Category: Sermons

Fruitful Trees, Well Nourished

Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 1 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked…Their delight is in the law of God, and they meditate on God’s law day and night.

Introduction

Our Psalm for today is an acclamation of the well-being of the one who follows God. Verse 1 always catches my eye. The Psalmist writes, “Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful!” I always wonder what people hear when they hear the word “sinners” and the phrase “the scornful.” I think people think that sinners and “the scornful” (those worthy of being scorned) are all the “bad” people, the ones who don’t fit the preconceived agreed upon notion of “the mold,” those who do “bad” things, break the civil law/code, those who are rude, impolite, terse, etc., people who swear, don’t get up early, skip reading their bible, drink spicey brown waters…. Sometimes I see that church history has done number on vulnerable human beings with the definition of what a sinner is, usually participating in this allocation of “sinner” toward those who are bad defined by deeds and actions just mentioned. (Even to the point of conflating aspects of one’s body and identity with being sinful.) Sometimes (often?) I worry how many of you think you are the “sinner” who is “not good enough” to be addressed and welcomed by God.

But who, according to the bible, are the “sinners” and those who are “scornful”? From what I can tell, it has less to do with petty demerits and absolutely nothing to do with the status of one’s body and physical expression and more to do with how and what human beings value. In other words, sinners and the scorned are those who choose idols over God as their object of love and dependence. In other, other words, they are those who have chosen themselves, their own ways and turned their backs on God and God’s ways.

Jeremiah 17:5-10

When God’s people and their leaders go astray, a prophet is summoned and provoked by God to see and hear, to share and identify with the pain and turmoil both divine and human. Jeremiah is such a prophet. He was summoned during one of the “…most crucial and terrifying periods in the history of the Jewish people in biblical times: the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon, followed by the beginning of the Babylonian exile.”[1] Jeremiah’s prophecies are unique because he uses his own experience to communicate to the people and before God. Jeremiah shared ire over having to speak judgment, expressing his anger toward God as well as his empathy towards and over his people; Jeremiah believed his people would turn, repent, and come back to the word of God.[2] Where last week Malachi was exposing the people, this week Jeremiah is frustrating the rulers of the Jewish people, exposing that everything was not fine especially within the leadership. According to Jeremiah, there was a problem when the people relaxed their relationship to God and God’s word and when the leaders sacrificed God’s people to their own comfort and security rather than shepherding them toward God’s peace and justice, towards God’s mercy and love.[3]

So, Jeremiah, in the passage assigned for today, says, “Thus says Abba God: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from Abba God,” (v.5). Who are the “cursed”? The ones who, according to God’s word and Spirit through Jeremiah, do not trust in God. It’s not the ones who drop the occasional verbal bomb, or the ones who can’t get their act together (whatever that means). It’sn’t the ones who can’t do everything according to the Holy Law of God. It’s anyone who trusts in mere mortals…and flesh…and who[thusly] turn away from God. In other words, what Jeremiah is pointing out here is that when the leaders of Israel forsake their posture towards God, they begin to build idols to replace God and those idols look a lot like themselves; as the leadership goes, so, too, will the people. As leadership becomes haughty, so will the people. As leadership becomes violent, so will the people. As the leadership turns away from God and toward their own strength, so will the people. Some may think, as long as there’s law and order and everyone knows their place…so what?

Well, it’s not that simple. According to Jeremiah, when the leadership (thus the people) turn from God and toward themselves they are uprooting themselves from the nourishing soil of God’s love and justice, mercy and peace and forcing tender roots into parched land. Jeremiah writes, “They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness…” (v.6). In other words, they are bound for death, everything they have they believe is of their own power, but it will wither and die because they are no longer rooted and anchored in the fertile soil and nourishing waters of God’s provision, and, thus, they’re cursed.[4] For Jeremiah, the idols of Israel are themselves, and this idolatry will be their downfall, not because God has left them but because they have left God and opted for their own “common sense” and judgment of the kingdom of humanity.

Jeremiah drives home the stark reality, “Blessed are those who trust in God, whose trust is Abba God. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it’s not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit,” (vv.7-8). These are the those who keep their eyes and faces fixed on God; those who do this are those whose bodies follow where their faces are turned, and eyes are focused. These ones thrive in all sorts of tumult because they are fully dependent on God, roots planted in God’s nourishing soil: God is the source of their substance, their love, their liberation; to veer from God is to steer away from life toward death. They have shrugged off the idolatry of humanity, choosing instead to fear God.[5] These are the ones who not only do good works in the world to the glory of God, these are the ones whose hearts hear God’s voice and respond to it (Dt. 6). They are, 100%, fully dependent on God.

Jeremiah continues with words of exposure and judgment, “The heart is devious above all else; it’s perverse– who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings,” (vv. 9-10). Turning back to those who are cursed, Jeremiah explains that their current predicament of being under God’s wrath (destruction of the Temple, impending exile, drought) is their own doing because they’ve been led astray by their own desires and devising, making idols reflecting back their own image. According to Jeremiah, they’ve brought their own judgment upon themselves. It’s time for Israel to turn back to God and forsake their idols; they must turn toward God and forsake themselves and their own “reasonable” and “rational” machinations of the heart and mind[6] which often leads astray and produces corresponding fruit of chaos, destruction, violence, and death.[7]

Conclusion

What’s the hope here for Israel considering Jeremiah’s summons and exposure? For their consciences to be burned by the light of God’s truth and presence in and through the words of the prophet. Here, healthy shame and despair, the type that drives people toward God, is the soothing balm of Gilead because in turning (back) to God—finding one’s “trust” and full dependence on God—is the source of the people’s life, love, and liberation.[8] This is the consistent and inerrant word found in our sacred text of the first and second testaments: God desires God’s people to be with God, to know—deeply and profoundly—how much this God is for them—through thick and thin, in good and bad. The cursed are those who have stepped out from under and away from this God who is for them; the blessed are those who are fully dependent on God, remaining in God’s care and nourished therein, as Luke says in the gospel, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” (Lk 6:20b,c, 24). It’s the poor who are the ones who are blessed because they are fully dependent on God, while the rich, according to Luke, often go their own way making idols that look like themselves.

Beloved, God has come close to us in Christ and even closer through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us remember that our very lives, our love, and our liberation is not hinged on the machinations of our heart and mind, but on the word of God that is the good news about Jesus and is Jesus. As we gather weekly and hear the word of God, may we also hear the sweet summons of a God who is so for us that God desires to always dwell with and among us. Going about things on our own power and strength ends in destruction, violence, and death, but going forward with and in the power of God, remembering who we are and whose we are, brings life, love, and liberation not only to our own exhausted and fatigued bones, but to our neighbors out there who are suffering and struggling, barely making it from one day to the next because we will be “trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season…”

[1] Marvin A. Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 917.

[2] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 917. “[shared] his anguish and empathy at the suffering of his people, his outrage at God for forcing him to speak such terrible words of judgment against his own nation, and his firm belief that the people of Israel would return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem…”

[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 917-18.

[4] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 961. “A person who relies on idols is like a bush in a parched land that knows nothing, but those who trust in God are like well=watered trees that produce fruit…”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 128. “Jeremiah knew that the malady was not primarily in the wickedness of the deeds, but in ‘the stubbornness of their evil hearts’…in their ‘evil thoughts’ …not only in their evil manners.”

[7] Heschel, Prophets, 121. “Instead of searching their own lives for the failures that brought down God’s wrath on them, the people resented Jeremiah’s prediction of doom, accusing him of ill-will, as if he were to blame for the disaster he predicted. Was Jeremiah an enemy of his people?…Deeply hurt by the accusations, Jeremiah protested before God his innocence and his love of his people. The word of doom was not born in his heart (17:6).”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 192. “Where signs and words from without fail, despair within may succeed.”

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By This Word Alone

Psalm 138: 7, 8a, 9b-c: Though God be high, God cares for the lowly; God perceives the haughty from afar. Though we walk in the midst of trouble, you, Abba God, keep us safe; Abba God, your love endures for ever; do not abandon the works of your hands.

Introduction

Last week I referred to the reality that we have been exposed for having lost our voice in the world thus our place and relevance in the world because we’ve forsaken the message of Christ in word and deed and have traded our spiritual authority of the reign of God for the acceptance and amicability of the kingdom of humanity. In our pursuits for intellectual validity in an age ruled by the rational and reasonable, we’ve whittled down the gospel into something easily digestible as post-enlightenment, (now) post-modern, scientific, fact and data driven, educated people. Few people (if any) are currently running to the church for help or find themselves desperate to hear what the church will do or say. The church may be stepping in to help here and there, but being a “force to be reckoned with” in the temporal realm? Nah. The mainline non-denominational, big-box churches are already in the pocket of the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of humanity eager to uphold the status-quo and gain their bit of power and prestige. And the mainline denominational churches desperate to make traditional spirituality great again were seduced into the siren song of ambiguous statements of love to make sure they kept the few they had in the pews. And let us not forget the overwhelming amount of toxicity and violence that has come from the hand of those charged to do right and keep safe the beloved of God. So, fam, we’ve achieved exactly what we were desperate to avoid: we’ve lost relevance.

To find that relevance once again, we must return to the age-old yet intellectually awkward proclamation of Jesus Christ—the one who was crucified and raised by God, the one who sets the captives free by word and in deed, flips tables, yells at winds and waves, exposes people, calls the least of these his friends and family, and has absolutely no problem confronting rulers and spiritual leaders of all stripes and types in the kingdom of Humanity. And by getting in touch with this weird, pre-modern, mythologically laden message, find ourselves (re)oriented to God, faces brazen with God’s glory and presence. In returning to the proclamation we’ve been given, we will also step in under the gracious, merciful, beautiful, light yoke of God’s expectations for us as the church—love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.

In other words, the foundation of the church is completely and totally dependent on the whacky and far-out stories of Jesus of Nazareth whom faith declares is the long-awaited Messiah of God and who is God—God of very God. It is precisely in and on these stories, these myths, where the church finds its unique identity to live and its concrete truth to speak into the world.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

For I make known again to you, siblings, the good news which I preached to you, and which you received, and in which you have stood, through which you are being saved by what words I preached to you if you holdfast, except if you believed at random. (1 Cor. 15: 1-2)

Paul gives us a clear and crisp definition of the “good news” on which, through which and by which the Church stands or falls and finds its unique identity and its concrete truth.[1] This is not some story that Paul came up with, but the very story that started the tradition of the church and will keep the church embedded as a force in the world for good and God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor. Paul says clearly to the Corinthians, I am telling you all again, my siblings, the good news I (have already) announced to you (v. 1a-b). In other words, Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the word of God that is the good news that God has proclaimed and promised from the beginning of the cosmos. He’s keeping this story very straight and clear and expects the Corinthians not to veer—in any way—from this tradition they’ve received from him. Thus, why Paul then says, and which you received (in turn[2]) and in which you have stood, and through which you are being (and will be) saved by what words I preached to you (vv. 1c-2b). They must remain on course because it is the ground under their feet. According to Paul, it is important for the Corinthians to hold fast to this particular message and not one of their own or a hodge-podge from what he said. Otherwise in straying and believ[ing] incoherently[3] (v. 2c), the Corinthians are not on solid ground and are not being saved.

For I handed over to you first and foremost what I also received… (v. 3a-b). What is the message that Paul preached and handed over and received and the Corinthians are being exhorted to hold fast to and not stray from? Each part of the crazy and whack story about Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. That Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas and then by the twelve[4] (vv. 3c-5). This is the good news, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (the gospel) Paul referenced back in v. 1, this is what he received and handed over[5] and through which the Corinthians are being saved;[6] this message, not part of it, not the comfortable bits, not another rendition. And it’s this message and its coherent grasp that is the foundation and the means by which the Corinthians are coming into an encounter with God by faith through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by this message and this alone that Christian faith and identity have its foundation, substance, and truth.[7] For Paul, the way this all works out is more than dogmatic (forced) confession and adherence, but the truth and actuality of a personal confession that is born of experiencing the summoning to life out of death of this good news.[8]

Paul then tells the Corinthians that Jesus in his resurrected state was seen by more than 500 siblings once for all, many of whom many remain until now, though some fell asleep. Afterward, he was seen by James [Jesus’s brother[9]], then by the all the apostles (vv. 6-7). Affirming the actuality of Jesus’s resurrection, Paul then presses in on the reality of the theme of Corinthians 15: God is God[10] and it’s this God who is God who is the one who brings the dead to life by grace and promise.[11] Paul writes, Then lastly as if one miscarried he was seen by also me, for I, I am the least of the apostles, of whom I am not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God; but by the grace of God I am who I am, and the grace of God toward me has not become fruitless, but to a greater degree I worked harder of them all, but not I but the grace of God in me. Through Paul’s confession and witness, those who are stuck are liberated, those who are afflicted are comforted, those who are untimely born are reborn in time, and those who are dead are made alive. According to Paul (by confession and experience), it’s the unmerited grace of God that is the breath of new life. [12] Thus, if for Paul than for the Corinthians[13]—individually and as the community.[14] It’s the promise of God fulfilled in and through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ that is the word of God that brings the dead to life,[15] gives authentic identity in the place of a sham identity, and replaces falsehood with truth.[16] It’s the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is, according to Paul, the firm foundation of the church; [17] apart from this there’s nothing to stand on, nothing to substantiate, nothing of relevance for the Christian community, the Church. Every part of Corinth’s existence is by God or not at all.

