a meal that’s refusing enjoyment, merriment, and lingering. Every part of this meal must take place with intention and presence; it’s to be done in haste as if the threat of death looms on the boundary of the meal—because it does loom.[3] “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt,” (v.13). They will eat this meal, putting all their faith in God and that God is faithful to God’s promises that those who follow what has been told to Aaron and Moses will be exempted from this final curse of the passing over of God and the execution of divine judgment on all the firstborns of the land.[4]

The Israelites must suspend their own judgment. They must step into the void from where God beckons them and faith lures them. They must not pause and consider what is common sense or what aligns with what they know to be good and right. In this moment, human judgment comes under attack by the unstated, whom do you love? The Israelites, individually and as a community had to give their answer. That night, as the angel of death swept over Egypt striking down all the firstborn of the land, divine judgment was executed; that night as families woke up human judgment received its verdict.

Conclusion

Would you? Put yourselves in Israel’s shoes. Would you kill the lamb, paint its blood on your door frames, and eat that meal in haste? Would you risk the life of your child, the life of your sibling, the your own life to appease what made the most sense to you? While we read this as a myth, it’s still a myth with a purpose to expose us. The question comes to us through these Ancient Israelites stuck in captivity and oppression. Would each of us, would we as a community, be able to see the depth at which God is doing a new thing in our lives to liberate us from captivity? Would we be able to trust that God is doing this thing and that God is truthful and trustworthy and will make good on God’s promises? Would we be able to suspend our judgment long enough to let God be God?

I’m neither advocating for “blind” and “uninformed” faith no affirming that voice in your head you think may God’s Spirit telling you to do something a bit uncharacteristic (always have those ideas checked by scripture and teaching!). What I am advocating for is this: are we able to suspend our human informed judgment long enough to see when God is doing something new in the world even when it contradicts our conception of what should be done in the world? Are we able to suspend what we think is right and good long enough to see when God is working a new thing for the wellbeing of our neighbor, which ends up being (ultimately) for our own wellbeing? Are we able to unplug our eyes and ears from what we have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing long enough to see and hear when God is calling us into liberation, into love, and into life and away from captivity, away from indifference, and away from death? Would we be able to learn something new about God’s divine mission in the world so to echo Peter’s eager and desperate response to Jesus, Wash not only my feet but my whole body, inside and out!? Would you be able to suspend your judgment long enough to let God be God?

The bad news is that we, as fleshy meat creatures prone to wander, will deliver our answer; the good news is that God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 125. “Preparations for the exodus” “Israel is to prepare for the coming redemption with a sacrificial banquet while the final plague is occurring and is to commemorate the event in the future on its anniversary by eating unleavened bread for a week and reenacting the banquet. This banquet became the prototype of the postbiblical Seder, the festive meal at which the exodus story is retold and expounded each year to this day on the holiday of Pesah (Passover), as explained below.”

[2] Tigay, “Exodus,” 125. “Since the exodus will be commemorated on its anniversary every year…the preparatory instructions begin with the calendar. Henceforth the year will commence with the month of the exodus, and months will be referred to by ordinal numbers rather than names….Since the number will mean essentially ‘in the Xth month since we gained freedom,’ every reference to a month will commemorate the redemption.”

[3] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “The Israelites are to eat while prepared to leave on a moment’s notice.”

[4] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “In most European languages, it is also the name of Easter (as in French ‘Paques’). The translation ‘passover’ (and hence the English name of the holiday) is probably incorrect. The alternativity translation ‘protective offering’ is more likely…”

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“Prone to Wander”: Estranged

Psalm 126:6-7 Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Introduction

In continuing our Lenten theme, “Prone to wander,” let’s look at verse two of the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,”

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood. [1]

In this season of long, sober, and honest self-reflection, we must come to terms with what verse two is suggesting: our voluntary estrangement from God, from our neighbor, and from ourselves. This isn’t a simple and innocent wandering away because we’re just absent minded or aloof. There’s no space here for that “oopsies, my bad” as we lift our head and realize, we have no idea where we are. There’s no way we can claim, “not guilty.” We are guilty. We’ve estranged ourselves from God, from our neighbor, from the created world because we’ve prioritized me and mine (my comfortableness, my pleasure, my rights, my power, my privilege, my whatever) over and against what might be better for bringing God glory, health to the earth, well-being to my neighbor, and (ultimately) wholeness to myself.

To estrange ourselves is to put on a “stranger” status. In being a stranger toward God, toward our neighbor, toward the earth, and toward ourselves we act as if we are not a part of God, as if we are not a part of a society filled with other human beings, as if we’re not a part of a created realm of flora and fauna that has an equably respectable existence of its own right, as if we’re not a part of ourselves but souls stuck in flesh suits. What verse two is saying is that we elect, we choose, we opt for this “stranger” status even as we point fingers and declare other people to be strangers worthy of expulsion. In other words, and to be blunt about it, we aren’t seeking God and God’s love, life, and liberation. Rather, we’re actively seeking our demise: building up silos of the indifference, death, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity that will only lead to our destruction. We need intervention, we need help; we’re not as capable as we like to think we are.

We are prone to become strangers and to estrange ourselves because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Isaiah 43:16-21

Zooming out a bit, chapter 43 is a great litany of personal statements about God and God’s activity in the world on behalf of Israel. Israel is exhorted, at the beginning, not to fear because God is with them, “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made,’ (vv. 5-7). Also, Israel is to come to terms with the reality that they have wandered away, forgotten this God whom they are not to fear who is with them. Their love has grown cool, and they’ve estranged themselves from this God, “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel! You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings or honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. You have not bought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. Rather, you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities,” (vv. 22-24). By the hand of a talented seamstress, a subtle thread is sown throughout the chapter holding it all in place: the image of a courtroom. If Israel so desires, they can bring God to court, if they so wish. But, Israel should be warned, it won’t go very well: both the nations will affirm (vv. 8-10) and Israel will be found guilty (vv. 25-28) in light of God’s faithfulness to God’s beloved and (not shoved off or pushed away but) restored perfectly.[2]

