Psalm 118: 14-16a Abba God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!
Introduction
Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!
This morning, our calcified hearts prone to wander from God find rest in divine sealing made known in the unsealed, empty tomb. We who are enticed and attracted to the shiny bobbles and fluffy lures of the kingdom of humanity are now ushered into something truly new, truly beaming, truly spectacular, truly built of the divine, eternal, never tarnishing substance that is the love of God for you, the Beloved. This morning, despite our wandering, we come face to face with God in Christ, the one who lives and doesn’t die.
Even when we decided to wander from God, to turn our backs, to forget the ancient and good story, to tread and tromp on everyone and everything, to estrange ourselves, to misjudge and prejudge others unto their condemnation, and even when we preferred acts of violence and death, God sought us and found us as we were wandering “from the fold of God”[1] and set us right. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the warm blanket of the Holy Spirit. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.
Today we’re a people set back on course, eyes lifted, faces turned, fleshy hearts thumping with divine love, hands and feet eager to spread the liberation we have received, and voices ready to call forth life even when all that surrounds us in the world is death. Today we become a people who dares to believe this crazy, far-out story because today become a people brought to life by this good and ancient word of God.
Luke 24:1-12
Now after the women were made full of fear they bowed their faces to the earth; [the two men in clothing shining like lightening] said to the women, “Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead?” (Luke 24:5)
At the end of chapter 23, Luke mentions that the women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and some other women (24:10a)—saw, from a distance, where Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’s body (v.55).[2] It’s these women who now take center stage in the reception of the good news that Jesus is raised. As the men fled, the women held their ground initially in the distance and now the first ones on the scene in Luke’s resurrection story.[3]
Having seen where Joseph placed Jesus’s body (23:55), and it being the first day of the week and still in the depths of early morning, these women went to the tomb bearing the spices they prepared on Friday night (v.1 and 23:56). Keeping in mind that they prepared spices on Friday night, these women are not examples of blind faith despite the facts; for them, as well as for the men, Jesus was dead—very dead. They planned to anoint his body,[4] which wasn’t done in the rush getting his body down from the cross and into a tomb before the sunset and curses arrived (cf. Dt 21:23).
Now, when they arrived at the tomb, they found the stonehaving been [mysteriously[5]] rolled away from the tomb (v.2). Curious to see what happened, the women entered the tomb. And after entering the tomb they did not find the body of Jesus (v. 3). Luke then writes, while the women were perplexed/in doubt about what had happened, behold! two men approached the women [dressed] in clothing shining like lightening (v.4). The women were confused, and now they became full of fear; upon being approached by two men in dazzling clothing, Luke tells us, they bowed their faces to the earth (5a). In other words, they suddenly dropped to the ground because they were full of terror. While this is a natural and biblical response to angelic visitors, it’s also a human reaction. These women came to anoint Jesus’s body, and not only is it missing (stolen, maybe?) but now two men show up and approach them (Are we in trouble? Are they going to harm us?). Luke does a marvelous job wedding together the spiritual and temporal realities of this story growing in dramatic tension.
Luke then writes that the two gleaming men said to the women, “why are you seeking the one who lives with the dead? He is not here but was raised” (v.5b-6a).For one moment, suspend your judgment and how well you know this story. Stay here with the women hearing, for the first time, that Jesus—whom they saw crucified on Friday and sealed up in a tomb—is not dead but alive because he is risen! Instantaneously, your world is turned upside down…again! As they looked at each other (now more in astonishment and less in fear) they begin the journey of faith as it dawns on them (in their hearts and minds) that death itself has a mortal weakness: God…Is it possible? Is Jesus alive? Imagine the grief they carried giving birth to hope…hope daring to rise to life in the depths of a tomb meant for the hopelessness of death…
Then Luke tells us that the two men exhort them, remember what he spoke to you while he was still in galilee, saying it is necessary that the son of humanity be betrayed into the hands of sinful humanity and to be crucified and on the third day to be raised up.” And as the men remind them, these women remembered [Jesus’s] words and after returning from the tomb they announced[6] all these things to the twelve and to the all the remaining people (vv. 8-9). That which they hadn’t fully grasped they did as the celestial men spoke to them;[7] they heard,[8] they believed, and they went.[9] If there were ever three phrases that sum up good discipleship, these are they.[10] The women didn’t linger, tarry, hesitate, debate, and didn’t dismiss because this message didn’t align with their social, political, or religious status-quo. They ran home and immediately told the disciples what they heard. Good news arrives!
And then it’s dismissed. Luke informs us, [the women and their words] appeared before [the men] as if silly, idle nonsense; they were disbelieving the women (v.11). The good news the women brought falls flat at the feet of the men they told; [11] save one. Peter is the only who listened and is intrigued enough to run to the tomb, and after stooping to look he saw only the piece of fine linen and then he departed toward home marveling at what had happened (v.12). According to Luke, Peter not only denied Jesus but then didn’t tell the others that the women were correct; he just remained silent and amazed. [12] Here, Luke draws purposeful attention to the faithfulness of the women who proclaimed the good news even when it sounded ludicrous.[13] They didn’t linger among the dead; inspired by faith,[14] they ran straight into (new) life, spreading the good news of the one who is living, the risen Jesus the Christ. In this moment filled with swelling divine life, the women were resistant to wandering. They ran toward the risen Christ boldly entering a new reality and order where death succumbs to life.[15]
Conclusion
For us who are prone to wander because we forsake and forget the way of the reign of God, this morning we are given Christ himself—all of him—so that we never forget or forsake the way. For us who are addicted to treading on and tromping about the land and on others, we have received a new way to walk in the world demonstrated by the running feet of the women: swift and sensitive, eager to bring good news rather than pain! For us who find ourselves estranged by our own doing and having become strangers to God, to our neighbor, to creation, and to ourselves we are beckoned out of the oppressive col of self-imposed tombs of isolation and are given a community with God, with others, with creation, and with ourselves built on and by the love of Christ. For us who know the pain of being caught in the captivity of misjudging and prejudging others according to our own human standards, we are refused that plumbline and, instead, we are given divine love, life, and liberation as our new metrics of good and right. For us who are drunk with violence and death, we receive what we do not deserve this morning: peace and life eternal.
This morning we’re given something completely new, completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. The women who were encountered in the empty tomb were charged to stop looking for the living among the dead; their lives were never ever the same.[16] So it is with us: our call to be disciples taking up their cross and follow Jesus isn’t gone, it’s the only way we have because the path we learned from the kingdom of humanity is forever blocked off.[17] This morning, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; this morning, we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the celestial realm: he is not here he is risen! How could we ever live in the old way? Everything is now new.
Today, our willful and chaotic wandering collides with the steady path of Christ that is dangerous and not careful, that is risky and not safe, that is radical and not status quo, that will afflict and not always comfort.[18] Today we live under the weight of the question, Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead? (v. 5). Go, Beloved, and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.
[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 272. “In 23:55 Luke directed our attention to the women who were present at the burial, and now he continues telling us about the activities of these women once the Sabbath rest had passed.”
[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 272. “It is interesting to note that here again Luke will tell parallel but different stories about the women disciples and the men…These women have been present, but have remained mostly in the background of the story, even since Luke introduced them in 8:2-3. In the narrative of the passion and burial, even while others deny Jesus or flee, these women stand firm, although at a distance. Now they come to the foreground as the first witnesses to the resurrection.”
[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 272-273. “They, no less than the rest, believe that in the cross all has come to an end. It is time to return home to their more traditional lives. But before they do that, they must perform one least act of love for their dead Master: they must anoint his body.”
[5] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 837. “How was the stone removed? Luke’s account neglects such detail, for he wants to move quickly to the pivotal discovery of an empty tomb.”
