Tag: Beloved

Exposed and Naked: We are Not in Control

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Today is about being reminded of death—death in general and death in specific. Ash Wednesday is our sacred and religious memento mori (remember to die); Ash Wednesday brings to the fore the very thing we push back: the reality that all life streams toward death even for those of us who feel very far above and beyond death’s long, cold, bony reach. with the application of ashes on our vulnerable skin, we not only hear with our ears but see with our eyes and feel with our senses the command to remember that we will die. Dying is part of our life in this world where death is not only around us in fits and spurts, but is very much a part of our life cycle.

But it seems that lately we are held hostage by death. We are powerless to the death caused by human beings who have long forgotten that power must be wielded rightly and mercy is more potent than fear. Through the barrage and onslaught of headlines streaming in from around the globe, the national ones decorating our minds like billboards on a highway, and the local ones hitting too close to home, we are made very aware of how much death seems to accompany global and national leaders who are curved in on themselves consumed with their own ego. And even if we turned off televisions, radios, computers, podcasts, and phones, we would not be able to escape the approach and encroach of death. Over the past few months, death has taken loved ones from us (both family and friend) and if not death, then death’s best friends, fear and rage, have stolen people from us in their own way. And if that wasn’t enough, our own bodies remind us about the cool shadow of death lurking closer; whether through the onset of age or by our own hands, things fall apart, breakdown, and come to naught. We are held captive by death; we do not have access to the keys to this prison we are in.

Thus, we are brought to the only confession we have, we are not in control. We are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. Is there any hope for such as these?

Psalm 103:8-14

Yes, there is hope for such as we. Our psalmist writes,

Abba God is full of compassion and mercy,
slow to anger and of great kindness.

Our Psalm is a hymn celebrating God’s steadfast posture towards God’s people and is a commentary on portions of Exodus and Isaiah.[ii] Specifically in our short portion, verse 8, just quoted, is asking the reader to remember Ex. 33:13, “Now, If I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor.” And if they are to remember Exodus 33, then 32 and 34 must be recalled, too. Exodus 33 marks Moses’s pleading on behalf of the people before and to God in the Tent of Meeting. Why is Moses pleading on behalf of the people? In Exodus 32 he broke the tablets upon his return from communing with God on the mountain when he saw the people worshiping the golden calf that Aaron crafted. Thus, in Ex. 33, Moses is eager to plead to God for God to relent of God’s anger. So, Moses goes to God in the Tent of Meeting carrying the sin of Israel and wondering what God will do with the people whom God has called “stiffnecked.” (33:5). In Exodus 33:13, Moses wants to know God’s own way in dealing with the sin of his people;[iii] how does God deal with the fault and guilt, the hurt and being lost, the fragility and unsafety of God’s people? Reference to Exodus 34 gives us the answer: God does not abandon Moses nor the people; God is present. This God who is present is a God who is compassionate and forgiving, steadfast and patient, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: ‘The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…” (34:6-7a). God does not abandon God’s people. God is faithful to the covenant even when God’s people are not; God is magnanimous and just even when the people are not.[iv] Our psalmist is intentional here in v. 8 (and v.7) in calling to mind the God of Israel who is faithful and just while the people are unfaithful and unjust.

Thus, why the psalmist can go on, singing the praises of God further elaborating on God’s character and posture towards God’s people:[v]

Abba God will not always accuse us,
nor will Abba God keep anger for ever.
Abba God has not dealt with us according to our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so is God’s mercy great upon those who fear God.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has Abba God removed our sins from us.
As a parent cares for their children,
so does the Abba God care for those who fear God.

Both Exodus 34:7b ff and Isaiah 57:16 (hinted at by Psalm 103:9) are in view here. In the second part of Ex 34:7 God promises that God will visit the punishments of the iniquities of the people on their children and grandchildren, etc. But Moses intervenes in 34:8-9, “‘If I have gained Your favor, O Lord, pray, let the Lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!’” And Isaiah 57:16 reads,

“For I will not always contend,
I will not be angry forever:
Nay, I who make spirits flag,
Also create the breath of life.”

Moses’s plea from Exodus 34 is met in Isaiah’s prophecy and promise that divine anger and displeasure have a time limit; even in spite of the way the people have acted—insatiable for debauchery and injustice—God will be unselfish and just.[vi] And as the prophet speaks from God’s own pathos toward and for God’s people, these words are as good as done. God’s words are like rain watering parched soil, turning it from a place of death into a source of life, just like God’s own being and breath.[vii] Under and with and by God’s Word, the people will come alive again and will be liberated from death and injustice, from their self-imposed notions of being in control, from their hurt, guilt, lostness, fragility, and unsafety; they will participate with God in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. God will condescend and transcend God’s self to bring God’s ways to the people so that their ways reflect their divine genetic inheritance (like parent, like child).[viii] Where they used to bring injustice they will bring justice, where they were self-consumed they will be consumed by divine passion for their neighbor, God’s beloved.

The psalmist concludes,

For Abba God themself knows whereof we are made;
Abba God remembers that we are but dust.

God knows God’s people. God does not hold them to a standard that is beyond their fleshiness, their fragility, their creatureliness but, rather, holds them to be such creatures who are fragile and fleshy, those who must hold each other gently and kindly as God does.[ix] According to the psalmist, God knows not only where we are and what we are but of what we are made. This is surely good news and every reason to have hope that God is for God’s people (even when things look bleak) and is coming for them to liberate them to life by God’s love.

Conclusion

Thus, even as God’s people are trapped and held captive in their sin, iniquity, and transgressions, God knows just how vulnerable and susceptible they are and none of that knowledge dissuades God from God’s covenant. But first the people must come to terms with their own situation and status before God: for they are not in control, they are hurt, they are guilty, they are lost, they are fragile, and they are unsafe. If they continue forward without acknowledging who and what they are before God, they will continue to participate in and perpetuate the rampant injustices of the kingdom of humanity, forsaking the justice of the reign of God and being harbingers of death and not life, of indifference and not love, of captivity and not liberation.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our determined and slow descent into the tomb of Good Friday. This movement from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday is the season of Lent, and it demands an honesty and exposure that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like a complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control; we are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word will liberate us out of death into life by God’s love. And not back into your old life, but caused to be new creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, brining love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Adele Berlin and marc Zvi Brettler, “Psalm 103,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1396. “A hymn of praise for God’s nature (divine attributes) and for His acts on behalf of Israel; it contains quotations from and allusions to Exodus and Isaiah.”

[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 187-188. “Your ways in dealing with humankind, meaning…the principles by which you deal with human sin. God had said that the angel would be unforgiving…What is God’s own way?…What is Your way, considering that Israel is Your own people?”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 189. “God grants both of Moses’ requests, passing His presence before him …and proclaiming His ways (33.13). The name Lord [YHVH], that is the attributes it represents. These attributes include both magnanimity (vv. 6-7a) and justice (v. 7b…)…extending Himself to those in covenant with Him…”

[v] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “Interpreting or elaborating on the meaning and current application of Exod. 34.6, quoted in v. 8.”

[vi] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 794. “The second complaint: parties instead of piety. Appropriately, the people whose appetite is insatiable will feed the insatiable appetite of Sheol, the underworld…”

[vii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 895. “Deutero-Isaiah pics up the metaphor of water … in a new way to emphasize a favorite theme: God’s promises and the prophesies God issued through the prophets never fail to come true…The metaphor is significant: God sends rain, which inevitably falls to the ground; then it is absorbed by soil and nourishes vegetation. Humans in turn harvest the vegetation and transform it into food. Similarly, God’s word is sure to have series of effects, the most important of which are indirect and involve human input.”

[viii] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The relationship between God and his worshippers is here portrayed as that between a father and a son…The compassionate father also figures in Jer. 31.20.”

[ix] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The creaturely and ephemeral status of humanity…and the permanence of God’s covenant with those who fear Him.”

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Being Divine Salt and Light

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Matthew 5:13-20

After promising his disciples that they will be persecuted, Jesus immediately adds,

You, you are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses savor, by what will it be made salty? It is yet worth nothing if not to be tread down under people after being thrown out. You, you are the light of the cosmos. A city situated on a hill is not able to be hidden. No one kindles a lamp and places it under a basket but upon the lampstand, and it shines for all who are in the house. In this way, let your light your light shine before humanity… (vv13-16a).

Keeping in mind that Jesus hasn’t had a week off between his last statement and this one like we have, these verses are a corresponding instructional[ii] product of his promise to the disciples that they will be persecuted and the other blessed statements. The disciples are expected to participate and continue the work of Christ, which is both salt and light in the world. Thus, the disciples will also be light and salt in the world because they will—by faith and the presence of the (coming) Holy Spirit—continue God’s work revealed/made tangible in Christ.[iii] Because of their identity with Christ, because of their faith in him, because of their union with God through the Holy Spirit, the disciples won’t be able to be anything else but salt and light in the world…just like the prophets before them—caught up in the divine pathos. So it happens with those God calls to be disciples (prophets).[iv] Jesus exhorts the disciples: go and be lights, go and be salt; btdubs, you haven’t a choice in the matter (you are salt and you are a light hanging form a lampstand for all to see, not by your own doing but by God’s). And this will bring both wanted and unwanted attention, thus the previous statement about being persecuted.

Thus, the negative statements in these verses are not so much a curse (e.g. be salt or else!), but a practical statement of an either/or situation: salt salts or it doesn’t, when it doesn’t it’s thrown out and trampled; a light lights or it doesn’t, when it doesn’t it doesn’t help anyone. Jesus is setting up a practical if/then: those who are salt and light are those who are called by God to participate in the divine mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation;[v] they are to help the birthing of the reign of God amid the kingdom of humanity (which, by the way, will bring attention and persecution). A world that is void of divine justice, is a world that is awful to live in; the disciples are to bring the salt to make this world a better place to live in; they are to be the light that exposes human injustice and draws people unto the truth of God’s reign and justice.[vi]

But here is an important point: all of this is done by God’s power and presence in and with them. The disciples are not mustering up their saltiness and lightyness of their own free will and choice; they’re being used to salt and to light (they are these things). Without the divine calling (“come and follow me”), without this divine power (baptism of water and Spirit), without the incarnate Word (the gospel[vii]), one can’t be the salt or light of which Jesus speaks—not unlike when the words of a false prophet fall to the ground (there to be trampled upon, words that do not expose and bring to God).