If we were to break chapter 43 into quarters, our portion is the third quarter and the second time the prophet exhorts Israel to remember who this God is with whom they are in relationship.[3] Isaiah says, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down; they cannot rise; they are extinguished, quenched like a wick…” (vv. 16-17). For Isaiah, this “the Lord” of “Thus says the Lord” is none other than the Great Liberator of the people[4] and, therefore, must be listened to and heeded. By recalling the liberation of Israel from Egypt, Isaiah wants Israel to remember what is known as the greatest event of liberation in their history. But then God, through Isaiah, says this, “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” (vv. 18-19). In other words, according to the flow of thought offered here, Isaiah brings to Israel’s mind the greatest event of liberation in their history and then tells them that the liberation from Babylon that is to come will be something even bigger and better.[5] Israel, while having an eye to the past, must turn their heads forward and dare to believe through an unknown future that not only will God act again as God did but that God will do so in a new way.[6]

This “new way” will be so great that it is compared to a “way” in the wilderness and a “river” in the desert, making passage easy through challenging, strenuous, and deadly environments. So, the new thing will be big and grand, it’ll be easy (an established path in the wilderness) and refreshing (accessible water in the desert), but it will also solicit praise from creation. God promises through Isaiah, “The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people…” (v. 20). As God prepares a way and provides for Israel, the “wild animals” will honor God because of God’s deeds. And all this is oriented toward inciting Israel to praise God, “…the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise,” (v. 21). What is to come will eliminate Israel’s self-induced and self-destructive estrangement; the children of Israel, God’s beloved, will no longer be strangers to God but brought through chaos, tumult, and the threat of death into order, peace, and a very real and thriving life in and with God. All that Israel has known and does know will be shattered and rendered void in what God is going to do.[7] God will come to God’s estranged beloved and reorient them to God’s self and they will have love, life, and liberation to the fullest.

Conclusion

Unlike previous weeks, this passage from Isaiah is completely about Israel estranging itself from God. In fact, it’s about God making Isarel very aware of how far they have (in fact) strayed from God and voluntarily postured themselves as strangers toward God. Isaiah has proven the point through divine inspiration that Israel is prone to wander and will choose to do so when given the leash to do so. And this is why these words of Isaiah’s are presented to us during Lent. We are brought into the story to witness to the fact that the ones whom God liberated from Egypt have estranged themselves from this same loving, life-giving, and liberating God. I say this not only because Isaiah has said it; I say this because all the other prophets following Isaiah will also say it. They will highlight that Israel—no matter what type of liberation is experienced—will (voluntarily) turn, wander, and estrange themselves from God. And in estranging themselves from God, Israel will estrange themselves from their neighbor, the surrounding nations, and in this they will also forsake the calling they have to be a conduit for divine blessing to the nations—to be estranged from God is to close the door on their divinely given mission to be the ones who correct the wrongs in the world. In becoming estranged from God, their mission, and their neighbor, they will turn in on themselves and becomes estranged from who they are and are intended to be. Israel will forget God is the source of their identity and create their own identity by their own means, completely disconnected from God and their neighbor, and they will propel themselves into manifold danger. Being convinced of their own power, they will credit their liberation to themselves. Isaiah knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this fifth week of lent, let us consider our times of our own voluntary estrangement from God, from our neighbor, from the earth, from our divinely given mission in the world that is to bring glory to God and well-being to the neighbor. In our estrangement from our God, our neighbor, our earth, and our mission, let us consider how we’ve become estranged from ourselves, not knowing who we are, whose we are, or for what we were created. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we are fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 871.  “…God recalls the sins of the Israelites (especially of the exiles’ ancestors), focusing on their failure to conduct proper sacrifices. The passage underscores the justice of their punishment and hence emphasizes that God is neither uncaring toward Israel nor too weak to save it. Once the punishment has been completed, there is no impediment to Israel’s restoration.”

[3] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 336. “The promises of the passage are divided into two parts, both introduced by a messenger formula. In the first, the emphasis falls on the merciful intervention of God for Israel’s sake to shatter Babylon’s power and to free the prisoners…In the second, there is a conscious allusion to the former deliverance from the captivity of Egypt…Of course, this event had become for Israel the example par excellence of God’s great redemptive power, which was continually celebrated in song and worship from its inception.”

[4] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 871. vv. 16-17 “A reference to the parting of the Reed Sea and the defeat of Pharaoh’s army there.”

[5] Sommer, “Isaiah,”871. “Long ago God took Israel out of slavery and defeated the mighty Egyptians. The liberation from Babylonian exile will prove even more impressive than the exodus from Egypt.”

[6] Childs, Isaiah, 337. “The rhetorical point of v. 18 is the contrast between the old and the new things. The coming salvation will completely transcend any experience of the past. The way in the wilderness will climax in the honoring of God not only by the wild beasts, but above all by his chosen people who declare his praise.”

[7] Childs, Isaiah, 337. “In spite of a broken text, the author interpret the Isaianic text as pointing to an eschatological new creation that shatters the old order.”

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“Prone to Wander…”: Desecrating Sacred Ground

Psalm 63:7-8 For you, Abba God, have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice. My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.

Introduction

I mentioned recently that, “Come Thou Fount” is not only one of my favorite hymns but is the inspiration for my messages through out Lent. As our sign out front says: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love.” While the third verse is my absolute favorite, the other two are remarkable. For this week, the first verse aligns well with our First Testament passage.

Come thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace!
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,
mount of God’s unchanging love.[1]

Remember that the season of Lent is about taking a deep, long, hard look in the mirror. The reality is, while we may not think about it often, we are prone to wonder from God. And by “we” I mean *all of us*–you, me, and whoever is sitting next to you. And this verse exposes us in a very subtle yet real way.  The verse weds the concept of teaching through singing and music making with being fixed on God’s mountain. The solicitation of the fount of every blessing—God—is the source of our blessing, of our singing, and the ground of our sure foundation. As in, as our feet are anchored in and on the “mount” of God’s unconditional, never stopping, always and forever love, we find ourselves on terra firma. God’s love for us is the solid ground from which our life, love, and liberation spring eternal; from this place, we should not wander.

But we do. Sometimes we wander because we forget that where we stand and on what we stand matters. Forgetting that we stand in and on the firm foundation of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, leads us to treat the very ground under our feet—the ground from which springs our very sustenance (food, shelter, clothing)—as if it has no essence of its own and is *only* there to be an object in our grand schemes to acquire power, prestige, and privilege, mere product for our grist mills. In forgetting where and on what we stand, we find ourselves tromping about and treading all over other people (our neighbors, the beloved of God), devaluing their alterity, their identity, their irreplaceable presence, demanding that they look and act more like the dominant group. When we forget that the mount on which we are fixed is the mountain of God, we desecrate sacred soil, leaving our shoes on as we step wherever and on whomever we need and want.