Conclusion

When the church fails to adhere to this message, when it decides what parts are worthy, reasonable, and rational at the expense of the other parts it will lose itself. In that moment, as it steps out from under and out of God’s grace and God’s word, the very thing it fears will happen: the church will cease to be relevant. But, according to Paul, the Church, sits precariously balanced on the solid word of God found in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; when the church stands on this word, proclaims this word, believes this word—as scary as that can be at times—the church finds itself square in the grace of God and supplied with God’s grace to carry on.[18] It is in adhering to this ancient claim that creates the timelessness of the church—it is the very essence of the invisible church, the ties that bind beyond human-made boundaries randomly drawn in the ground, beyond separations of generations of time, and beyond seemingly uncrossable expanses of space. It is this word that brings light where there is darkness, love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death. It is on and by this divine word—the word of Christ crucified and raised—and this word alone that the church is the church in the world to the well-being of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

[1] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1169. “The cross…remains ‘the ground and criterion’ of Christian existence and Christian identity.”

[2] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “The readers have in turn…received it. This is a happy rendering…to indicate transmission of a tradition for which the thrice-repeated καί is scarcely accidental.”

[3] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Here Paul envisages the possibility of such a superficial or confused appropriation of the gospel in which no coherent grasp of its logical or practical entailments for eschatology or for practical discipleship had been reached. Incoherent belief is different from believing in vain.”

[4] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1205. “…the twelve became a formal title for the corporate apostolic witness of those who had also followed Jesus during his earthly life, and who therefore underlined the continuity of witness to the One who was both crucified and raised.”

[5] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “Paul declares the gospel as that which is not only revealed (cf. Galatians 1 and 2) but is also ‘both transmitted and received’ and therefore in principle constitutes ‘the premises of the audience’ which provide the foundation on the basis of which Paul will develop his argument about the resurrection of the dead.”

[6] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1184-1185. Both italics and bold are part of the original text; when my emphasis, it will be noted in the footnote. “We must understand the gospel in 15:1, therefore, to denote more than the message of the resurrection, but not less. It denotes the message of salvation; in vv. 3-4 Paul endorses the shared pre-Pauline tradition which both proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ and interprets it in terms of the saving and transforming power of the God as this receives explanation and intelligibility within the frame of reference provided by the [Old Testament] scriptures.”

[7] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Paul does, however, refer to a continuity of handing on and receiving which constitutes, in effect, an early creed which declares the absolute fundamentals of Christian faith and one which Christian identity (and the experience of salvation) is built.”

[8] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1188. “There is a very close relationship between the dimension of proclamation or kerygma which declares a gospel truth claim and the dimension of confession or self-involvement which declares a personal stake in what is asserted.”

[9] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1207-1208. “…we have independent evidence that. Paul clearly regards James the Lord’s brother as an apostle…’…Paul certainly indicates that he regarded James as an apostle.’ This anticipates the point that for Paul the term apostle is always wider than the Twelve.”

[10] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[11] hiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[12] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1208. “The emphasis lies in the undeserved grace of God…who chooses to give life and new creation to those reckoned as dead, or, in Paul’s case, both a miscarried, aborted foetuswhose stance had benhostileto Christ and to the new people of God.”

[13] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1213. “‘Ecumenicity’ is not the lowest common denominator in a miscellany of individual experiences. For Paul it is defined by the common kerygma of a shared, transmitted gospel tradition, anchored in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as ἐν πρώτοις.”

[14] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1194. “…the promise of God which remains steadfast…depends entirely on God’s sovereign will and gift of grace to give life to the dead…, who as the dead have no power to create or to resume life as God’s chosen community.”

[15] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1210. “Given Paul’s association of this encounter with the resurrected life as one of new creation…it seems most probably that Paul perceives himself as one who was unable to contribute anything to an encounter win which God’s sovereign grace was all, even to the extent to giving life to one who was humanly beyond all hope. This precisely reflects the theme of resurrection as God’s sovereign gift of life to the dead…”

[16] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1195. “…the transfer ‘from death to life’ thereby provides a new identity for a new community: God can ‘raise up’ children of Abraham from the stones….hence Paul uses this figure of the ‘nothingness’ of death to expound the establishing of the divine promise of life and identity  to the nothings, to the disinherited, to the Gentiles.”

[17] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1211. V. 10 “We come to the heart of Paul’s point Underserved, unmerited grace (χάρις) which springs from the free, sovereign love of God alone and becomes operative in human life not only determines Paul’s life and apostolic vocation but also characterizes all Christian existence, not least the promise of resurrection and the reality of the activity of Christ as Lord.”

[18] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1212. “The emphasis on labor reminds us that difficulty and cost in Christian work, far from suggesting an absence of God’s grace, presupposes the gift of such grace to prosecute the work through all obstacles…The theme of grace in and through ‘weakness’ is one which Paul constantly urges to Corinth.”

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We Are Exposed

Psalm 84:3,5: Happy are they who dwell in your house, Abba God! they will always be praising you…Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.

Introduction

We are in times that are exposing who we are and what we stand for. We are in times that are exposing what we believe and how those beliefs inform our actions. We are in times, as a church, where we have been exposed and have been found lacking.

I’ve watched the last week and a half unfold; I’m an observer, it’s my preferred mode through the world. So, I’ve watched as things were said, actions taken, and when an Episcopal bishop preached. Focusing in on the last part of this abbreviated list of events, I listened to the bold and biblical sermon by the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, DC, Bp. Budde and watch it take over the stage that was to be reserved for a new president taking oath and office. What caught my attention, though, wasn’t the sermon itself. From what I can tell and conceive to be the event of proclamation and preaching, Bp. Budde was well within her sphere—as a bishop in the Episcopal church—in explicating the scriptures in the way she did, preaching Christ, and offering a humble plea to an incoming leader in the way she did.[1] (Church history is literally filled with such sermons.) What caught my attention was how people reacted: either people were astounded by such a sermon, or they were angered. Hmmm, such drastic responses; seems somethings afoot…

Why? I kept wondering. Why were people so flabbergasted for well or for ill? Why were people stunned by the sermon or clutching their pearls over it? Then it dawned on me. Ah, we don’t expect a denominational preacher, let alone a mainline, liberal leader, to be so bold and confident to, figuratively, stand toe to toe with a leader of the temporal realm and assert her spiritual authority within her spiritual realm. We’ve stopped expecting this level of proclamatory confrontation because it has ceased to be given to us. We’ve stopped expecting this boldness of preaching because we’ve grown lukewarm over the decades—preferring our own comfort while fearing the power of big donors in our churches. We’ve opted to sacrifice the radical Word of God’s revolutionary love for the beloved on the altar of our intellectualism in the name of demythology. We’ve allowed the gospel of Christ to be stripped of its power to summon the sleeping awake and the dead alive, sending into the world empty and vacuous notions of good news. We’ve been exposed; we’ve forgotten what preaching is about: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, awaking the sleepers, called the dead into new life, and bringing Christ close to God’s beloved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Malachi 3:1-4

Our First Testament text is from the book of Malachi; it is situated in the Persian period when the temple was rebuilt and sacrificial worship was underway.[2] Malachi means “my messenger;”[3] according to rabbinic sources, Malachi was considered not only one of the last prophets (along with Haggai and Zechariah) but a sage, too.[4] This prophet-sage messenger came to the people of Judah, those who seemed to have everything back in order and brings God’s message and word of judgment. Malachi is holding up a mirror to the people of Judah and asking them to take a long look; is everything as great as it seems? Malachi asks the people to consider how they fail God and themselves—day in and day out, personally and publicly.[5] Unlike other prophets who focused their attention on the leadership of Israel allowing God’s word of judgment to illuminate the sickness and decay, the violence and death embedded deep in the leadership, Malachi is exposing the people. According to Malachi, everything is not great even with the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinvigoration of sacrifices; Malachi’s people have grown comfortable while ignoring their own spiritual malnourishment wreaking havoc on their relationship with God and with themselves: they’ve neglected Torah, the hearing of Shema; they’ve ceased to hear so deeply that they follow God and God’s word of Torah.[6]

So Malachi comes and exposes the people for who and where they are; Malachi exhorts the people back to Torah, which has just been canonized.[7] One of the neat things about the text, the nitty-gritty exposing parts of the text, is that the exposure is not strictly built from the fear of God’s judgment, but rather getting the people to identify with the “evil-doers” within the text[8]—just as the prophet Nathan did with King David. In this “identification” not only do the hearing and reading people find words to say to God (for the “evil doers” speak and are heard in the text), but they are also asked to examine themselves, to see where they fall short, and to repent.[9] When we speak along with the characters of the story, we, effectually become and identify with those characters and their words become our words and that can be exposing, especially here for Malachi’s people.

Thus says the Lord, See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight– indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? (Malachi 3:1-2)

While we don’t really know who the messenger is in our passage (v. 1), we Christians tend to see this messenger not as Malachi himself (though he is a type of messenger here), but as Jesus the Christ, this person who is God.[10] With this in mind, the “prepare the way” is a reference to the preparations needed in the heart of the people. This heart need preparing because it’s this heart that is calcified and looks for God in many places (even the Temple) but never finds God because the seeking is oriented toward that which resonates with the kingdom of humanity and not with the reign of God. God works in and through the heart of God’s people, causing them to hear so deeply that they heed and harken to God’s Word by faith and in action.[11] For Malachi, this heart must be prepared to receive the messenger.

These two verses emphasize that the messenger of God is coming to the people.[12] The messenger comes, and the messenger represents God to the people. Considering this messenger coming, the human question is asked: who can endure? Rightly, our response, when looking around and taking honest stock of our captivity and complicity in and to the kingdom of humanity, is: no one! No one will be able to endure; and this humility is part of the desired preparations mentioned earlier—preparation that reorients the creature to their creaturely status before and to their Creator.[13]

But humility isn’t the only form of being prepared mentioned by Malachi; he goes on:

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

The people will be humbled, and they will be purified by fire and cleansed with a “sharp cleansing agent” (think: lye). The messenger, the one who comes as God’s representative, is both the “Purifier” and the “Purification”, the people will be stripped of their complacency and comfortability.[14] It is here, at this point of exposure, humility, and purification where God can, once again, work through and with the people. God’s exposure brings life to God’s people; they are found wanting and God provides.

Conclusion

I know it’s uncomfortable to be exposed; but exposure leads to healing and health. Being exposed allows us to locate ourselves in the mess and then find a way out of it, the path out is illuminated by the light of the Word of God that is the calling of our names in the proclamation of Christ. To be exposed by this messenger, by the Word of Malachi, by our Christ is to be exposed and accepted and received and not exposed and condemned and sent away.

Just as Malachi held up a mirror to his audience (reader and hearer), asking them to take a long and hard look, we too are being addressed and being asked to do the same by God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit found here in these ancient words. If we take this moment seriously, we will see that we’ve lost our focus, we’ve lost our words, we’ve lost our orientation toward God, taking on everything else we’ve deemed to be good and right. If we’ve allowed our spaces to be acquired by the kingdom of humanity, we’ve forfeited our voice and have forgotten what God expects of us as God’s beloved children. Hope is not lost though, because exposure has come and we can rejoice because we were blind, but now we see, we were deaf but now we hear, we were dumb and now we speak. We can find ourselves relocated before God, oriented to the Creator as their creatures, we can reclaim our space in the world as the manifestation of the spiritual realm, and we can, once again, find our voices to speak into the darkness of the kingdom of humanity and remember exactly what God expects of us as followers of Christ baptized by fire and the Holy Spirit. If we don’t hear our names called by Bp. Budde when she addressed President Trump, then we’ve missed the entire point of that sermon. And what does God expect/”require” of us? To love Mercy, to do Justice, and to walk Humbly with our God.[15]

[1] It was quite good, appropriate, and within the rights and privileges vested in a consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal church. Briefly, this vocation—the vocation of Bishop—has been, is, and always will be principally about two things inspired and informed by the Holy Spirit, faithfully and prayerfully: caring for the beloved of God in Christ as Christ (directly and indirectly through their priests and deacons) and protecting the faith of the church by maintaining the proclamation of God’s Word made known in Christ and pointing the church to Christ.