[6] Gren, Luke, 838-839. “‘Luke underscores the faithfulness of their testimony by noting that they announced ‘all these things’—that is, what they had observed, what they had been told, and the new significance they attributed to Jesus’ passion and the absence of his corpse.”
[7] Green, Luke, 837-838. “These women come looking for Jesus, but they want to minister to him, and as they quickly discover, because they lack understanding, they are looking in the wrong place. The angels first admonish them, employing language that is reminiscent of Jesus’ rejoinder to the Sadducees in 20:38: God is not the God of the dead but of the living! That is, in spite of their devout intentions in coming to anoint Jesus’ body, these women have failed to grasp Jesus’ message about the resurrection and, thus, have not taken with appropriate gravity the power of God.”
[8] Gren, Luke, 838. “The antidote for this miscalculation is remembrance. The women are addressed as person who had themselves received Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and the angel’s message fuses Jesus’ predictions during the Galilean phase of his ministry…Thus they are reminded that the career of the Son of Man blends the two motifs of suffering and vindication, and that in doing so he fulfills the divine will.”
[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The women do not see the resurrected Jesus. The two figures at the tomb (presumably angels) simply tell them that he has risen just as he had foretold, and they believe. Luke does not even say, as do Matthew and Mark (Matt. 28:7; Mrk 16:7), that they are instructed to tell the rest of the disciples (an injunction they follow in Matthew, but not in Mark). They simply hear the witness of the two men at the tomb, and apparently on their own initiative go and tell the others.”
[10] Gren, Luke, 838. Seim qtd in. “Their reception of the resurrection message ‘confirms their discipleship and the instruction they have received as disciples.’”
[11] Green, Luke, 839-840. “The gap between male and female disciples widens, as the faithful account of the women falls on the cynical and unbelieving ears of the men. Nothing more than useless chatter—this is how their announcement is evaluated and discarded. This can be explained in at least to aways. First, the earlier situation of the women disciples is being repeated int eh case of their male counterpart; failing to grasp Jesus’ teaching regarding his suffering and resurrection, they cannot make sense of the news share d with them. At the same time, however, Luke’s ‘all this’ (v 8) cannot but include the message they had received form the angels, so that the men were given access to the significance of recent events. The dismissive response of the men is therefore better explained with reference to the fact that those doing the reporting are women in a world biased against the admissibility of women as witnesses.” Peter’s response is all the more positive.
[12] Green, Luke, 840. Amazement is not faith nor does it hint at the eventual genuine faith. “Unlike the women, [Peter] returns home with no new message to share.”
[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The contrast is such that one cannot avoid the conclusion that it is purposeful, and that Luke is stressing the faith of these women who have traveled with Jesus from Galilee, and who were the only ones who remained true throughout the entire story of the betrayal. Even though the later course of church history, with its expectation of entirely male leadership, would lead us to think otherwise, it is they who bring the message of the resurrection to the eleven, and not vice versa.”
[14] Green, Luke, 836. “The Evangelist has repeatedly noted the incapacity of the disciples to grasp this truth…but now he signals a breakthrough on the part of the women. If the male disciples continue in their obtuseness, and thus lack of faith, at least Peter response to the witness of the women by going to the tomb. His behavior portends at last the possibility of a more full understanding of Jesus’ message on their part.”
[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 274. “The resurrection is not the continuation of the story. Nor is it just its happy ending. It is the beginning of a new story, of a new age in history.”
[16] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “But the truth is that the resurrection of Jesus, and the dawning of the new with him, poses a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story. The women on their way to the tomb were planning to perform one last act of love for Jesus, and then would probably just return home to their former lives. Peter and the rest would eventually return to their boats, their nets, and the various occupations. But now the empty tomb opens new possibilities. Now there is no way back to the former life in Galilee. Even though Luke tells us that Peter simply went home after seeing the empty tomb, we will soon learn that this was not the end of it: Peter himself would eventually die on his own cross.”
[17] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The resurrection is a joyous event; but it also means that Jesus’ call for his disciples to take up their cross and follow him is still valid. The road to the old ways in Galilee is now barred. The resurrection of Jesus impels them forward to their own crosses, and indeed, we know that several of the disciples suffered violent death as the result of their following and proclaiming the Risen One.”
[18] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The full message of Easter is both of joy and of challenge. It is. The announcement of unequaled and final victory, and the call to radical, dangerous, and even painful discipleship.”
Psalm 96:11-13 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it; let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before God when God comes, when God comes to judge the earth. Abba God will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with Abba God’s truth.
Luke 2:1-20
Our gospel passage opens up with, Now it happened in those days a decree came out from Emperor Augustus to take a census of all the state (v.1). Luke further clarifies that this first census occurred while Quirinius was governor of Syria (v.2); this is Luke locating this very, very, very old story within the history of the kingdom of humanity.[1] We’re also told that all the people were going to give [their] names for registration [the census] each in their own cities (v.3) because that is what the census demanded. So, a (very, very, very) pregnant Mary (v.5) is traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem by donkey with her husband to-be, Joseph, who was of the lineage of David (v.4) (and this is why he’s going to Bethlehem, because it’s also the “City of David”). Mary’s physical situation wasn’t considered as a valid reason to opt out of the journey because oppression, adverse to mercy, knows no limits, and trickles down from on high and disrupts and disturbs the everyday lives of the least of these—no one is excluded from the impact of this oppression no matter how much one might be deluded by false identification with the powerful. [2] And, considering Mary’s very pregnant situation and arriving in Bethlehem, Luke tells us, Now it happened while being there the days of [Mary’s] begetting completed, and she brought forth her first born son, and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him down in a manger because there was not a place for them in the inn (vv.6-7).
There it is, the Christmas story; the one we are all here to celebrate, the one we are all very familiar with. But Luke has more to share because he believes we need to hear a bit more of the story. So, he goes on. Luke shifts the scene: we go from the stable and manger, and find ourselves among the shepherds and their sheep, in the cool night air under a blanket of stars. And shepherds were in that region living in the fields and watching over their flock keeping guard through the night (v. 8). Luke’s language is brief, but his point is anything but.[3] Remember that reference back in vv.1-2 about Augustus, Quirinius, and the census? Well, turns out that’s a bit more than a location in history; it’s a commentary on the oppressive political regime[4] that was about to become even more oppressive once this exploitative[5] census finished. This census wasn’t just a tally of who is who and who is where, but a way for the government to dip oppressive hands deeper into the livelihoods of all the people from the wealthiest to the poorest, the poorest being most impacted by the results of the census. [6] Luke sends us to the shepherds because it is these humble tenders of livestock who are looking for more than literal wolves out hunting for a quick late night meal—wolves they could and were trained to fight off. No, the shepherds on this night feared bigger wolves who were on the prowl in bipedal fashion;[7] against these they could not fight and if they did (or if they even spoke of it) it would be considered subversive and thus rebellion or insurrection and punishable.[8] These shepherds stayed awake to stay on guard and keep watch; they stayed awake because they were angry, scared, and terrified about what was coming.[9] The existing darkness of the night doubled as the shroud of socio-political darkness rolled in.