Jesus continues, that your good works might be perceived and might esteem your Father who is in the heavens (v16b). It’s as if the light that they have by faith in Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit will illuminate (for all to see) their being the salt of the earth.[viii] To be salt of the earth is to cause the earth to be savory (tasty;[ix] thus good and well-pleasing) and also to preserve it so it doesn’t rot[x] and become corrupt(ed) (two uses common to the historical context[xi]). To be salt is to be active in the world to the benefit of others[xii] (being unsalty in the world is like being nothing).[xiii] And it’s the light that shines through them that will expose them as salt to the benefit to the neighbor and the entire cosmos; Jesus’s scope of the disciples saltiness and lightyness, according to Matthew, is all encompassing; it’s massive.[xiv] The salt and light born of faith is loving deeds;[xv] those who love, those who participate in bringing life, those who hunger and thirst for liberation from captivity (for others and not only for themselves), are the salt and light making the world better, more enjoyable, a place that not only sustains but causes life to thrive (for both salt and light are necessary for such conditions of grown and thrive[xvi]). And the depth and breadth of their loving (faithful) activity is a (divine intended) result of being members of the blessed ones just mentioned; like Abraham and Sarah and their family, the disciples are a blessing to be a (public[xvii]) blessing to others and the world.[xviii] In this way, God’s name will be esteemed because of the disciples[xix] (a fulfillment of the petition in the Lord’s prayer to come, let your name be hallowed!).

Thus, Jesus continues to speak of the law and of righteousness (justice),

Do not consider that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy but to complete. For, truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth might pass away, one iota or one distinguishing point will not at all pass away from the law until all might come into being. …  For I say unto you, if your justice is not over and above, much greater than the scribes and pharisees, you might not at all enter into the kingdom of the heavens (vv17-20).

Jesus completes or fulfills the law and the prophets by being the substance of the promise, in doing what is expected therein, and embodying the heart of the law and not just the words; [xx],[xxi] rather than discard or destroy, he takes up into his being even the smallest strokes of the law (the iotas and distinguishing points).[xxii] Jesus is bringing into being that which the law and the prophets have been pointing to; “carry[ing] them into a new era of completion.”[xxiii] He does so through his orientation in the world that is the product of God’s love for humanity (for God so loved the cosmos…); the law was to be a tool used to structure fractured human love. However, the scribes and Pharisees often missed this component paying attention (instead) to the rubric of the law, the acting out of the words of the law rather than the intent, the “weightier matters” of the law.[xxiv] Thus the law has gone “undone” or not completed; Jesus is here to do such doing and completing. Jesus expects his disciples to participate in this doing and completing, too. How? By being one of the blessed ones, by being the salt and light of the world, by being his followers in the world now (while he is here) and (especially!) after he leaves; by being those who publicly live out what he taught and lived out.[xxv] It is in this way (Jesus’s way[xxvi]) that their righteousness (their Christ defined divine justice) will exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (human defined justice). It’s not about doing the law better and harder than the scribes and Pharisees;[xxvii] it’s about doing it the way Jesus did it:[xxviii] by faith working itself out in loving deeds for the wellbeing of the neighbor and the world to God’s glory.[xxix]

Conclusion

The good and not so nice expectations offered in the first part of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, give way to the why…why do the disciples need to be concerned with identifying with the poor and those who mourn, being gentle, seeking and desiring justice in the world, being merciful and clear of heart, having an eye to making peace that surpasses understanding, and preparing for being persecuted? Because this is how they add life-sustaining flavor to the world and preserve it from decay; because this is how they become the light shining the light of Christ into the world, ushering everything it touches into the divine presence.

The beatitudes are not a personal pursuit of individual and autonomous righteousness, a means to a self-centered end. In post-modern America, we—each of us—want to know—before endeavoring to participate in a plan, offering a solution to a problem, fulfilling a request, or doing a task—what’s in it for me? We want to know how we will benefit from our investment (whatever form it takes). But what Jesus laid out in the beatitudes and solidifies here in this portion of chapter five is that our reward lies in being found in and participating with the reign of God that is meant not only to bring glory to God but to also bring well-being to the neighbor. Not our own happy state and satisfaction is in mind here; being so oriented is antithetical, according to Matthew, to the goal of the proclamation of the gospel. As disciples of Christ, those who follow Jesus out of the Jordan, we are to put ourselves aside (not deny ourselves as if we didn’t exist) and to intentionally put the needs of the neighbor first (which is exactly what God does in Christ). It is through this other-orientation that disciples are recognized as the salty salt of the earth and the lighty light of the whole world; and this goal—becoming the salt and light of the world—is precisely the goal of the law and the prophets, it is the goal of our encounter with God in Christ, it is the goal of our faith eager to work itself out in loving deeds.

In other words, Beloved, we are blessed to be a blessing; we are loved to be love, to be salt, to be light in the world bringing everything and everyone whom we touch and encounter into the life giving, loving, and liberating encounter with Godself in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 78. Moving into the instructional portion of the sermon on the mount

[iii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 78-79. “It is prefaced with ‘salt and light’ sayings addressed to the disciples in a way that points them toward their mission in the world. Neither salt nor light exists for its own sake. The salt needs to stay salty to fulfill its function and the light needs to be lifted up to give light.”

[iv] . T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 175. “Here the light which Jesus brings is also provided by his disciples, who will soon be commissioned to share in his ministry of proclamation and deliverance.”

[v] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 94. “Julio: ‘By liberating it. Because a world filled with injustice is tasteless. Mainly for the poor, life like that has no taste.’”

[vi] Cardenal, Solentiname, 94. “Elvis: ‘…Christians don’t have that Christian taste. They’re simpleminded, insipid. Only the ones who are struggling for a just society are the ones who have that taste of salt.’”

[vii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 95. “Marcelino: ‘I think that “salt” is the Gospel word given to us so that we’ll practice it and pass it on to others, practicing love, so that everybody will have it. Because salt is thing that you never deny to anybody.’”

[viii] France, Matthew, 177. “The metaphor of v. 15 is now explained more prosaically, with the ‘light’ shed by disciples interpreted as the good that they do.”

[ix] Cardenal, Solentiname, 94. “Adan: ‘It seems to me its because every meal should have salt. A meal without salt has no taste. We must give taste to the world.’”

[x] Cardenal, Solentiname, 94. “And Doña Adela, a little old woman with a weak voice: ‘We are the salt of the world because we have been placed in it so the world won’t rot.’”

[xi] France, Matthew, 174. “The two most significant uses of salt in the ancient world were for flavoring and for the preservation of food, and either or both of those uses would provide an appropriate sense here: the disciples are to provide flavor to the world the live in …and/or they are to help to prevent its corruption.”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “These metaphors imply a turning outward toward mission in the world. The impact of the followers of Jesus upon others is part of the message here. Something good and desirable is given that will cause them to give glory to God.”

[xiii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “These metaphors imply a turning outward toward mission in the world. The impact of the followers of Jesus upon others is part of the message here. Something good and desirable is given that will cause them to give glory to God.”

[xiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “The scope of this blessing is the widest possible…”

[xv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 95-96. “Felix Mayorga: ‘Maybe the light is the good people, who practice love. Everyone that has a good spirit and loves others, he is the light of the world.’”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 173. “Sir 39:26 lists salt as one of the essentials for human life…’The world cannot endure without salt.’ Disciples are no less essential to the well-being of ‘the earth,’ which here refers to human life in general.’”

[xvii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “The community of disciples cannot be a closed community, an ‘introverted secrete society shielding itself from the world.’ Its witness is public.”

[xviii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “The universal scope of divine blessing through the people of God is consistent with the theme in Hebrew Scriptures of ‘blessed in order to be a blessing’ (Gen. 12:2; 22:80) and called to be a ‘light to the nations’ (Isa. 2:2-5, 42:6; 49:6).”

[xix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “The gifts/functions of salt and light are not self-contained; they are meant to be shaken out and shining forth. Followers of Jesus need to be salty and we have to shine. Are we ‘salt of the earth’ kind of people? Are we ‘shining examples’ of God’s light in the world? Do people have cause to praise God (v. 16) because of us?”

[xx] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79-80. “Jesus’ fulfilling the law and the prophets can have several dimensions of meaning:

  1. That Jesus brings into being what the law and prophets promised. Reference to the fulfilling of the law is often made just before Matthew quotes something from the Hebrew Bible.
  2. That Jesus himself does what the law and prophets in fact require of us. His life is molded by the law, and it defines his vocation and the conduct of his life.
  3. The Jesus teaches and lives the deeper meaning of the law, which is best understood in terms of the love command on which ‘hang all the law and the prophets’ (22:450). All the laws concerning tithing, ritual purity, and Sabbath observance remain in place, but they are subordinate to the love command. Love exceeds these. It requires more and not less than the law.”

[xxi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 80. “All three of these dimensions seem to be involved in Jesus’ relations to the law and the prophets as variously presented in the Sermon on the Mount.”

[xxii] France, Matthew, 186. “The jots and tittles are there to be fulfilled, not discarded, and that is what Jesus has come to do. They are not lost, but taken up into the eschatological events to which they pointed forward.”

[xxiii] France, Matthew, 183. “In the light of that concept, and of the general sense of ’fulfill’ in Matthew, we might then paraphrase Jesus’ words here as follows: ‘Far from wanting to set aside the law and the prophets, it is my role to bring into being that to which they have pointed forward, to carry them into a new era of fulfillment.’”

[xxiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 80. “The commandments of Torah are not all of the same weight. Jesus argues later that love and compassion for the neighbor outweighs matters such as cultic observance…He chides the scribes and Pharisees because they ‘tithe the mint, dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith.’ Jesus’ own life is an exemplar of attending to the weightier matters.”

[xxv] France, Matthew, 183. “From now on it will be the authoritative teaching of Jesus which must govern his disciples;’ understanding and practical application of the law.”

[xxvi] France, Matthew, 187. A different type of doing the law that is different from scribes and pharisees “That will mean in effect the keeping of the law as it is now interpreted by Jesus himself…”

[xxvii] France, Matthew, 189. “The paradox of Jesus’ demand here makes sense only if their basic premise as to what ‘righteousness’ consist of is put in question. Jesus is not talking about beating the scribes and Pharisees at their own game, but about a different level or concept of righteousness altogether.”

[xxviii] France, Matthew, 182-183. Jesus “the way in which he  ‘fulfills’ the pattern laid down in the law and the prophets.”

[xxix] France, Matthew, 190. “Those who are to belong to God’s new realm must move beyond literal observance of rules, however good and scriptural, to a new consciousness of what it means to please God, one which penetrates beneath the surface level of rules to be obeyed to a more radical openness to knowing and doing the underlying will of ‘your Father in heaven.’”

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A Disciple or One of the Crowd?

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Matthew 5:1-12

Matthew begins by telling us that Jesus after seeing crowd went up/ascended up the mountain; after he sat down his disciples came to him. And after opening his mouth he was teaching them saying… (v1-2). Jesus pulls back a bit. Matthew doesn’t tell us why he creates distance between himself and the crowd, but only that he does. Most likely, Jesus aims to teach something (pointed and specific) to his disciples about what is expected of them. So, Jesus ascends a mountain to give himself (and thus his disciples) some distance from the crowd. What follows is primarily for the disciples of Christ (his own who came to him) and only then, secondarily, for the overhearing crowd who followed the disciples and overheard the teaching.[ii] Thus, what Jesus teaches his disciples must be understood as an expected characteristic of their life in the world; Matthew is intentionally drawing Jesus and the disciples up and out to focus the narrative spotlight on them. This teaching isn’t for the average passerby or casually interested; it’s for those who are called to be disciples, the ones empowered by faith and the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s representatives in the world to the glory of God and well-being of the neighbor.

So, what does Jesus teach his disciples that the crowd overhears?

  1. Blessed [are] the beggarly poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven (v3).

Who are the “beggarly poor in spirit”? Matthew is not setting up a dichotomy between those who have materially naught and those who have spiritually naught. Matthew has in mind the very same people Luke does, the poor. These are the “‘anawim’”; translated from the Hebrew, these are “‘the poor of Yahweh,’” those who find themselves captive to sin (in themselves) and the sin of the kingdom of humanity holding them hostage (in other words these are the “oppressed”; there is no Greek word that neatly translates the Hebrew).[iii] The blessed here are the ones who cry out to God for liberation and long for the kingdom of heaven, exhausted and fatigued by dehumanizing rules and demands of the kingdom of humanity. The “beggarly poor in spirit” are the ones who Jesus then mentions in the following “blessed” statements: the mourners, the gentle, the hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the merciful, the clear of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, and his representatives who will live in the world as he did and who will suffer like he did.[iv] To these “beggarly poor in spirit” will be given the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God that will liberate them from death, indifference, and captivity. Jesus exhorts his disciples to see that around them are those who do not fit into the status quo, those who are rejected and pushed out, those who are scapegoated by the powerful and mighty, those who are exiled and deported; it is these, Jesus tells his disciples, who will be heard and answered by God through Christ’s representatives inspired by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  • Blessed [are] the ones who mourn, because they, they will be comforted (v4).

This one is straight forward: those who mourn for loss and in grief and sorrow will be comforted. The mourners are the widows who find themselves afraid and scared, thrust into a situation of precarious dependency on agencies and institutions for their well-being. They are the children who do not know what has happened to their parents. They are the ones who carry the burden of remembering a life cut short too soon and too early, life lost in the wake of impulsive and deadly actions of the kingdom of humanity. Those who lose in the game of health and wealth; their deaths are mourned for. Jesus promises that these who mourn will be comforted; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, that which is to come, that which is being born through Christ’s disciples and representatives, those who are eager to see life, love, and liberation reign.[v]

  • Blessed [are] the gentle/humble, because they, they will inherit the earth (v5).

In our understanding of the world (the ideologies that are resonant with the kingdom of humanity) it is the powerful and mighty who take ownership of the land, those who initiate and win wars dedicated to taking lands and nations unto themselves, causing their empire to grow in presence and stature. But Jesus says something different: it is not the powerful and mighty who inherit the earth, but the gentle, the humble, or we could say “the beggarly poor in spirit.”[vi] Why? Why does Jesus flip the expectation? Because it is not the powerful and mighty who are the trustworthy, but those who put themselves aside to take up the cause of the earth—flora, fauna, humanity, and creation.

  • Blessed [are] the ones who hunger and thirst for justice; [vii] because they, they will be filled (v6).

Jesus then promises that the ones who hunger and thirst for justice will be filled. God is on the side of the hungry and thirsty, for those who are hungry and thirsty desire and call out for justice which is God’s justice.[viii] It is also those who advocate (in word and deed) on behalf of the hungry and thirsty and strive for justice to be done in the world who find God on their side. The disciples of Christ are to be driven by a hermeneutic of hunger for God and God’s justice to be done on earth as it is in heaven for the well-being of the neighbor.

  • Blessed [are] the merciful/compassionate, because they, they will be shown mercy/will have mercy by God’s grace (v7).

A trademark characteristic of the disciples of Christ is connected to the pursuit of justice: mercy, compassion. It is not a blind reverence and obedience to the law, executing harsh judgment and deadly punishment for noncompliance. Those who dare to wear the name of Christ, those who have faith, those who are participants in the grace of God are those so called to be patient, discerning, calm, and (most of all) merciful. Just like justice, mercy does not set out to harm but to cause to flourish. For in showing mercy they receive mercy from God.

  • Blessed [are] the clear of heart, because they, they will see God (v8).

One may expect this to come first. But it doesn’t. For only the clear of heart are those who do not carry internal burdens of dissonance, shame, and guilt; these ones are aligned—inner to the outer and with God and God’s will. Thus, why they will (and do) see God. Only those who attempt to find a compromise or live according to the tenets of the kingdom of humanity while claiming Christ are considered the “unclear of heart” who, then, cannot see God.

  • Blessed [are] the peacemakers/peaceable, because they, they will be called [children] of God (v9).

To be a maker of peace is to be one who causes peace to happen amid conflict and tension. It is not done by threat or condemnation, it is not obtaining security by means of might and power, it is not done by being the biggest and the strongest. It is done through humility seeking justice; it is done through mercy and patience; it is done through vulnerability and risk. No military of the kingdom of humanity will ever be able to bring peace; security maybe—but only temporarily—but not peace and real safety. It is the ones who strive for peace and unity by means of love, mercy, humility, and justice that can expect to be the children of God.[ix] Like children do, they carry with them (inside and out) the genetic traits of their parents. And in this instance that parent is Abba God and to make peace is to bring divine justice into the world.

  • Blessed [are] the ones who have been persecuted on account of justice, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven (v10).

To pursue the justice of the reign of God as children of God will pit the disciples of Christ against the forces of the kingdom of humanity. [x] This is not persecution because one sides with traditional ideologies or the status-quo of the kingdom of humanity; this is persecution because you dare to be a midwife for the divine reign of God being born into the world. These ones who are so persecuted are already in the kingdom of heaven.[xi]

  • Blessed are you when they might insult you and they might persecute [you] and they might say all evil against you, lying on account of me. Be glad and exult, because much is your reward in the heavens; for in this way they persecuted the prophets those before you (v11-12).

This statement targets the disciples directly (moving it to a direct address with “you”). If they weren’t paying attention before, they are now. Jesus prophesies that they will be persecuted as they pursue God’s justice in the world in the name of Christ and just as Christ will be persecuted for the very same thing.[xii] Those who are persecuted for pursuing justice, for thirsting and hungering after God’s justice are those who follow Christ and will be persecuted because of his name and this pursuit. They are, by default, guilty of bearing into the world the collision of the reign of God with the kingdom of humanity in the name of Jesus and will be treated like he was treated and as the prophets before were treated. Jesus is linking—through himself—those who follow Christ in Christ’s name are the same as the prophets who came before. It is these prophets (past, present, and future) who declare the reign of God comes and who denounce the present controlled by the kingdom of humanity.[xiii] They will be persecuted. But they are to take heart, their reward is the kingdom of heaven because the kingdom of heaven is for the “beggarly poor of spirit.”

Conclusion

We are faced with a question in this moment: are we the disciples of Christ or just the crowd? Are we being addressed by Jesus’s sermon here, or are we overhearing? Discern your answer because how you answer will determine how you walk away from this sermon and what you do with the commands therein and the grace so promised by God and received by faith.[xiv],[xv]

To be a follower of Christ, a disciple and representative, offers not ease and comfort but blessedness. [xvi] The life of faith is not a solitary endeavor, one relegated to isolated mountaintops and singular experiences of worship one hour each Sunday. The life of faith is not meant to take the believer up and out but to push that believer down and in, it is an incarnated faith that is active in love, that is eager to show itself in loving deeds to benefit the neighbor and bring glory to God, it is to be the body broken bearing into the world the reign of God. To be a follower of Christ, a disciple and representative, is to be left without recourse to compromise with this world and it’s fractured and misdirected human rule; to follow Christ out of the Jordan—to be baptized into his baptism (both of water and Spirit)—is to be positioned—forever—at odds with the way things are because they know, by the Word, what should and could be. The disciples and representatives of Christ—not the crowd in general—are called to a higher level of righteousness of the reign of God that is in opposition to the errant righteousness celebrated by the kingdom of humanity.[xvii]

This is both very good news and very hard news.