[2] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1268. “The book of Malachi is set in a period when the Second Temple was rebuilt and sacrificial worship was resumed. It was composed in the Persian period, and is addressed originally to the inhabitants of the Persian province of Yehud (Judah).”

[3] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. Malachi = “My Messenger”

[4] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. “Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are all understood by the Rabbis as the last of the prophets, and the Talmud mentions rulings and saying s by this prophet that seem to characterize him as an early sage, in addition to his being a prophet.”

[5] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. “The readers of the book of Malachi are asked to look at some pitfalls in everyday life and in the cult of the Temple, and particularly at how they affect the relationship between the Lord and Israel, resulting in a lack of prosperity.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268-1269. “Messages of cultic reform and proper worship are deeply interwoven with the conviction of the coming of a future day in which the Lord will trample all evildoers. Such optimism about an ideal future is typical in prophetic works. Further, the book asks its readers to identify proper behavior in these and all matters with following the Torah (or Teaching of Moses.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1269. “As a whole, the book is aimed at persuading its readership to follow the Torah of Moses, or at strengthening their resolve to continue to do so. This message must be understood within the book’s historical setting, soon after the canonization of the Torah.”

[8] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1269. “The use of disputation format in much of the book contributes rhetorically to that purpose, for it allows the arguments of evil doers to be heard, in order to be countered and neutralized. Further, it allows the reader some limited form of self-identification with the actions of the evildoers, and as such serves as a call for them to examine themselves and repent.”

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1273. “The identity of the messenger in 3.1 has been highly debated. Is My messenger (Heb ‘malakhi’) Malachi? Or is there at least a pun on the name of the prophet? Is the messenger the angel of the covenant, a zealous, powerful enforcer of the covenant who is like a smelter’s fire and like fuller’s lye (i.e., a purifying, caustic treatment)? Is he Elijah (see v. 23)? Does the text indicate an expectation of a priestly Messiah? …The New Testament merges this v. with Isa. 40.3 and identifies the expected messenger is John the Baptist (Matt. :0; Mark 1.2; Luke 7.27).”

[11] Martin Luther, “Lectures on Malachi,” in Lectures on the Minor Prophets I: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi. LW 18, trans. Richard J. Dinda, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1975), 409. “That preparing, then, is to make humble and to arrange things so as to allow God to work in one. You see, the way of the Lord is where He himself walks. The prophet mentions nothing about our ways except that we should abstain from them.”

[12] LW 18:409. “Behold, He comes! The repetition indicates certainty.”

[13] LW 18:410. “2. But who can endure the day of His coming? In Hebrew this reads: ‘Who will regulate or control the day, etc.?’ or, ‘Who will provide?’ It is as if he were saying: ‘Remain in your fear, then. Stay humble. Let that Messenger prepare you.”

[14] LW 18:410. “Blazing, or purifying….[Hebrew word] means a sharp cleaning agent or soap that washed great stains out of garments…The kingdom of Christ is a mystical smelting furnace that purges out the impurity of the old Adam. …Christ is not only the Purifier but also the purifying agent. He is not only the blacksmith but also the Fire; not only the Cleaner but also the Soap.”

[15] This is an adaption of Micha 6:8, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” NRSVUE

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These Humble Waterpots

Psalm 36:5-7 5 Your love, O Abba God, reaches to the heavens, and your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep; you save both human and beast, O Abba God. How priceless is your love, O God! your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.

Introduction

I saw a meme recently that referred to January as a big MONDAY. Like, the whole month is just one Monday. Now, as someone who prefers Monday to Tuesday, I wasn’t displeased with this idea—though, it did make me consider if March or February was the big TUESDAY of the year… No matter my opinions on the meme or the days, the feeling holds. Think about it. We are two weeks out from many parties, festivities, celebrations, and feasts. We are more than two weeks out from opening presents and receiving cards and picture in the mail. We are two weeks into houses and business slowly removing their festive lights from public view. We are two weeks into feeling the lean and the austere as we pull back from the Christmas season back to the “normal” day in and day out. We’re two weeks into the cold feeling colder and the dark seeming darker.[1]

It feels like one big Monday.

Sometimes the temptation in the Monday (no matter how long or short it is) is to pull in and away, hide, and burrow in deeper under those duvets and comforters. There are times when this is exactly what we (I?) may need to do, but it can’t and shouldn’t be our only response to Mondays mondaying. Here’s why: because it’s in our lack, in our weak, in our exhaustion, in our want, in our empty, in our sad, in our “I can’t even” where God shows up. In the Mondayest Monday that ever Mondayed, God shows up. When we can’t, God can; when all that’s left is water, God brings wine.

John 2:1-11

Now Jesus says to them, “Fill the water pots full of water.” And they filled them up to the brim. Then he says to them, “Now draw water and bring [it] forth to the superintendent of the banquet.” And they brought [it] forth. And as the superintendent of the banquet tastes the water it has become wine! And he had not perceived from where it came… (Jn 2:7-9b)[2]

John brings us to a very familiar story; one we all know quite well: Jesus turning water into wine. While always an excellent argument about why wine is “okay,” there’s more to the story here than an argument for drinking and to why it’s included in our lectionary.[3] This story and its embedded miracle, are an “Epiphany” story and miracle.[4] While not all that original to the Christian narrative (there is some intersection with the legend of Dionysus[5]) the story features the revelation of the glory of God in Christ; the son of humanity Jesus Christ’s acceptance and revelation as the son of God. This one is no ordinary one, John is saying in this miracle story; both Jesus’s humanity and divinity are being exposed here by John.

The human part is designated by the story opening on Mary and Jesus and the disciples at a wedding in Cana (vv. 1-2)—a rather regular human affair. Noticing that the wine has fallen short (there’s no more), Mary, Jesus’s mother, brings this to Jesus’s attention, “They do not have wine,” she says to him (v. 3). And Jesus’s response is quite sharp and frank, “What [is it] to you and me, woman? My hour has not yet arrived” (v. 4) The tone is “stop bugging me,”[6] and, frankly, if there ever was a more real and human interaction between a mother and her eldest son, I know not of it. But Jesus’s use of “Woman” (γύναι) is unique here and places a certain distance between himself and Mary[7] exacerbating the tension that’s building toward the miracle as incredible. In other words, Jesus dismisses the request, but the story isn’t over.[8] Mary then dismisses Jesus’s curt reply and declaration that it’s not time for him to be public and pushed into the confrontation with the status-quo and the powers and rulers of the kingdom of humanity.[9] She tells the servants at the wedding banquet, “Whatever he might say to you, you do.” (v. 5). Mary’s aim, or, rather, John’s aim is to get Jesus to do a miracle.[10] And so the story moves on.

John tells us that there were six large waterpots appointed for purification rites according to the children of Israel; [these pots] holding two or three measures of 8.75 gallons (v. 6). (That is, max, 26.25 gallons per waterpot and thus, 157.5 gallons total.) Then John tells us, Jesus says to/commands [the servants], “Fill the waterpots full of water.” And they filled them up to the brim (v. 7). Then a second command, Jesus says to/commands [the servants], “Now draw water and bring [it] forth to the superintendent of the banquet.” And they brought [it] forth (v. 8). At this point the narrative shifts from Jesus and the servants to the superintendent of the banquet. John writes, Now as the superintendent of the banquet tastes the water, it had become wine(!), and he had not perceive from where it came. But those who have drawn the water had perceived (v.9-9c). John keeps the miracle relatively obscured, only the reading audience knows that Jesus did this miracle. Thus, for John, God’s divine activity is celebrated but cloaked. [11] God is glorified not by direct praise but by the concrete miracle of water turning into wine[12] in the midst of a people being made happy,[13] celebrating, and coming together;[14],[15]

John continues, And the superintendent of the banquet calls out to the bridegroom and says to him, “All people appoint the good wine first, and whenever [the people] were drunk with wine [appoints] the lesser; you, you keep the good wine until just now!” (vv. 9d-10). A miracle has occurred, the best wine is brought out last, and, according to John, this illuminates Jesus as the promised messiah[16] and that this event is just the first of the signs in Cana of Galilee that reveal Jesus glory and his status with God and among humanity (v. 11a). God’s glory is made known in and through Christ, and this is the goal and object of John’s material–specifically around the miracle stories. For John, there is no way to mistake it, Jesus is the son of God, the promised one, the long awaited Messiah, the one who reveals God in his flesh and God’s will through his words and deeds[17] and thus solicits faith from people—and his disciples believed in him (v. 11b). This is the point, to come into contact with the Holy One of Israel, to find oneself face to face with God in Christ and to believe, to receive grace and truth thus to be saved and rescued from one’s dead self unto a new alive self to be in the world for the neighbor, the beloved of God, to the glory of God just like Jesus. [18]

Conclusion

Jesus took six empty waterpots and some water and turned it all into a reason to continue the party. This is a real and true miracle. And John’s point is how this miracle, demonstrates Jesus’s divine glory, his relation and representation of God as God’s son. This is what Jesus does, he takes what is empty, fatigued, worn out, dead and renders it full, rested, fresh, and alive. While we could wax eloquently in defense of partying and celebrating with wine, now isn’t the time for that. The real thing to focus on is how Jesus can bring to life ordinary objects and send them into the world for the robust divine purpose of bringing God’s love, life, and liberation to the people.

As I said at the beginning, it’s in our lack, in our weak, in our exhaustion, in our fatigue, in our want, in our empty, in our sad, in our “I can’t even” where God shows up. When we can’t God can. When all that’s left is water, God brings wine. When it all seems and appears to be nothing and gone and ready to be washed up and closed down, God shows up and reinvigorates that which is dead because that is what God does: God is the strength in our weakness because when we are weak and can’t God is strong and can. The radical thing is that God is glorified when, in spite of ourselves, God’s will, mission, and revolution of love life and liberation are not only participated in, but moved forward through us and our weakness by his soundness. We are the waterpots, we are the ones taken, filled, and made to be glorious instruments of belonging and God’s glory. Beloved, in this mega-Monday of a January, be assured God is still at work in and through you.

[1] I credit my son Quinn with giving me this idea that there is “December Winter” and “January Winter” and the two are very different.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Did you know that all three Epiphany 2s have a reading from John either first or second chapters according to our lectionary?

[4] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 118-119. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “The source counted this as the first miracle. It is easy to see why it put it at the beginning of its collection; for it is an epiphany miracle…There can be no doubt that the story has been taken over form heathen legend and ascribed to Jesus. In fact the motif of the story, the changing of the water into wine, is a typical motif of the Dionysus legend.”

[5] See fn1

[6] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf&Stock, 2010), 76. “I said that Jesus’ words—‘Why do you tell that to me?’—according to the latest biblical studies, are very strong words. In other parts of the Bible they always appear in lawsuits or when someone is being injured by someone else, and it’s something like our expression ‘Stop bugging me.’”

[7] Bultmann, John, 116. “The refusal is a rough one…What is surprising here is the form of address, γύναι, where one expects ‘Mother’. Even though it is not disrespectful or scornful, it sets a peculiar distance between Jesus and his mother.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 116. “The purpose of the preparation is precisely to bring out the character of the miracle as παράδοξον by raising the tension. This is done here, as elsewhere, by making Jesus at first refuse the request, but in such a way as to keep the expectation alive.”

[9] Cardenal, Solentiname, 77. “Carlos Alberto: ‘…By doing this he was already pushing himself into his public life, I mean, into struggle, and now he was going to be persecuted…I see that right after this in the following passage, Saint John already has Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple, and also talking about his death. So it’s clear that this miracle speeded things up.’”