We are prone to tromp and tread about because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Exodus 3:1-15

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When God saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

The First Testament text is from Exodus and highlights God’s calling of Moses. An interesting story in its own right; nothing beats a spontaneously combusting bush from which God’s voice beckons a person minding their own business. In my research, I discovered that this story is not a smooth, cohesive unit. Rather, it’s a merger from two different sources according to the Hebrew words—there’s different names for God and Pharoah, textual redundancies, and a textual intrusion.[2] I know that sounds like mundane, academic chatter; yet, knowing this actually helps the goal of this sermon. This splicing together of the text indicates that there’s an important theme being preserved and emphasized: God’s self-identification to Moses, Moses collision with God, and Moses’s subsequent sending by God.[3] From this moment on, the ground under Moses’s feet is going to be the mount of God’s unchanging love for God’s beloved, the people of God whom Moses represents and to whom Moses will (soon!) represent God. For it is there on Horeb—“the mountain of God”—where Moses comes face to face (flame?) with God on sacred, holy land.[4]

The text tells us that as Moses is on Horeb, he notices a bush that’s burning. This isn’t just any spontaneously combusting flora; it’s God’s presence,[5] and it’s intentionally trying to get Moses’s attention.[6] As the bush burns and doesn’t burn up, Moses is curious and comes closer. Then the text tells us that this is part of the reason for the flame: to get Moses’s attention—not just anyone but this one, the son-in-law of Jethro, the one called Moses. So, the bush calls out to Moses using his name twice. (The double use being an affectionate calling.) After Moses responds to the divine voice coming from the bush, God stops Moses from coming any closer and commands him to take off his shoes. Why? Because there are some places that are holy and sacred where one must walk carefully and tenderly; places where one must come and enter humbly and vulnerably. Everyone walks a bit different with shoes on, faster and with less concern for where they place their feet. But as soon as shoes come off, we walk slowly and with more concern for where we place our feet, being aware of both our ability to damage and be damaged.

In this sacred place and in this vulnerable position, Moses receives God’s self-disclosure. God tells Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” In this self-declaration, God also becomes the God of Moses. Standing on the mountain of God, face to face with the divine flame, shoeless and vulnerable, Moses received not only God’s self-declaration thus God’s self (coming into personal contact and experience with God like his forefathers[7]), but also his calling. After explaining that God has heard (and felt! cf. Ex. 2:25) the painful and tormented cries of Israel dying under oppression and alienation, God is going to deliver God’s people into liberation, and Moses will be the one through whom God will conduct this promised exodus. Here, Moses goes from shepherd to prophet.[8] Everything Moses does and says—from this moment onward—will work toward the liberation of God’s people from the oppression of Pharoah. From this day forward, everywhere Moses walks is sacred ground for God promises to be with Moses[9] for God will be who God will be:[10]that is, the one who will go with Moses and Israel.

Conclusion

None of what is in this passage from Exodus is about Israel forgetting where and bon which they stand. In fact, it’s about Moses being made aware that he’s on holy ground and will be as he walks into Pharoah’s throne room and demands the children of God be released and all in God’s name for God is with him. But here’s the thing, the bulk of Exodus is about exhorting Israel to stay with God, to keep their eyes on God, and walk with God thus walk with their neighbor and correct the wrongs in the world. But why? Why is this story a focal point in Israel’s history? Because, well, Israel has a history of finding themselves tromping about, shoes on, causing violence to the neighbors and to themselves, eager to bring glory to themselves, and forgetting the holy ground on which they stand with God. They will forget that their ground is hallowed and that they should tread tenderly and vulnerably. I say this not only because I’ve read the book; I say this because in a few chapters in this text, Israel will be liberated and will rejoice with singing and dancing and then swear that Moses is trying to kill them by leading them into this wilderness. Whether intentional or unintentional, Israel will begin to forsake God, to forget, and to wander away from their God whom they love and thus to also begin to see their neighbor as a threat, their land as theirs, and live as if they (and the promised land) weren’t intended to be a blessing through whom all the world (including other nations) will be blessed. Israel will get caught up in the lie that power and military might equal peace and safety, tall walls and ethnic purity equal security and blessedness. They will forget God is the source of their identity and create their own identity by their own means, with their shoes on, disconnected from the hallowed ground, the mount of God’s unchanging love. They will stand on their own land and wander from God and thus from their call. Moses knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this third week of lent, let us consider our times of forgetting the hallowed ground we stand on, the times we forgot that there is tender earth under our feet, the very ground God walks with us as our neighbor. Let us consider how we’ve forgotten our calling to be a blessing of love, life, and liberation to our neighbors especially the least of these. Let us consider how we’ve forgotten the good story, forgotten that our terra firms is, was, and always will be God, and that without the heart of our Christian identity (Christ, God of very God) we cannot bear such an identity. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we’re fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Jefrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 110. “The current narrative is the result of an artful combination of the two early sources, J and E. This is intimated by the different names used for God in 3.4a and b, but the clearest indication is the fact that 3.9-15 seem intrusive: vv. 9, 10, and 15a are redundant with, respectively, vv. 7, 18b, and 16a; the people never ask for God’s name as Moses expects in v. 13; and vv. 10 and 18 describe the goal of Moses’ mission to Pharoah differently and use different terms for the Egyptian king. VV. 16-18 in fact read like a direct continuation of v. 8.”

[3] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “The consistent use of the name ‘God’ (‘elohim) in 3.9-15 identifies its source as E; the remainder of this section is mostly from J with a few other passages from E (such as vv. 1, 4b, 6b, and 20b). By incorporating material from both sources the redactor preserved important themes, such as the explanation of God’s name in v. 14 € and the fact that God both ‘appeared’ to Moses (3.2, 16; 4.1, 5 from J) and ‘sent’ him (vv. 10, 12-15, from E).”

[4] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “Horeb, alternate name for Mount Sinai (in E and in Deuteronomy). It is generally thought to be located in the Sinai Peninsula, though some believe it is in northwest Arabia, near Midian. Its designation mountain of God may indicate that it was already considered a sacred place, or it may be anticipatory. The first possibility may gain support from Egyptian inscriptions of the 4th  century BCE that refer to an area, apparently int his region, as ‘land of the nomads, Yahwe’; this might also be understood as ‘land of the nomads who worship Yahwe.’”

[5] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. V.2 “a manifestation of God. Angels (lit. ‘messengers’) usually take human form, but this one takes the form of fire, a substance evocative of the divine because it is insubstantial yet powerful, dangerous, illuminating, and purifying.”

[6] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “The burning bush is both a means of attracting Moses’ attention and a manifestation of God’s presence.”

