Absurdity of Faith

Albert Camus and “The Myth of Sisyphus”

What if there’s no reason or purpose to anything? What if being alive necessitates an awareness that life is rather pointless? What if all there is, all we can actually know is the absurdity of our existence? And, what if that’s okay?

“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But , on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divest of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his stetting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.”[1]

I have an entirely new respect for the absurd after reading The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus. In fact, Camus gave me words to identify something what has followed me most of my conscious life: what is the purpose? Not merely: What is my purpose? But: What is the purpose of anything? There are times I contemplate beauty and question its reason for being. Think of the multitude of flowers–the vast variety of not only classification but of variations of color, form, size, and smell within each classification—there’s some absurdity there. I get that there’s something explanatory embedded in the theory of evolution, but at the same time the sheer multiplicity of variation betrays that not even the theory of evolution can address why this rose is this way and that one that way any better than just cuz.

Even all of our best efforts to explain all the nuances of creation (of our and the world’s) through the apologetic of the existence for God have never satiated the question. Every apologetic for God and for our purpose has consistently left me with my question still in tact and on my lips, …but why? The only explanation that has ever made any sense was that none of it makes any sense. Even with the notion that God is love and God loves and thus that love–being dynamic and creative–created this world as an object of God’s love, and all that is in it and of it is representative of that love…the reason for God’s love movement is still baffling and doesn’t make sense. It’s alway and everywhere: just because.

One of my very bright and capable of students made reference in one of his papers to the idea and the certainty of the Christian claim that God is love and loves us specifically: why would an almighty being like God deign to care about puny humans? He’s right; it’s rather absurd to think and to make this claim as true. But maybe the underbelly of God’s activity and presence is less about sense-making, but absurdity. Maybe God is absurd. The gift of God’s grace to people who do not earn it (justification by faith in Christ alone)[2] and the righteousness of God that is righteousness that makes righteous,[3] are absurd. The gospel is offensive because of its absurdity and not because it makes sense.

“Any though that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life. Detached from it, the work will once more give a barely muffled voice to a soul forever freed from hope. Or it will give voice to nothing if the creator, tired of his activity, intends to turn away. That is equivalent.”[4]

Rather than being the fodder of an existential crisis, absurdity, as Camus presents it, is the stuff of radical living. It’s like being able to give up all of your coveted doctrines that you cling to as reason for believing in whatever God you believe in and just believing in that God. It’s scary as hell, but once embraced the freedom is unparalleled. The dark night of the soul is the wrestling with the pointlessness of life and the nonsense of existence and finding in that moment sense and point: just because. The question shifts from …but why? to …why not? The former slows to numbing slumber upon slumber while the later propels into existence upon existence (in quantity[5]). The way Camus plays his philosophy out, the person who sees and performs the absurd of existence is the one who is liberated and thus the one who is given a present defined through revolt, freedom, and diversity. The mundane and banality of the everyday becomes glorious, because that’s the paradox of the absurd, the paradox of grace.

“All that remains is a fate whole outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics—in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the territorial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.”[6]

 

Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Trans Justin O’Brien. New York, NY: Vintage International, Vintage Books (Random House) 1955. Le Mythe de Sisyphe France: Librairie Gallimard, 1942.

[1] Camus 6

[2] Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians vol. 26 LW pp. 113-4, “I am saying this in order that we may learn the doctrine of justification with the greatest diligence and distinguish most clearly between the Law and the Gospel. On this issue we must not do anything out of insincerity or yield submission to anyone if we want to keep the truth of the Gospel and the faith sound and inviolate; for, as I have said, these are easily bruised. Here let reason be far away, that enemy of faith, which in the temptations of sin and death, relies not on the righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness, b of which it is completely ignorant, but on its own righteousness or, at most, on the righteousness of the Law. As soon as reason and the Law are joined, faith immediately loses its virginity. For nothing is more hostile to faith than the Law and reason; nor can these two enemies be overcome without great effort and work, and you must overcome them if you are to be saved. Therefore when your conscience is terrified by the Law and is wrestling with the judgment of God, do not consult either reason or the Law, but rely only on grace and the Word of comfort. Here take your stand as though you had never heard of the Law. Ascend into the darkness, where neither the Law nor reason shines, but only the dimness of faith (1 Cor. 13:12), which assures us that we are saved by Christ alone, without any Law. Thus the Gospel leads us above and beyond the light of the Law and reason into the darkness of faith, where the Law and reason have no business. The Law, too, deserves a hearing, but in its proper place and time. When Moses was on the mountain speaking with God face to face, he neither had nor established nor administered the Law. But now that he has come down from the mountain, he is a law giver and rules the people by the law. So the conscience must be free from the Law, but the body must obey the Law”

[3] Eberhard Jüngel, Jüngel, “Living Out of Righteousness: God’s Action—Human Agency.” Theological Essays II. (Ed. J.B. Webster. Trans. Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and J.B. Webster. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995). 243. “What follows will therefore try to explain the extent to which the message of justification brings light and life not only into our hearts and our church but also equally into our world. It is no doubt for this reason that the synod has placed its work under the title: ‘Living out of Righteousness: God’s Action—Human Agency’. Yet already at this point I stop short. The subtitle of this theme can potentially blind us to a decisive point of the message of justification at the outset. For it suggests that human agency directly and exclusively corresponds to divine action. Thus one is given the impression that the relevance of divine action for humanity is ethical and only ethical. But thereby something decisive of what the gospel of justification of sinners has to say is lost. If God’s righteousness brings forth life, new human life, then the question of our being has priority over the question of our agency. And prior to both questions is certainly the question of God himself.”

[4] Camus, 116.

[5] Ibid, 72ff. I’d argue that it is both quantity and quality as long as quality doesn’t mean scarcity but substance. I see quality playing out with the reference to Don Juan. And quality is not antinomy to quantity.

[6] Ibid, 117-8

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Moltmann in Brief

Stephen D. Morrison and “Jürgen Moltmann in Plain English”

Stephen D. Morrison has stumbled upon an excellent idea: distilling and synthesizing the corpus of intellectual material of notable and influential Christian theologians. As a teacher of theology and religion, I long for ways to get good and accessible theology into the hands of my students. Handing a student a volume from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics or one of Luther’s commentaries isn’t always feasible or advisable. Being a bit of a broody hen when it comes to my students and their theological education, I’m wary to send them off on their own to slog through one of these theologians. However, Morrison is a capable and humble guide and thorough.

 

Morrison does not twist the theologian to get them to say what he wants them to say. Rather, he carefully and thoughtfully organizes his book around their works, devoting a chapter to their major works while incorporating the other writing; this creates a smooth, fluid, and coherent representation of the theologian. He has a knack for creating before the reader’s eyes the living and breathing person that is the theologian under examination and consideration. She will feel as if she’s entered a casual conversation with Morrison and with the theologian she’s reading about. The project “Plain English Series” will prove to be fruitful for academics and lay-scholars alike. You are right, Morrison, it truly is a unique[1] project; I’m excited for more installments of the series to grace my bookshelves.