[10] Bultmann, John, 116. “When the wine runs out, Jesus’ mother brings it to his notice; of course she does this with the aim of getting him to perform a miracle, as can be seen from Jesu’ answer v. 4, and as was also to be expected from the style of the miracle story, in which everything is related with an eye on the main point of the story and must be understood in relation to this point.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 118. “It is in accordance with the style of the miracle stories that the miraculous process itself is not described; the divine action remains a mystery.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 118. “As in other miracle stories, the greatness of what has happened is emphasised by a demonstration or acclamation by the public. Yet here the παράδοξον is not brought out by a generalized phrase, but by a concrete scene: the water had been turned into the most excellent wine!…This saying marks the end of the narrative proper: any further words would only detract from the effect.”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 78. “Oscar: ‘It seems to me that the wine means joy, a party. To be happy. Enjoyment. Also love. He wanted to make us see that he was bringing enjoyment, happiness, a party.’”

[14] Cardenal, Solentiname, 78. “Olivia: ‘Joy. And also unity. Wine unites. He was coming to bring about unity among people. But liquor can separate too, and lead to quarrels, stabbings…’”

[15] Cardenal, Solentiname, 79. “Marcelino: ‘We see then that he was coming to bring unity and brotherhood among people. That’s the wine he brought. If there’s no brotherhood among people there’s no joy. Like a party where people are divided, where they don’t all share alike, it’s a party without joy….So  a society with quarrels, with social classes, can’t have a true banquet, a true party.’”

[16] Cardenal, Solentiname, 78-79. “The prophet Amos had said that when the Messiah came there would be great harvests of wheat and grapes, and that the hills would distill wine. Isaiah says that God was going to prepare a banquet for all the peoples, with very good meat and very good wines. And he had also prophesied about the Messiah, saying that “they would not be sad.” By the miracle Christ is making it clear that he is the promised Messiah.’”

[17] Bultmann, John, 120. “For here, as elsewhere, the Evangelist’s figurative language refers not to any particular gift brought by the Saviour Jesus, but to Jesus himself as the Revealer, as is true of the images of the living water, the bread of life  and the light, as well as of the shepherd and the vine; equally the wine refers not to any special gift, but to Jesus’ gift as a whole, to Jesus himself as the Revealer, as he is finally visible after the completion of his work.”

[18] Bultmann, John, 119. “For the Evangelist the meaning of the story is not contained simply in the miraculous event; this, or rather the narrative, is the symbol of something which occurs throughout the whole of Jesus’ ministry, that is, the revelation of the δόξα of Jesus. As understood by the Evangelist this is not the power of the miracle worker, but the divinity of Jesus as the Revealer, and it becomes visible for faith in the reception of χάρις and ἀλήθεια; his revelation of his δόξα is nothing more nor less than his revelation of the ὄνομα of the Father (17.6).”

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Water and Fire

Psalm 29:1-2, 11 Ascribe to Abba God, you gods, ascribe to Abba God glory and strength. Ascribe to God the glory due God’s Name; worship Abba God in the beauty of holiness. God shall give strength to God’s people; God shall give God’s people the blessing of peace.

Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments in my life where I have felt the heavy blankets of shame, disgrace, and regret. The dastardly thing about these emotions and feelings is that they never tend to stay on the surface, pinned to the exterior of the epidermis. They sink in deep, infecting the heart, mind, soul, the very being of a person. There isn’t enough soap and water hot enough to get at the dirt. There are times when I want to crawl into the shower and stay there, under the hot streams, until I feel clean, hoping beyond hope that the water cascading down, pouring over me would–somehow—penetrate through my flesh and cleanse my heart and mind, my soul and self, washing away these children of malfeasance. In the end, though, it’s just water, it can’t and won’t do the very thing I needed it to do. These are times I need something more than just water, I need divine fire. Under that falling water, I need to remember my confession: please forgive me Lord, a sinner. But I can’t stop there, I must press through that confession and remember this: In the name of Christ, I am Baptized. With Martin Luther, it’s here, in remembering my baptism where I am exposed by my confession and brought through that death into new life, placed deep in the presence of God through the purifying fires of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

John answered and said to the people, “Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me for whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire.” (Lk. 3:16)

In chapter 3, Luke brings us face to face with John. According to the first part of chapter three, John, the son of Zechariah, is going about the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance (vv. 2-3). In v. 7, people are coming to John in the Jordan to be baptized, and he is verbally exposing them and exhorting them to better life lived in the world (vv.7-14). Due to this interaction, the people begin to wonder with excitement that John might be the Messiah (v. 15).

Luke tells us John senses this building excitement and wonder about his role in God’s activity in the world, and quickly nips all speculation in the bud, Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire (v. 16). John makes a clear distinction here between the baptism he offers in the coming reign of God and the one Jesus will offer. His cleanses the outside, Jesus’s will cleanse not only the outside but also the inside. Luke has a couple of objectives in mind by placing these words on John’s tongue. First, at the time of writing, there were factions remaining of those who followed John and those who followed Jesus; for Luke, not even John wants anyone following him because he is one who points to Jesus (his is more prophet[1] than Christ).[2] Here, Luke, through John, places articulated emphasis on the baptism that Jesus will offer as the superior baptism to his water baptism. While both water and fire clean, only fire will purify.[3]

Luke’s second objective: to expose the significant difference between John’s baptism and Jesus’s (it’s not only that one is more powerful). The bigger difference is that one baptism includes receiving something. Where John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance and being washed clean with water (full stop), John does not claim to give anyone anything to fill the now vacant spot washed. But, according to Luke’s John, Jesus does. What is this gift? The Holy Spirit. The believer, the one who is baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, receives the Holy Spirit in Jesus name via baptism. In other words, John’s baptizands aren’t empowered with anything, they’re just washed clean; Jesus’s are.[4] Those who receive the baptism of Jesus with fire and the Holy Spirit also receive the Holy Spirit and it is this “paraclete” (according to the gospel of John) who exposes and who empowers Jesus’s followers (i.e. through exposure and exhortation, or the growth discussed in the book of Ephesians) into the way of wisdom, love, and truth[5] and will continue to do so long after Jesus ascends.[6]

John then retreats to some rather intimidating imagery of judgment. Who has his winnowing shovel in hand to thoroughly purify his threshing floor and collect the grain into his grainery, but the chaff he will consume entirely [by] unquenchable fire (v. 17). Again, there are two important things being articulated here. The first is the comparison of Jesus and his baptism with fire and the Holy Spirit as an act of judgment,[7] or, what I would call “exposure”. The winnowing shovel is judgment; to winnow is to separate the chaff from the grain. For Luke’s John, Jesus comes with a winnowing shovel to judge by exposing everything to fire (judgment). This winnow shovel language echoes back to what John said at the beginning of the chapter about the axe being laid at the base of the tree to chop down those trees that are fruitless.[8] Thus judgment is clearly and explicitly intended here and no one is escaping divine fire! But, (and second) how Luke relays this winnowing is important: it’s in the past tense; as in: it’s already happened. Return to the imagery with me, one will come with a winnowing shovel and the grain will be collected together while the chaff is burned in the unquenchable fire. Thus, the winnowing has already been done by the time the collecting together of the grain and the burning of the chaff. In other words, for Luke, John has winnowed and Jesus will collect and the left over unusable parts will be burned up. Those who respond positively to John’s call for baptism by water will be the grain that is gathered up by Christ and baptized by him. [9] According to Luke, John is the fork in the road; if you are open to repentance baptism, then you are open to what comes when the Christ shows up. [10]

Then our passage closes with the well told story of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan with John. Here Luke solidifies Jesus’s dual identification with God and with humanity;[11] demonstrating that Jesus is, without need of repentance, in solidarity with humanity’s plight (needing repentance) [12] as well as in solidarity with God’s mission in the world to bring absolution (the purification with fire and the Holy Spirit) to the beloved. As one of the many people in the Jordan, Jesus, too, is baptized; yet, as the one who is God’s son, he is recognized by God as God’s own by the opening of the heavens (v.21), and the Holy Spirit like a dove[13] came down bodily upon him, and a voice out of heaven came about, “You, You are my son; with you I am well-pleased” (v. 22). According to Luke, Jesus is the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, the one through whom God’s redemption comes[14] and through whom humanity will be both restored and represented in the heavenly realms.

Conclusion

To be baptized of water, to be cleaned by water is great; to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and God’s divine fire in the name of Christ is the call of anyone who follows Jesus out of that Jordan on that day and every day after that. Something I find interesting here is that this passage speaks not of two different fires but of one. Just like it is one light that illuminates the darkness, sending the darkness to its demise while illuminating that which is in the room; so does the divine fire that comes with the Christ send that existential and spiritual dirt to its demise while rendering the beloved object of that fire new and pure. The very thing that sends me into the hot shower to cleanse from head to toe is obliterated life chaff sent to the unquenchable fire in my confession and my recollection that I am baptized in Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Yet, I, in my flesh and in my soul do not escape that fire, but suffer through it like pottery in a kiln or gold in the refinery; what is left of the fire that surges over and through me is what is collected and stored in the grainery to serve and participate in God’s mission in the world, following after Jesus and walking within the same sand impressions left behind by my savior as he left the water. In my confession and in my need for Christ, I am summoned out of and away from death (chaff) and placed in the heart of God’s love, given new life, and sent forward in liberation renewed by faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit. That which is sentenced to death (my guilt, shame, regret, anything that hinders me from new life) is burned up forever, and that which is sentenced to life abundant (me, myself, and I) are refined and collected up into the grainery to be used by God in the world to God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor, God’s beloved.

We, as God’s beloved, are called to walk through the one fire and to let God take what is chaff and burn it up completely and purify and refine by the baptism of Christ that is with God’s Holy Spirit and fire that which is to be collected as grain. In the event of faith, we, as God’s beloved, are brought into death and through it, finding ourselves resurrected on the other side, purified and made clean, inside and out, to be as Christ in the world, to represent God by word and deed, and to identify with the suffering and plight of our neighbors.

[1] Gonzalez, Luke, 50. “Thus what John is saying is that he is not even worthy to be counted among the lowest servants of the one whose coming he announces…In brief, Luke presents John as perhaps the greatest among the prophets and as the heir to the long line of leaders of Israel who significance was announced in that they were born of barren women; but even so, John cannot even be compared with Jesus.”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 50. Luke is emphasizing Jesus over John “This is an important point for Luke, who apparently was writing at time when there were still those who claimed to be followers of John but not of Jesus and such views had spread beyond the confines of Judea to Diaspora Judaism…”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “John baptizes with water; but Jesus will baptize ‘with the Hoy Spirit and with fire.’ Both water and fire are purifying agents; but fire is much more potent than water. Water may wash away whatever is unclean; but fire burns it away.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Thus in Lukan theology there is a difference between a baptism of repentance, which is what John performed, and baptism in the name of Jesus, which is connected with receiving the Holy Spirit. John calls people to repent, and when they do this he baptizes them as a sign that they are cleaned of their former impurity. But Christian baptism, while still employing water, is ‘with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’ It is a cleansing (fire) and empowering (Holy Spirit).”

[5] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 54. “Octavio: ‘The Holy Spirit is Wisdom.’
Julio: ‘It’s love for others.’
Gloria: ‘And the fire is love too.’
Eduardo: ‘Because it gives light and warmth.’
Tere: ‘And also because it purifies.’”

[6] Joel B. Green, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids): Eerdmans, 1997), 180. “The conjunction of the Holy Spirit and fire in this baptism is puzzling within the context of Luke-Acts. The Holy Spirit has been present repeatedly in 1:5-2:52, where such roles as empowering and guiding were paramount; for Luke thus far the Holy Spirit has been a manifestation of eschatological blessing and an empowering presence critical to God’s redemptive mission. Baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit,’ then, must surely be related to these themes even if other connections of the Spirit with cleansing and purging are also in view. Fire, too, can have this meaning, and it may be that the figure John anticipates will administer s single baptism of refinement and empowerment.”

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[9] Green, Luke, 182. “…the language John uses actually presumes that the process of winnowing has already been completed. Consequently, all that remains is to clear the threshing floor, and this is what John pictures. This means that John’s ministry of preparation is itself the winnowing, for his call to repentance set within his message of eschatological judgment required of people that they align themselves with or over against God’s justice. As a consequence, the role of Messiah is portrayed as pronouncing or enacting judgment on the people on the basis of their response to John.”