And it is to these scared, anxious, tired, poor, powerless shepherds[10] an angel of God comes. Luke tells us that in the blink of an eye the darkness surrounding the shepherds is obliterated by the glory of God shining around them, and an angel of God stood among them (v. 9). The shepherds go from hidden to suddenly exposed,[11] from the least significant[12] to the most important, and they are terrified.[13] So, the angel of God says, “Do not be afraid, for behold! I proclaim good news to you, a great joy whichsoever will be for all the people! Today a savior who is Christ the Lord was born for you in the city of David! And this [will be] a sign to you: you will find a newborn child having been wrapped in swaddling clothes and being laid in a manger!” (vv. 10-11). The shepherds may have not been the most erudite of the people, but they knew that the coming of the savior indicated liberation. As the darkness of the decree from the kingdom of humanity goes out over the land threatening increased captivity, indifference, and death, in this moment in the intersection of celestial and earthly realms it collides head-on with the light of the word of God, the Savior Messiah, now born and lying in a manger promising to bring spiritual and political love, life, and liberation.[14]
Luke tells us further that suddenly it happened a great army of heaven was praising God with the angel, saying, “Glory to God Most High and upon earth peace among humanity of [God’s] favor!” (vv. 13-14). And as fast as the angel and their folx showed up, they left(v. 15a). Here something interesting happens. As the angels leave, the shepherds talk to one another (v. 15b). What did they discuss? Luke tells us: “Indeed, let us travel until Bethlehem and let us see this word which has happened which God declared to us!” (v. 15c). Luke then tells us, And they hastened and found Mary and Joseph and the new born child being laid in the manger” (v. 16). Did you catch it? They left their fields and their sheep and hastened to find Mary and the baby, the savior, the Christ, the one who is the long-awaited fulfillment of the promise of God’s liberation, the promise fulfilled now wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a dirty manger, the ancient of days, the great counselor, Immanuel. They dropped everything and went—everything that defined them, sustained them, comforted them. In that moment, they left it all behind to pursue the sign of the fulfilled promise of divine liberation come down low, to earth, to them. Good news does that; whereas the bad news of the census of the kingdom of humanity drove them deeper into darkness, the good news of Messiah and of the coming reign of God summoned them into light. On this night, they left; they left, and when they came back from visiting with Mary and sharing their story (vv. 17-18), they were new people, with a new word, with a new vision, with a new hope, with a new song to rejoice!
Conclusion
I don’t know about you, but I want (need?) this story to be true and real right about now. I want to have God intercept this world and intervene, to come here and show up. I want the reign of God to literally break into the kingdom of humanity, right the wrongs, establish justice, and bring real, tangible peace. I want the night sky to part and the light of the celestial realm to stream through. I want to turn and see the Christ in the manger, the long-awaited promise fulfilled. I want angels to show up and proclaim actual good news to; I want them to tell me to go and see so I have proof. But here I am, just regular me in this regular church telling a regular story to some regular people. As far as I can tell, there has been no divine intervention; I can’t help it, I find myself asking, where, oh where is God…? As I celebrate and remember the birth of the Christ, where is God now, tonight?
And then I realize, this is Luke’s point. We think this story is solely about the birth of Christ and about God coming low to save us. And while it is very much about that, stopping there truncates the story Luke is telling Theophilus and, thus, telling us. Just remembering the birth of Christ and not also the oppressed shepherds met in the middle of the night in fields adjacent to Bethlehem places the emphasis on the wrong syllable of the narrative. This story isn’t solely about the birth of Christ, it is also about the rebirth of the shepherds. Tonight, in remembering the nativity of the Christ, we are also asked to recall the shepherds who were summoned and sent, who were reoriented toward something completely different and completely new. We need to see that this is the story about far-off, isolated and alienated, terrified and anxious shepherds who are afraid of what the future holds, who doubt, who are afraid, who feel abandoned, who very well may have been wondering where is God, tonight? And it’s these same shepherds who are not only met but also summoned to go (as they are!) and greet the newborn ruler of the reign of God, the one who will take on the empire of the kingdom of humanity, the one who will bring life where there is death, love where there is indifference, and liberation where there is captivity.
In the divine calling of the shepherds, we hear our own summons. Tonight, as the angel comes to proclaim good news to the shepherds, we, too, are receiving that very same news.[15] Tonight, as the shepherds are sent, so are we. Tonight, as the shepherds encounter God swaddled, we are encountered by God in the proclamation of this good news from the angel to the shepherds, of the shepherds meeting and marveling at the first-born baby of Mary.
Like the shepherds before us, we are exposed by the light of heaven and summoned from what was and sent toward something new, something different, something better. Amid our fear, our doubt, our desperations while being submerged in a world that is dead set on burning itself down, we, through this story, come face to face with God, born to a single woman of color, swaddled and laid in a manger. Tonight, if but for a moment, we dare to have hope, seek peace, grasp love, and risk having joy. Tonight, along with the shepherds we harken to the divine summons and embrace the truth of the reign of God defined by love, life, and liberation. Tonight, the Christ is born anew among us, in our heart, for us. Breathe deep, rest, be comforted, and rejoice. Again, I say, Rejoice.
[1] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 32-33. “It is characteristic of Luke, for it does not appear in any of the other Gospels…[and] indicates Luke’s interest in placing his story within the context of world history”
[2] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “For a period before the advent of the Roman Empire, the Jews had been struggling against Syrian domination. Now their land was ruled from Syria by a governor appointed by Rome. Whatever the actual chronology may have been, the political structure is clear: the Jews have a puppet government under Syrian and Roman power. As usual, oppression is not a merely political matter, the concern only of those directly involved in politics. It also reaches the every day lives of people, as is seen in the very fact that Joseph and Mary have to travel to Bethlehem even though she is about to give birth.”
[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “This is not a mellow, bucolic story about some shepherds tending their sheep with little or no care beyond the possibility of a wandering wolf. That is not the setting in which Luke presents the story.”
[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “The setting is rather that of people living under and oppressive regime. The mention of Augustus and Quirinius…is politically charged.”
[5] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “A census usually announced grater poverty and exploitation. It was as welcome among subjects of the Roman Empire as undocumented immigrants in industrialized nations welcome a census today.”
[6] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “A census had sinister implications. It was not just counting people in order to see how many there were, and what population trends were. In ancient times, and long thereafter, a census was in fact an inventory of all the wealth of a region—its people, its animals, and its crops—so that the government could be able to tax people to the maximum.”
[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “Given those circumstances, the setting of the shepherds keeping their flocks at night is much less tranquil and romantic. They live out in the fields, suffer all kinds of deprivations and even dangers, in order to protect their flocks. But the census threatens a new danger, a wolf more dangerous than any four-legged beast, a wolf that will probably decimate their flocks, and whom they cannot fight, for it is too powerful.”
[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “It is not difficult to imagine what would be the talk of such shepherds as they sought to remain awake through the night. In that sort of circumstances, people vent their anger, frustration, and fear in what is at once idle and dangerous talk—talk that does not necessarily lead to rebellion, but that in itself is subversive and the authorities will consider it rebellious and punishable.”
[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “…the setting itself was one of fear and oppression.”
[10]Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 26. “Felipe: ‘The angel came to them because they were working men, and I find this is very important for us. Because they were poor little people who were working. They were watching over their sheep which is like taking care of cattle today. They were workers, laborers, poor people. The angel of God could have gone to the king’s palace and said them: “The Savior has been born.” But the angel didn’t go where the king was but where the poor people were, which means that this message is not for the big shots but for the poor little guys, which means the. oppressed, which means us.”
[11] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “One of the ways in which the ‘little people’ manage to survive under oppressive regimes is not to call attention to themselves. …Now these shepherds are literally in the limelight, and an obviously powerful personage confronts them.”
[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 26. “I: ‘It was really the shepherds who were at the bottom of the social scale in Israel…’”
[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “It is in that scene, perhaps silent, but not as peaceful as we tend to depict it, that an angel suddenly appears before the shepherds and they are terrified. Their fear is not surprising…Suddenly there is a bright light, and an unknown person stands before them. It is not surprising that they would be terrified.”
[14] Gonzalez, Luke, 35-36. “The good news that the angel announces is the birth of a child, ‘a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’ This is the only text in the entire New Testament where these three titles appear together. The title ‘Savior’ (sōtēr) was employed in the Septuagint….to refer both to God and to those whom God sends to liberate Israel. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the function of such liberators is neither purely religious nor purely political. Actually, this is a distinction that people in ancient times would find difficult to understand…The ‘saviors’ in the Hebrew Scriptures liberate Israel from its political oppressors so that the people may be free to serve and obey God…The child who has been born will free the people form bondage—bondage both to their sins and to their oppressors.”