 

In this particular volume, Morrison looks at the work of one of my favorite theologians: Jürgen Moltmann. (I read Moltmann’s work when I need to take a break from my dissertation research.) Moltmann’s theology is paradoxically confrontational and pastoral; but I’d argue that’s the paradox of Jesus the Christ and the gospel proclamation of Him crucified. Moltmann is deeply cruciform and Christocentric in his approach to systematic theology, from his doctrine of creation, the eschatological hope, doctrine of the trinity, to ethics, etc. Morrison, in my opinion, captures these aspects splendidly; at times the reader will be left wondering if Morrison isn’t in conversation with Moltmann directly while writing. Moltmann’s goal is to bring life to his reader through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ; Morrison stays true to this.

 

Morrison begins with a biographical sketch of Moltmann and continues to structure the book by creating 10 sections each primarily focused on one of Moltmann’s works. Each section heavily draws from the work corresponding to it, as mentioned above. But Morrison is a good researcher and brings in other components of Moltmann’s material to bolster the deductions Morrison is making. Thus, Morrison’s explanations and conclusions are well grounded in Moltmann’s conceptions as they are articulated not only in one book but throughout the corpus of his work.

 

Interspersed between the chapters are these short excurses, or “Sidebars.” These sidebars range from further explanatory and instructional words about some of the conceptions of the corresponding chapters (“Peace with God” with “Theology of Hope,” “The Sacraments” with “The Church in the Power of the Spirit,” “Tritheism” with “The Trinity and the Kingdom” to mention a few) to challenges for the reader—challenges Morrison himself received while engaging with Moltmann’s work. These sidebars specifically are exactly what Moltmann would have his reader do: he would want her to turn her eye to the world to see where she and her church are failing to be proactive in the world on behalf of the oppressed and disenfranchised. He would want his reader to use his voice to proclaim the word of God crucified to bring true and radical freedom and liberation to those dying for lack of. In this way, Morrison exposes that he’s a good student of Moltmann; one from whom I can learn a lot.

 

There was one sidebar, though, that didn’t measure up to the others in content, and it is with that sidebar I’ll contend with here. Near the end of chapter 5, “The Trinity and the Kingdom,” Morrison splendidly sums up Moltmann’s Christocentric and social approach to the doctrine of the trinity, “The Triuntiy of God is in their mutual indwelling and interpenetration; it is a unity not found in a hierarchal monarchy or a philosophical one subject, but unity in Tri-unity.”[2] And further explains a bit later, “Understanding the doctrine of God’s Triunity as the fellowship of person leads to rejecting hierarchy in the Church, the state, and in society. We should strive toward a community free from hierarchy and patriarchy, an open fellowship of equals.”[3] Morrison goes on to mention that Motlmann’s conception of the doctrine of the trinity works well and inherently advocates for feminism (as well as for Liberation Theology and Black Theology).[4]

 

Morrison took the right conclusive trajectory from Moltmann’s conception of the doctrine of the Trinity defined as perichoretic triunity. However, in the sidebar associated with this chapter, “Sidebar: God, His & Hers,” Morrison seems to miss an opportunity to put to work exactly what he sees occurring in Moltmann’s conception of the trinity as social force in the world dismantling hierarchies. In defense of feminism in church and theology, rather than quoting from Elisabeth Moltmann extensively (a known feminist theologian), Morrison leans heavily upon Jürgen to validate Elisabeth and the role of feminism in theology and church. Also, there is a lot of recourse to other male theologians to validate the maternal nature along with the paternal nature of God. Thus, the female voice is subordinated to the male one, and upholds rather than challenges the status quo of the hierarchy of patriarchy in church and theology. Feminism is valid because it’s valid in its own right and not because a host of men have seen the value of it.[5]

 

That Jürgen was influenced by Elisabeth (as the story initiating the sidebar indicates) is a beautiful thing, but should not be the basis by which we validate her theology or her feminism. Yet, starting the chapter with such a story[6] situates the reader to validate Elisabeth based on what Jürgen says. Elisabeth is a worthy theologian (Full stop). Considering the title of the sidebar is one of the titles of Elisabeth’s works, she herself can substantiate the validity of both her theology and feminism. A presentation of her work alone would have done well as the totality of the sidebar and placed the reader in a confrontation of having to decide for themselves.

 

Jürgen Moltmann in Plain English by Stephen D. Morrison is not only commendable but recommendable. I enjoyed the accessible tour and my able tour guide and fell in love with Moltmann all over again. We should not take for granted talented authors who can revive such love. I look forward to more installments of Morrison’s series, “In Plain English.”

Stephen D. Morrison’s Jürgen Moltmann in Plain English Columbus, OH: Beloved Publishing, 2018.

[1] Stephen D. Morrison Jürgen Motlamnn in Plain English “Introduction” p. vii.

[2] Ibid, 119.

[3] Ibid, 120.

[4] Ibid, 120.

[5] Especially with the dynamic of what Morrison refers to as “bitter feminists.” We must always remember that women have suffered deadly violence at the hands of men. When we categorically dismiss those who are angry, we will forget just how bad the violence is.

[6] Morrison, 126.

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Reading List Summer/Fall 2019

The following is my reading list for this summer and into the fall…Reading isn’t restricted to this and I may update the list. I’ll be updating the list marking selections “Read” (etc.) and adding new books (if needed). But for now, for those who may be interested in what I’m tackling over the next few months…Here you go:

Moral Philosophy:

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Augustine, City of God (Books: 1, 2, 13, 14, 19)

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Immanuel Kant The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Hegel The Philosophy of Right

Marx Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of Karl Marx READ

Engles Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy READ

Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto READ

Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil Reading

John Stuart Mill On Liberty

Rand Anthem

Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince READ

Plato   Phaedo READ

            Protagoras READ

            Meno READ

 

For the Dissertation:

In English:

Karl Barth The Church and The War 1944 READ

Travis McMaken The Sign of the Gospel READ

Philip Ziegler Militant Grace READ

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Ethics READ

In German:

Friedrich Gogarten Politische Ethik 1932 Reading

Friedrich Gogarten Die Verkündigung Jesu Christi 1948

Friedrich Gogarten Der Mensch zwischen Gott und Welt 1956

 

Misc.:

Stephen D. Morrison Jürgen Moltmann in Plain English READ

James Cone Martin and Malcom READ

Tripp Fuller Jesus: Lord, Liar, Lunatic…or Awesome? READ

McMaken/Congdon Karl Barth in Conversation READ

Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus READ

Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex

Søren Kierkegaard  Fear and Trembling READ

Sickness unto Death READ

Bultmann This World and Beyond

Tina Schermer Sellers Sex, God & The Conservative Church READ

 