[10] Green, Luke, 182. “…it is important to realize that John presents his baptismal activity as an anticipation of the Messiah’s; his baptism forces a decision for or against repentance, and this prepare for the Messiah’s work…”

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “One of the women said: ‘to give us an example. He didn’t need baptism but we did, and he did it so we would do it when we saw that even he did it.’” And, “Somebody else said: ‘And he could also have done it out of humility. He was with his people, with his group, and he wasn’t going to say: “I don’t need this, you do it, I don’t have any sin.” The others, the Pharisees, might say that, the ones who didn’t follow John. Not Jesus, he goes along with the others.”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “Alejandro: ‘You could also say out of solidarity. So he wouldn’t be separated form the group.’”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 57. “‘It wasn’t that a dove descended, because it doesn’t say that a dove descended but “like a dove.” A dove is a soft and loving little animal. And the Holy Spirit is loving. It was the love of God that descended upon him.’”

[14] Green, Luke, 187. “The purpose of the divine voice in 3:22 is above all that of providing an unimpeachable sanction of Jesus with regard to his identity and mission. Working in concert with the endowment of the Holy Spirit, this divine affirmation presents in its most acute form Jesus’ role as God’s agent of redemption. This accentuates Jesus’ role as God’s representative, the one through whom God’s aim will be further presented and worked out in the story, but it also demonstrates at least in a provisional way the nature of Jesus’ mission by calling attention to the boundaries of his exercise of power.”

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Like the Magi

Psalm 84:1 1 How dear to me is your dwelling, O God of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of Abba God; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.

Introduction

Happy New Year!

The beginning of the New Year can be a way to reflect backwards on what was to gather a plan to do things differently and improve on the version of the you that was. To be honest, I like New Years and the tangible break it offers me. Like, here’s a day—just one day—that’s feels completely different from the one before it (even though, intellectually, I know it’s just another day in the week). There’s something gracious about being given a day—as random as it might be—that offers a true turning from what was (last year) and a turning toward what will be (this coming year). Celebrating what was, welcoming what’s new, there’s something absolutely refreshing about New Years. On the 31st of December I can look back over the terrain behind me and see the mountains I climbed and the valleys I made it through; on the 1st of January I can turn that gaze forward with both excitement and a little bit of (healthy) intrepidation.

This “what was” and “what will be” pares well with our liturgical journey through Christmas tide (today being the last day of Christmas!). While we are forever listening and looking backward through stories about the waiting of the Messiah’s coming, the birth of the Messiah, and what follows, we are (paradoxically) reoriented toward what will come, to the new, to the not yet and away from the already was. While we know the story and what has happened (last year) we are now faced with how this story will play out uniquely in front of us (this new year). As well as we have known this story, there will be new ways God’s word unfolds in our lives, ushering us into new territory, calling us to follow new stars, even luring us to take a completely different route home when necessary…

Matthew 2:1-12

“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” (Mt. 2:10-12, NRSVUE)

Our gospel author, Matthew, introduces us to the Magi and King Herod. Matthew is sharing two things with his audience. First, the reference to King Herod locates the audience with Jesus and Mary and Jospeh under tyranny.[1] According to one source, “There were three Herods…Herod the Elder, Herod his son, and a grandson Herod. Herod the elder, the one at the time of Jesus’ birth had ordered two of his sons to be strangled on suspicion of conspiracy, and he also killed one of his wives. At the time of Jesus’ birth he killed more than three hundred public servants on other suspicions of conspiracy.”[2] Knowing this, we get a sense of the anxiety and the terror of the socio-political atmosphere under the murderous rule of Herod; there is no rest under such a ruler who is so insecure that not even his own sons can live with ease, let alone the birth of the one who is considered Messiah, “The King of the Jews[3].”[4] Second, the news of Jesus’s birth is not isolated to just Bethlehem or Judea proper, but is spreading beyond imposed human made boundaries marking nations and principalities. So, into this situation come the Magi, the “Three Wise Men” from the east, who were noble men of philosophy and science, especially of the stars,[5] and religious teachers of Zoroaster. And, they intentionally head to Jerusalem (v. 1) seeking the arrival of a new king born of the Jews because the stars (planets?) had aligned a certain way in the sky and this proclaimed the birth of a new ruler (v. 2).[6]

After introducing us to Herod and Herod’s rule and the inquisitive and humble[7] Magi, Matthew tells us that it’s the inquiries of the Magi in Jerusalem that send King Herod into a fit of fear, and with him the rest of Jerusalem (v. 4)—both those in league with him whose power is also being threatened and those who are subject because when there’s an insecure ruler on the throne, no one is safe because everyone within reach is a threat and an enemy.[8] Anxious and full of fear, Herod not only consults his own chief priests and scribes (think Pharisees and Sadducees) about where the birth of the Messiah would occur, but he also “secretly” calls for the Magi and seeks information from them (vv. 5-7). Then, Herod sends the Magi to go and find the child and return to him so he can go and worship, too (v. 8). All this so that Matthew can tell us that God is not at work in the heart of the empire, Jerusalem, but elsewhere, in meager Bethlehem home not to rulers and the powerful but to people living on the fringe and the peasants.[9] Herod and his fellow leaders and rulers are being exposed in Matthew’s work; they are (rightly) already on the defensive and afraid; the imposters—claiming to rule as representatives of God in God’s name—are beginning to feel the initial tremors of the shifting of power from them to the true king of God, to the humble baby swaddled in manager. In other words, through the arrival of the Magi in Jerusalem these rulers of the kingdom of humanity are put on notice and are afraid, “…for they are linked with Jerusalem’s fear, and they are allied with Herod’s scheming (2:3).”[10]

The Magi proceeded to follow the star that summoned them from the east until it stopped over the place where the child was (v. 9). According to our text, the Magi were “overwhelmed with Joy” (v. 10), and they entered the house, found the baby Jesus in Mary’s lap, knelt, paid homage, and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (v. 11). These gifts, as odd as they may seem to us are valuable treasures at the time; they will come in handy once Joseph is given a vision that he must flee with his family out of Bethlehem and into Egypt to save the life of his son since Herod is moments away from decreeing a massacre of all children two years old and younger (Mt. 2:13-18). Gifts like gold, frankincense, and myrrh will help the family live in Egypt until God summons them back after Herod’s death (Mt. 2:19ff). When we proclaim the migrancy of Jesus’s family in these early days, we tend to picture both the scene with a very, very pregnant Mary and the scene of Joseph leading his family into Egypt in sentimental terms against peaceful and pastoral backdrops. But both events are anything but; they are events that are whipped through with fear and anxiety because they are doing whatever it takes to fight for their lives. And it’s here, for Matthew, where Jesus—the son of God, the king of the Jews—is situated deep in the human predicament and plight: in the pain of being human in an inhuman world.[11] And it is this inhuman world run by the kings of the kingdom of humanity that Jesus will, decades later, come face to face in conflict.

Finally, Matthew tells us, “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” Matthew’s story about the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus the son of Mary, begins with resistance. Worried more about the life of this child, they defy Herod’s order to return to him, and they find their way back home via a different route. Here, the Magi—wise and noble, with access to power—sided with the little one in the lap of a humble woman of color, one who was already being threatened with persecution.

Conclusion

It’s a new year. So, we are presented with a glorious many roads to take. Grateful, though, becaues our examples—our “shining guiding stars”, if you will—the Magi present to us the very clear way we must walk forward this year: aligned with the marginalized, the oppressed, those being threatened with death and met with hostility. There is, if I’m understanding the Christian story well enough, no other way than to find another way home and refuse to side with power that is so insecure it will destroy millions upon millions of lives one way or another. We like the Magi must be humble, bend our knees, adore the word of God made known to us in Christ—his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension—and bring our gifts for the advancement of God’s reign, participating in the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of our neighbor.

[1] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 31.

[2] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31.

[3] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31. “It was known that the Messiah was going to be king, an that’s why the wise me arrive aksing for the king of the Jews, meaning the Messiah.”

[4] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 27.

[5] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31.

[6] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.

[7] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.

[8] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.

[9] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.

[10] Case-Winters, Matthew, 28.

[11] Case-Winters, Matthew, 29-30.

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Remember and Rejoice Even Now

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid. For God is my stronghold and my sure defense, and Abba God will be my Savior.

Introduction

Joy. Joy? In this economy?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been awash in many a meme and reel describing the harriedness of a mom during the Christmas season. From doing advanced math to figuring out the equity calibration among the presents for the kids to just making sure that things are “merry and bright” and feel like Christmas, these memes solicit a chuckle here and there as I navigate the various holiday season enterprises. The funniest memes and reels include moms who must also navigate a Christmas season with a kid who has (the audacity to have) a December birthday…

Joy. Joy? In this economy?!

But Joy is precisely what is being asked of me as I show up here, in this place. Maybe the audacity isn’t so much my kid who has a December birthday, but mine…can I have the audacity to have joy…even now?

We speak of Advent as a time of waiting and expecting; I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m waiting and expecting something I’m really just catastrophizing and imagining the worse, dreading everything. But what if the news to come is good? What if the waiting and expecting is for something remarkable, life-altering, world changing, something categorically awesome and awe-filled, something that rejuvenates tired bones and fatigued bodies, something that solicits that electrical surge of No Way! through the brain when something unbelievable happens? What if joy and its activity “rejoicing” are precisely the emotive and active prospects of this very moment, of this very economy, of this very time of waiting and expecting?

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah

Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation. And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to Abba God and call upon Abba God’s Name…

Our canticle brings us into the realm of rejoicing, whether we like or not and whether we are ready for it or not. The canticle starts with a declaration from Isaiah, “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid” (v.1). These words of Isaiah begin to conclude what has come before in the previous eleven chapters.[1] The words are not strictly Isaiah’s though, they are for the assembly. These prophetic[2] words of Isaiah 12 are liturgical words, thus, per Advent 1, they are psalmic.[3] It is not only Isaiah who praises Abba God; it is Israel’s summons to praise God because of all the good things God has done: God has been Israel’s “stronghold” and “sure defense” and God has demonstrated God’s self to be Israel’s savior (v.2). In remembering these deeds of God and the salvation they receive from God’s hand, Israel is ushered into the celebration of rejoicing and praise (v.3),[4] not unlike Moses and Israel did when they were liberated from Egypt. The words of Isaiah 12:1-6 are a litany of quotations from the psalms, other portions of Isaiah, and exodus.[5] Israel is being swept up in the great and grand salvation of God because God’s salvation is not one and done; God will always be their God thus their salvation, and they will always be God’s people in need of saving.

As the canticle continues with v. 4, “And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make God’s deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that God’s Name is exalted.” On that day…meaning, not only on back then when their foreparents stood on the shore of the sea liberated from Egyptian oppression, but on any day when God’s salvation is made known to the people shall they give thanks and call upon God. Israel has been saved, is being saved, and will be saved; Isaiah has the fullness of time in view. [6] Israel will remember that God has saved and in remembering will look forward to God’s salvation in the future; with both their past and future secured in God, Israel’s salvation is present tense and they are liberated to brings God’s justice further into the world.

With the imagery of the Passover and liberation from Egypt in mind,[7] the canticle beckons the Israelites to remember that it is a faithful remnant that call upon God’s name, who respond to God’s judgment and redemption; and this is Isaiah’s hope.[8] The remnant is not the powerful, not the leaders, not the ones out front; the remnant is hidden among the regular people, like you and me, the ones calling out to God from their squalor, from their pain, from their suffering, from their oppression, from their existential fatigue;[9] they are the ones who remember the great deeds of Abba God and abide in God.[10] Martin Luther in The Bondage of the Will, says something similar about the true church of Christ, “The Church is hidden, the saints are unknown.”[11] The promised new community which the remnant constitutes is heard, according to Isaiah; their present reality is formed by a mutual remembering of the past and this constitutes the future of Israel.[12] God’s people will not be easily snuffed out no matter where they are or where they go because God is both their defender and their salvation in every moment. It is the remnant, spread far and wide, whose voices become one as they “Sing the praises of Abba God, for Abba God has done great things, and this is known in all the world” (v.5), and as they “Cry aloud” and “ring out [their] joy” because they are anchored in God because God is with them and God is their God and they are God’s beloved. [13]And knowing an believing this, there is reason to rejoice even in the waiting and expecting; especially in the waiting and expecting.