[15] Cardenal, Solentiname, 28. “I: ‘….At this very moment you are receiving the same news from the angel that the shepherds received.’”
Psalm 146:4, 6 Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in Abba God…Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger.
Introduction
If we’ve learned anything from the gospel of Mark it’s that being a disciple of Christ isn’t easy and comfortable, it demands reconsideration of things familiar and comfortable, it conflicts with the way the world works and the kingdom of humanity operates, it can rupture relationships, it will force you into an inner crisis of identity. What we’ve gleaned from Mark’s Jesus about what it means to follow him clashes with common notions that being a Christian means worldly prosperity, power, popularity, and privilege (often defined by the kingdom of humanity); it clashes with the idea that being a Christian means being nice and happy; it clashes with the idea that being a Christians means allegiance to a flag or nation; it clashes with the idea that being a Christian means doing one set of things on Sunday and spending Monday through Saturday doing whatever you want.
To follow Christ as one of the disciples—those baptized and partaking of the cup—is to render one’s whole life in service to the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the wellbeing of God’s beloved (you, me, us, and especially all who suffer and are heavy laden outside of these walls). There isn’t one part of us that isn’t claimed by the Spirit of God that descended on Pentecost and now lives in us, yoking us to God by and through our faith in Christ. Mark’s Jesus takes very seriously that you are the fragile, breakable vessel of God, working through you as the epicenter of divine judgment and justice—condemning that which promotes death, indifference, and captivity and exalting that which nourishes, life, love, and liberation. This is the demand on the faithful disciple of Christ (then and now); it is the pursuit of divine love that lets them know we are Christians of the reign of God. Nothing else qualifies but to love God and love those whom God loves.
Mark 12:28-34
And then the scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher! You spoke on the basis of the truth that God is one and there is not another except this one. And to love God out of the whole heart and out of the whole intellect and out of the whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is greater than all of the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”[1]
This entire discussion is rather banal.[2] Since there are (about) 613 mitzvot (separate commands) within Genesis to Deuteronomy, discussions about which commandments were seen “as more essential” and even debates about which ones were “light” and “heavy” happened regularly among the local scholarly network (Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees, etc.).[3] Even a “summary” of the law—some idea that ties up the Torah—was expected.[4] Thus, Jesus’s summary fits in with other Jewish summaries of the law (causing absolutely no surprise) and is extended to include the prophets.[5] The only thing that is interesting (and considered unprecedented) is that Jesus links two well-known first testament texts: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.[6]
So, why include this story in the gospel and in our lectionary? Because the most central feature of a Christian’s life of faithful discipleship is love. Fullstop. Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord your God the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord God from your whole heart, and from your whole soul and from your whole intellect and from your whole strength.’ The second [is] this, ‘You will love your neighbor as yourself.’” The entirety of the Christian life is defined by love that is born by the reign of God and made known in the kingdom of humanity (vertical and horizontal, divine and human, spiritual and material). Not only is the disciple exhorted to love God with their whole self, but they are also to love the neighbor (whoever and wherever they are[7]) in the same way; this is the way for the disciple of Christ. To prove this point and to drive it home, Jesus adds, There is no other command greater than these. Here things get a bit more interesting. Jesus has, first, not given one command but two when the scribe asked for what command is first of all? And, second, Jesus created a hierarchy between the love of God and the love of neighbor and the other commandments. According to Mark’s Jesus, there is a preferred way,[8] subjecting all other commands to these two.
The scribe’s response—“Well said, teacher!You spoke on the basis of the truth that God is one and there is not another except this one. And to love God out of the whole heart and out of the whole intellect and out of the whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is greater than all of the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices”—reveals two things. The first is implicit, the scribe gets something that the disciples are still trying to ascertain and understand[9] and the other scribes (and Pharisees and Sadducees) refuse to get.[10] The scribe affirms the fact that Jesus’s words are founded on truth thus revealing his own inherent disposition toward Jesus and also Jesus’s mission in the world (thus why Jesus can say to him later, “You are not far from the reign of God.”; #notallscribes[11]).[12]
The second is explicit, there is nothing within religiosity and religious traditionalism that rival these two commands. Nothing—no ritual, no tradition, no pilgrimage, no vigil, no quiet time, no eucharistic celebration, etc.—absolutely nothing is more important to the Christian life in the world before God and among the neighbor than love, love, love. Everything else is not only subverted[13] to these two commands to love God fully and completely and to love the neighbor as one loves themselves but should be viewed in support of this demand for love in two directions, vertically and horizontally. Thus, for Mark’s Jesus and this humble scribe, to love God is to love the neighbor and to love the neighbor is to love God. [14] What is essentially and primarily ruled out here is any conception of a privatized relationship between one person and God as if that’s all that matters. A disciple of Christ cannot love God and ignore their neighbor because to ignore their neighbor is to ignore God. You don’t get the option to do half of the chief commandment; it’s either both or its nothing.
Conclusion
If you’ve ever wondered what God’s will is for your life as a disciple of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, wonder no more. The entirety of your life is summoned into a robust and vigorous relationship fueled, inspired, and sustained by God’s love for the cosmos. We love because we have first been loved; we love our neighbor because God loves us, and we love God and thus love what God loves. To love God with our whole selves is a definitive mark of a disciple of Christ because it manifests as loving our neighbor as if we are loving ourselves the way God loves us (and loves our neighbor). Thus they truly will know we are Christians by our love…
To go further, and to put darker lines around what it means to love God and love the neighbor, it must be stressed that to love God is best expressed not only in devotion through prayer, worship, and glorifying, but specifically expressed in loving that which and those whom God loves. This means loving God’s justice—God’s mission of life, love, and liberation[15]—that seeks to right the wrongs created and promoted by the kingdom of humanity. Thus, to quote Felipe from Ernesto Cardenal’s The Gospel in Solentiname, “‘To love your neighbor then is to love God. You can’t love God without practicing justice. And you can’t love your neighbor without practicing that justice that God commands.’” [16] In other words, the systems of the kingdom of humanity oriented toward injustice–those systems and ideologies oriented toward death, indifference, and captivity—are to be categorically rejected by those who claim to follow Christ by faith as his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit.[17]
I can’t stress it enough that we are so very, very loved by a good, good God—a God who is love. This is worth celebrating. But if it never goes further and farther than that, then we will find ourselves distant from the reign of God. God’s love can’t be purchased and owned privately as if it can be just for ourselves. God’s love is always on the move, always seeking the object of God’s desire: God’s beloved, you, me, and more importantly, those who have been cast off and pushed to the margins by the ideologically inspired actions of the residents of the kingdom of humanity. We love because we have first been loved; we strive for justice on behalf of the neighbor, because God’s love strives for justice.
[2] Placher, Mark, 174. “Just as it is important to note that Mark portrays this scribe in a sympathetic light, so it is worth remembering that Jesus was not saying anything radically new or at odds with the Jewish tradition.”
[3] 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), 477. “Given that there are, according to scribal reckoning 613 separate commandments in the five Books of Moses…the question of priority could not be avoided. The rabbis discussed which commandments were ‘heavy’ and which ‘light’, and sometimes ranked certain categories of law as more essential than others.”
[4] France, Mark, 477. “There was a natural desire for a convenient summary of the law’s requirements, a single principle form which all the rest of the Torah was derived…”
[6] France, Mark, 477-478. “But for his explicit linking together of these two very familiar OT texts [Lv. 19:18 and Dt. 6:4-5] we have no Jewish precedent.”
[7] Placher, Mark, 174. “Further, we should love our neighbors, and there should be no limits on who counts as a neighbor.”