Teaching:

Jeanette Parker, Instructional Strategies for Teaching the Gifted READ

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“Our God Loves Justice”

Sancta Colloquia episode 109 ft. Sabrina Peters (Talkin’ “Our God Loves Justice” by Dr. W. Travis McMaken)

In this episode of Sancta Colloquia, I had the honor and privilege of sitting down and chatting with a friend from Twitter, Sabrina Peters (@sdrp_). I’ve always really enjoyed the content Sabrina produces both through her tweets as well as one her blog (listed below). She’s very insightful and completely human: she loves and lives in a way that is authentic (she isn’t virtue posing, this woman gives a damn about you and your life). So, when Sabrina posted a book review about Dr. W. Travis McMaken’s most recent book, Our God Loves Justice: An Introduction to Helmut Gollwitzer (#OGLJ), I couldn’t help but notice and want to talk to her about it. There are two reasons: McMaken’s book is one of my favorites (as I express in the show), and I knew that Sabrina would have an embodied response to the work and the implications of Helmut Gollwitzer’s Political Theology and Theological Politics. My conversation with Sabrina about this book proved me right: Sabrina is postured in the world toward others as her theology demands her to be: fighting against oppressive systems and finding ways to dismantle the kyriarchy.* For Sabrina, the Gospel is not a tool of oppression as it is all too often used. Objectivist Neo-Capitalism has infiltrated gospel proclamation, and what we have is, as Sabrina makes mention, a disembodied message (ironic since the Word of God is also the incarnate Christ, Jesus of Nazareth) that is only a saccharine word of numbing “comfort” for a very small group of people: those who are elite and privileged. (In other words, you aren’t actually getting comfort in this proclamation; you’re being lulled to sleep in the midst of your pain and the pain others.) Sabrina makes it clear that the word of God, when we are encountered by it in the event of faith, brings a bit of crisis and crisis brings embodiment. When you are under exposure you become very aware of your body (flesh and blood). And as this crisis plays out with the encounter with God in the proclamation of the Gospel it isn’t just a crisis that ends with exposure unto death but one that ends in life, new embodied life. To think this event only involves some sort of soothed conscience so that you can just continue to live in a disembodied way is a lie: the creative word of God in the proclamation of Christ Crucified is a word that reconstitutes the entire person (mind, soul, heart, and body). The mind and the body matter. Freedom and rest are not freedom and rest if you merely think you are; freedom and rest are truly freedom and rest when you are free and at rest. I was honored to have Sabrina on the show and I believe you’ll agree with me that she doesn’t pretend to be smart, she’s hella smart and insightful.

*Kyriarchy: Sabrina explains it as anything that maintains systems of power and oppression like Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia to name a few

Intrigued? You should be. Listen here via Screaming Pods (https://www.screamingpods.com/)

A huge THANK YOU to my friend and producer Sean Duregger (Twitter: @seanCduregger) and Screaming Pods (Twitter: @ScreamingPods) for hosting Sancta Colloquia (Twitter: @SanctaColloquia).

Sabrina reads lots of books (mostly comics and theology books lately), drinks lots of tea, pretends to be smart on Twitter, and ponder how to destroy the kyriarchy. She lives in the passive-aggressive, beautiful Seattle, with her spouse and his mostly clever, somewhat corny jokes. She currently serves as a Eucharistic minister at a local Episcopal church, and is re-exploring her vocational direction, dusting off the MDiv she earned six years ago. For the personality junkies out there, she is most likely a 5w6, and every MBTI test ever taken has been inconclusive, save for the “I” for “introvert”. Her blog is: https://sdrp.me/

The following are links to highly recommended videos/podcasts where Dr. W. Travis McMaken discusses his book Our God Loves Justice:

With Stephen Waldron (@stephen_m_w) on his podcast Theology and Socialism (@TheoSocialism) cohosted with Benjamin D. Crosby (@benjamindcrosby): https://t.co/sFA3IDWHV1

With Tripp Fuller (@trippfuller) on Homebrewed Christiantiy (@HomebrewedXnty & https://trippfuller.com/): https://trippfuller.com/2018/04/17/our-god-loves-justice-with-w-travis-mcmaken/

With Dean Dettloff (@DeanDettloff) and Matt Bernico (@spookymachines) on their podcast: The Magnificast (@themagnificast & https://themagnificast.com/): https://m.soundcloud.com/themagnificast/ep-54-our-god-loves-justice-w-w-travis-mcmaken

And this video with one of my previous guests, Liam Miller (@liammiller87), on his youtube channel (youtube.com/user/MQUT) for his blog/podcast: Love, Rinse, Repeat (@RinseRepeatPod):

Recommended Reading/Works Mentioned in the Podcast:

There’s a free study guide for Our God Loves Justice; you can read about it here on Dr. W. Travis McMaken’s blog (DET): http://derevth.blogspot.com/2018/02/free-study-guide-for-our-god-loves.html

Evangelical Theology, by Karl Barth: https://books.google.com/books/about/Evangelical_Theology.html?id=8iQgolN1WTMC

Wisdom Ways, by Elisabeth Schüller Fiorenza: https://g.co/kgs/StgzoA

Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision by Randy S. Woodley: https://books.google.com/books?id=cB5qKv72Jz0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=shalom+and+the+community+of+creation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI6ur8pZniAhXKs54KHa-ODUsQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=shalom%20and%20the%20community%20of%20creation&f=false

Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago, by Heath Carter:  https://g.co/kgs/SnA8bR

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Curves

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands.
My course skin against yours young;
Yang’s coarse to soft yin,
Yin’s aged bronze to yang’s nascent tin.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
And I explore the unchartered territory of your eyes;
Wisdom searches among youthful vivacity,
Sorrow and regret met by innocence and tenacity.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
Look at me: I pray you never know the pain I do;
Energetic eyes bounce back, they sparkle and prance,
The eyes that know too much slow the dance.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
I know you’ll hide pain deep, away, and aside;
I’ve witnessed other teens who sit at my tables and chairs
Making me false promises of being aloof and without cares.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
Your face reflects to me what I hope: contentment;
A smile to cover the fear and confusion
Able to create, cause, and confirm the illusion.

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
I never want to let you have your own suffering;
But what is the journey without the dark side of life,
How would wisdom ever be formed without the fire of strife?

I hold the curve of your face in the curve
Of my hands,
One more caressing moment before death pulls me completely in;
Fingers weak and frail, merely bones skin covered,
Recall the first day you they held and tenderly, nimbly mothered.

You hold the curve of her face in the curve
Of your hands,
Your course skin against hers young;
Yang’s coarse to soft yin,
Yin’s aged bronze to yang’s nascent tin.