[7] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110-111. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: This phrase later became the way that God is addressed in the ‘Amidah prayer. The repetition of ‘God’ before each patriarch is explained in ‘Etz Yosef a commentary on the Jewish prayerbook, as meaning that, like the patriarchs, each person should believe in God on the basis of personal investigation, not merely tradition.”

[8] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111. “I will send you as a Prophet, Moses’ primary roles is to serve as God’s emissary. Phrases with ‘send’…typify the selection of prophets…”

[9] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111.

[10] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111. “God’s proper name, disclosed in the next verse, is Yhvh (spelled ‘yod-heh-vav-heh’ in Heb; in ancient times the ‘vav’ was pronounced ‘w’). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, probably best translated as ‘I Will Be What I will Be,’ meaning ‘my nature will become evident form my actions.’ (Compare God’s frequent declarations below, that from His future acts Israel and Egypt ‘shall know that I am the Lord [Yhvh]’…Then he answers Moses’ question bout what to say to the people: ‘Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (‘I will Be,’ a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.’ This explanation derives God’s name from the ern ‘h-v-h,’ a variant form of ‘h-y-h’, to be.’ Because God is the speaker, He uses the first person form of the verb.”

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“Prone to Wander…”: Forsaking the Way

Psalm 91:1-2 They who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, abide under the shadow of the Almighty. They shall say to Abba God, “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.”

Introduction

One of my most favorite hymns is, “Come Thou Fount” (a hymn that shows up in our current season of music. Of the three verses, the third is my absolute favorite.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart; O take and seal it;
seal it for thy courts above.[1]

As I mentioned on the evening of Ash Wednesday, the prophet Joel brings us to the brink and asks us to take a deep, long, hard look in the mirror. The reality is, while we may not think about it often, we are prone to wonder from God. If it helps, please know that I am all too aware of my tendency to want to wander from God, the God whom I love, the God who saved me from myself for others, the God who has given me life, love, and liberation from sin and from human made, harmful mythologies and ideologies. So, if you are having a hard time wrapping your head around this or are feeling that type of shame that leads to condemnation and hiding, don’t worry… you aren’t alone; I’m right there with you.

Sometimes we wander because we forsake the way. There are two types of ways we wander because we forsake. Sometimes, it’s intentional. We’re done. It’s too hard. We just can’t. Sometimes the demand is too great, so we stop participating and we give up. We opt for something easier, something with more give, something with more personal reward seen by others and, more importantly, approved by others. Think about times you’ve tried to “self-differentiate” and the system pulled you back in being stronger and more dominant than your meager efforts—it’s easier to just give up and give in, go back and pick up where you left off, dismissing the work you’ve done thus far. Even uncomfortable and toxic systems can be comfortable even if detrimental. The human mind prefers comfort and ease to the hard work of embarking on something new. I saw a meme once that said the nervous system prefers a familiar hell to an unknown heaven.

Sometimes, though, our forsaking the way is slower and not as intentional. It’s more like forgetting to follow true north and then, OMG, here I am, and I don’t know where this “here” is. neglected to double check, assuming we knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going. And then, nope. This is best expressed when we slide away from our spiritual traditions because of the banality that is caused when tradition becomes traditionalism and boringly oppressive unto death. Blah, blah, blah, I know all of this. So, we stop listening, stop paying attention because we’re convinced we know the what, how, who, when, where, etc. Eventually we are allured away to something sparkly and new, something different and exciting, something that makes us feel special and unique. Yet, by the time that allure and shine has worn off we realize we are nowhere near where we should be; we’ve strayed and in straying we’ve forsaken the way.

We are prone to forsake because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

“‘So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set [the basket of first fruits] down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”

According to Moses, Israelites are ”to make annual pilgrimage to the central sanctuary, bringing the first fruits of the harvest, to thank God for the land’s bounty.”[2] Upon bringing the basket of first fruits of harvest, the Israelite is to recite a short history summarizing the main events bringing Israel to where they are now; it is a confession of faith and is the verbal adherence to the first command of the Decalogue.[3] According to Moses, the Israelite bringing the basket of first fruit concludes their confession of faith with an acknowledgement that even the items they carry in as an offering are an offering dependent on God; even this bounty is not of my own doing. (As we say at the start of the Eucharist, “For all things come of you, o God…”) Finally, the Israelites are to take everything and throw a massive celebration to honor the coming of the harvest season, to honor God and God’s faithfulness, and, notably, to honor those who have nothing. According to what Moses has offered us here, there is no division between those who brought offerings and those who did not. Here, in this moment, there are no lines drawn in the sand; mercy and solidarity triumph over tribalism and productivism. God’s reign is experienced in the midst of the kingdom of humanity.[4]

So here we are in an interesting spot in the book of Deuteronomy; one that doesn’t really have “Lent” written all over it. So, first, let’s go back just a skosh. Right around chapter 14, Moses (using traditional authorial language) reviews all the laws again. (That’s what the name of the book means: Second Law or Law Again.) Moses details all that is entailed in the Decalogue; this task is finished at the end of chapter 25.[5] Before that? Well, a few (fun!) things, right before the recapping of the Law there is a hefty section on the blessings and curses for adhering to the law and the need for Israel to stay pure and focused on God (chapters 6.5-13). The beginning of chapter 6 is my favorite: the greatest Commandment. Chapter 5 is the quick version of the Decalogue much like the one that appeared in Exodus. Chapter 4 is Moses’s command for obedience to God (one of his final ones considering he’ll die at the end of the book). And chapters 1-3 are a retelling of major events of Israel’s history up until that point.