[8] France, Mark, 478. The “evaluative language is not typical of the rabbis, who spoke of ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ commandments, but on the understanding that all are equally valid, and who, while they might look for summarizing principles, do not seem to have ranked individual commandments as ‘first’ or ‘more important.’”
[9] France, Mark, 482. “In Mark’s previous mentions of the kingdom of God we have repeatedly noted a contrast between the divine and human perspective, and a sense of surprise, even of shock, as the unfamiliar values of God’s kingship are recognised. It is a secret given only to those who follow Jesus and hear his teaching (4.11). But here is a man who Is already a good part of the way through the readjustment of values which the kingdom of God demands and which the disciples have been so painfully confronting on the way to Jerusalem.”
[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 173. “The question is sincere, the scribe’s response to Jesus is wise, and Jesus tells him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ Mark….goes out of his way to indicate that not all Jewish scholars where corrupt or were Jesus’ opponents.”
[12] France, Mark, 482. “…the scribe’s reply has assured Jesus that his mind is well attuned to the divine perspective. This place him οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ, not yet a part of it apparently, but unlike the rich who will find it so hard to enter the kingdom of God…this man is a promising potential recruit.”
[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 530. “I: ‘But here he’s not talking only about false rites but true rites. He says that love is worth more than all religious rites.’”
[14] Cardenal, Solentiname, 529. “You can say, then, that those that obey the second, it’s as if they’re obeying the first. Those who don’t love God, for example, because they don’t believe in God, but love their neighbor, according to Christ it’s as if they’re obeying the first commandment.”
[15]Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 528. “So to love [God] is to love liberation and justice and that’ s the same things as to love your neighbor. To love God, then, is to love love. And therefore it’s logical that the second commandment should be very similar to the first one.”
[17] Placher, Mark, 175. Verses leading up to the Leviticus quotation should be considered in defining ethical action of love toward the neighbor, “Maximizing profit at all costs and cutting corners are contrary to love of neighbor.”
Psalm 118:22-24 I will give thanks to you, God, for you answered me and have become my salvation. The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day God has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Introduction
What Death tried to seal in a tomb, God liberated with one proclamation: “Let there be life!” And life burst forth, sentencing Death to its own tomb. Nothing gets between God and God’s beloved!
Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!
What a day. It’s the singular time in the Christian liturgical calendar where the resurrection of Christ is told in the present tense and not as some distant future mythology for a special few who get their faith just right. Today, resurrection is for everyone. Today, God is for everyone. We declare today that God shook heaven and earth and liberated God’s beloved from death as the first born of all creation, the enduring symbol that death is not the final word for anyone. (Full stop.) Today we proclaim that life wins, love wins, liberation wins. Hallelujah!
Today in our encounter with this story of God’s radical activity in the world through the resurrection of Christ, I get to remind you that not only does life, love, and liberation win, but these become the foundation under our feet, the thread holding together the fabric of our existence, the substance of our individual and corporate life together, and the motivation for our activity in the world. It’s this message that makes the church the Church—visible and invisible. Without it, the church doesn’t exist. This awkward, weird, scientifically baffling, nonsensical, proclamation—Christ is Risen!—is meant to be the very characteristic establishing the church—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
What’s haunting me is how quickly we prefer to move on from Easter Sunday into this makes more sense Monday, and let’s be rational Tuesday, and that’s just mythology Wednesday, and so on. We are too quick to truncate the possibility of this announcement, relegating it to the simplicity of premodern people, some single historical event, a “picture painted on a wall.”[1] I think I’d be fine with this if we, as “enlightened” and “scientific” people, didn’t have so many of our own beliefs that don’t make sense, that are “irrational”, and that qualify as “mythology”. We have our own versions of the very things we criticize previous eras of human existence for. So, I’m wondering, what if… What if this ancient, whacky story of divine activity in the world, the overruling of death, the radical reordering of actuality and possibility has meaning for me, for you, for us today?
What if it can actually recenter and stabilize? What if it can create space and hold time to find identity? What if it can shatter alienation and encourage relationality? What if it can break through false expectations and give us ground to build community? What if it means—no matter what—we have solidarity? What if it’s true?
Matthew 28:1-10
Now, the angel answered and said to the women, “You, you do not fear! For I know that you are seeking Jesus the one who has been crucified. He is not here; for he is raised just as he said. Come (!) and see (!) the place where he was laid. And quickly go and say (!) to his disciples that he is raised from the dead; and behold! He is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him. Behold! I bid you!” [2]
Mt 28:5-7
Matthew seems to have a flair for the divinely dramatic side of story telling that seems, to me, absent in the other three gospel accounts of the resurrection. Mark, Luke, and John have the women (of some number) showing up and the stone already rolled away. But Matthew? Nah. That’s not his style. Let’s go big, or let’s go home!
Matthew tells us that the women, the two Marys (Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”[3]) came to look at the tomb.[4] Now, while our text makes it sound as if Mary and (the other) Mary were merely there to express their silent condolences, there was a purpose for this “looking”: to confirm Christ’s death.[5] These two women came assuming they’d affirm the actuality of death; they weren’t expecting to leave declaring the possibility of life. Then, out of the blue…
[B]ehold!, a great earthquake happened; for an angel of the Lord descended out of heaven and drew near and rolled back the stone and then was sitting upon it…and from fear of [the angel] the guards shook and they became as dead.
A massive shaking of the ground, an angel in dazzling brightness descending and rolling back a massive stone, and big guards falling over, stiff as boards because they are terrified. Matthew skips no beats here in adding scientific perplexity to vibrant narrative pizzazz; he’s got a point and it’s not just for entertainment. What’s his point? This: Jesus didn’t need the stone removed to leave the tomb.[6] The Angel does it for pure divine dramatic effect. So, this is Matthew hollering at the top of his lungs: JESUS IS RISEN! And God had everything to do with it! this isn’t a “resurrection” story, it’s a “he is not here!” story.[7] It’s a “No one gets between God and the Beloved!” story.
The angel beckons the two Marys to come and see, because the angel knows they are seeking Jesus, the one who has been crucified.[8] Then the angel charges the women to go and proclaim to the disciples that Jesus is not dead, that he has gone on before them into Galilee, and that they’ll see him there. These humble women, dismissed by much of society, are charged by the angelic visitor, a representative of the celestial estate, to be the first to proclaim[9] good news to the sorrowful, to the regretful, to the ones who ran off, to the one who denied three times. It’s these very ones Jesus declares as “my brothers”;[10] they in the midst of their alienation, isolation, loneliness, shame and regret are summoned unto God, affirmed as the beloved because nothing…not-one-thing can separate them from the love of God.
Conclusion
Today, we celebrate, let our voices ring out with the splendor of heart felt Hallelujahs!, throw our hands up in the air, dance with delight like children, and rejoice that death doesn’t triumph over life. When everything looked as it if was dead and gone, God stepped in and breathed life into dry bones.[11] When our hostility toward God felt like an eternal fracture, God bent low and mended it.[12] When our tongues grew parched from reciting unfulfilled promises, God brought us the water of heaven.[13] When our bodies grew exhausted under the constant threat of the thunder of doom creeping about our lives and relationships, God cleared out the clouds and let the light of God’s countenance shine over us.[14] Today, in the resurrection of Christ, God comes near to you, to me, to all of us and is for us.[15]
Today God is in our hunger for stability; we are stabilized. Today God is in our hunger for identity; we are irreplaceable. Today God is in our hunger for relationality; we are with others. Today God is in our hunger for community; we are seen, known, and loved here. Today God is in our hunger for solidarity; we are not nor ever will be forsaken.