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An Intersection of Marx and Jesus

A (very) brief examination of the two through the book of James [by William Brien]

The following was written by a student of mine, William Brien, and I found the content quite insightful. As a caveat, Brien writes “I submit this piece with only a limited understanding of Marxism, therefore if I am panned for misconstruing it I yield my position to the experts.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Also, I’d like to add that these insights are merely those: insights. He is, “giving credit where credit is due.” He’s a true intellectual who does not have to profess allegiance to something in order to see what value it may offer. None of the following determines his religious or political inclinations.

Never in the history of humankind has a doctrine been so viciously contorted as that of Christianity. It has been used as justification for atrocities ranging from the Holocaust, to Apartheid, and even Jim Crow. The symbiotic relationship between Russia’s Orthodox Church and the Tsarist regime served as a bulwark of aristocratic rule amid the mass killing and famines of the early 20th century empire. Yet the egalitarianism promoted in the Christian scripture itself directly contradicts the oppressive status quo it has been used to preserve. The Epistle of James condemns the hypocrisy of elitism, saying,

If a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?… Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? (2:2-6).

Perhaps the radical Marx could have found a friend in James. Indeed, the apostle’s contrast between the “dishonored” poor and the “rich who oppress” and “drag [the poor] into court” is very much reminiscent of The Communist Manifesto’s elite bourgeoisie guarding the means of production and subjugating the proletariat. The perpetuation of injustice, in accordance with this passage, is not the fulfillment of God’s plan, but a crude imitation designed to protect tyrannical authorities. Though these distortions led Marx to adopt a vehement opposition towards religion, ironically enough, the greed-filled class struggle which he proves to be the driver of socio-economic development towards socialism runs parallel to the greed and sin which drive the actions and thoughts of human beings as they work to become good Christians. It is the death of self-serving pursuit and the preservation of equality, whether through political and economic revolution or through compassion blind of class, which both doctrines wish to bring about.

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Law, Justice, and Faith

Sancta Colloquia episode 108 ft. Tim Fall

In this episode I come face to face with the law. Seriously. My guest is Tim Fall (Twitter: @tim_fall) and he’s a judge. Now, many of you may think that this might be my first time in front of a judge, but it’s not! I’ll save those stories for later…plus, a little allure never hurt. For now, let me talk about what Tim and I discussed. I’ve known Tim strictly through Twitter and have thoroughly enjoyed his Gospel-centric approach to the way he does theology: oriented toward the comfort for the beleaguered. Now, most of my beloved readers/listeners will know that I’ve a penchant for all things distinguishing Law and Gospel. So, when I found out that my Gospel-peddling friend, Tim, was also a judge my interest was piqued. How does one who is the categorical symbol of the law (a judge) proclaim the gospel so well? How is the distinction between the gospel and the theological function of the law struck when one spends the majority of their time upholding the civic function of the law? What I found out from my conversation with Tim is that it is important to maintain the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. One needs to let the law of the court and of society operate as the law and being detached here is key. Tim told me, wisely, that a judge is not in the role to be judging the personhood of the person, and it’s this that Tim carries with him to the bench. A good judge keeps control and remains open (neutral, as neutral as any human can be). But when Tim is not in the courtroom, he spends all of his time looking for ways to speak of the event of the cross, to proclaim Christ crucified, the judge judged in our place (to borrow from Karl Barth), the longed for rest for those heavy laden.  So come and listen to this conversation with Tim and take away a wealth of good information offered from the perspective of one who upholds the law as well as a word of comfort for your mind and body. 

Intrigued? You should be. Listen here via Screaming Pods (https://www.screamingpods.com/)

A huge THANK YOU to my friend and producer Sean Duregger (Twitter: @seanCduregger) and Screaming Pods (Twitter: @ScreamingPods) for hosting Sancta Colloquia (Twitter: @SanctaColloquia).

Tim is a California native who changed his major three times, colleges four times, and took six years to get a Bachelor’s degree in a subject he’s never been called on to use professionally. Married for 30 years with two kids (both graduated, woo-hoo!) his family is constant evidence of God’s abundant blessings in his life. He and his wife live in Northern California.

Tim does not normally talk about himself in the third person.

Recommended Reading/Works Mentioned in the Podcast:

Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Beyond Sex Roles, Gilbert Bilezikian
Persuasion, Jane Austen
 
Tim’s blog: https://timfall.com/
 
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Who Do You Say That I am?

The Silence of Holy Saturday

If there was a day to feel the most human, I know not one better than the 24 hour period linking the event of death of Good Friday to the event of life of Resurrection Sunday.  Yet, I believe most of us rush through Saturday, not paying any attention to tension embedded in this day.

We know what happened: Jesus died on Friday and was raised on Sunday. Saturday is just the day I run those last minute errands, color eggs, plan for tomorrow’s dinner celebration, and lay out my “Easter best” outfit. My day to day productivity attempts to eclipse the possibility of eventful reflection. God can break through the clutter and cacophony of a regular day just as God can break through stone hard hearts and closed off minds. But if we are too immersed in the demands of our worlds and lives, we could miss the silence of Saturday; missing this silence and the very pregnant space-time pause, steals from the abundance of tomorrow, Easter Sunday. Might as well just be a celebration of the fertility of the Spring solstice.

In my opinion, Holy Saturday, the divine silence of this 24 hour period, is the center of the chiastic structure of massive event proportions. While everything feels normal here, nothing is actually normal. Everything is different but then none of it is. It’s the entire book of lamentations jammed into a day; it’s the moment between Adam and Eve stepping out of the Garden per divine decree and the settling in of the cherubim and seraphim who will forever prevent return. It’s the between of the walls of water dropping and drowning the Egyptian soldiers and the arrival at Mt. Sinai. It’s the deep dark of transition before Mary pushed Jesus into the world and held him to her breast. It’s the pain of Dinah after her rape and before her brothers find out; it’s the harrowing  moment between the last few breaths of the Levite’s concubine of Judges 19 and the door opening the next morning. This is where we are; it makes sense that we run through it.

There’s nothing easy about Holy Saturday. It’s filled with questions with no answers. It’s filled with crisis and confrontation. It’s filled with darkness no matter how bright the noon day sun shines. The demand of what in the hell just happened? weighs down on human skeletal structures, and there is no reprieve of an answer. This is loss; this is sorrow. Our bodies are forced into a conflict of feeling and thought: he was here, and now he’s not. The longing to touch him still courses through the nerve endings of the skin of my finger tips, but I cannot touch him anymore. The grief of desiring to lay lips on his that are now dead and gone, cold and lifeless. Substance was here and now it is seemingly vanished; the vacuum pulls my body into it: where I could not lie and sit and stand because he was there, I now can and that awareness of absence is crushing.

In the midst of this palpable heaviness that feels like divine silence, God isn’t actually speechless. The kerygma floats on the warm breeze: who do you say that I am? On Good Friday humanity answered with a conviction and judgment that ended in death. On Sunday, God will do the same but it will bring about life. But even if answers have been given, the question spoken long ago still demands an answer today; we aren’t off the hook because we’re being addressed today. And today, Saturday, the question haunts us as faith goes searching for her desire: what we knew and believed is being met with a radical upheaval of the unknowability of the future.