While our faith does bring us assurance—all who believe are saved and all are the beloved of God—those daring to live out that faith—those “foolish” enough to follow Christ out of the Jordan—will find themselves in the paradox of blessedness and persecution.[xviii] For, “[t]he gospel of the love of God is…good news for sinners, but it is not nice news without any confrontation with human sinfulness for what it really is, a nothing.”[xx] There is absolutely no way for the disciple and representative of Christ to see the pain of the world, to feel the pain of the world and not speak up and not act even if it means being brought to our own end. The life of faith brings discontent and confrontation with the kingdom of humanity; the life of faith—eyes and ears, and hands and heart set on the bringing forth of the reign of God—will cause us to “quarrel” with and “chaff against” the current reality under the rule of the kingdom of humanity.[xix]

But the good, good word, Beloved, is that in all this heaviness of being called to be a disciple of Christ means that God is with us; we labor not alone but with Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. And if God is for us, then who, I ask, can be against us?

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 76.

[iii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf&Stock, 2010), 82. “I said that in the Bible the poor are often called anawim, which in Hebrew means ‘the poor of Yahweh.’ They are so called because they are the poor of the liberation of Yahweh, those that God is going to liberate by means of the Messiah. It’s like what we now understand as the ’oppressed,’ but in the Bible those poor people are also considered to be good people, honorable, kindly and holy, while their opposites are the oppressors, the rich, the proud, the impious. This word anawim was probably the one that Jesus used. In Greek there was no word like that, and when the Gospel of Matthew was translated into Greek that word was translated as ‘poor in spirit,’ whereas Luke in his Beatitudes as simply ‘the poor.’ This phrase of Matthew, ‘poor in spirit,’ has created confusion, and many have believed that it deals with spiritual poverty. And I said that I met a priest who said that the ‘poor in spirit’ were the good rich people.”

[iv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 85. “I said: ‘The other Beatitudes seem to be only other ways of saying the same thing. In all of them the same poor people are spoken of by other names, and what they promise is the same thing.’”

[v] Cardenal, Solentiname, 86. “…Felipe…: ‘We can be happy about the news that the Kingdom is coming, but we can’t be satisfied until it comes.’”

[vi] Cardenal, Solentiname, 86. “Rebecca: ‘And he blesses those of humble heart. It seems to me that these are the poor in heart or the humbled. Maybe they were even humbler before (that’s my idea anyway) and yet for God they were the most worthy. People shouldn’t feel sad, then, even though they are poor, poor in spirit or humbled, because God will bring them into the Promised Land, which is the kingdom. But those of proud heart will not enter.’”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 76. “The righteousness to which the Sermon on the mount calls people is not a sinless perfection but a calling to do justice and love mercy (tsedaqah). Matthew is the only synoptic Gospel that uses the word dikaiosynē, or justice. Five of his seven uses are here in the Sermon on the mount. Clearly it is an important theme for him tin understanding Jesus’ central message. To ‘know God’ is to do Justice (Jer. 22:15-16).”

[viii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 86. “Marcelino: ‘He blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice. Hunger and injustice amount to the same thing. Anyone who hungers for good also hungers for justice. They are the ones who are going to make social change, not the satisfied ones. And then they’ll be filled with bread and social justice.’”

[ix] Cardenal, Solentiname, 88. “Oscar: ‘If I’m trying to have one person not exploit the other, I am one who is looking for peace. He says that people who look for peace will be the children of God, because they look for unity, that we should all be brothers and sisters. It’s clear that the kingdom of God belongs only to the children of God.’”

[x] Cardenal, Solentiname, 88. “Alejandro: ‘And he says that they are going to be persecuted because they seek justice, and for that also he blesses them.’”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 77. “The blessings are directed toward those who have certain disposition and inclination to act in ways consistent with God’s will rather than toward those who have a particular circumstance or status. Matthew is taking an ethical perspective.”

[xii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 89. “Olivia: ‘Before he talked of people persecuted for looking for justice and now he says ‘because of me.’ He wants to point out that it’s the same thing. Everyone who is persecuted in the cause of justice is persecuted in his cause.’”

[xiii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 89. William: ‘And Jesus compares us with the prophets. The prophets in the Bible were not so much people who predicted the future as people who denounced the present.’”

[xiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 74. “Perhaps the Sermon on the mount strikes a better balance between God’s grace and human action than this question suggests. It is true that it is full of commands to do God’s will and ‘bear fruit,’ but right alongside these are promise of divine mercy and blessing along the way. These are intertwined throughout.”

[xv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 75-76. “In the Sermon on the Mount, this twofold grace is exemplified. Grace and calling to obedience intertwine. They are not a before and after. The law is not primarily a judge that convicts us of sin; it is primarily a guide for life in relation to God and neighbor. It is already an expression of God’s grace to us. … The law is a good gift of God in its role as a guide for living. To live in this way is to already experience the hoped for reign of God. The new relationship with God that Jesus exemplifies is open now for all who would follow him.”

[xvi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 77-78. “Those who have ‘crossed over’ to radical commitment do not find a life of ease and luxury; they find a life of blessedness instead.”

[xvii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 78. “The phrases of the beatitudes may well have reference not only to discipleship attitudes but to minority social position (those who are meek, poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness/justice). That would be consistent with the warnings elsewhere in Matthew (6:19-21) concerning the danger that wealth and power present to the higher righteousness which the disciples are called.”

[xviii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 76-77. “The first four beatitudes declare blessing for those who were traditionally understood as being defended by God: the poor, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice. The second set blesses those who do what is right by being merciful and pure in heart, making peace and enduring the persecution that attends following in the way of Jesus Christ. When one’s life is characterized by the attributes highlighted in the beatitudes, two things are assured: blessedness on the one hand and persecution on the other.”

[xix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 78. “If we would—even now—live under the reign of God, there are implications. The alternative reality will chaff against the present reality. To love as God loves is to be discontented with the present reality…In our discontent, we may pray with William Sloane Coffin, ‘Because we love the world…we pray now…for grace to quarrel with it, O Thou Whose lover’s quarrel with the world is the history of the world…’”

[xx] Paul Hinlicky, “A Synopsis of Theodor Dieter, Der june Luther und Aristotle: Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie (Berlin & NY: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 19. online article; page number based on printout.

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Epiphany: God for Us

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

At times, in the cool, dark of January and after all the festivities have wound down and the decorations and ornaments have been packed up, one can feel alone, unseen, unheard. Going from Thanksgiving to New Years is a tour of parties and engagements, concerts and events, gatherings and celebrations. One can feel swept up and out of banalities of regular life, being entertained from one moment to another.

As a parent of three children, each of whom is in a different stage of education, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of sweet returns and homecomings as semesters end and all the kids come home to stay, the onslaught of various concerts and parties threatening to overlap, and the rush of shopping, dining, traveling, and being ushered from one family visit to the next. This energy carries all the way through the first week of January. And then… Silence. And everything slows all…. the…. way…. down as if being caught in mud.

It’s not just parents who suffer the experience of the radical shifts between up and down, loud and quiet, active and inactive. Everyone feels it. The first few weeks of January, in the stillness, darkness, and coldness of the month, pose the greatest challenges for mental health; these can be the hardest weeks for our friends and family working with and through depression and grief, sorrow and loss, anxiety and despair, loneliness and alienation. The big drop after the cessation of the holiday feasts and fests paves the way for a dark cloud to loom over vulnerable humanity.

Thus, our orientation outside of ourselves is even more important as we tumble out of celebrations and land on that regular and blah day to day. Last week, Luke guided us to refocus our attention on the initial vibrations of the beginning movement of God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the tween Jesus. Today, Matthew continues that refocusing outside of ourselves and on to another. Matthew tells us a story of the divine Son, Jesus the Christ, who identifies with us in all aspects of our life from the greatest of great to the lowest of lows.

Matthew 3:13-17

Jesus has no need for a baptism of repentance[ii] like the one Matthew tells us John is offering to those gathering to and in the river Jordan.[iii] And yet, Jesus shows up. Matthew tells us, At that time Jesus arrives from Galilee to the Jordan toward John to be baptized by him (v13). The sinless one, the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, shows up for the purpose of being baptized by John like everyone else. However, everyone else in that river needed to confess, needed to be washed clean, needed to repent.[iv] But Jesus is not like everyone else; John knows this. John nearly refuses Jesus this event, as Matthew tells us, But John was hindering him, saying, “I, I have need to be baptized by you, and you, you come to me?!” (v.14). Our English version makes it sound like John was speaking it as if from a script but not acting on it. I think he was acting on it with all the passion of a Palestinian Jewish man. With the emphasis embedded in the original language, John is (literally) astounded[v] by Jesus coming to him; it wouldn’t be farfetched to imagine Jesus’s cousin holding Jesus back by the shoulders with wet hands, confessing such words. John’s astonishment and confession to Jesus showing up in the Jordan will be echoed in Peter’s similar astonishment and confession when Jesus goes to wash his feet. God on the move is always on the move in a way that defies human reason and common sense.