So, when in chapter 26—the “‘Concluding liturgies’” portion[6]— Moses turns to speak of giving the first fruits to the priest and scripts out a response for each person bringing their basket of fruits to the priest, it’s in response to all that has come before. In other words, it’s a confirmation of the covenant that has just been laid out for the children of Israel.[7] It’s also an offering of praise and thanksgiving for deliverance from enemies and for occupation of the land promised long-ago to Abraham.[8] All this to say, chapter 26 is about Israel NOT forgetting and forsaking the who of “Who let the captives out…”[9] Just as the first commandment of the Decalogue is, “‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me,’” (Ex. 20:2-3), this commandment not only aligns the remaining nine to it but is a declaration that Israel must always remember who liberated them from Egypt. In remembering this, everything else falls into place. And, according to our text, this remembrance is to extend to God and the neighbor: [10] the Levites (priests), the orphans, widows and strangers. For Israel and according to Moses, to remember God’s love for Israel is to love others, especially the disenfranchised, unpropertied, the “have-nots.”[11]

Conclusion

None of what is in this passage on Deuteronomy is about Israel forsaking the way and giving up. In fact, it’s all about Israel remembering, remembering intimately, and celebrating and preforming that remembrance. Truly, it’s not about them giving up at all. But here’s the thing, the bulk of Deuteronomy is about asking Israel to exhorting Israel to stay with God, to keep their eyes on God, and walk with God thus walk with their neighbor and correct the wrongs in the world. But why? Why is God, through Moses, telling all this to Israel and, actually, “telling them again”? Because, well, Israel had a history of forgetting and giving up and wandering away. I say this not only because I’ve read the book; I say this because literally a few moments outside of the great liberation from captivity through the wet ground of the parted Red Sea, Israel was ready to drop it all and go back to Egypt so they could have leeks. Whether intentional or unintentionally, Israel will begin to forsake God, to forget, and to wander away from their God whom they love and thus to also forsake and wander away from their neighbor. Israel will get caught up between the allure of the sparkle and shine of the kingdom of humanity (the power and privilege) and forsake God and their neighbor, the stranger, the oppressed, those dependent on help. They will forsake God and God’s way because it grows too difficult and comes with little earthly reward. Moses knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this first week of lent, let us consider our times of forsaking because we’ve forgotten the good story, became bored of God’s good Word, or because it was too hard, too uncomfortable, too weird, ugly, blech. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we are fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this, and God comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 423.

[3] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 424. vv. 8-9 “The thanksgiving prayer recited by the pilgrim provides a precis of the main narrative line of the Pentateuch and Joshua (the ‘Hexateuch’). For that reason, the verses have been seen by some scholars as an ancient confession of faith, or creed, that is olde than its present context. Strikingly, this summary of the main events of Israel’s religious history makes no mention of the revelation of law at Sinai/Horeb. The same is true for many similar confessions in the Bible…”

[4] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 424. v. 11 “Enjoy” “or rejoice” “specifically in a festive meal consumed at the central sanctuary…which must include the Levite and the stranger for whose benefit (along with other disadvantaged groups) the following law is directed.” The law in v. 12

[5] LW 9:254

[6] Bernard M. Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 423.

[7] LW 9:254 This portion “confirms the covenant between God and the Children of Israel.”

[8] LW 9:254

[9] Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” 423-424. V. 5 “This verse is deployed in the Passover Haggadah (just following the section on the Fours Sons) in a famous passage that emphasizes God’s miraculous sparing of Israel from a long line of persecutors, beginning with Laban’s attack on Jacob (Gen. 31).”

[10] LW 9:254 “So he also treats the tithes to be paid every three years, teaching that they are to be given to the Levites, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers, with the affirmation that they are a fulfillment of the work of love.”

[11] LW 9:255 “… it denotes the confession of faith and the thanksgiving of the righteousness the sprit, where we acknowledge at the same time that the Lord has freed us from great evils to which we have been subjected, and that we have accepted many good things by faith. But bringing of tithes denotes that we are wholly given to the service of the neighbor through love…”

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“Prone to Wander…”: An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Psalm 103:8-11 Abba God is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness. … Abba God has not dealt with us according to our sins…. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is God’s mercy great …

I recently received a pin from a very nice person in the New Dimensions class I’ve been teaching on Tuesday afternoons. The pin is a green dumpster, top open with a fire burning within it. The dumpster has a face, it’s smiling and there’s some sweat forming at the corner of the dumpster’s “brow.” Right below the smile is a white sign that is, when you look closely, being held by two tiny dumpster hands. The sign reads, “It’s fine. I’m’ fine. Everything is fine.”

I love this pin for two reasons. The first is that it’s my running joke/motto (?) while teaching this New Dimensions class on “Resistance and Love” that “It’s fine, everything’s fine.” It’s my way of inserting laughter into a discussion that often takes a serious posture and tone. The second reason is: it’s flat out lying. If I’m walking around saying “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine!” then nothing is fine, and I’m trying to convince myself that everything is fine when it positively, absolutely is not fine.

Tonight, on this Ash Wednesday, let’s be completely and painfully honest: things are not fine. People are scared. People are hurting. People are dying. Everything is not fine.

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.

Through the prophetic words of Joel, God is shedding light on Israel’s past.[1] This may seem like an odd thing to say, considering Joel mentions a day that is coming. But by mentioning this coming day—this coming day of divine judgment—it’s an indictment on what the people in general and the leaders in specific have been doing. God, says Joel, is on God’s way, and when God gets here, it’s not going to be great because the leaders and thus the people have not been oriented towards God’s will on earth as in heaven.

Notice that Joel does not say that a day of gladness is coming. Rather Joel is announcing a day of gloom, requesting that the inhabitants of Israel—everyone within the range of the blowing trumpet and wailing alarm from the holy mountain—come together and tremble because of this coming day of God. Like a thermometer, Joel’s words demonstrate that Israel is not well and judgment draws nigh.

In other words, everything isn’t fine, and God is going to contend with Israel through a plague of locusts that will come like thick darkness and consume everything in its path (this is the “army” referenced by Joel[2]). This event, while common (locust plagues were common), will outperform any other locus plagues that have come and will come; it will even outperform the one form long ago when Israel was still held captive by Pharoah in Egypt. Keep in mind that that plague was the 8th plague to hit Egypt to convince Pharoah to let God’s people go; a plague of locusts indicates a people and leadership stuck and set in their hard-heartedness, refusing to listen.

But, as there is with God and God’s dealing with God’s beloved, there’s a glimmer of relief…maybe.

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?

For Israel, according to Joel, there’s a possible way out, but it will demand a level of faith that Israel hasn’t displayed recently. If Israel not only hears Joel but really listens, like shema type listens (Deut. 6ff), they will turn from their errant ways and return to God. There’s a catch though, according to Joel, It must happen before God comes;[3] thus, why Israel will have to press into their faith. They will have to believe the words of Joel, and that they are fromGod. Thus, it will demand that Israel self-examine and realize they fear humans more than they fear God. They must find their way back to their love of God which results in being unafraid of the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of humanity.[4] Joel continues:

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.

Joel declares that Israel needs to be sanctified: everyone. From the old to the young, even those invested in profound ritualistic events (like marriage). Everyone must stop what they are doing, gather, and fast together, to be sanctified together. But that’s not all. Joel shines the spotlight on the people of Israel first, and then turns that light on the leaders, exposing them, especially the priests…

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?'”