Today, law failed. Today, religion failed. Today, piety means nothing. Today, faith feels like a farce. Today, bodies long and hearts faint. Today, prophets only sigh. Today, love mourns. Today, grace feels beyond reach. Today, we are naked. Today, we are forced to be human, to reckon with what was and confront what will be. Today, we must wrestle with the demand of the eternal question in the divine address: who do you say that I am?

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Judge and Be Judged

Luke 6:37-42 (Homily)

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

He also told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher.Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

We are commanded not to judge; but yet we do. How do we refrain from participating in the very part of our intellect that seems to make us most human? That we judge things as good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. Our ability to judge and think, to be rational and reasonable, to think freely and equitably is the fabric of what makes human societies politically, economically, and socially great. Free, responsible, and reasonable human beings forming and maintaining a just society…yes, please!

But this beautiful gift to judge goes beyond its domain when it attempts to determine the personhood of another.[1] When we use our judgment to determine who gets and does not get our affection, our love, our mercy, our forgiveness based on some self-imposed system of acceptable, this is judgment overstepping it’s limits. When we segregate based off of external factors, making distinct groups equating to “us v. them,” thus good and bad respectively, this is judgment overstepping its limits. Using my activity as the basis and foundation of your quality and substance is judgment overstepping its limits. When I fall to the temptation to religious totalitarianism[2] and legal piety[3] grounded too much in actuality and forget and forsake possibility, I’ve made it impossible for you to be good enough in my eyes; you’ll always fall short.

What our judgment of others exposes is actually not where the other person is falling short, but where we are. That we use our judgment in this way indicates that we are desperate to find a way to self-validate ourselves (in both thought and deed). And the way we judge others will reveal our lack of character and our lack of commitment and expose our hypocrisy.[4] Our judgment of others, our eagerness to remove the speck in their eye while ignoring the log in our own, is the action that exposes the fundamental problem of a hardened heart. The posture of our heart will orient the posture of our bodies; “People, like trees, are known through what they produce.”[5]

Jesus’s admonitions here in Luke 6 are a call to a full-bodied devotion to a major reversal of inner and outer person. It is not the actions of a person that determine a person, but their heart. As we judge, so are we judged because the judgment we deliver judges us: we follow the devices and desires of our own hearts rather than God’s purpose.[6] Thus to be good disciples of Christ, to actually be the believers we like to think we are, we need to be reoriented to the one who is the real and rightful Judge.[7] We need to be oriented to the one who ushers in the Reign of God and renders to dust the kingdom of humanity. We need to have our feet set in alignment with the Judge judged in our place; the one who takes the judgment of God and the plight of the world unto himself and makes it impossible for any of us to judge anyone else because we are all guilty.[8]

Christ poses a conflict for us: will you trust your own judgment of the world and of others, or will you trust Christ’s? Will you continue to follow the devices and desires of your own heart and mind, or will you follow Christ? [9] Jesus is the plumb line; will you measure up? Will you heed the call to hear so deeply that you obey the call of Christ to live differently in the world? Will you allow your values to be redefined? Will you see as to become more like your teacher? [10] Will you become a person of character and constancy of heart and action? [11] Will you let yourself confess? Or, will you stubbornly persist in your own ways?

In the story here, articulated by Luke, you and I must contend with these questions, even if you don’t believe Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. There’s no escape route to take or secrete hatch from which we can drop to evade the demand of the questions. Especially, we must come face to face with the ultimate question being posed to us: Will I be the one who judges others thus is judged and indicted? Or will I be like the one who had every right to judge, but didn’t? Will I choose to follow the law of the spirit thus receive life? Or will I choose to stay the course of the rest of the world thus confirm death?

In Christ we have received grace upon grace, and life upon life. Where we should have been exposed and condemned, we weren’t. Where we fell short of the plumb-line, the plumb-line was destroyed. When we were determined to be dirty, we were declared clean. When we were yet dead, we were given life. And as we receive, we give.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:7-12

 

[1] Green 275, Joel Green The Gospel of Luke TNICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997). “Just as the merciful God does not predetermine who will or will not be the recipients of his kindness, so Jesus’ followers must refuse to ‘judge’—that is to prejudge to predetermine who might be the recipients of their graciousness. This is nothing but the command to love one’s enemies restated negatively. In an important sense, Jesus’ instructions are to refuse to act as those scribes and Pharisees had done in 5:27-32, as they calculated beforehand the status of those toll collectors and sinners and thereby excluded them from circles of social interaction.”

[2] Friedrich Gogarten, Christ the Crisis. “Religious Totalitarianism” “…in which it tolerates absolutely no and nothing within itself which does not belong to it, and which does not serve it, by receiving from it its life and its meaning.” 127.

[3] Friedrich Gogarten. Christ the Crisis. The legal piety of the world is impacted by Christ, the foundations of this legal piety come under doom. “But criticism is aimed at the essence of this piety For however it practiced, whether with fanatical seriousness or with conventional casualness, its essential basis is that it claims to serve God and the life which men have to receive from God through its practice. But, in fact it serves the world that is constituted by it, and the regard that one receives through it in the eyes of the world. It is this that Jesus calls its hypocrisy.”

[4] Green 277, “Even here where ‘doing’ is accorded such privilege, fundamental to Jesus’ closing remarks is the contrast between two sorts of people whose hearts are revealed in their actions. The issue is one of character and commitments issuing forth in action. The two, character and action, are inseparable for Jesus, and those who attempt to sunder them are guilty of hypocrisy (w 4142 46).”

[5] Green 277, “…Jesus is concerned with the nature of a person the heart but such a concern does not lead to what today we might call psychological evaluation. In Luke’s (pre-Freudian) world, a person’s ‘inside’ is accessible not through his or her psychology but through or her social interactions.”

[6] Green 277, “Clearly then, the following Jesus seeks is a full-orbed one; his is a message that calls for total transformation, with a consistency of goodness between the inside and outside of a person. Even if the language of repentance is absent, the idea of change of heart and life, of a thorough reorientation around God’s purpose is very much present.”

[7] Karl Bart CD V.I.449. “That He is the Judge, and that He makes judgment impossible for us…is the indicative which stands behind the evangelical command not to take top seats but the lower (Lk. 148), not to exalt but to abase ourselves (Mt. 2312), and especially the prohibition in v. 37 (Mt. 71f). The One forbids men to judge who restrains and dispenses them from it, is the One who has come as the real Judge. He makes clear what is true and actual in His existence among men as such: that the one who exalts himself as judge will be abased, that he can only fall into the judgment himself. The evangelical prohibition frees us from the necessity of this movement in a vicious circle.”