Jesus (lovingly) replies to John’s passion not with chastisement or offense, but acknowledges that John’s not wrong, but here in this moment God is up to something different, something that doesn’t make sense, something that is new, something that will fracture the stagnant and toxic status-quo (the status quo he witnessed all those years ago in his week-long stay in the temple). Matthew tells us, Now, Jesus answered him and said, “You permit me just now; for, in this way, it is fitting for us to fulfill all justice.” At that time, [John] permits him (v15). Jesus links his being baptized to the fulfillment of (divine) justice. But what divine justice is being fulfilled here in the sinless God-man being baptized like a regular sinful human being? It is the justice of God that is fulfilled in identifying[vi] with the plight and predicament of God’s people.[vii] And it is through this identification with God’s people—in their highs and especially their lows—that God’s justice is manifest among and in those who are oppressed (spiritually and politically).[viii] Divine justice, divine righteousness is not about what one has (as if it is something we can possess on our own right); it’s about having a fleshy heart and a humble mind that drives one to live life before God in a human way with the people of God[ix] for the goal of “keeping human life human.”[x]

Matthew continues the story, telling us about what happened after Jesus is baptized, Jesus immediately ascended from the water. And, behold!, the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove coming upon him. And, behold!, a voice out of heaven saying, “This one is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased!” (vv16-17). Something new is afoot and God is making Godself known in and through Jesus ascending out of the water and the dove descending to alight on him. Here we have clear images of new creation, of love, of life, of liberation. Jesus ascends from the midst of the water like his ancestors before him crossing the Red Sea to find themselves liberated from the oppression of Egypt; the dove descends and lands on firm ground that is the Christ, the son of God and the son of Humanity, much like Noah’s dove after the flood.[xi]

But what is significant here is the way God makes it known (directly and without mediation[xii]) that God identifies with Jesus and Jesus identifies with God. This is my son, the Beloved…Jesus identifies with the people and identifies with God. In that God identifies with Jesus, who identifies with the people, means that God identifies with the people in and through Christ. In this way, Jesus represents God to humanity and humanity to God.[xiii] In Jesus the Christ, the son of God and the Son of Humanity, humanity and God are united forever. In this way, humanity, the yous and mes of this world, participate by faith in being the Beloved with whom God is well pleased.

Conclusion

We hear this story every year, but do we pause long enough to consider the significance of Jesus taking a baptism of repentance he didn’t need? There’s no logical conclusion except for his desire (thus, God’s desire) to identify with the plight of humanity in its ups and especially in its downs. The Sinless one identifies with the sinful ones, and it’s this profound and earthy and fleshy identification that marks the very beginning of Jesus’s active ministry. If you’ve ever wondered if God is for you, Epiphany gives us a resounding HECK YES, GOD IS FOR YOU!

And not just for you when you are up, when you are “too blessed to be stressed,” when you are clean, neat, put together, organized, straightened up, physically killing it at work and at the gym, spiritually killing it in your quiet time and charity. Epiphany highlights and emphasizes that God is with us at our worst: in our desperate need to confess, to be washed, to repent. God is with us when our acts are not together, when we can barely get out of bed, when we just can’t anymore, when we are depressed and despairing, when we are consumed with grief and emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual pain, when we bare tremendous burdens of loss and sorrow, when we want to quit and when we do. God is with us when we fail. God is with us when our shoulders and backs feel as if they are about to break with the burdens. And what’s more? God is with us when society is against us, threatens us when we are different, and condemns us because we have need, because we lack, because we can’t rise to the demands of a system dead set on devouring us.

Epiphany is the unmediated voice of God telling you, telling us, that we are unquestioningly, undoubtedly, unconditionally accepted by God because God chose to identify with us on no other condition than God’s love and pleasure made known in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 117. “The first appearance of the adult Jesus in Matthew’s story takes place in the context of John’s baptism, with Jesus as John’s Galilean ‘follower’ … who receives baptism along with the repentant Judean crowds.”

[iii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 50. “John has been preaching a baptism that signifies repentance. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? What does he need to repent? Our theological tradition has insisted that Jesus is without sin.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 51. “Regular ritual washing with water was widely practiced within Judaism and its symbolism of cleansing form sin was understood. This singular experience of ‘baptism’ that John was practicing is more reminiscent of the practice of ‘proselyte baptism.’ When Gentiles converted they were baptized. In extending this practice to everyone, John is in effect declaring that everyone stands in need of conversion, signaling their repentance and turning to God. Even the religious leaders stood in need of baptism.”

[v] Merriam-Webster “Astounded”, “feeling or showing great surprise or wonder”

[vi] France, Matthew, 120. “The most obvious away in which Jesus’ baptism prepares for his mission is by indicating his solidarity with John’s call to repentance in view of the arrival of God’s kingship. By identifying with John’s proclamation Jesus lays the foundation for his own mission to take on where John has left off.”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. “One way we might understand Jesus’ presenting himself for baptism is a sign of his solidarity with sinners. In this context, ‘to fulfill all righteousness’ is to be with God’s people, stand in their place, share in their penitence, live their life, die their death.”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. Righteousness/justice according to Hebrew thought, “It is about the establishment of God’s will that justice should everywhere prevail. God’s righteousness is connected with ‘vindication,’ ‘deliverance,’ and ‘salvation’…God’s righteousness is seen in God’s special regard for those who are powerless or oppressed and stand in need of justice.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. “Thus righteousness is not to be conceived as a static quality that one possesses (what one is) but rather a matter of what one does in living life before God.”

[x] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context.

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50-51. “That he is baptized in the Jordan (v. 3) recalls the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land. That when he comes up from the water, the Spirit descends like a ‘dove’ reminds us of the links between water and Spirit in Genesis, as ‘a wind from God swept over the waters’ (Gen.:2). After the flood Noah sends out a dove. Themes of creation and new creation are reverberating here.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 122. Divine voice, “…the most unmediated access to God’s own view of Jesus.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 120. “Further, as Jesus is baptized along with others at the Jordan, he is identified with all those who by accepting John’s baptism have declared their desire for a new beginning with God.” (representation)

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Nothing to Lose; Everything to Gain

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Now it happened, writes Luke, in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus to take a census of all the inhabited world … and all the people were going to enroll, each one to their own city (v1,3). Luke’s story about the event of Christ’s Nativity contrasts with what we expect it to be. Experiences and feelings of hope and peace, of love and joy, fill our expectations of Christmas and its season. But, on that night, for Mary and Joseph, for the shepherds at work, there was no hope and peace, there was no joy and love. There was fear. There was anxiety. There was chaos. There was pain (physical and emotional, maybe even spiritual). There was worry and concern threading through every thought and action. There were people struggling to find bravery when they needed it the most.

Luke narrows the scope of the story, focusing in on Joseph and Mary humbly going on their way: Now, Joseph went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea into the city of David being called Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. He went to be registered with Mary, the one who had been betrothed to him and the one who was pregnant (vv4-5). On that night, Mary and Joseph made a tough journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The path wasn’t easy, the ride wasn’t smooth, the forecast was unknown, and there was no confirmation that when they got to Bethlehem there would be lodging. On that night, all was not calm; it was scary and unknown because, on that night, tensions rose and the potential for harm from chaos loomed with every step they took. Adding to this heavy burden, Mary was ready to give birth to her first-born son; her body ached, her spirit fatigued, her mind consumed with what might happen if her time came. On that night, she fought to be brave—walking all that way, not wanting to be a burden to Joseph, unknowing of what was to happen or what would come. Where was God in this for Mary?

And what of Joseph on that night? We don’t hear much about his plight as he made his way, leading the pregnant Mary, to Bethlehem, away from the comfort of his own town of Nazareth, the places and spaces he knew so well. The discomfort of the unfamiliar road and journey barely eclipsed the rolling and roaming narrative in his head: is she telling me the truth? I know the angel spoke to me, but it feels strange, surreal, farfetched… Thoughts of the census accompanied his human doubt and questioning, what will happen to use once this census is done and all the chips are collected into wealthy pockets?[ii] As they traveled into Bethlehem and faced closed door after closed door, Joseph’s brave face faltered as he watched Mary’s face give way to the first pangs of labor. Now it happened, Luke writes, while being there, her days completed… (v6)One prayer passed over his lips, please let me find somewhere safe for her, for him…this child… that’s not even mine… Everything felt up to him; as frustration, fear, and maybe even some resentment began to surface, the burden continued to weigh down on his shoulders.[iii] Where was God in this for Joseph?

In a stable in Bethlehem, they felt safe enough. …[Mary] brought for her first-born son, and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was not lodging for them (v7). Neither Joseph nor Mary thought this situation ideal, but it was what it was. And, for now, the child was safe in the wooden manger and hay, among the animals forming fortress around the exhausted couple and the long-awaited Messiah of Israel and the world. Those who felt exhausted from the long, lonely journey, felt beleaguered by the socio-political demands of Caesar Augustus and Syrian Governor Quirinius,[iv] and isolated from family, those who wondered where God was in their plight, now had God in their midst, dwelling among them. God as brave, poor[v] infant daring to face the world in vulnerable humanity: to feel every pain, every sadness, every frustration with systems and ideologies set up and upheld just to keep the already down, down. This one, this brave divine infant, will be the one to heal the fractures existing among humanity and between humanity and God and creation, the fractures that fuel injustice, war, hatred, domination, inequality and inequity, disunity and discord.[vi]

And Shepherds were in that region spending the night and keeping guard through the night over their flock (v8). The shepherds held ground in that dark night, in that silent night. There was, of course, worry about potential animal attacks on their sheep;[vii] there was more worry about what would happen to them and their flock once the census completed. How much more will I lose? I already have so little and this feels like a kick in the gut while down… The shepherds feared not the literal wolf, but the metaphorical one, the one against whom they could not fight and if they did, they knew they would not win.[viii] The shepherds, the oppressed of the oppressed, where afraid; it is quite certain their blanket of anxiety that night did not keep them warm but it sure kept them awake and on guard.[ix] That night, those shepherds didn’t feel that brave as the powerful were gearing up to take what they wanted and they couldn’t do anything about it. Where was God for them?