Conclusion

In Advent, we are summoned in and asked to remember while we wait. Following the logic of Isaiah 12:1-6, when we remember we also find ourselves looking forward to God who is our past and our future. We dare to look forward, to pick up heavy heads and cast tired eyes into the great unknown and dare to look forward with confidence that God will do what God has promised God will do because God has demonstrated God’s self as trustworthy (yesterday, today, and tomorrow). In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices with that ancient remnant of Israel, those eager voices of yesteryear crying out to God. In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices to those who cry out today for God’s intervention: those who are threatened with extinction and cry out to God, those who are scared to live as they are and cry out to God, those who fear for the lives of their loved ones because of the color of their skin and cry out to God, those who only know the cold bars of captivity and cry out to God, those who cry out to God from the depth of their nakedness, hunger, thirst, and loneliness. Israel’s call in the world is to think upon the gråeat actions of God and to then participate in God’s mission in the world righting the wrongs in the world. For those of us here today, those of us also waiting and remembering, we, too, are asked to participate in righting wrongs, in identifying with the least of these, in seeking God’s justice and peace in the world.

So, as we refresh our exhausted minds by remembering once again the off-the-wall story of God coming low in the humble form of a baby born to Mary in a cave so that God’s self can identify with God’s beloved, let us also find new energy to sing and praise God, to throw our hands up and rejoice again…even now, especially now.

[1] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 107. “The chapter offers a response to the great deeds of God’s salvation to his people in Zion that were recorded in the previous eleven chapters.”

[2] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “It seems clear that the traditional conventions of the Psalter have been reused to shape an eschatological psalm of thanksgiving into a new vehicle for the prophetic proclamation of the book.”

[3] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “…chapter 12 is dominated by the psalmic language of Israel’s liturgy.”

[4] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “Verses 3 and 6 bracket the second confession and offer further theological grounding for the call of praise by the community of faith.”

[5] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “The passage is a veritable catena of citations and allusions form other sections of Isaiah, from Exodus, and the Psalter. For example, v. 1=Isa. 5:25; v. 2a=Ex. 15:2b; v. 2b=Ex. 15.2a; v. 3=Isa. 35:10, 55:1; Ps. 105:41, 43; v. 4=Ps. 105:1, 148:13; v. 5=Ex. 15:1, 21.”

[6] Childs, Isaiah, 109-110. “The theme of salvation is repeated three times, not just as a promise extended, but a reality experienced…It is this experience of the redeeming mercy that evokes joy as an inexhaustible source of life-giving water. Moreover, as with the rest of the Psalter, the experience of salvation calls forth a witness to the rest of the world that bears testimony to the wonders of God’s might works.”

[7] Childs, Isaiah, 110. Analogy between this text and Moses’s song in Ex. 15.

[8] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “The major point to make is that chapter 12 presents the voice of the faithful remnant of Israel responding to the great deeds of God, both in judgment and redemption, which had occupied the prophets throughout the former chapters.”

[9] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “Thus an analogy is established between redeemed Israel after the deliverance from Egypt and the present remnant, who in their experience of faith already stand on a safe shore a second time after having been rescued from enemies and exiles.”

[10] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 208. “God not only asks for justice; He demands of man ‘to regard the deeds of the Lord, to see the work of His hands’ (Isa. 5:12; cf. 22:11), ‘to walk in His paths’ (Isa. 2:3). ‘If you will not believe, you will not abide’ (Isa. 7:11).”

[11] Martin Luther “Bondage of the Will” LW 33:89

[12] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “Up to now there had been the promise of anew community of faith that would emerge from the ashes of Israel’s destruction, but the actual voice of the remnant had not been heard. The presentation of this voice of praise serves to confirm that the new society of faith was not merely a future promise, but was a present reality, made concrete first in the son Shearjashub (7:3) , but above all in the sign of Immanuel (7:14). This community of faith confirms in liturgical praise its experience of God, and the choice of the idiom of the Psalter bears testimony to the liturgical actuality of the worship.”

[13] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “In the response of faith the reality of the divine presence, ‘God with us’ (Immanuel), has been experienced, pointing to the full eschatological consummation of the kingdom of God. Israel can shout in joy because the Holy One of Israel, who has always reigned over his creation (6:3), even now shows himself mighty in the midst of his people (v. 6). The eschatological tensions of the chapter testify that the remnant already shares in that for which it waits in expectation.”

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Come Into the Courts of God

Psalm 25:3-4 Show me your ways, Abba God, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.

Introduction

Welcome to Advent. Some of us enter excited, filled with joy, ready to embrace the Christmas season with gusto. It’s that time of year again. Lights fill the night sky from the stars in the celestial realms to the twinkling of little tiny incandescent lights decorating any surface we can apply them; parties and events populate our calendars, shuttling us from one day to the next with little time to rest; gifts begin to appear under trees and in stockings; and food take on an increase making up for the slim trimmings all year long. This morning, some of us enter this space with unparalleled excitement, embracing the Advent season, ready for a fresh dose of hope to brighten our step and give us that steady gait into tomorrow.

But some of us enter this space beat up, tired, confused, angry, and doubtful. Some of us carry in here the weight of the world on our shoulders, dragging us down, curving us over, and holding us captive within its mammoth size. Some of us enter this moment scared of what the future brings. The beginning of Advent ushers in a sense of doom, maybe, that this upcoming year is so unknown while this one that’s ending is quite familiar. And we like familiar, even if it’s a bad familiar; at least we know what to expect. Some of us come into this space riddle with anxiety over relationships with family members and friends; so many areas of our lives are impacted by the radical socio-political polarization swirling around us. And some of us are strapped with the burden of sadness and grief, feeling the existential pain of the world, the reality of loss, the deep longing to those loved ones again who have ceased darkening our doorways. All of these show up here, too, humbly looking for hope as a buoy to make it through one more week, one more day, one more hour…one more…anything

Psalm 25:1-9

Remember, Abba God, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, Abba God.

The Psalms is the first book of the “Writings” (Kethuvim) that became authoritative within the “Writings.”[1] It is comprised of collections of poetic prayers geared toward the community’s communal worship[2] uttered through words of “songs of praise.” [3] The psalms are not only an invitation to sing, but to pray; they summon us to pray to God and this God is a good God, one who loves us dearly and with whom we are in a deep and profound (personal and intimate) relationship.[4] The psalms also give us, from the balcony of 2024, a look back at ancient Israel’s liturgy (in both first and second temple eras).[5] The psalms—the Greek iteration, psalmos, of the Hebrew, mizmor—also give us insight that many of these songs of praise, prayers in poesy form, were accompanied by a string instrument.[6] One question, who wrote the psalms, remains rather ambiguous (not all Psalms were actually penned by David), [7] though we could break it down like this, according to the JPS study bible, “1, chapters 1-41 (most of the ‘Psalms of David’ are in this collection); II, 42-72 (containing some Psalms of Korah and Asaph); III, 73-89 (almost exclusively the psalms of Korah and Asaph); IV, 90-106 (mostly untitled psalms); V, 107-150 (mostly liturgical psalms for pilgrimages to the Temple and for festivals).”[8] At the end of the day, the psalms not only inspire and invite us in to pray to God, but they also suggest that God is faithful and will do what God says God will do; the psalms often expect God to hear the pleas and cries and praise of the people and to respond.[9]

So, if you came here this morning looking for a way to speak with God, to praise God, to commune with God with your voice and body, the psalm for today, Psalm 25, invites you to do all of that. Those of us desiring to keep what hope we have and those looking to inflate a hope that’s been deflated, can feel comforted by these ancient words, in (a near perfect[10]) acrostic form.[11] Psalm 25 opens with a plea for help from God, v.1 “To you, Abba God, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you; let me not be humiliated, nor let my enemies triumph over me.” And the next verse commends trust in God, v.2 “Let none who look to you be put to shame; let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes.” This cycling through plea and trust is woven through the psalm; a need for God is expressed followed by God showing up and delivering from distress.[12] The psalmist begins by asking for protection (“lift up…”[13]) and then follows by asking that shame belong to those who do not turn to God for protection in dependence and responsibility. To shift the shame from the follower of God to those who do not follow God is a common theme in the parts of the psalms.[14]

The next coupling, vv. 3-4, draw out that the psalmist longs for God’s wisdom, “Show me your ways, Abba God, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.” The psalmist’s trust and verbalized dependence on God for salvation instigates a desire to know more about God’s ways which should be the ways of the one who follows God, i.e., the psalmist.[15] Yet, there’s some caution here, to be shown the ways and paths of God is then to earn the obligation to do them; it is not enough that the ways are known and contemplated, but to know the right way of God brings with it a demand: one must also do the right things of God. Then vv. 5-6 make a bit more sense; to pray to be shown God’s ways and paths, to declare one’s trust and dependence on God should solicit confession that too often the very one praying thusly is also the one who falls short of the goal and becoming skewed and ushering the psalmist toward missing the mark (“sin”). Thus, the psalmist prays, “Remember, Abba God, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, Abba God.” In other words, remember not any of my sins and missing the mark from my earliest days unto this very day.[16] Rather, remember your love and mercy, because it is on these divine characteristic that I am truly dependent and that will bolster my weak and feeble spirit and body barely clinging to whatever malnourished hope I have.[17]

The psalmist then returns to praising God in vv. 7-8, “Gracious and upright is Abba God; therefore Abba God teaches sinners in his way. God guides the humble in doing right and teaches God’s way to the lowly.” Recalling God’s mercy and forgiveness bring the psalmist back into the realm of praising God and remembering God teaches those who follow God and God’s ways; those who are humble, those who know their dependency on this good and gracious, merciful and forgiving, are those who do the good and right that makes up the ways and teaching and paths of God. And at the end, the psalmist confesses their knowledge of God and of God’s ways, “All the paths of Abba God are love and faithfulness to those who keep God’s covenant and God’s testimonies.” Thus, to be fully dependent on God, to trust God, to be shown and taught the ways and paths of God is to become like God in the world, walking and working in the ways of divine truth with responsibility, participating in the divine mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world to the glory of God and the wellbeing of the neighbor. This is to keep God’s covenant and God’s testimonies; here is the foundation of the hope of the people of God.

Conclusion

When we find ourselves coveting the hope we have or desperate to find anything to produce hope, we must come into the courts of God. We must come and hear something new, something different, something radical about what could be because anything is possible with God and we need a really good interruption. It is through our prayers, our songs of praise, our proclamation of God that our hope is fueled and bolstered; it is our faith in this God who not only says God loves us but will show it. It is this divine showing that will always be the foundation and source of our hope. God will show God’s self as merciful and forgiving, loving and kind, and God will do this by being born in a manger to a single woman of color, in poor and meager conditions and to live as one of God’s beloved with the goal to rescue them from the plight and damage of the kingdom of humanity.

[1] Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, “Psalms,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1280. “The book of Psalms is the first book of the Kethuvim, or Writings—probably because of its size and significance and also perhaps because it was the first book in the Kethuvim to become authoritative.”

[2] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1280. “Psalms is a collection, actually a collection of collections, of poetic prayers. (Prose prayers are also found through the Bible, but they are ad hoc, private prayers of individuals.”

[3] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1280. “The Hebrew name of the book, Tehilim, ‘songs of praise,’ is found often in rabbinic literature and is also attested in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls…” and which credits David as the author of 3,600.

[4] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1284. “According to the outlook of Psalms, the main religious function of human being is to offer praise to God, to proclaim His greatness throughout the world. Thus, the psalms enjoin others to praise God, and they envision a world in which everyone and everything will praise God. This implies a relationship between God and humans, another important dimension of Psalms.”

[5] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1280. “The origin of most of these poetic prayers is lost in obscurity, but they were preserved because they were likely used liturgically in ancient Israel, certainly in the Second Temple and in some cases perhaps in the First Templet.”

[6] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1280. “The English title ‘Psalms’ derives from the Grek psalmos, a translation of Hebrew mizmor, ‘a song with the accompaniment of a stringed instrument.’”

[7] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1281. “Davidic authorship, however, on the basis of linguistic and contextual evidence, is not accepted as historical fact by modern scholars, but is viewed as a way the ancients linked biblical writing with the appropriate inspired well-known biblical figure, thereby confirming the divine inspiration and the authority of those writing (as is the case in the ascription of Proverbs to Solomon, Lamentations to Jeremiah, and so forth).”

[8] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1280.

[9] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms:Introduction,” 1284. “God is called upon to hear prayers and to respond; this one of His attributes. Worst of all is when He ‘hides His face’ and refuses to pay attention to the psalmist, because this puts into question the efficacy of prayer. If there is one primary underlying assumption of the book of Psalms, it is the potential efficacy of prayer.”

[10] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “Two letters are missing and two are doubled, likely reflecting changes that the psalm has undergone in its transmission.”

[11] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “An individual’s petition in acrostic form: the first line begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the first word of the second line with the second letter of the alphabet, and so on to the final letter.”