[8] Friedrich Gogarten. Christ the Crisis. “He has only two choices: either to despair, or to submit to the sentence of doom. Jesus chose the second alternative. He was able to choose it only because he recognized that this sentence of doom was the judgment exercised by the righteousness and truth of God upon the world, which endures by the very fact that in it the righteousness and truth of God are perverted into its own supposed righteousness and truth, and therefore into its unrighteousness and untruth. Thus for Jesus to submit to the sentence of doom meant that he subjected himself, as one who belonged to this world, to God’s judgment which is carried out through this sentence of doom It is this that Jesus did by turning towards those who like him lived in this world and became their neighbor. And thus the responsibility for the way the world as such which was laid upon him when he became aware of the sentence of doom, also became a responsibility for the men who lived in it.” 209.

[9] Green 278, Blind, refers “…those who lack faith or those who lack insight. The saying about the relationship is also proverbial, and, when read together, these verses underscore the necessity of seeking trustworthy, insightful guidance.” Whom will you follow?

[10] Green 278, “Throughout this sermon, as in his earlier ministry of healing and instruction, Jesus has been renegotiating norms; will these gathered masses accept this reversal of values? Will they hear and internalize this unconventional worldview? How will they become like their teacher?”

[11] Green 279, “Central to Jesus’ admonition is his own rebuke of those who see the faults of others but not of themselves. He calls them ‘hypocrites.’ In general usage today the negative connotations of this label are incontrovertible, but in Greco-Roman antiquity a more nuanced understanding is required. In parlance contemporary with Luke, a “hypocrite” might refer to someone whose behaviors were not determined by God (LXX) or someone who is playing a role acting a part (Roman theater). In this case a decision between these two is difficult and probably unnecessary. Jesus indicts persons who attempt to substantiate their own piety through censuring the shortcomings of others as acting inconsistently. Their hearts and actions are inconsistent. While they themselves posture for public adulation, their behavior is not determined by God.”

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Christ our Crisis

Luke 4:1-12 (Sermon)

I remember my first existential crisis. I was five and staring out of a window at a massive cornfield on the other side of the road from our house in Minnesota. My eyes focused on the window screen. As the cornfield blurred, I examined the screen. Then my eyes refocused again, but this time their focus was my nose. This broke my five-year-old brain. For the first time I was aware of what I considered to be a distinction between mind and body, and I felt my disembodiment. Lauren was in this particular body…but maybe I could’ve been in another body? Born to a different family? Living in a different house?

Cue the crisis.

I’m not alone here in existential crises. I’m happy assuming that many of you have had one or two or one once a week. An existential crisis occurs because something external has radically altered the way we see our existence, which challenges us and causes us to doubt the permanence of our existence. The crisis is the bright light that shines into the dark recesses of our existence and exposes the truth of who and what we are: dead person walking with no way to escape the things that plague sleep, that cause fear, that wake regret. No matter how much make-up we wear or what suite we put on, we are that person and that person we are.

Lent is a that which points us to our crisis. Lent is not a feel-good-about-yourself-because-you-gave-up-sugar-for-40-days event. To borrow and expand the apt imagery Rev. Montgomery employed on Ash Wednesday: Lent is cleaning house. It’s not merely straightening up the rooms that will be seen by your guest, but going under the bed, to the back of your closet, even into the attic and basement and dragging out those boxes where you keep the stuff you’d never want exposed by the light of day. Lent is to be a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of yourself, to quote the 4th step of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Without the crisis of the self in death, we have not the self in life; without Good Friday, there’s no Easter.

Cue the crisis.

Then Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was lead by the Spirit into the desert, in order to be tempted forty days by the Slanderer (devil). 4:1-2a

Our gospel reading from Luke forms a bridge between Jesus being baptized in the Jordan and the beginning of his ministry.[1] Thus, I’m picking up where I left you: in the Jordan with Jesus, with the one who stands in solidarity with God and with Humanity and who answers the divine question posed to humanity: whom will you follow and with whom will you stand?

Being filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus exits the Jordan and is ushered into the desert (the wilderness[2]), thus, steps into the solitude of a desolate wasteland. The focus is solely on him; this then becomes the locus of our eyes and the orientation of our ears. We are to look and listen, being quiet visitors because it’s not (primarily) about us, it’s (primarily) about Jesus, the assumed son of Joseph who is (and has been equipped to be) Jesus the Christ.[3] We watch as the battle wages in a realm that is cosmic in proportions[4] as the Slanderer takes on the Christ.[5] And this battle will establish in concrete terms what Jesus proclaimed in his baptism in the Jordan: I am for God; I stand with God.[6]

As in the Jordan and in this battle with the Slanderer in the wilderness, Jesus is not only Christ standing in solidarity with God but Jesus the Christ standing in solidarity with humanity—the overlap with Israel is no accident.[7] Where Israel failed, Jesus triumphs. Where Israel grieved the spirit after their baptismal event (crossing the ground of the Red Sea between two walls of water); Jesus follows the leading of the Spirit after his baptism event in the Jordan. Where Israel clamored and complained about hunger, Jesus resists the temptation to feed himself; where Israel spent 40 years, Jesus spends 40 nights; where Israel was God’s son disobedient, Jesus is God’s son obedient.[8]

The first generation of Israel, liberated from the captivity and bondage of Egypt’s oppression and enslavement, was sentenced to death for their disobedience, never to enter into the Promised Land. Jesus will enter the Promised Land, the presence of God, and establishes that he is the Promised Land: he is the Son with whom God is well pleased. And where this Son goes so too does the presence of God, for where he stands there established is holy ground. And as the presence of God does, so too will Jesus: illuminate and expose the people for who and what they are.

Cue the crisis.

And he ate nothing during those days and when they had completed he was hungry. The slanderer said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone so that it may become bread. And Jesus answered him, “It is written that humanity will not live by bread alone. 4:2b-4

The first temptation is rather basic: the Slanderer plays off of Jesus’s hunger. Jesus, you need food, so, being the Son of God, just turn this stone into bread.[9] The Devil here is addressing a very basic human need: hunger. In his hunger, Jesus stands in solidarity with humanity in his flesh. He is hungry. Jesus’s answer doesn’t create a dichotomy between flesh and spirit; it’s not as if Jesus has suddenly become an airatarian or that he thinks that the flesh is bad and only needs spiritual food. He doesn’t. The picture is larger than that. Jesus’s hunger is a real and present need; however, it’s not only by bread that humanity is nourished, but primarily by the word of God. For forty days and forty nights Jesus existed in the wilderness with nothing but the word of God. [10] There was no manna this time; there was just the word of God.

Also, it’s the word of God that sustains the entire cosmos,[11] from the wheat that grows and is turned into the bread we eat to the heartbeat of the one whose hands made that bread. Everything is sustained by the all-powerful, creatio ex nihilo, word of God. This is Jesus’s claim. Drawing some sort of hierarchy between spirit and flesh would do disservice to the incarnation as a whole and negate the depth of the temptation.