Today, in the resurrection of Christ, sola suspicio, reaches its limit; it has nothing to say to a people who are aware of their hunger, no longer satisfied with consuming themselves to death. Today, in being confronted with this radical story of divine love, life, and liberation we are awakened in our spirits. Today our hearts quicken with possibility, with what if and why not. Today our imaginations are reinvigorated, daring to dream of a world filled with justice, peace, mercy, love, and life. Today, wrapped up in the story of He is not here! we have the audacity to defy nothing with something, what-is with what-could-be, captivity with liberation. Today we come face to face with our hunger, with the reality that resurrection is not of the past but is right now, that we desire more than what we have grown accustomed to accepting and receiving. Today, we realize that our hunger is God’s hungering divine passion for the beloved; thus, today, we see that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is a summons to us to rise from the dead and join the living and God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for all people.
“The word of love lives, it happens, it is spoken and it is heard. As this word, Jesus is raised from the dead. The story of love does not end on Calvary but begins there.”[16]
Today we taunt death with the fullness of life and dare to follow Jesus out of our tombs; today we are bold to say beyond the limits of reason and suspicion:
“I believe in the crucified Lord who is alive, the failure which didn’t fail, the defenceless man whom God did not forsake, the man who loved, with whose cause God identified God’s self. God says yes to what we usually, with good reason, deny. God makes him the lifebringer, whom we thought of as lost in unreality. … God did not arm the defenceless man, God did not let him come to grief, as reason would suppose, but God approved of his defencelessness, accepted and loved him and raised him up. To believe in [Christ] means to follow his way. He who seeks him among the living, seeks him with God and therefore on this our earth.”[17]
(for part 1 click here, part 2 click here, part 3 click here, part 4 click here, part 5 click here, Good Friday click here)
[1] Luther qtd in Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, Trans. Dinah Livingstone. New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1969. 58.
[5] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2015. 336. “The effect of these visits was to confirm death. The women who come to perform this sad task of confirming death instead find themselves running tor Joy, announcing life. Waiting and watching in sadness, they have become the first witnesses to the resurrection. Once again the last are first. They are also first to worship the risen Lord.”
R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. 1097. “The action of the angel in removing the stone from the entrance to the tomb draws attention even more clearly than in the other gospels to the fact that Jesus has already left the tomb, while the stone was still in place.”
[7] France, Matthew, 1098. “This is not an account of the resurrection of Jesus (as some editors still unaccountably describe it in their section headings), but a demonstration that Jesus has risen. We are not told at what point between the burial on Friday evening and the opening of the tomb on Sunday morning Jesus actually left the tomb, though the repeated ‘third day/three days’ language (and even more the ‘three days and three nights’ of 12:40) presupposes that he was in the tomb for most of that period. What matters to the narrators is not when or how he left, but the simple fact that now, early on Sunday morning, ‘he is not here’ (v.6).”
[9] France, Matthew, 1101. “The women are not only themselves the witnesses of the empty tomb, but also the chosen messengers to convey the amazing news to Jesus’ male disciples.”
[10] France, Matthew, 1103. “my brothers” “This time, however, it follows the abject failure of the Twelve to stand with Jesus when the pressure was on, a failure which was hardly less shameful because Jesus had predicted it in 26:31. But now it is time for the second half of that prediction to be fulfilled ( 26:32), and that Galilean meeting will eventually restore the family relationship which they must surely have thought had come to an end in Gethsemane.”
Psalm 84:1-3: How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are they who dwell in your house! they will always be praising you.
Introduction
Have you thought about wisdom?–what it is as a concept and thing. Who oversees discerning if someone has it? I think we tend to confuse common sense for wisdom; those who choose the path of action or the line of thought most commensurate with what we would do are “wise”. But are they? Isn’t that like judging whether someone is a good driver on how you drive? Too fast, reckless jerks; too slow, ridiculous. Each of us has used “they say” when offering some random “wise” fact to a conversation; basing the inclusion of the sentiment on the hopes that the “they” who are doing the saying are wise. Who are “they”? I hope it would be a group of various voices, experiences, and bodies; however, I fear their selective and exclusive composition.
Wisdom is defined for us through the philosophy poured out over the ages. However, so much of it is written by the privileged and powerful group of people at the expense of the oppressed—in fact leaving out large groups of people when talking about things like labor and production and value. But even if they weren’t negating large swathes of human existence, what is the basis for determining what is moral and what is wise, what is good and what is beautiful? How does one group determine that for all the other groups?
Is wisdom of the silver generation who walk before us? There is wisdom in maturation, and I’m eager to learn. I’ve also seen those grown into the decades become calcified in archaic thoughts and actions refusing to change with the demand of context.
Maybe wisdom is something different than we’ve come to expect—especially from the perspective of one encountered by God in the event of faith. What if it looks more like a “little bit dangerous”[1] disturbing the status quo? What if Christian wisdom looks like Creative Disobedience?[2] What if Christian maturation based on The Christian Imagination[3] makes us look like fools to the world and stumbling blocks to politicians eager to count our votes?
Luke 2:46-49, 52
Now it happened after three days they found him in the temple having taken a seat in the midst of the teachers both listening to them and questioning them. And all of those who were listening to him were amazed on the basis of his understanding and replies. Now after seeing him they were shocked, and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why did you act like this to us? Behold, your father and me also were seeking for you tormented. And he said to them, “why were you looking for me? Did you not perceive that it is necessary for me to be in my father’s house? (Lk 2:46-49, translation mine)
Our gospel passage starts with a unique story: parents forgetting their kid. This parental gaff becomes a moment for divine revelation. Between chapters one and two, Luke emphasizes the link between Mary and Jesus and Hannah and Samuel in 1 Samuel 2.[4] Luke is a master storyteller, so I ask: why Samuel? The themes Luke is eager to connect Jesus to are twin: “kingdom of God” and “temple”. Jesus is ushering in the kingdom of God and is the new temple.[5] There is movement here from the Kingdom of David to the Kingdom of God and movement to the locus of God: tent to tabernacle to temple to the body of Christ. For Luke, there’s a shift rupturing structures and systems built by humanity based on human “wisdom” and “assumption” about what God can and cannot do and where God can and cannot go.[6]
Jesus’s reply to his mother isn’t expected. Jesus prioritizes his posture and place in the temple over and against obedience to his parents; his dedication to the coming kingdom of God is of a higher priority than honoring father and mother.[7] Even the shift in recorded dialogue highlights the shift of perspective from that of humanity to God; this story is about God’s movement in the world and not about our wisdom and common sense and our status-quo and biased systems.[8] A reordering is happening in the relationship between the law and the person: the law was made for the person and not the person for the law. [9]
Scholar Justo Gonzalez does well highlighting Luke’s reach to the Hebrew Scriptures to make the correlation between Samuel and Hannah and Jesus and Mary in order to redefine familiar themes of “kingdom of God” and “temple”. This story is also the start to setting the groundwork for Jesus’s ministry culminating in radically redefining both what the kingdom of God is all about and the conception of what the temple is. I want to reach forward to Mary and Martha and Jesus when he visits in Luke 10. There, Mary and Martha are busy about their duties at home, then Jesus arrives. Mary stops what she is doing and seats herself[10] at his feet listening to his words. Martha “distracted by many things” confronts Jesus asking him to get Mary to help her. The story ends with Jesus drawing Martha’s attention to him away from what is causing her distraction and anxiety.[11]
The themes of Luke 2 are present in Luke 10. Jesus, the one favored by God, is in the position of the teacher, he is causing a disruption in expectation and assumed “wise” behavior, and the corresponding response of anxiety by the person holding to what is expected by tradition. Martha, burdened by much work, goes to Jesus and asks him if he cares that she is burdened by anxiety and expects him to tell Mary (her sister) to help her. Mary, Jesus’s mother, approaches him after “seeking for him in torment” and expects his reply to align with what a son should say based on tradition. In both cases, Jesus responds in an unexpected way and overhauls the status-quo. While the questions are different—(Luke 2) why are you doing this? and (Luke 10) why aren’t you doing this?—the communication is similar: what are you doing? Why aren’t you upholding tradition and expectation? Jesus’s answer is consistent in both cases: I’m not of the old age but the new; God is forging a new path for humanity. What came before will be reduced to the dust of death and what comes is life and light.