Here the religious leadership of Israel is exposed and called to turn back to God, too. The priests are to “weep” for their own part in straying; they are to pray for the people, and this is a confession that they’ve participated in/helped along the people’s and the leadership’s straying because they, too, have wandered away from God. They, too, have preferred their own power and privilege while the people were sacrificed by the rulers; they, too, have forgotten that they serve God thus serve the people and not their own whims and desires. Thus, they must now pray before it’s too late.

There’s a risk here in Joel’s words: God won’t show up, and Israel will be left to its own devices, left to being lost, left in the shadow of God’s departure. Joel wants his reader to imagine this horror, this gloom, this potential obliteration and feel the impending fear and identify with his voice, thus God’s merciful calling to them. Joel wants his audience to make his words their words, to step in faith, and a commit to making these actions their own so to secure their future with God and with themselves.[5]

Conclusion

Joel is setting us up to enter into this moment of Ash Wednesday with honest self-reflection to see that our tendency is, like Israel, to lie, to stray, to turn our backs, to think we know better than God, to be more afraid of other people (what they think of us, what they may say about us, losing our status and privilege) than considering loving God with our whole heart. We conflate God’s love for us with the thinking that God winks at our complicity with evil, human ideologies and actions that threaten the lives of the least of these among us (our houseless siblings, our queer siblings, our black siblings, our poor siblings, our immigrant siblings, our native siblings, our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and the flora and non-human fauna of creation). God is merciful says the entire bible,[6] but God does not relish when human beings harm other human beings through war and genocide, through inhumane laws and policies, and through the creation of deeper and wider lines in the sand making the “in-group” smaller and the “out-group” larger, colder, hungrier, thirstier, more naked, less safe.

Joel advocates for the mercy of God in our passage, but between being caught in the death of our sins and the life that is promised in God there is a call to repentance, a call to penitence, a call to take a deep, hard, long look at ourselves in the mirror and for once…FOR ONCE… be completely and brutally honest with ourselves before turning that judgmental eye on anyone else. Ash Wednesday prepares us to come face to face with our mortality, with our own death so that as we can prepare ourselves to enter this moment and this season with the  fertile ground and nourished soil of a heart eager to see God.[7],[8]

We must come to terms with how prone we are to wander and leave the God we love who is the source of our love, our life, and our liberation.

Welcome to Lent.

[1] Zvi, “Joel,” 1166. “The lack of references to specific events in Israel’s past (locust plagues were not uncommon) and the overall imagery of the book encourage its readers to understand it against the background of Israel’s past in general.”

[2] Zvi, “Joel,” 1169. “Military imagery is pervasive in this section; in this context, the army is a personification of the locusts…”

[3] Zvi, “Joel,” 1169. “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. “

[4] 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.”

[5] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “The readers of the book of Joel are asked to imagine a terrifying plague of locusts and its horrifying impact on society and the natural environment created by the human society. Then the locusts become a mighty army sent by the Lord against Judah. 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 to a range of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

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

[7] LW 18:96 v. 13 “Return to the Lord. It is as if he were saying: ‘This will be the means—where you have come with your whole heart, with a true heart, then you are returning to the Lord. Otherwise, it will not happen.’”

[8] LW 18:98 “The righteous…use them correctly, for they are bruised and cast down by the angry threats of God; they bear divine judgment; they recognize their sin and their damnation So, when they hear these promises, they turn to the mercy of God. In this way their conscience again are lifted up and become peaceful.”

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What is Truth?

The following is the opening portion of a Christmas letter I wrote at the end of 2024. I’ve been meaning to post it, but haven’t gotten around to it…until now. So, here are some random musings from yours truly. If they hit and serve you; I’m glad. If not, leave them behind; I would never want you to be burdened by my own “stuff”.

Christmas 2024                                        

“Therefore, Pilate said to him, ‘So then, you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You, you say that I am a king. For this I, I have been born and for this I have come into the cosmos, so that I may witness to the truth; everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.’ Pilot said to him, ‘What is truth?’” (Jn. 18:37-38)

Truth seems a tricky beast to get a hold of, like grasping at oil or sand. There’s a brief moment when I feel like I’ve got it in hand and then…what I thought was mine is now no longer mine as it spills out from a fist clenched with desperation. I’ve always considered our human travels through time on this rock as the way we accumulate more truth (like coins in a jar). But, looking around here at the end of 2024, I’m not so sure that’s the case. I feel no closer to the truth today than I did in January. Sadly, I feel further from it this year than years before. It seems our information landscape is a veritable wasteland of dis- and misinformation; a minefield to navigate with alertness and wakefulness that only ends up producing existential fatigue. I have no choice but to echo Pilate with weak lips, What is truth?

I have a hard time asking this question aloud because it’s often met with scientific, intellectual, philosophical, theological, and party-political pat responses. But truth isn’t fact strictly, and it certainly isn’t dogma or human-made ideology. These are all things drawn from the truth because human beings are eager to make sense of their environments and place in history. Facts and ideologies are material manifestations of the truth that (eventually) become captive to space, decay with time, and will (if we allow them to) die. But truth can’t be confused for these things no matter how comforting that may be; truth refuses capture and denies us the ability to mount it on our wall like a trophy.

If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that truth isn’t a thing; it’s a summons, a disruption, it’s what liberates us from the captivity of what was. It’s the thing that gets us to turn our heads towards the future while standing in the present and remembering what was rather than clinging to it; truth beckons us to let go of what we have known and receive something new. So, this is why I dragged Easter into Christmas. Advent is our time of waiting for the arrival of God in our moment; our eager expectation to be flat-out and totally ruptured from what was and is (the status quo). God promises to show up and bring God’s reign; in the nativity of Jesus Christ God does show up. The birth of Christ is a great and heavenly fracture of geological time and space. But it’s the beginning; the story doesn’t stop there. Behind the manger looms the cross, and it’s in the cross and resurrection event (whether you believe them to be fact and real or not) where the world will never truly be able to go about its business as if something didn’t just happen, as if the earth didn’t just shake, as if the illuminating light of God didn’t stream forth and expose all those who witness it (literally or spiritually, historically and currently).