Being hungry reminds us of our humanity and our utter and total dependence on something outside of ourselves to live. We don’t actually “earn” our own food; for without the one who prepares the food, we are up a creek without a paddle. We think we are “self-made,” and when God withdraws his sustaining word, we drop to the ground like flies mid flight. If the earth stops turning, you can neither run fast enough to budge it nor will you have the air to fill your lungs to do so. We believe the illusion that we’re autonomously functioning particles. And the dastardly thing is we perpetuate the illusion by repeatedly demanding others (less fortunate than ourselves) to function as such. We do not and cannot go it alone; how dare we ask others to do so.

Cue the crisis.

And the Slanderer lead Jesus and in a moment of time pointed out to him all the kingdoms of the inhabited earth, and he said to Jesus, “I will give to you the authority of all of this and the glory of these, for it has been handed over to me and to whom I wish I give it; therefore if you might worship in my presence, it will all be yours. And answering, Jesus said to him, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and you will serve only him.” 4:5-8

In his letter to Theophilus, Luke already mentioned, in 2:1 and 3:1, that the “emperor” is the authority of the kingdoms of earth. Now, it’s the Slanderer who actually has authority.[12] Luke pulls back the veil: the kingdoms of humanity are under the authority of the Devil. On top of that, the Devil can offer these kingdoms to Jesus all he wants, but they’re only the Devil’s as a higher authority (God) delegates them to him.[13] Comically tragical.

Jesus’s answer is short and sweet: I worship God alone, and him only do I serve. And considering Jesus’s divine standing as the Son of God, these kingdoms are already his. But God does not work within Devil run systems and structures that work against God’s plan.[14] Just because these kingdoms will be and already are Jesus’s kingdoms does not mean that they are as they should be or that they’ll stay standing. In Christ, a new reign is being ushered in and it will look vastly different. What has been considered blessed (wealth, power, strength, popularity) will be flipped on its head.

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

‘But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.

‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. 6:20-26

Cue the crisis.

Then he brought Jesus into Jerusalem and placed him upon the edge of the temple and he, the Slanderer, said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; for it is written that he will command his angels concerning you in order to protect you and that by their hands they will carry you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” And answering, Jesus said to him, “It is said and written that you will not put the Lord your God to the test.” 4:9-12

Jesus is brought to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem and then is told, by the Slanderer, to test God. The Slanderer uses the “It is written” formula for himself. He uses Psalm 91 to try to recruit Jesus to his plan to test God. Here’s the portion of Psalm 91 in play,

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 91:9-12

Psalm 91 is not about testing God to see if God is faithful to God’s word. Rather, it’s about those who find their allegiance to God and are in God’s presence. It’s about obedience to God.[15] While Israel was courted by infidelity and succumbed to the temptation, Jesus won’t.[16]

But there’s more to the Psalm. Here are the next two verses:

You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name. 91:13-14

There’s divine rescue through suffering mentioned here and not merely from it.[17] Jesus calls the Slanderer out because it’s not about protecting his foot from striking a rock, but that that very foot will crush the head of the serpent prophesied long ago in Genesis 3:15. The Psalm the Devil uses is the Psalm of his demise. Jesus’s “Don’t put the Lord your God to the test” may as well be, “Check mate.” The Offspring of the Woman has been born and that Offspring is Jesus the Christ. Devil best run. And he does.

And when all the temptations finished, the Slanderer kept away from him until a point in time. 4:13

As the Slanderer flees until his next appointed time of engagement with the Christ, keep this in mind: Jesus will now go forth and begin his ministry by calling those who shouldn’t be called according to our standards, and engaging with those who are relegated to the fringes and margins of society. The world is about to be turned upside down.[18] Christ’s foot will step and strike the cornerstone of the kingdom of humanity, rendering it to dust because of dust it was made, and he will establish himself as the new cornerstone of the Reign of God—through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.[19] Those in charge, those wielding power and authority for their own gain, those turning a blind eye to the poor and hungry, naked and homeless…they best run.

Cue the crisis.

In your encounter with God in the event of faith you become aware you are grafted into the story of Israel: the story of failure upon failure upon failure. This narrative moment in the gospel of Luke is hardwired to transcend time and space, confronting all whose eyes are turned and ears perked by the scene before them: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, being tempted by the Slanderer and winning.

Witnessing this event, we are brought to the reality that we would not have won, that we would have succumbed to each and every one of those temptations, and would have given far more for far less. We are exposed for wanting. We would have conjured the bread from stone, we would’ve sought our own power and fame no matter the cost, we would’ve tested the Lord our God. And we do these things. Everyday.

Cue the crisis but don’t fear the crisis. According to this story: Christ is the crisis. And if Christ is the crisis, then he’s in the crisis—he’s with you in the thick of it. It’s the crisis that brings you to the fullness of your humanity—body, mind, and soul—because it’s in this crisis where you realize you need an other. Christ is the incarnate Word of God who sustains your very life, who is very God of very God worthy of your worship and obedience, who surpasses all testing because he’s the fulfillment of all promises. God dwells in your crisis as God dwells in the gallows, with the dry bones, with those who are dead in their trespasses because God’s righteousness is that which calls to life what is dead.

“A miracle happens, the miracle of miracles, that this impure being, impure in the midst of the pure creation, that this impure being is permitted to live. The annihilating encounter with God become for him a life-giving encounter…Death is taken away, the death which I bear in myself because of my contradiction, my impurity is covered by the encircling life-giving love to him who was the prey of death.”[20]

Cue the crisis because crisis is the heart of Lent, the heart of the Great Litany. Cue the crisis and throw yourself at the feet of God whose property is to always have mercy, and find life.

 

 

 

[1] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke TNICNT Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 191. “Luke 4:1-13 presents a number of key elements linking it, some almost subliminally, to surrounding material, helping to ensure its interpretation as a bridge scene moving Jesus from his endowment with the Spirit to his public ministry.”

[2] Karl Barth CD IV.1.59.260, “On the old view the wilderness was a place which, like the sea, had a close affinity with the underworld, a place which belonged in a particular sense to demons. It was to encounter there that He was led there and kept His fast there. For Him as the Son, the One in whom God was well pleased, this had to be the case. …His way will never be at a safe distance from the kingdom of darkness but will always be along its frontier and finally within that kingdom. But already at the outset it brings Him into confrontation and encounter with it.”

[3] Green 191, “He was baptized, the Spirit descended upon him he was the assumed son of Joseph-these all portray him in a passive mode. Now he becomes the deixic center, the one around whom the narrative and its actants are oriented, the one preparing to take the initiative (4:14-15) for which he has been equipped.”