[12] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “The psalm is made up of alternating petitions and expressions of trust. It resembles wisdom literature in its concern with learning and finding the right path, but has the religious concerns of Psalms in its hope for forgiveness and for deliverance from distress.”

[13] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “…lit. ‘lift my soul to You’…i.e., ‘turn to You for protection.’”

[14] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “The plea for the ‘shaming’ of one’s enemies is frequent in complaints…”

[15] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “Prayer for moral guidance with a wisdom cast…”

[16] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “Youthful sins: Since God’s mercy dates from the beginning of time, the psalmist mentions sins that date form the beginning of his life.”

[17] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalms,” 1309. “Prayer for divine mercy and forgiveness of sins. A key word is ‘z-k-r,’ ‘remember,’ translated as be mindful and consider. God should remember that He is merciful and not remember (take into account) the psalmist’s sins.”

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We’re Our Own Problem

1 Samuel 2:8a-b Abba God raises up the poor from the dust; Abba God lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.

Introduction

Our relationship with our ideologies will be the end of us.

I know that’s not the greatest way to begin a sermon in a place that should bring comfort, but it is the truthiest way I know how to begin. (This place is as much about comfort as it is about truth.) While I think there are good ideologies and worse ones, the reality is—and to quote last week’s sermon—we do this. There are ideas we have and ideals we strive for; then there is the calcification of those ideas and ideals that we turn into ideologies; we do this. They aren’t inherently embedded in the universe, waiting for our exploration and discovery. Let’s go on a thought journey: imagine earth making its way about the sun without humanity anywhere. In this image, what is happening on the face of the earth? Flora is flora-ing, fauna is fauna-ing, Things get warm, things get cold; things enter night while things enter day. Things are just going. Are animals fighting, sure. Are trees dying because of beetles, sure. But it’s all just going, organically, day in and day out.

At no point in that image is there a discussion about “good” and “evil”, of “progress” and “conserving”, of “individual” and “communal”, of “this” and “not that”. Why? Because we bring that stuff into the mix. To be clear, I’m not arguing for a human-less world; I very much enjoy my time here as a human, doing all my humany things. I’m also not arguing that those discussions, dialogues, and dialectics aren’t important; don’t forget, I’m a theologian and political ethicist, my academic career depends on such things be engaged with and vigorously. But what I want you to see is that part of being human is making and creating systems and structures  that reflect ourselves into the world, materializing what we hold most dear. Did you catch that emphasis? What WE hold most dear, how WE see the world, what WE think is best. Every philosophy, theology, ethical program, religious expression carries a certain amount of personal bias that then resonates with others experiencing the world. Every. One.

The problem is that we don’t see these ideologies as things we make, like tables and chairs. We see them as parts of us worth defending as if our lives depended on it. Here, three things happen, a). (individually) we lose ourselves to them (as in, they become a part of our personhood, being, and identity); b). (corporately) we lose the number one thing that makes us most human: relationships with others, with our kin and with our neighbor (as in, we will cling to ideologies harder than we will cling to each other because we have allowed them to define us more than our relationships); and c). because we have invested so much in these ideologies, we can’t let them be wrong because then we become bad (as in, we’ve succumbed to the false binary that right=good and wrong=bad). In other words, too close an identification with what we believe to be the way will mean that we lose others and in losing others we lose ourselves. In other, other words, we lose our humanity and let the very things we created have domination over us, and we are thrust back into captivity; our ideologies are none other than immaterial golden calves causing us to curve in on ourselves more and more, forsaking our neighbor, thus forsaking God. We will become so turned in on ourselves that we won’t even know God’s left the building.

Mark 13:1-8

And then, while they were leaving out of the temple, one of [Jesus’s] disciples says to Jesus, “Teacher, behold(!), how magnificent the enormous blocks of stone and how magnificent the sanctuary!!” And Jesus said to him, “See these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left stone upon stone, not one at all(!); all will be overthrown.”

Mark opens chapter thirteen with Jesus leaving the temple—the one he’s been in for a while teaching. This leaving functions in two ways: 1. it provides a conclusion to the teaching of the disciples that has been ongoing for chapters now; and 2. Jesus physically severs his connection with the temple (he’s not thrown out; he leaves as the “unquestioned winner in the contest”).[1] In other words, Mark sets up an important visual for his audience: God is leaving the building (recall Mk. 1:1).

As Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple, one of them (who goes unnamed) marvels, to Jesus, about how magnificent the building is and the stones! “Teacher, behold(!), how magnificent the enormous blocks of stone and how magnificent the sanctuary!!” These structures were fantastically remarkable, the place you’d go if you’re touristing about Jerusalem. One scholar explains, the temple “occupied a platform of over 900 by 1, 500 feet, and the front of the temple building itself stood 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide, made of white stone, much of it covered with silver and gold”; don’t forget, his disciples aren’t city mice, they’re country mice[2]—what they witnessed firsthand as the sun played with the precious metals, stones, and cuts was truly marvelous and awe inspiring.[3] But even though a building is remarkable and speaks to the beautiful ingenuity of human minds and hands (and conjures horrifying images of the many oppressed bodies that were used to build it…), and even if it is dedicated to the most upright purposes, it doesn’t mean that somehow God is trapped therein, obligated to reside (forever) among the stone and precious metals.

So, Jesus says, “See these great buildings/sanctuaries? Not one stone here will be left stone upon stone, not one at all(!); all will be overthrown.” What the unnamed disciple saw as magnificent, Jesus sees as the cite of God’s revolution of love, life and liberation in the world. For Mark’s Jesus, there’s nothing of the temple that is glorifying to God;[4] rather, it’s a testament to human glory, and the leadership therein is dead set on their one way to do things, the one way that brings them the most power and the most glory (remember Mk. 12:38-44). Like the pharisees in other instances and the scribes just before this, this is nothing but a well decorated tomb of human made ideologies[5] destroying God’s beloved, oppressing them, tearing them apart, rendering them grist for the mill of the corrupted authority. As Jesus leaves the temple and promises its destruction, he emphasizes that the temple is going to be replaced with something new.[6]

Jesus then, according to Mark, goes to the Mount of Olives and sits down. It’s assumed he leaves the temple by the east gate. The imagery here would not have been lost on the original audience, but it might be lost on us. Mark is harkening back to the book of Ezekial and God’s abandonment of the temple through the east gate and resting on the mountain to the east of the city.[7] Thus, Mark positions Jesus going out of the east gate to the Mount of Olives and sitting down opposite the temple (a position of judgment).[8] According to Jesus, Jerusalem and the temple are no longer the primary focus of the divine government.[9] God has (definitely) left the building.

And the next part of our passage is Jesus’s cryptic reply to Peter’s question (on behalf of James, John, and Andrew) that speaks to “‘the end of the old order’.”[10] Peter asks, “Answer for us when these things will be, and what the sign [will be] whenever all these things will intend to be accomplished.” Jesus’s response is a (prophetic[11]) litany of various wars and skirmishes, lies and deceits, none of which are literal signs that are predictions; Jesus knows that his disciples will be prone to being misled by wars, rivalries between nations and kingdoms, and even by false messiahs.[12] Rather, these things will happen not because they are signaling something divine (the collapse of the temple) but because they are the fruit of humans being human; we cause wars, we intentionally deceive others, we allow our anthropocentric megalomania to dare to believe we can save ourselves (politically and spiritually). WE DO THIS! The collapse of the temple is because of human intoxication with itself; the temple will collapse under the weight of human made ideologies and God’s refusal to be held captive by them. As we said last week,Unless Abba God builds the house, their labor is in vain who build it. Unless Abba God  watches over the city, in vain the watcher keeps their vigil.

But Jesus doesn’t leave them without hope. For Jesus, part of the economy of the kingdom of God is that death precedes life, just as incredible trial and pain precede the birthing of new life.[13] The promised destruction of the temple is but one of those things that will liberate the people into something new [14] and the disciples need not get caught up in conspiracy theories and false messiahs[15]. They are to stay the course,[16] they will need to keep their head about them and refuse the temptation to be driven and controlled by cultic conspiracies. They must fix their eyes on something else, someone else who came to liberate them—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.[17] And it is this fixed focus on Jesus, the source of love, life, and liberation that the disciples will participate in liberating all of God’s beloved from captivity (to the temple, to religion, to philosophy, to theology, to dogma, to doctrine, to law, to themselves, to their power, privilege, and prestige) into real liberation that brings with it robust love (for God and for the neighbor), vibrant new life focused on pulling together and not apart, uplifting and not tearing down, listening and not dismissing. Here in, in this pulling together, in this community, in this solidarity within humanity is the temple to be found.

Conclusion

If you’re tempted to think this is a first century Palestinian problem, please think again.[18] The Church, the Christian Church, the American Christian Church is not the new temple; we are as at risk of turning this building into an empty tomb as our ancient siblings. The new temple will always be in Christ and where Christ goes; and it will be those who follow Christ (by faith and in action) who live within the new temple of the reign of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Sirit. It is these who will be with Christ who bring Christ to others and participate in God’s diving mission of the righteous revolution of love, life, and liberation.

So, for us here today, Beloved, we need liberation, we need interruption, we need to get our heads on straight. We must heed the words of Christ to his disciples and think clear and smart and always choose that which brings much love, that which produces the most life, and that which causes the greatest amount of liberation—about these we must also be adamant, these are our guiding ideas and ideals, these are our dives and motivations. If our ideologies cannot do that or have stopped, we must—must—choose love, life, and liberation over our ideologies…we don’t have a choice; God’s about to leave the building, if God hasn’t already left.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 494. “…already in 12:1-12 and increasingly since 12:34…Jesus has taken the initiative, posing the next question himself (without receiving a reply) and going on to denounce the representatives of religious power and to overturn conventional values of importance an status. It is thus appropriate that the whole episode ends not with the authorities taking action against Jesus…but with Jesus now the unquestioned winner in the contest, himself severing the connection by leaving the temple and pronouncing its down fall.”

[2] France, Mark, 496. “The unnamed disciple’s admiration of the temple buildings would be typical of a Galilean visitor to Jerusalem.”

[3] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 184-185. “It is understandable that Jesus’ disciples, mostly from the countryside, would have been impressed by the temple Herod had built. It occupied a platform of over 900 by 1,500 feet, and the front of the temple building itself stood 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide, made of white stone, much of it covered with silver and gold, by far the most impressive building any of them had seen, glowing int eh sunlight. Little wonder they were amazed by it all—and then little wonder at Jesus’ frustration that they had not yet understood his teaching that God was not present in him and not in the temple.”

[4] France, Mark, 496. “Splendid as the structure may be, its time is over.”

[5] France, Mark, 494. “The unnamed disciple’s superficial admiration for the magnificence of the buildings, contrasted with Jesus’ declaration of their ultimate bankruptcy, furnishes yet another example of the reorientation to the new perspective of the kingdom of God to which the disciples are committed but which they remain slow to grasp, and which Mark expects his readers to embrace.”

[6] France, Mark, 494. “The old structure of authority in which God’s relationship with his people has hitherto been focused, is due for replacement…As Mt. 12:6 has it, ‘Something greater than the temple is here’. The discourse which will follow in vv. 5-37 will fill out the nature of that ‘something greater’.”

[7] France, Mark, 494.

[8] France, Mark, 495. “Moreover, he goes from the temple onto the Mount of Olives (v. 3), presumably leaving by the east gate. it does not take a very profound knowledge of the Book of Ezekiel to recall the dramatic description of God’s abandonment of his temple as the chariot throe of God’s glory rises up from inside the temple, pauses at the east gate, and comes to rest on ‘the mountain east of the city’ (Ezk. 10:18-19; 11:22-23). So now again the divine presence is withdrawn from the temple, and it is left to its destruction.”

[9] France, Mark, 497-498. “The mutual hostility between Jesus and the Jerusalem establishment has now reached it culmination in Jesus’ open prediction of the destruction of the temple, with its powerful symbolism of the end of the existing order and the implication that something new is to take its place. This is to be a time of unprecedented upheaval in the life and leadership of the people of God. Jerusalem, and the temple which is the focus of its authority, is about to lose its central role in God’s economy. “the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, is to find a new focus.”

[10] France, Mark, 498.

[11] France, Mark, 508. “What we know from Josephus of the forty years or so between Jesus’ ministry and the destruction of the temple amply illustrates these warnings.”