The birth of Christ is not a light that only shines backward illuminating the past (woe to me a sinner); rather, it’s a beacon that shines forward, illuminating our path forward (surely this man is God). Herein lies truth. Jesus says that he came into the world to witness to the truth of God; this means nothing less than to witness to God’s reign and mission of love, life, and liberation in the world. Wherever there is indifference, the truth will beckon us to bring God’s love; wherever there is death, the truth will beckon us to bring God’s life; wherever there is captivity, the truth will call us to fight for divine liberation of God’s beloved. According to Jesus at the penultimate Good Friday moment, truth is a voice calling out, summoning me to drop my nets and follow God not backward toward what is familiar and known, but to be ruptured from what was, to go forward, follow Christ and step into the unknown. Dorothee Sölle (German Lutheran Liberation Theologian)writes,

“Christ’s truth is concrete.…By concrete we mean changeable according to the situation and according to human needs; able itself to change a situation and liberate from oppression. This kind of truth must be realized and so it can be experienced but it cannot be known in advance. It can be made but not determined.”[1]

The divine summons of Advent is into this truth of the reign of God defined by love, life, and liberation.

[1] Soelle, Truth is Concrete, 7-8.

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Look and Listen; See and Hear

Psalm 99:4-5 “O mighty God, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” Proclaim the greatness of our God … Abba God is the Holy One.

Introduction

We lose our way. Sometimes we roam from one room of the house to another forgetting why we entered the room we just entered, wondering where our phone is while using its flashlight to look for it, unable to find the glasses that are on our face. To lose our way is human; our memories (even at their best) aren’t that good. Have you ever had that experience where you are certain you remember exactly how a story goes or what a person looks like, only to find out that you don’t remember that story/that person as well as you thought?

Sometimes we lose our focus thus our way concerning what’s important in the world. We become caught in and trapped by (enslaved to?) our ideologies, worshipping them while forsaking God and other human beings. We get lost in trying to carve out our space in the kingdom of humanity, adhering to the lies of “The life-hack life,” “the grind-mindset life,” “the girl-boss life,” “the dog-eat-dog life,” “the last-one-standing-gets-everything” life, the “austerity” life….all of these not only take from us—slowly diminishing the allure of our God-given human glory and dignity—but lead us down paths and to locations that are down-right opposed toward keeping human life human.[1]

We lose our ways even spiritually. We can deconstruct and demythologize ourselves and the world to the point where there’s nothing of substance under our feet, just a voracious and insatiable void sucking everything—and everyone—into it offering no solutions or answers just more and more questions. We lose our ways, wandering from creativity and dreams of “better than this” and “possibly”. We become trapped in the material reality of the world, forgetting the spiritual still exists whether you believe it or not. We wander from God, lured by our hubris, cash, diplomas, and power convinced we are the masters of our own destinies.

Sometimes we lose our way because the way, our way, the path we were on is taken from us, stripped out from under our feet; what was known and steady is now unfamiliar and irregular. Everything feels confusing, comfort is lost, trust and safety are challenged, vulnerability skyrockets and defenses go up. This was a violent disruption, a chaos eruption. What’s to come? *shrug*

So, humans lose their ways—in one form or another, from one degree to another. And sometimes we need to be lovingly interrupted and become reoriented to the present, to feel the coolness and comfort of the cloud descending upon us, and become still long enough to hear the divine voice call to us to listen, to look, and to touch the one who is with us even in the midst of this…

Luke 9:28-36

But while [Peter] was saying these things a cloud occurred and was enveloping them. And they were afraid while they entered into the cloud. And a voice sounded from the cloud saying, “This one is my son, the one who has been picked out [for/by me]; listen to him.” (Luke 9:34-35)[2]

In our gospel passage we come face to face with a story telling us who Jesus is (again). This story exists outside of our intellectual and rational grasp; we may feel the trap of trying to trivialize the story, to make it about us, drawing too tight of a correlation between Peter’s (appropriate) verbal bumbling and our understanding of good discipleship (i.e. disciples can’t stay on the mountain top, they must come back down the mountain and travel along the valleys). We should resist this temptation. [3] It may seem counterintuitive to resist this temptation, for what negative could come from seeing ourselves in this story and subsequently applying it to our lives? Well, while I love you tons and God loves all of us even more, not every story is about us. In other words, if we make it about us and our discipleship, we will miss what God is telling us through Luke about Jesus.

According to the details of this story and who shows up to stand with and speaks about Jesus, Luke really wants his reader to think about the great event of the Exodus (back in the book of Exodus with Moses, Israel, Pharoah, and an Angel of Death) and keep in mind the very recent event of Jesus’s baptism back in chapter 3 (where the divine voice declared Jesus to be God’s son and, also, exhorted the audience to listen to him).[4] So, for Luke, Jesus is beginning another journey; whereas Jesus’s baptism signified the beginning of his public ministry, this event signifies the beginning of the work to be done in and thru Jerusalem to his death[5] on the cross.[6]

Now, I know I said that this isn’t really about us, but we are impacted by this knowledge. Luke’s point to his audience (thus to us) is that the one walking with them—through all that lies ahead—is none other than the one who is equivalent to Moses and Elijah, [7],[8] the one who is the son of the God of liberation, of love, or life, the son of God who defends the oppressed. [9] By focusing on Jesus, Luke turns the head of his audience to look [10] and see[11], to remember that no matter what is coming, Jesus, the son of God, the incarnate Word of God, goes with them no matter if it’s into the darkness of the tomb and death of Good Friday or into the unfamiliar and irregular of the new creation of Easter’s Resurrected life.[12]

But it’s not only important for Luke that his audience see who Christ is, but that they hear, too, who this Jesus is they’ve been following thus far.[13] This isn’t an event being orchestrated by human ingenuity or reason, it’s a divine event and God, Abba God, is the one whose loving, life-giving, liberative hand is behind it. Thus, Jesus is not just any person or some good teacher and sage; Jesus is this God’s son,[14] Jesus of Nazareth is the son of their God, the one who liberated their fore parents from Egypt, the one who sides with the oppressed. So, for Luke, this Jesus is to be listened to because he is reliable[15] and because an exodus is coming again.[16] Jesus, like Moses and God through Moses before him, will be liberating the captives from all forms of captivity; [17] yet this time the scale of liberation is bigger and includes liberation from death.[18] Luke provides for his audience a crystal clear picture in the midst of the cloud on the mountain top: what’s to come is going to feel more like losing one’s way than knowing where one is going, but don’t lose heart, the one who goes ahead and among you is God of very God. They will need this picture, experience, seeing and hearing so that they can walk through the chaos, tumult, and darkness to come.