And then to those who were eager to stay unseen and unnoticed, were exposed by divine, celestial light.[x] Luke describes,

And then an angel of God came upon them and the glory of God illuminated them, and they were frightened with a great fear. And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! For, BEHOLD!, I announce to you great joy whichsoever will be for all the people. A savior was born for you today—who is the Lord Christ—in the city of David. And this is a sign for you, you will find a newborn child having been wrapped in swaddling closes and being laid in a manger. And suddenly it happened a great number, an army of heaven appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to the most High God and upon earth peace among humanity whom God favors!” And it happened the angels left from them into heaven… (vv9-15a).

Heavenly light encompassed the shepherds, and for this moment they are center stage in this divine drama. It’s not Jesus the Christ, it’s not God in a ball of fire or voluptuous cloud, it’s not kings or princes, not emperors or governors, it’s not even Mary, the “God-bearer”, who is the center of attention here. It’s the shepherds, the lowly, unclean, unknown, unseen, not-all-that-brave-in-this-instance shepherds.[xi] They are not only addressed by divine representative, they are sent to go find God in a stable, in the hay and wood, among animals, among two very tired, fatigued new parents.

And they go! They are addressed by divine messengers and they are terrified by them,[xii] but they still go because there is always comfort and joy in God’s Goodnews.[xiii] Luke tells us, and they went and hastened and they found Mary and Joseph and the newborn child being laid in the manger (v16). These shepherds feeling, a bit unbrave against the raging of the kingdom of humanity, feel empowered by divine Spirit to go and dare to be in the presence of God without an mediator they know of. These lowly are now the brave, these unclean are now the righteous ones seeking and finding God in God’s humble abode and vulnerable body, it is these humble who are the first to be sent on a great divine mission in the world seeking, finding, and embracing the one who will bring both spiritual and temporal[xiv] release and instigate the divine mission of the revolution of life, love, and liberation to Israel and to the world to defeat the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity.[xv]

Conclusion

Every year I tell you that we are the shepherds, we are part of the rabble that is surrounding the baby Christ in the wooden manger and straw bedding. And this isn’t wrong, we are.[xvi] We are the ones peering in and being vicariously included, completely invited in this story as witnesses and onlookers.[xvii] We are the ones filled with anxiety, plagued with sorrow and grief, dreading what is to come from our own socio-political realities…more anger? More strife? More fear? More division and derision? We’re the ones struggling to be brave in the face of it all. And we’re the ones met tonight by the divine baby in the manger just like the shepherds.

But it’s more than just that; there’s more good news. The theme of tonight’s sermon is bravery. It is the case, in the divine economy, that those who have the least to lose can be the bravest.

Why did Mary say yes to God all those months ago? Because she, the lowly and poor, had little to lose and everything to gain.

Why did Joseph say yes to Mary by way of angelic vision? Because he, the lowly and poor, had little to lose and everything to gain.

Why did the shepherds say yes and hasten to find the new family carrying divine hope, peace, joy, and love into and for the world? Because they, the lowly and poor, had little to lose and everything to gain.

These are the bravest. And each of them was sent by divine summons to go and be in the world in a new way: a way trusting God, a way following Christ, a way empowered by the divine Spirit of God.

The baby is delivered. The mother is exhausted. Step-dad, too. The angels and the host of heaven have announced, glorified, and sang. The shepherds have heard and have found. But the work of Christmas is just beginning… because the baby of Christmas, Jesus the Christ, is born in our hearts tonight and now we become the brave ones called and sent.

“The Work of Christmas” —by Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

Tonight, we are, along with the Shepherds, along with Joseph, and along with Mary, being sent to do something brave: to dare to have hope, dare to work for peace, dare to rejoice, and dare to love. And we can dare to do such things because this daring comes with nothing to lose, and everything to gain. It is by our faith in Christ, the humble, vulnerable infant born this night, that we can dare because he has gone before us and promises to be with us every step of the way. Immanuel, Immanuel, has ransomed captive Israel.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “A census had sinister implications. It was not just counting people in order to see how many they 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 would be able to tax people to the maximum. A census usually announced greater poverty and exploitation. It was as welcome among the subjects of the Roman Empire as undocumented immigrants in industrialized nations welcome a census today.”

[iii] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “As usual, oppression is not a merely political matter, the concern only of those directly involved in politics. It also reaches the everyday lives of people, as is seen in the very fact that Jospeh and Mary have to travel to Bethlehem even though she is about to give birth.”

[iv] Gonzalez, Luke, 33. “The setting is rather that of people living under an oppressive regime. The mention of August and Quirinius—as earlier the mention of Herod—is political charged. 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.”

[v] Cardenal, Solentiname, 24. “‘[Christ] was the greatest revolutionary, because being God he identified with the poor and he came down from heaven to become a member of the lower class and he gave his life for us all. The way I see it, we all ought to struggle like that for other people and be like him. Get together and be brave.’”

[vi] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 23. “[Jesus] was born into a humanity divided and dominated by crime in order to unite us and to change the order of things. And that’s where we are.”

[vii] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 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.”

[viii] Gonzalez, Luke, 33-34. The shepherds, “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. It is not difficult to imagine what would be the talk of such shepherds as they sought to remain awake through the night.”

[ix] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “…the setting itself was one of fear and oppression.”

[x] Gonzalez, Luke, 34. “One of the ways in which the ‘little people’ mange to survive under oppressive regimes is not to call attention to themselves. They seek to go on with their lives unnoticed by the powerful, who could easily crush them. Now these shepherds are literally in the lime-light and an obviously powerful personage confronts them.”

[xi] Cardenal, Solentiname, 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 angle of God could have gone to the king’s palace and said to him: ‘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.’”

[xii] 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.”

[xiii] Gonzalez, Luke, 35. “An encounter with God’s power and might leads to awe and terror, but then God’s gracious word produces joy and comfort.”

[xiv] Gonzalez, Luke, 36. “The title, ‘Savior’ (sōtēr) was employed in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible that Luke used) to refer both to God and to those whom God sense to liberate Israel. In the Hebrew scriptures, the function of such liberators in either purely religious nor purely political.”

[xv] Gonzalez, Luke, 36. “The ‘saviors’ in the Hebrew Scriptures liberate Israel from its political oppressors so that the people may be free to serve and obey God…Thus when the angel announces Jesus as ‘Savior,’ his declaration has both political and religious overtones. The child who had been born will free the people from bondage—bondage both to their sins and to their oppressors.”

[xvi] Cardenal, Solentiname, 26. Thomas Peña “‘The way I see it is that those guys who were watching over their sheep heard good news. There they were just like us here, and they heard good news.’”

[xvii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 28. “I: ‘That’s right. At this very moment you are receiving the same news form the angel that the shepherds received.’”

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“Salvation will come”

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

It’s mid-November, and we’re coming to the close of our liturgical year. It’s been a long year. Our socio-political landscape is marked by tumult and chaos, no matter what voting party you ascribe to. The ups and downs, the wins and losses, the intermingling of hope and despair are exhausting. We’re tossed about on the waves caused by those who tromp about leaving bodies in the wake, those who have more power, more money, more authority, more status than we do; we’re left wondering if we, the ones being represented, actually matter in this battle for who has the most toys (read: money, weapons, prestige, etc.). It’s hard to feel the ground under our feet when truth feels downright elusive; anyone else feel more and more skepticism toward anyone claiming to tell the truth? A diet of chaos and tumult with a big glass of skepticism never nourishes and always depletes. Humans are not meant to run on fumes for so long.

I don’t know about you, but I’m existentially and physically fatigued.

And that’s not even including our own personal lives and the things that have come and gone. Over the course of a year, we gain a lot, that is true. However, over the course of a year, we lose a lot, too. Some of us have lost family members, partners, and friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Whether to the cold hands of death or the firey fingers of derisive and divisive ideologies demanding cult-like adoration and adherence, there are people who were in our lives at the start of the year who are no longer darkening our doorways. Sadness, sorrow, grief, and regret are pretty wretched snacks; none of which actually satisfy our hunger and only leave a really bad, lingering aftertaste.

I don’t know about you, but I think I really need an intervention, a divine intervention, a good-news intervention. I need a light to pierce this darkness threatening to consume me, you, us, God’s beloved. I need to be interrupted and divorced from the dominant narratives of fear and anger. I need to be relocated in something new, something firm, something that is steady when everything else is rocky. I need a divine “normal” when nothing is normal anymore.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.

Isaiah’s words are a warm comfort to the parched soul. Ancient words to a people eager to know God is still their God; a need to know that they’re still seen by their God, that they’re still heard by the God who led them out of captivity in Egypt into the liberation of the reign of God. Through Isaiah, God proclaims that what was will be eclipsed by a new thing God will do in both heaven and on earth; the world will be changed when God shows up.[i]

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

Isaiah declares to the people that God’s joy and delight will be with God’s people. Not only will God take delight and have joy in God’s people, God’s joy and delight will be with and among the people; they, the children of God, will have access to and participate in that divine joy and delight. Weeping and distress will be no more. Isaiah’s comments about death highlight that life will be lived to the fullest, celebrated with joy and delight, with mercy and grace, by faith and love. For the one who dies when it is time to die will be the one who has lived well and has been alive all their days and those days will be many. They will also be the one who die in God’s delight and joy and will be taken further into God’s delight and joy; those who survive will celebrate such a one, for there will be no need to mourn.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord–
and their descendants as well.

Isaiahs’ imagery turns to the work of the people when God shows up, and the reign of God takes over. It will no longer be toil; it will be work that’s pleasing not only to God’s eye but to the eye of the one who works. What Isaiah is describing here is a lack of exploitation of the laborer; the fruit of their hands will be the product of their own work, and they will enjoy it.[ii] Children will not be born into systems that steal human dignity, reducing them to things that toil to make others rich and some even richer. Isaiah’s words also point to a satisfaction and satiation. There’s an emphasis on a distribution of satisfaction in the work of their hand and a feeling satiated is hinted at. It’s not about grain silos and treasury vaults to store up for one’s self and keeping it from others. Rather, it’s about everyone receiving what they need all the days of their life, each day blessed by God. And even further, it’s about letting the surplus go to those who lack. All are cared for; none go hungry, thirsty, naked, or unhoused.

Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent– its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

God’s people wonder if they’re heard, and they are heard; God’s people wonder if they’re seen, and they are seen. God not only sees them and hears them, God’s presence, Isaiah prophecies, will be so close to them that even before they pray their prayers will be answered.[iii] The people of God will be seen and heard intimately and vulnerably because God will be accessible by all who are seeking God.[iv] Isaiah tells the people, “Salvation will come…”[v] God comes for God’s people, the curse from long ago will be undone, the exile of recent will be terminated forever. Prey and predator will lie down together, they will stop hunting and being hunted, anger and fear will depart; the new heavens and the new earth will even be a place of refuge for animal-kind. But not for the serpent who is, according to Isaiah, reduced to eating dust; while the world, humanity and animal kind will feel relief from the burden of the curse in God, the serpent will bear it out as was long ago promised by God,[vi]

The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.[vii]

Conclusion

Isaiah tells Israel, “salvation comes,” and it will. Isaiah tells Israel, “God comes,” and God will. Isaiah tells Israel, “help comes,” and it will. Because their God is a God of the people, of the humble people who are at their wits end, hanging from the very bottom of the rope, the ones ready to give up. As Isaiah says elsewhere, “a bruised reed [Abba God] will not break, and a dimly burning wick [Abba God] will not quench; [Abba God] will faithfully bring forth justice.”[viii]

We are not abandoned, forsaken, or alone. We are not ungrounded, destabilized, or uprooted. We are not consumed by grief, sorrow, or despair. We are not ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. Isaiah’s words to Israel become words to us today, where we are and as we are. Beloved, God comes; Beloved, salvation comes; Beloved, help comes. For, behold, Christ Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us will be born to us, to identify with us, to dwell with us, to be God close to us, and he will be the light that pierces the darkness forever.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[i] Benjamin D. Sommer, The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 913. “This passage recalls the initial prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah in its exuberant tone and literary style, but the nature of the prediction goes beyond those found in chs. 40-48: The world itself will be transformed in the new age that God brings.”

[ii] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 538. “The imagery of joy and absence of weeping is set in contrast to the sorrow through which the community of faith has come. The planting of vineyards and the enjoying of its fruits is simply the converse of Israel’s experience of exploration and conquest.”

[iii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 913. “In 51.9-11 and chs 63-64, the people wondered whether God listens to their prayers. God answers this question here: In the future, God will answer prayers before the people even utter them.”

[iv] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “Verse 24 once again repeats the theme of chapter 65 of God’s utter accessibility in his calling and answering those who seek his presence.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 158.

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “The line ‘dust will be the serpent’s food’ is a play on Gen. 3:14, which describes the curse of the serpent at the Fall.”

[vii] Genesis 3:14

[viii] Isaiah 42:3

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Sinner isn’t a Four Letter Word

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

The word “sin” and “sinners” carries a heavy load. It’s weaponized in a way to force people to be feel shame about their existence as fleshy human creatures. It’s incorrectly used doctrinally and theologically to spiritually abuse people stripping them of their inherent dignity and worth. It’s strapped with the burden of condemning people, pushing them beyond God’s limits and reach until they “reform” their ways because they are too “bad” or (worse) “evil”, that they need to become “good enough” first for God to accept them. And, in the Protestant tradition, “sinner” and “totally depraved” go hand in hand incorrectly making it seem like you are just a total pile of nothing-all-that-nice (to put it g-rated).

For all these reasons, over the past many years progressive churches have jettisoned the word and (even) the idea. I get it. When a concept/word becomes toxic and triggering, it’s best to find another way to speak of the thing or idea the word is signifying. So, to move away from the fundamentalist, American Evangelical notion of “sin” and “sinner,” progressive churches such as our own found different and lighter ways to speak about our human condition and plight—that we are turned in on ourselves. I will be honest with you, I know I am hesitant to use it because of my own experience (spiritually and theologically) with a heavy emphasis on human “depravity” and the resulting condemnation. Both “sin” and “sinner” are such loaded terms; isn’t it just better to avoid them?

The problem is that our entire biblical witness of God’s activity in the world and for God’s beloved, the people, is kind of hinged on these words. I don’t mean that God is wringing God’s knuckles over our sin, sinning and being sinners, while tromping about heaven angry as h-e-doublehockeystics. Rather, what I mean is that the biblical witness tells us—from beginning to end—that in spite of our sin and being sinners God desires to be so close that God will take on our human nature and become one of us to the point that God will die and become deeply identified with us in our human plight and condition of “sin.” Without speaking of sin, which (plainly translated) is the action of missing the mark (no matter how well intended the attempt was, to miss the mark is to go astray, to mishear), then God’s humble advent into our world and lives is not such a great story. To identify as a sinner is to be able to identify as a creature who can’t and doesn’t get it right often and yet finds themselves addressed and accompanied, loved and accepted by God. To identify as a sinner is to posture oneself humbly in the world accepting your creaturely (i.e. non-God, non-divine) status, to confess your dependence on mercy and grace from God and others, and to come empty handed into God’s lap and find yourself receiving absolutely everything without condition or charge and then to love others—by showing them mercy and grace—in the exact same way.

1 Timothy 1:12-17

Paul[2] writes to Timothy,[3] I have gratitude toward Jesus Christ our lord, the one who empowered me, because he regarded me faithful and placed [me] into [his] service, [even though] I was being a blasphemer and persecutor and violent man… (v12-13a). Paul positions himself honestly before Christ and to Timothy.[4] And even though Paul is contending with opposition coming at Timothy, he’s humbly authenticating his call not through big words and deeds but by highlighting his worst.[5] Through a posture of gratitude toward Christ[6] for what Christ has done with and in him,[7],[8] Paul cannot forget where he started: a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a “violent man” or a man with “rude arrogance” or “boastful pride.” In this way, he resists those who come against him with their boasting in themselves and their grand works, positioning themselves as better than everyone else; those who boast in themselves and in their own deeds so to elevate themselves over others are, for Paul, the ones to be wary of. Why? Because they place all the credit at their own feet.[9] What does Paul do? Paul Places all the credit at the pierced feet of his Savior and God.[10] But I was shown mercy, Paul writes, because I acted ignorantly in disbelief, yet the grace of our lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus (vv13b-14). Out the window goes boasting in himself: he acted ignorantly because he didn’t have faith—what he thought was right and true was exposed (by the light of Christ) to be wrong and false—and yet(!) Christ displayed both mercy and grace that abounded exceedingly with the divine gift of faith and love that will define his life and service.[11] His conversion, this pivot point in his life, was all because of Christ’s action toward him in mercy and grace,[12] not because of anything he did, thought, or said.[13] Paul’s presentation of himself is nlike those who boast in themselves and forsake the gospel and Jesus’s mercy and love[14] and are forced to resort to previous forms of godliness that bring condemnation rather than liberation.[15] For Paul, you know who follows Christ when you see where they place the credit for their life, love, and liberation.[16],[17],[18]

To back up his claim and to encourage Timothy to accept what he’s confessing,[19] Paul writes, The saying [is] faithful and worthy of all approval, ‘Christ Jesus came into the cosmos to save sinners/those who miss the mark,’ of whom I, I am chief, but for this very reason I was shown mercy so that Christ Jesus might show in me first the utmost longsuffering —as an example to the ones who are about to believe in him toward eternal [his] life (vv15-16). Paul emphasizes his depravity in a way that would make many of us run to sooth him; but that’s not what Paul intends. He’s not depressed. He’s not expressing false humility. He’s, literally, calling a thing what it is, calling himself who he was and who he is now. In doing this Paul exposes the inner (and outer!) liberation he’s experienced in Christ. And this is to become the paradigm for others because this is, according to Paul, what Christ actually does through the proclamation of the Gospel that is heard in the heart and mind by faith.[20] Through Paul, Jesus Christ has demonstrated his long-suffering patience with us.[21] So, if for Paul then, yes!, absolutely for for each of us.[22] Paul’s honest self-reflection and humility bring us to the same location and posture;[23],[24] considering all that Paul did, can’t we also be a little bit (more?) honest about ourselves? For Paul, thus for us, because of what Christ has done and will do for us, there’s no need to hide behind facades of perfect and awesome or paint over all our actions—even when they are quite bad—with “good” and “right.” We can be wrong and maybe even bad and that’s okay even if it hurts, because God loves us in and through Christ and nothing will get in the way of that. Now to the eternal kingdom, incorruptible, invisible, God only, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen (v17).

Conclusion

So, we don’t need to be afraid of our “sin” and being a “sinner.” Here’s two reasons why:

  1. Jesus—literally—came to save sinners, those who are not well, who need help, who do not hit the mark, who trip and fall, who wound others and are wounded by others, who find themselves trapped in deeply problematic systemic issues (being both captive and complicit), those who grumble when it’s time for church or Sunday Education, who drive too fast or too slow, who aren’t perfect at school or think that by being perfect at school they’ll earn all the love, and those who are just truly and wonderfully way too hooman for their own good. Jesus literally came for us sinners, and if we can’t acknowledge that (honestly and personally) then we miss out on all that Christ has to offer (mercy, grace, longsuffering patience) and that means we are stuck in our indifference, death, and captivity. Being a sinner doesn’t mean you aren’t loved by God; according to Paul, to know you are a sinner is to know the love of God deeply and profoundly.
  2. By acknowledging our sin and that we are sinners, we have a story to tell to others of a God who is so loving that even at our worst God so loved us first.[25] We have a story to tell of a God who came to us when we were dead set in our ways of ignorance thinking we were right when we were terribly wrong. We have a story to share that not only positions us alongside our neighbor in humble and equal status, but a significant way to identify with them in their fear, pain, anger, and oppression. And right now, looking around, I see a world that is divided through and through because of the fractured human tendency to need to be right so to be good so to be loved and accepted, who are afraid to be wrong, who are angry at change and chaos. And what the world needs now is not more adamancy that this way is the right way or even ridiculous arguments about who is truly moral and who isn’t. What the world needs now is more people who, like Paul, can stand in the posture of humility and self-awareness and can dare to call a thing what it is even when it comes to themselves, people who can readily say “I don’t know”, those who aren’t afraid to listen to others with whom they disagree, those who can sit in the discomfort of chaos while knowing it’s bad and that God is in it with us, those who find their hope in Christ, those who can speak a substantial word into the swirling hurricane of empty words. Beloved, because of Christ’s work toward and in you, the world needs you in your honesty and humility; never forget that.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] I’m using tradition language for the author of this letter so I can just keep it simple for the audience. I am aware of the debates of authorship and dating.