[12] France, Mark, 508. “The disciples, and those who following them will read these words, are called to discernment and warned against the sort of superficial impressions of ‘fulfillment’ which have been the bane of students of apocalyptic and eschatological literature ever since. Sometimes false impressions are self-inflicted, as people naively read off from world events the ‘signs of the end’ (vv.7-8). Sometimes, however, they are deliberately fostered by those who have something to gain by working on the credulity of the faithful (vv. 5-6). Jesus’ disciples will be liable to both kinds of misinformation as they look for the fulfilment of his words about the destruction of the temple. They must be on their guard.”

[13] France, Mark,509. “There is a birth to be looked forward to, but the wars, earthquakes, and famines of vv. 7-8 show only that it is coming, not when it will come. Even to speak of a birth at all is perhaps to press the metaphor too far, in that such an expression as ὠδῖνες τοῦ θανάτου does not seem to envisage a birth, only pain; but as the discourses proceeds, we shall see that the coming destruction of the temple will bring with it a new beginning.”

[14] France, Mark, 509. “The answer given to the disciples’ questions in the first four verses of the discourse is thus a negative one, clearing away the natural tendency to look for signs of the temple’s destruction in the stirring and ominous events of the coming years, in the areas both of politics and of natural disaster. The disciples must not allow themselves to be misled. They will have enough to do to maintain their own witness to the truth through these difficult days…”

[15] France, Mark, 510. Those claiming to act in Jesus’s name, “So we must assume some meagre contextual guidance is that they were not so much claiming to act on Jesus’ authority as in fact aiming to usurp his place, not by claiming to be Jesus redivivus (surely too far-fetched a concept in this context) but by arrogating to themselves the role which was rightly his, that of Messiah…”

[16] France, Mark, 511. “The disciples are to be calm and not to jump to hasty conclusions.”

[17] Placher, Mark, 185. “They want to know what is going to happen, and Jesus says that many terrible things will happen (a safe bet in first-century Palestine), but that they should not jump to the conclusion that bad times announce the immediate end of the present age.”

[18] Placher, Mark, 185. “Christians in any period who see the end at hand need to remember that such predications came within a generation of Jesus’ death and have been coming, on and off, ever since.”

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Imagine Another Way

Psalm 127:1-2 Unless Abba God builds the house, their labor is in vain who build it. Unless Abba God  watches over the city, in vain the watcher keeps their vigil.

Introduction

We’re marching forward here in the gospel of Mark and learning, in every which way, what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ. And while I’ve stressed (because Mark has stressed) that it’s hard and can be (very) uncomfortable, the actual point is that following Christ, being a disciple of Jesus, is really and simply about being human…fully, and totally, materially and spiritually, from the inniest parts of our souls to the outiest surfaces of our body. For Mark’s Jesus, being fully and totally human requires a few things, full dependence on God through faith in Christ by the power of the indwelling divine Spirit. It’s this triune foundation that nourishes us in the amniotic fluid of divine love, bears us into the world swaddled in divine love, and continues to grow us toward divine love that is faith making itself known in the world through acts of love for God’s beloved. As the psalm tells us this morning: “Unless Abba God builds the house, their labor is in vain who build it. Unless Abba God  watches over the city, in vain the watcher keeps their vigil.”

In other words, when left to our own devices and to our own cleverness we create kingdoms and orders that remove us from not only God but from our own humanity. It is not some evil force that makes even well-intentioned systems and structures inhuman, it’s our own doing. We create hierarchies, in groups and out groups, uses and thems; we determine who is worth saving and who isn’t; we fabricate narratives elevating some above others because of wealth, skin, gender and sex, religion, age, abledness… We do this. And Jesus came, according to Mark, to expose these tendencies of the inhabitants of the kingdom of humanity and to usher them into the reign of God as citizens who make a difference in the world just by being willing to be utterly and completely human by loving (in word and deed) those whom God loves. By faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, disciples of Christ become those human beings—fully dependent on God—who see through elaborate presentations of power and prestige and dare to imagine another way, a better way, a more human way defined by the reign of God and to the wellbeing of the neighbor.

Mark 12:38-44

And then [Jesus] was saying in his teaching, “You perceive from the scribes, those who desire to walk around in the apparel of the elite and [be] greeted deferentially in the places of assembly and [desire] the most honorable seat in the synagogue and the chief place at the table at dinner, the ones who take material advantage of the households of widows and for pretexts pray for a long time; they, they will receive a greater judgment…” (Mk. 12:38-40)

Apart from what we experienced last week between Jesus and the scribe who “got it,” we are back with Jesus’s continual denunciation of self-aggrandized power run amok.[1] Literally. Jesus has zero tolerance for these scribes[2] and exposes their “general character” manifesting as “ostentatious, exploitative, and hypocritical”.[3] Jesus proposes to his disciples, in this passage, another way of being (and leading) in the world, a way he, Jesus, the Son of God and of Humanity, will take which is the way he expects his disciples[4] to take, too.[5]

If you thought that the politics of Jesus emphasized being nice and tolerant, this passage blows that notion to smithereens; Jesus is thoroughly polemical[6] right now, and that’s why he broad brushed an entire group of Jewish authority[7] when he says: You perceive from the scribes those who desire…. The “you perceive” is a command, meaning YOU look….LOOK! And the “those who desire” modifies the scribes as those who have the ambition to abuse their power and to exploit the people. In other words, Jesus is saying, Look, LOOK!, look at how the scribes not only exploit the people but that they desire to do it… They desire[8] the glory their fancy/celebratory robes[9] bring them, the deferential greetings[10] their rank demands from those who are inferior, the best seats, and to siphon the livelihood from widows through being paid for their long prayers.[11] And when it comes to leaders who opt for arrogant self-involvement at the expense of God’s people—especially the weak and least of these in society like widows[12]—God takes massive issue and divine judgment comes…not for the people so deceived and duped, but for those in authority who capitalized on and benefited from such deception. This is quite literally what the major and minor prophets are all about, and this is why Jesus then says, they, they will receive a greater (divine[13]) judgment!

Then, according to the text, Mark tells us, And then after sitting down opposite the treasury he was looking at how the crowd is throwing money into the treasury. And many wealthy people were throwing in much. And then a poor widow came and threw in two of the smallest amounts of money[14] (which is a quadrans). This scene is jarring, it doesn’t seem to fit with what has just come before. Or is it? Seems there’s some ostentatious public[15] demonstrations of the rich throwing large sums of money[16] into the various thirteen “trumpet chests” [17]. It’s here where there’s an overlap: Jesus, again, has zero tolerance for ostentation and zero tolerance for exploitation. Thus, it’s not so much an attack on the rich per se but on the desire to show off how much one can and is giving thus drawing attention to oneself (like the Scribes in the marketplaces in their robes).[18] In this way, it can also be (potentially) an attack on institutions that allow the exploitation and extortion of widows their business for their own benefit—donations for the poor were done elsewhere apart from these trumpet chests.[19]

Jesus, in response to witnessing the widow’s offering, according to Mark, says, Truly I say to you—so take notice—that the poor widow threw much more into the treasury than all others; for all others threw in out of that which abounds, but she threw in out of her poverty all she was having, her entire livelihood. We’ve often made this offering a type of virtue even to the extent that some churches have suggested that you must give all you have to prove your faithfulness. It is possible that Jesus is glorifying her self-sacrifice and even honoring her heartfelt gift. It could be, too, that Jesus is placing a certain amount of emphasis on the reality that this widow just gave to the temple the means of her next meal when it may have been better for her to eat and live another day.[20] It is possible that Jesus is calling out the narrative justifying stealing from such people their very livelihood.[21] Thus, like the scribes, the human religious authority, consumed by the ideologies of the kingdom of humanity, have turned the temple into a money making institution, granting more and more power and privilege to the themselves (thus the cycle repeats from the beginning).

Conclusion

What do we take away from this? It is not to give all you have, though, during pledge month…give what you can! But more importantly, the point of this passage for us, today, is that humility carries way more currency in the economy of the reign of God than self-aggrandizement. This isn’t about not tooting your horn once in a while because you did something great or something great happened—you need not resort to just saying, “It’s all Jesus!”, Jesus wants you to receive the credit, too! This is about how we participate in systems and institutions that are prone to extorting and taking advantage of the least of these (and some of these least of these includes you). It’s about our faith in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, that we, as disciples of Christ, become human beings—fully dependent on God—who see through elaborate presentations of power and prestige and dare to imagine another way, a better way, a more human way defined by the reign of God and to the wellbeing of the neighbor. We are to be truly and fully human in a world demanding to grow ever more inhuman.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 489. “Apart from vv. 28-34, it is true, all the scribes we have met in this gospel have been critics, if not openly enemies, of Jesus, and here in Jerusalem their hostility has come to a head as Jesus had predicted…But there is no comparable denunciation of the priests or elders.”

[2] France, Mark, 491. “In that case the subjects of these participles are not a new group, or even a subgroup of the scribes, but must still be the scribes in general.”

[3] France, Mark, 489.

[4] France, Mark, 490. “These remarks, too, are addressed specifically to the disciples….and do not form part of the public denunciation of the scribes. Jesus again calls those who follow him to abandon the world’s conventions of importance: the first are to be last and the last first.”

[5] France, Mark, 489. “But the warning here is not related to what they. May have in mind to do to Jesus, but to their general character as ostentatious, exploitative, and hypocritical…In this context the effect is to offer the crowd a choice as to the sort of leader they will follow, and Jesus pulls no punches in exposing the shortcomings of scribes in general.”

[6] France, Mark, 490. “What is now recorded, however, is not so much teaching as polemic.”

[7] France, Mark, 489. “…this is polemics in the context of a highly charged and potentially fatal confrontation, and a suitably broad brush is applied.”

[8] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 181. “Beware of those who hold the chief seats, Augustine writes, ‘Not because they hold them, but because they love them.’ Those who are condemned put on a good appearance of piety praying long prayers, but what they seek is honor and wealth.”

[9] France, Mark, 490. “a στολή is not an everyday garment, but a festive or celebratory robe…and suggests ‘dressing up’.”

[10] France, Mark, 490. “Deferential ἀσπασμοί are a mark of social standing…”

[11] France, Mark, 492. “…προφάσει would naturally describe the fraudulent means by which it is achieved. In that case the reference cold be to the sort of payment for the prayers of a religious professional which became common in mediaeval Christianity.”

[12] France, Mark, 491. “The vulnerability of widows is a recurrent theme in biblical literature, so that to defraud them is particularly despicable.”

[13] France, Mark, 492. Κρίμα a reference to “….God’s eschatological judgment, of which Jesus has spoken so vividly…”

[14] France, Mark, 493. “The λεπτόν was the smallest denomination of currency in use, a copper coin less than a centimetre in diameter and worth less than one hundredth of a denarius (which was itself half the value of the half-shekel temple tax).”

[15] France, Mark, 489. “The scene is in the Court of the Women, so-called not because it was a specifically for women but because it was the nearest point to the temple building proper which was open to women. Here stood a range of thirteen ‘trumpet chests’…designed to receive monetary offerings, including not only the half-shekel temple tax but also ‘freewill offerings’. The half-shekel was obligatory for men, but any contribution to the other chests was voluntary, and would be noticed by anyone who, like Jesus and his disciples, was watching…perhaps it was a recognised tourist attraction.”

[16] France, Mark, 492. “χαλκός is strictly ‘copper’ or ‘bronze’, and the widow’s two coins would be of copper.” And, “But the large sums donated by the rich would presumably be in silver or gold coins… so that χαλκός is here used in its more general sense of ‘money’.”

[17] France, Mark, 492. “γαζοφυλάκον…its reference here to the collecting chests in the Court of the Women is demanded by the context…”

[18] France, Mark, 489-490. “Jesus’ comment on the widow’s offering is not an attack on wealth or the wealthy as such, but rather on the scale of values which takes more account of the amount of a gift than of the dedication of the giver. It develops further the new perspective of the kingdom of God which Jesus has been so assiduously teaching his disciples on the way to Jerusalem specially his comments responding to their astonishment at his treatment of the rich man in 10:23-27.”

[19] France, Mark, 493. “All contributions were therefore for the work of the temple; charitable donations for the poor were made separately.”

[20] France, Mark, 493. “While Jesus was not averse to exaggeration to make a point, it is quite possible that in first-century Palestine the donation of two [copper coins] would have left a poor widow without the means for her next meal.”

[21] Placher, Mark, 182. Alt reading: the widow mistakenly gives into a system that is bleeding her dry “Jesus lamented the widow’s contribution”

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