Now Jesus was progressing[12] in wisdom both maturity and grace in the sight [favor] of God and humanity. (Lk 2:52, translation mine)
Conclusion
So, to our opening question: what is the wisdom of the kingdom of God? It’s in opposition to the things we think are wise.[13] In two comparable stories we see Jesus’s actions and language are perplexing and causes anxiety because his actions and language challenge the expectations held by the people and society around him. Noting that at the end of Luke 2, Luke mentions Jesus has grown in maturity and wisdom as it pertains to God, we must see that by Luke 10, those actions are the working out of that wisdom and maturity influenced by God’s will and mission on earth. Jesus’s actions perpetuate the demand for questions which is hallmark of the divine encounter with God in the event of faith. When we are encountered by God in the scriptures telling of God’s divine incarnation at Christmas, we are pushed off balance and forced to ask questions because the answer that’s been given by God challenges and confronts what we have deemed as wise and mature. Thus, our questions in response to God become the bedrock of the questions we turn and ask ourselves, others, and our institutions and ideologies.
We are washed in the holy water of the divine answer that is Jesus of Nazareth the Christ and swept up in its movement. By baptism we’re grafted into the mission of God in the world trapped in death and darkness. By our baptism we are washed of death and brought into life. By our baptism we are made into holy troublemakers, wildcards, willing to imagine and be creatively disobedient by questioning things of the age of darkness and death and the kingdom of humanity. As the beloved of God and agents of light, we can challenge errant notions of heteronormativity, racism, sexism, classism, ageism and ableism–petrified, calcified, archaic, death-dealing ideologies and institutions having no place in the kingdom of God.
By our baptism we become responsive and active participants in the kingdom of God and the age of life and light, calling and pulling forth that which was and is being done by God in the world through the incarnation of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray that as we stand at the beginning of 2021 we have the audacity to grow in the wisdom and maturity of God as Jesus did and that we would dare to drag the advent of the new age—Christmas—into our simple days in simple ways. By the power of the Holy Spirit in you, where you are there God is too, and there is the light of life; where you are, Beloved, there is God and there is love.
For an excellent discussion of the connection between the event of Baptism and the mission of God see W. Travis McMaken’s work, The Sign of the Gospel. I hosted Dr. McMaken on my podcast to talk about this text and the ideas contained within it, an episode which aired in two parts: here.
[1] Idea taken from W. Travis McMaken’s Our God Loves Justice: Introduction to Helmut Golwitzer. “What overcomes this ecclesiastical banality is encounter with the church’s resurrected Lord, with ‘the Easter story [that] broken into our world, bringing with it a power, a world-overcoming revolution, which makes everything different in our life, which forces the church into a totally different direction.’ This encounter delegitimizes the church’s banality and demands that the church become an agent in proclaiming this world-overcoming revolution through word and deed. Instead of leaving the church to its comfortable domestication, ‘the one thing that matters for the church is that she should be both a danger and a help to the world.’ Gollwitzer’s ecclesiology calls for a dangerous church because a church that is not dangerous is not help at all.” 150-1.
[2] Playing with Dorothee Sölle’s book on Christian “obedience”, Creative Disobedience. Eugen OR: Wipf and Stock, 1995. “”In traditional usage one speaks rather descriptively of ‘fulfilling’ obedience. The picture is that of a container of form which must be filled. So too with obedience. A previously existing order is postulate that must be maintained, defended, or fulfilled. But Jesus did not conceive of the world according to a model of completed order, which person were merely required to maintain. The world he enters had not yet reached perfection. It was alterable, in fact, it awaitedtransformation. Schemes of order are in Jesus’ words utterly destroyed–great and small, scholar and child, riches and poverty, knowledge of the Law and ignorance. Jesus did everything in his power to relativize these orders and set free the person caught up in these schemes. This process of liberation is called ‘Gospel.’ Out obedience then still be thought of as the Christian’s greatest glory? I detect that we need new words to describe the revolutionary nature of all relationships begun in Christ. At the very least it is problematic whether we can even continue to consider that which Jesus wanted under the term obedience.“ Pp. 27-28
[3] Playing with Willie James Jennings book on race The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. New Haven CT: YUP, 2010. From the introduction, “The work also joins the growing conversation regarding the possibilities of a truly cosmopolitan citizenship. Such a world citizenship imagines cultural transactions that signal the mergence of people who sense of agency and belonging breaks open not only geopolitical and nationalist confines but also the strictures of ethnic and racial identities. This is indeed a noble dream even if it is a moving target given the conceptual confusions and political struggles around multicultural discourse. Yet I hope to intervene helpfully in this conversation by returning precisely to the question of the constitution of such a people and such a citizenship.” Pp. 10-11
[4] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief Series Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. P. 43. “The story about the visit to the temple in Luke 2 has no parallel in the other canonical Gospels. Indeed, only Luke recounts an episode in the life of Jesus—this one—between his birth and the beginning of his ministry. In this particular case, Luke is again connection Jesus with Samuel—which he already did in Mary’s song, taken mostly from the song of Hannah—for the words in verse 52 are patterned after 1 Samuel 2:26…”
[5] Gonzalez Luke 43. “Here again there are typological connections: Samuel would bring in the kingdom of David, which pointed to the kingdom of God that Jesus would bring in. Furthermore, Samuel’s connection both with the temple and with Jesus hint at the typology that sees Jesus as the new and final temple of God.”
[6] Gonzalez Luke 44. “The temple and the tabernacle before it, were types of the incarnation that was to come. Elsewhere in the NT…Jesus refers to himself when he says that if the temple is destroyed, he will raise it up on three days. God can dwell with mortals on earth—even though the cross shows that mortals do when God does dwell with us.” And this was interesting, too: Gonzalez recounts a discussion about the idea of incarnation among some rabbis, here is the conclusion: “…the presence of God in the temple is perfectly compatible with the presence of God in a human being. There are many other important differences, he said, but to the questions, Can God indeed dwell with mortals on earth? Jews and Christians can both answer, Yes!”
[7] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke TNICNT Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. P.155. “But Luke introduces a surprising countermeasure as well. Jesus is being raised in a pious environment, but his commitment to God’s purpose transcends that piety and that environment. In this case at least, acting on behalf of God’s aim places Jesus’ behavior against parental expectation.” And, “Jesus is in the temple, the locus of God’s presence, but he is there under divine compulsion engaged in teaching. The point is that he must align himself with God’s purpose, even if this appears to compromise his relationship with his parents.” P. 157
[8] Green Luke 156. “In addition the movement of the story is not simply to Jerusalem and back to Nazareth; rather, one recognizes in these geographical markers a subtle deixic shift. As the scene opens, Mary and Joseph are the subjects of the action, but as it unfolds Jesus takes on an active role—for the first time in the Gospel.”
[9] Green Luke 156. “Finally, the pericope contrasts two sorts of piety, not in order to negate the one but to underscore the preeminence of the other. It is a good thing to keep the Passover, but the sort of pious environment to which Jesus has become accustomed at home serves and must serve the more fundamental purpose of God. Not even familial claims take precedent over aligning oneself uncompromisingly on the side of God’s purpose.”
[10] While the word used describing Mary’s action is παρακαθεσθεισα (first principle part: παρακαθιζω (to seat oneself, to sit down) it shares the root word used of Jesus seating himself in the midst of the teachers καθεζομενον(first principle part: καθιζομαι the ppi1s of καθιζω, to sit down, to take one’s seat). I believe this creates a link between the story in Luke 10 with the story in Luke 2. As a deponent the action is as if it was active and the two words overlap significantly in meaning and intentional action.