[4] Green 192, Pericope is a clash of “cosmic proportions” the devil takes on Jesus, God’s son, who is full of the Holy Spirit, “This account thus exhibits the basic antithesis between the divine and the diabolic that will continue throughout Luke-Acts.”

[5] Green 191, Luke’s narrative emphasis lies on the presence of the Holy Spirit in Jesus, thus, “Empowered by the Spirit, Jesus is full of the Spirit, and inspired by the Spirit. His central, active role is therefore fundamentally as God’s agent, and it is this special relationship and its implications that lie at the root of Jesus’ identity in Luke-Acts. Not surprisingly then it is this that will be tested in the encounter between Jesus and the devil.”

[6] Green 191-2, “Luke 3:21-38 was in its own way integral to the demonstration of his competence indicating his possession of the requisite credentials, power, and authority to set forth on his mission. But these are not enough. They must be matched with Jesus’ positive response to God’s purpose. Hence here Jesus will signal his alignment with God’s will in a way that surpasses the evidence already provided by his display of submission to God at his baptism. In the OT and in subsequent Jewish tradition fidelity to God was proven in the midst of testing whether direct activity of the devil. In the present scene, the testing conducted by the devil seeks specifically to controvert Jesus’ role as Son of God either by disallowing the constraints of that relationship or by rejecting it outright.”

[7] Green 193, “The similarities are sufficient in scope and quantity to show that the narrator has drawn attention deliberately to Jesus in his representative role as Israel, God’s son.”

[8] Green 192, “Correlation to Israel’s testing in the wilderness:

  1. divine leading in the wilderness (Deut 8:2- cf. Luke 4:1);
  2. “forty” (Exod 16:35; Num 14:34; Deut 8:2, 4; cf. Luke 4:2);
  3. Israel as God’s son (e.g., Exod 4:22-23; cf. Luke 4:3, 9);
  4. the testing of Jesus is analogous to that experienced by Israel and the scriptural texts he cites derive from those events in which Israel was tested by God (Deuteronomy 6-8); and
  5. though Jesus was full of the Spirit and followed the Spirit’s guidance, Israel ‘rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit’ (Isa. 63:10)”

[9] Green 193, “These ingredients of ‘setting’ are in fact integral to the first test. Jesus’ fasting has resulted in his near starvation and this foregrounds an immediate need, the provision of food.”

[10] Karl Barth CD III.2.44.67, “It is only apparently the case that the Matthean text says less and is more reserved, as though in the phrase ‘not by bread alone’ Jesus had recognised that man does indeed live by bread too, but that he also needs the words proceeding from the mouth of God. For in this case the trite application that man has not only bodily but also spiritual needs is so obvious that the explication is a priori brought under suspicion. The fact is that during the forty days in the wilderness Jesus did not live by bread at all, but according to Mt. 42 He was an hungred, and yet in spite of His hunger He was still alive. Again, His answer to the tempter is a quotation from Deut. 83. But in this passage ‘living by bread’ is not one necessity to which ‘living by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God’ is added as a second. On the contrary, the reference is to the miracle effected by the World of the Lord, which consisted in the fact that for forty years God led Israel through the desert, and that where there was no bread, and the people seemed likely to die of hunger, He nevertheless sustained them, namely, by the manna which neither they nor their fathers knew. It was in exactly the same way (except that now there was no question even of manna) that God sustained the hungering Jesus in the desert.”

[11] Karl Barth CD III.2.44.67, “This divine communication brings it about that He lives and is sustained, nourishing and quickening Him. Even the bread which, if He were not in the wilderness, He might sow, reap, grind and bake, or even purchase or steal, could not give him life as [humanity]. This is given Him by the almighty Word of God, whether he has bread or hungers in the wilderness.”; see also CD III.4.55.347

[12] Green 194, “At the outset it is worth noting two sources of irony present in Luke’s description of this setting. First we have been led to believe that ‘all the world’ was under the charge of the Roman emperor (2:1; 3-1)- Now however, in a way clearly parallel to the scenario painted in Revelation 13, we discover that the world of humanity actually ruled by the devil.”

[13] Green 195, “Whatever rule the devil exercises is that allowed him by God; he can only delegate to Jesus what has already been delegated to him. What Jesus is offered, then, is a shabby substitute for the divine sonship that is his by birth.”

[14] Green 194, “The perspective he thus outlines is fully at home with the language of reversal and portrayal of hostility characteristic of Luke 1-3, even if it goes beyond them in identifying the activity of those human and systemic agents that oppose God’s plan and God’s people as manifestations of diabolic rule.”

[15] Green 195, “Fundamentally the issue here is akin to that in the first test. Jesus is radically committed to one aim, God’s eschatological agenda; the devil has an alternative aim a competing agenda. He wants to recruit Jesus to participate in a test of the divine promises of Psalm 91. In doing so, the devil overlooks the critical reality that the psalm is addressed to those who through their fidelity to God reside in God’s presence; even in the psalm faithful obedience to God is the controlling need.

[16] Green 196, “Jesus does not the deny the promises of God the devil quotes at him but he “…does deny the suitability of their appropriation in this context. He recognizes the devil’s strategy as an attempt to deflect him from his single-minded commitment to loyalty and obedience in God’s service, and interprets the devil’s invitation as an encouragement to question God’s faithfulness. Israel had manifested its doubts by testing God. But Jesus refuses to do so (cf. Deut 6:16).”

[17] Green 196, “Moreover the devil fails to recognize an even deeper mystery known already to the believing community of which Luke is a part, that divine rescue may come through suffering and not only before (and from) them.”

[18] Of note, from W. Travis McMaken’s Our God Loves Justice (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2017). “Appendix 1: Must a Christian Be A Socialist (Helmut Gollwitzer 1972)” trans WTM. “The goal of the disciples’ service is a society that gives equality to their unequally endowed members and gives each member the chance for a cull unfolding of life: where the strong help the weak, where production stands in the service of all, where the social product is not siphoned off by a privileged minority so that only the modes t remainder is at the disposal of the others, a society that ensures appropriate regulation of freedom and of social co-determination for all, the development of social life for the common task and for rich purpose in life for all members of society.”

[19] Karl Barth IV.1.59.264, “We cannot ignore the negative form in which the righteousness of God appears in the event handed down in these passages. This is unavoidable, because we have to do with it in the wilderness, in the kingdom of demons, in the world unreconciled with God, and in conflict with that world. It is unavoidable because what we have here is a prefiguring of the passion. But in the passion, and in this prefiguring of it, the No of God is only the hard shell of the divine Yes, which in both cases is spoken in the righteous act of this one man. That this is the case is revealed at the conclusion of the accounts in Mark and Matthew by the mention of the angels who, when Satan had left Him, came and ministered unto Him. The great and glorious complement to this at the conclusion of the passion is the story of the resurrection.”

[20] Helmut Gollwitzer “Forgiveness are One” The Way to Life: Sermons in a Time of World Crisis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981). 43.

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