Conclusion

I’ll take back what I said at the beginning about this story not being about us. It is. We should identify—very much—with the disciples, with Luke’s audience. We should see ourselves being addressed by the divine voice speaking from the cloud, addressed by the showing up of Moses and Elijah, and addressed by who Jesus is. We are to look and see, to listen and hear who this one is. We should feel the cool mist as we are enveloped in the cloud that is descending upon the mountain, taking into it all who stand there: Jesus, Moses and Elijah (even as they are leaving), the disciples, and us, Luke’s very distant audience. Why should we see ourselves incorporated in and addressed here in an ancient text and far-out story?

Because we lose our ways. Either because we’ve lost focus or because our way has been yanked out from under us and everything is now very upside down, we need to see and hear again who this Jesus is we claim to follow, the one who is the fullness of our justification and righteousness by faith alone, the one who is the physical manifestation of God who is, according to the bible, the God of liberation and freedom, the God of the divine revolution of love and life.[19] And in accepting that we are being addressed we begin to find our way again, we can begin to focus again, we can be reoriented toward God because of our orientation toward Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit and, thusly, toward each other in love.[20]

[1] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 126. BAD POINT “…the point being that just as peter was inclined to build booths and to remain on the mountaintop but had to return to the valley, true disciples have to be willing to descend from the mountaintop to the valley, there to communicate their mountaintop experience to others.” Trivialization of an awesome gospel event and pedestrianizes it into an “example” and ignores that Luke says the disciples didn’t say anything.

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 126. “There is little doubt that in the Gospel write’s mind this story is closely connected with Exodus 24:12-18 (Moses on Mount Sinai) and Luke 3:21-22 (the baptism of Jesus).”

[5] Gonzalez, Luke, 127. “In the transfiguration, while the emphasis lies on the power and glory of Jesus, there is also a reminder of his death, as we are told that Moses and Elijah were discussing his ‘departure’ (again, his ‘exodus’). Coming immediately after Jesus’s announcement of his sufferings and death, the transfiguration is thus a reminder that in spite of all outward signs of defeat and powerlessness, Jesus is ultimately more powerful than death and than the political and religious authorities in Jerusalem.”

[6] Gonzalez, Luke, 126. “On the latter, just as the baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of his public ministry, now the transfiguration marks the beginning of the journey to Jerusalem. In both cases, a voice from heaven (or from a cloud) affirms the unique relationship of Jesus with God, and thus endorses his ministry, actions, and teachings.”

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 126-127. “On the former, there is a clear attempt in the choice of words of the passage to show that at Jesus is no less a figure than Moses (and Elijah), and that his experience at the mountaintop is parallel to Moses’ experience on Mount Sinai.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 127. “The two figures of Moses and Elijah clearly represent the Law and the Prophets, a common way of referring to the totality of Scripture….Thus the text shows Jesus to be at least the equal of Moses and Elijah, and certainly invested with the authority of God so that his teachings are inspired: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen’ listen to him.’”

[9] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 282-283. “they asked me why Moses and Elijah appeared, and I said that Moses was a the great liberator of the people, that he brought them out of Egyptian slavery, and Elijah was a great prophet, a defender of the poor and the oppressed, when Israel again fell into slavery, with social classes. Both of them were closely identified with the Messiah, for it had been said that the Messiah would be a second Moses and that Elijah would come back to earth to denounce injustices as a precursor of the Messiah…”

[10] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 377. “Luke’s transfiguration scene places a premium on the motif of sight.”

[11] Green, Luke, 381. “This emphasis on seeing illuminates the transfiguration scene from the vantage point of the apostles, with Luke’s focus set on the significance of this event for them. At the same time, Luke invites his audience to share their viewpoint through the use of ‘Look!’”

[12] Gonzalez, Luke, 128. “The roller-coaster experience of the disciples is also ours. Are we the Easter people, or are we the people of the cross? Both! And neither is of any significance without the other. At the same time that we celebrate the victory of Jesus—and our own—we must never forget his cross—nor eschew our own. There are ‘transfiguration moments’ in Christian experience and in the life of the church; but they neither abolish nor diminish the need for the cross.”

[13] Green, Luke, 377. “From ‘seeing,’ then, the narrative turns to ‘hearing’ (vv 35-36a), after which, we are informed, the apostles told no one what they had ‘seen.’ Luke thus works in this scene with an understanding that is common in biblical narration—namely, ‘unaided human intellect cannot grasp history’s significance. One who reckons to understand the past implies a claim to God-given insight into the matter.’ The divine word illuminates; hence we may follow the narrative from the ‘seeing but not perceiving’ of vv. 28-34 to the ‘seeing and (beginning the process of) perceiving’ in v. 36. The whole scene is thus cast as a moment of revelation.”

[14] Green, Luke, 382. “…the encasement of Jesus’ mission in the language of exodus reminds us that, whatever shape it takes, that mission is grounded in the purpose of God to bring liberation from bondage. Through the journey Jesus is undertaking, release from the constraints of demonization, from the darkness of satanic intent, and from the diverse expressions of diabolic power, whether in disease or in social marginalization or in the patronal ethics of the Roman world, will be effected.”

[15] Green, Luke, 384. “…god speaks not to Jesus but to these representative followers, underscoring for them Jesus’ status. Form an unimpeachable source, Jesus has been identified for them; as a consequence of this divine confirmation, they should regard his words, including his teaching on his destiny and the concomitant nature of discipleship…as reliable.”

[16] Green, Luke, 378. “For Luke, if not for historiographers in general, this was due to his notion that historical events are divinely guided. This means that the Evangelist will have seen in the mission of Jesus a virtual, divinely oradin3d, reenactment of the exodus from bondage.”

[17] Green, Luke, 379. “…the transfiguration scene calls upon this choir of voices especially to stress the image of Jesus as liberator from bondage, his ministry as one of release from captivity in all its guises.”

[18] Green, Luke, 379. “These internal reverberations are important for what they emphasize about this scene—namely, the way it (a) summarizes critical issues related to Jesus’ status in relation of to God, (b) proleptically alerts representative apostles to the full significance of his heavenly status, and (c) supplies the apostles (and Luke’s audience) with an interpretive framework for making sense of the ensuing narrative, including the fulfillment of Jesus’ predicted suffering and death.”

[19] Cardenal, Solentiname, 284. “I: ‘In the Bible, God appears fundamentally like the God of Exodus, which is like saying the God of freedom. The prophet Amos says that the Exodus of Israel was not the only one and that Yahweh had brought other peoples out of other slaveries. Which is like saying that Yahweh is the God of every revolution.”

[20] Cardenal, Solentiname, 285. “I: ‘Christ is the Word of God made flesh on earth, the message of God that we should love one another. That’s the word that the cloud says we must hear.’”

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