[11] The words here are different than the words used to describe Mary’s (and also Joseph’s) panic, but the emotional content is similar. Again another link between the structure of Luke 2 and Luke 10. Jesus’s presence and action inaugurate something new and there is anxiety in response by those familiar with what should be according to tradition.
[12] This word προεκοπτεν (impai3s, first principle part προκοπτω) carries with it the idea of a pioneer cutting a way through brushwood.
[13] Green Luke 157. “He returns under different circumstances than before. Now he is an active agent in the story, set on working within the contours of God’s aim irrespective of the consequences.”
Psalm 89: 1-2: “Your love, O Lord, forever will I sing; from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness. For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever; you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.” Amen.
Introduction
A gray winter evening ended in a depressed steel town in Pittsburgh, and the fall semester of my last year of seminary wrapped up. Then contractions started. A first-time mom, I had nothing previously in my life to prepare me for this moment. Yes, I took the necessary classes; yes, I read every book (I’m an enneagram 5, if we could, our babies wouldn’t be born until we’ve plumbed the depths of ACOG). Yet, as the contractions began that Monday night, my life was changing. Forever. The event that was barreling at me like a freight train was one I’d have to experience as it came in waves, in pain, in water and blood, in my body breaking. Daniel could not walk with me or protect me; I had to do it alone…I, on behalf of my unborn son, would wage a campaign against death, and my body would be the battleground and I’d never be the same again.
And the only solution was to stand and fight And my body was bruised and I was set alight But you came over me like some holy rite And although I was burning, you’re the only light Only if for a night[1]
Florence and the Machine
In the act of bringing forth life, a woman will grab death by its face and fiercely declare: my life for this one. When labor comes, when the urge to bear down swells, there’s nothing else to do but submit to the event, to enter what feels like chaos and the blindness of darkness. The warrior woman and the ferocity of motherhood will be summoned, and she will stand and fight to remind death once more: life wins. Even if I die here and now, life wins.
Luke 1:38a
“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’” (Lk 1:38a).
Mary, a young virgin, will take on the burden of this battle in her own body. In our gospel passage, Luke tells us the story of the announcement that Jesus will be born. After receiving Gabriel’s announcement that she—a humble and poor woman of no status—will conceive when the spirit of God comes upon her, Mary submits herself to this divine request. She will bear in her body the stigma of being a young, unwed mother and the threat of the law therein.[2] The task she undertakes in her submission is one that will not only be internal (reckoning with herself as her time approaches) but also external as she must prepare herself to come under the judgment of law: criminal, worthy of death. The path laid bare will be marked by pain and humiliation. [3]
Mary becomes part of the fulfillment of the promise made to David by the prophet Nathan, “…the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam 7:16). Her body is the house of the son of God—not made of mortar and stone, but of flesh and bone. She will bear in her body the child and son of God the Christ and the full weight of the law; the great rescue begins here. Her womb, her body becomes the battle ground between life and death. Her body hosts the form of the day of favor as salvation and rescue from the religious tyranny and authority of human systems and kingdoms deeply corrupt and oppressive in their favoring of the rich and powerful. Her body will become the site of the day of judgment coming into the world on those in authority abusing their power in using God’s word to marginalize and oppress those without power and authority. Mary is the site of the beginning of the world flipped right side up. [4]Woe to the rich, blessed are the poor…
Mary submits not to the oppressive command of a god taking advantage of a young and intimidated young girl, but to the mission of God in the battle of life against death. The Joan of Arc before there was a Joan of Arc, Mary enlists herself and her body in this divine war against death. Mary “…heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’”; and she said, “‘Here am I; send me!’” (Is 6:8). Mary’s statement of submission to the mission of God puts her in the household of God usurping her role in the family of Joseph for the things of God surpass the things of humanity.[5] Mary’s statement of submission to the mission of God and the presence of God’s spirit anointing and empowering and strengthening her[6] graft her into the great line of prophets who roamed this earth proclaiming the wonderful and awesome day of the Lord. She, too, becomes one of those prophetic voices who will proclaim and herald good tidings of salvation and rescue to Israel and unto the ends of the earth.
Listen to her:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever. (Cant. 15 The Song of Mary; Lk 1:46-55)
Mary, like the prophets before her, submits to the mission of God of love in the world: behold the day of the Lord comes! She, like the prophets before her, participates in bringing justice to those who suffer injustice, bringing comfort to those who need to be comforted, proclaiming and performing love in the world. She is like Isaiah, the herald of good tidings; she is like Jeremiah, the suffering servant; she is like Micah, watching in hope for the coming of the Lord; she is like Malachi, announcing the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.
Conclusion
The impact of the descent of God into our timeline radically alters our lives—yesterday, tomorrow, and (especially) today. The proclamation streaming out of the historical event of God’s descent into the world in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ ricochets through the halls of time, never exhausting itself and never running out of steam. It moves about the cosmos forever and unto the ends of the earth for the beloved, to reconcile the beloved, to love the beloved, to save the beloved from death. Not even death itself will put a stop to the activity of God on the behalf of the beloved (Rom 8:38-39).
This is the great mystery Paul mentions at the end of Romans, the long held secret mystery of God being revealed into the world for the whole world in the fractal of broken bodies (Rom. 16:25-27). Mary, the one low of status in wealth, society, and gender will become the blessed of God because God is with those whose bodies are broken: who are low status, hurt, who have pain, who suffer injustice, oppression, and marginalization. Mary will face death so that her son can reckon with it. Mary will go through hell, so that the Christ will shut it down. Mary will lay low the divine child in the wood of a manger so that Jesus the Savior may raise up all who suffer by the wood of his cross. Her body will be broken so that her son’s can be; so that ours, too, can be broken as we participate in reminding death—in all its forms—life wins.
And right now as death has found a seat in our pews, taking one of our beloved, we need to be reminded that death is not the final word. As Tom’s timeline stopped and ours seems to surge beyond, hold on to this: there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And if that then also this: no one is separated from us—not even by death—because Love knows not that boundary and certainly isn’t restricted by it. Love descends into death bringing with it love’s life. So, today we have the audacity to stand in the encounter with God in the event of faith and fight and declare I believe, to sing, to look death in the face and, with confidence, proclaim: hope wins, love wins, life wins because the Christ, the child of Mary, Jesus of Nazareth is born.
[2] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 21. “Mary will have to bear the stigma—and perhaps even the penalty—of that condition…”
[3]Gonzalez. 21 “This is the beginning of a story of pain and humiliation that will lead her son being condemned to death as a common criminal.”
[4] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke TNICNT Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 92 “In antiquity, the status of a slave was determined by the status of the householder. In his characterization of Mary as ‘slave of the Lord,’ Luke has begun to undercut the competitive maneuvering for positions of status prevalent in the first-century Mediterranean world. Mary, who seemed to measure low in any ranking—age, family heritage, gender, and so on—turns out to be the one favored by God, the one who finds her status and identity in her obedience to God and participation in his salvific will.”
[5] Green 92 “In describing herself as the Lord’s servant…she acknowledges her submission to God’s purpose, but also her role in assisting that purpose. Moreover, she claims a pace in God’s household, so to speak; indeed, in this socio-historical context, her words relativize and actually place in jeopardy her status in Joseph’s household. For her, partnership in the purpose of God transcends the claims of family.”
[6] Martin Luther LW 25. 149. “It should be noted that the word virtus here is understood as ‘strength’ or ‘power,’ as Moglichkeit in the colloquial sense, ‘possibility’.’ And power of God is understood not as the power by which according to His essence He is powerful but the power by virtue of which He makes powerful and strong. As one says ‘the gift of God,’ ‘the creature of God,’ or ‘the things of God,’ so one also says the power of God, that is, the power that comes from God, as we read in Acts 4:33…Luke 1:35: ‘The power of the Most High will overshadow you.’”
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