[3] The precious things about both the two letters to Timothy and the one letter to Titus is that these are personal letters to persons and not churches. For all practical purposes, we shouldn’t be reading them, mining them for ways to condemn each other through biased eisegesis and baseless proof texting. We are peeking in on a relationship and as those who are peeking in, we are *not* addressed. Rather, we are the audience witnessing such a dialogue as if we had front row seats to a play. So, as we listen, we see Paul, the great and magnificent Paul, at his most humble. As he encourages Timothy in his service of the gospel, Paul tends to Timothy delicately and kindly, and (mostly) through his own personal narrative about his life and walk with Christ.

[4] Philip Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, TNICNT, ed. Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 134. “We discover not only that his gospel is the paradigm of sound teaching, but also that his own experience of coming to faith provides a blueprint for measuring the authenticity of any who would oppose him.”

[5] Towner, Timothy, 134. Verses 12-16 form a tightly knit unit. “Paul blends personal history with salvation history in a way that sets him as an apostle squarely into God’s plan. His calling to be an apostle is authenticated, and his own experience of mercy and salvation become the paradigm for all believers.”

[6] Towner, Timothy, 136. “Gratitude is the dominant and opening note of this testimony…”

[7] Towner, Timothy, 134. “This section corresponds to the thanksgiving sections of other letters The present needs created by opposition to Paul’s authority, message, and mission determine the selfward turn of Paul’s gratitude.”

[8] Towner, Timothy, 138. “…[Paul] is probably much more intent on attributing his calling to Christ than he is of making trustworthiness the condition of appointment.”

[9] Towner, Timothy, 141. “in contrast to Paul, who sinned before coming to faith in Christ, the false teachers are portrayed as believers (or those who profess to believe) who by their sin have rejected their faith…”

[10] Towner, Timothy, 138. “There, as here, the issue is of Paul’s teaching a correct view of things, and the condition of being ‘trustworthy’ (the same ‘faith’ word that occurs here) is linked to the Lord’s mercy…”

[11] Towner, Timothy, 142. “…the phrase defines Christian existence by bringing together the fundamental act of God in Christ that begins the relationship, the ongoing present mystery of union with Christ (in the Spirit), and the sense of new and renewed status that results. In other words, the phrase expresses a dynamic existence that is eschatological, relational, and existential.”

[12] Towner, Timothy, 141. Not only mercy, but grace expands, “‘Grace’ overwhelmed his sin. ‘Grace’…refers to God’s kind intention toward humanity.”

[13] Towner, Timothy, 139. Ethic device “it supplies a contrast between two ways to life with the focus on the Christ-event as the moment of change.”

[14] Towner, Timothy, 142-143. Opponents have departed from faith and love, thus “Paul employs this phrase as n identity tag of authentic believe in the apostolic gospel, and that in doing so he excludes those who reject his gospel and supply another (legalistic and Torah-based) standard of godliness.”

[15] Towner, Timothy, 143. “In Paul’s thinking, the direction taken by the opponents back into Torah and Torah speculation is retrograde. Not only does it nullify ‘faith’ as the basis for salvation and holy living …but also in terms of salvation history it marks a retrograde step.”

[16] Towner, Timothy, 138. “Paul is not arguing that Christ foresaw that in spite of his sin Paul would prove himself faithful; rather, the sense here is of the potency of divine calling to achieve certain results in human lives. As Paul reflects on the process, his argument is that his ministry to this point has demonstrated the effectiveness of Christ’s choice in appointing him apostle to the Gentiles.”

[17] Towner, Timothy, 139. “This personalizing of the eschatological transformation will serve two purposes. It prepares the way for Paul’s presentation of himself as the pattern of salvation….It also links his conversion To God’s plan to reach the Gentiles.”

[18] Towner, Timothy, 141. “Authentic Christian existence bears unmistakable marks…and Paul’s personal experience of grace bears testimony to that reality.”

[19] Towner, Timothy, 143. “Its stable form….however, suggests it is either widely known or will be perfectly understood. Its purpose is to authenticate Paul’s immediate expression of the gospel as apostolic and to be accepted as true. … the expansion ‘that deserves full acceptance’ emphasizes the need for hearers to make an appropriate rational response to embrace and esteem what is said and to act accordingly.”

[20] Towner, Timothy, 151. “…If Christ can reach and enlighten the zealous persecutor, he can reach others who hear the gospel, and this need not exclude Paul’s opponents if they repent.”

[21] Towner, Timothy, 148. “But with an immediate shift of actors, form Paul to Christ, the perspective on the human dilemma shifts under the new christological lens. From this new vantage point Paul’s experience becomes a (salvation-historical) spectacle, a ‘display of the immensity of Christ’s patience.’”

[22] Towner, Timothy, 149. “…the converted Paul was a living illustration of divine patience.”

[23] Towner, Timothy, 149. “The purpose of Christ’s display in Paul was to provide an ‘example [pattern, model] for those who would believe on him [Christ] and receive eternal life.’”

[24] Towner, Timothy, 151. “Thus the apostle is as an example or illustration. His experience of Christ’s immense patience, his conversion, and knowledge of his gospel form the pattern for those to whom his mission reaches.”

[25] Towner, Timothy, 154. “But built into the gospel message, rooted as it is in the OT promise to bring the whole world, is the centrifugal thrust that reaches beyond the church. We today are invited to view the Pauline ‘pattern’ and to replicate it. Our own experiences of conversion and calling contain promises for those around us who do not yet know Christ’s mercy. Yet they will come to know it only if the gospel is communicated meaning fully to them—if we resist our own tendencies to become absorbed in what we already have instead of reaching out with what others need to have.”

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It’s Both/And

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

Our spirituality often gets forced into a binary: it’s completely earthly or it’s totally otherworldly. Either we’re completely consumed with the things and events of this world bearing the burden that it’s our responsibility to fix and mend, or we turn two blind eyes to the fires and tumults burning and occurring around us and stare heavenward convinced that one day God will suddenly make everything right.

I think human beings love binaries because they seem easy to navigate. Isn’t it just easier to live as if all of this is right and all of that is wrong? If everything is determined in its substance to be 100% good or 100% bad, then our choices will be clear, and we’ll (always) know what to choose and when to choose it (or not). The thing is that this line and way of thinking is exhausting because it removes us from having any control over ourselves and the things presenting to us asking for our action. It’s exhausting because we aren’t the ones in control but are being controlled. It’s exhausting because we’re under the subjection of toil, of the “shoulds”, of the “having to prove our righteousness through our works” or the lack thereof.

But human beings don’t work this way and certainly don’t work best this way. We thrive when we ourselves in distinction from our temporal or spiritual allegiances, when we have a bit more alterity regarding our self-expression and self-determination, when we take a moment, catch our breath, and see and hear what’s needed in the moment. Rarely are moments in life demanding my response so crystal clear, black and white, good or bad; often, there are too many factors needing to be considered, most importantly considering any other person in the mix beside myself.

This is why I think Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, is exceptionally helpful here; even if passages such as the one below are used to affirm radical departures from the temporal realm to the spiritual life; that’s not what Paul is advocating for. Rather, the Christian is the epicenter of both the spiritual and temporal realms, working out their spirituality in the temporal realm while bringing the temporal needs of their neighbor into the spiritual realm through prayer. And all of it is about looking to and keeping our eyes fixed on Christ.

Colossians 3:1-11

Paul begins chapter 3 with, Since it is the case that you were raised with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Keep setting your mind on the things above, not on the things upon the earth… (vv.1-2). In the previous chapter, Paul mentioned that the Colossians identifed with Christ in his death; now, he balances the equation: if you have died with Christ then you can identify with Christ in Christ’s resurrection. For Paul, the Christian journey by faith and deeds is not only about dying to the old self and to the world and its deeds, but it’s fundamentally about taking hold of—orienting oneself toward—the resurrected life because those who identify with Christ in his death also identify with Christ in his resurrection. The Christian life is not merely a set of do-nots, but a big, robust set of do-pleases![2] Paul expects the Christians he teaches to be those who have one foot in the death of Christ and one in the resurrection of Christ. It is the Christian, for Paul, who operates by and through divine grace: she’s not the one who rejects the world or finds herself consumed by it; rather, she’s the one who is oriented toward Christ[3] and infused with God’s grace[4] that she’s compelled to walk in the steps of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in the world.[5] What this entails is a new perspective, one that is informed by the things above most of which/whom is Jesus of Nazareth the Christ sitting at the right hand of God.[6] With this new perspective so inspired by the death and resurrection (and ascension) of Christ, it’s the Christian (having died and continually dying to the old self) who is the one who can navigate the treacherous way through the world avoiding all those ideologies of the kingdom of humanity demanding complete devotion and manipulating through fear and anger.[7],[8] Thus why Paul then says, …for you died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, your life, might appear at that time you, you will be revealed in glory with him (vv.3-4). Their identification with Christ will cause the Colossians to walk differently in the world, but their reward lay not in popularity within the kingdom of humanity (which will probably hate them for moving against the status-quo), but in the glory they’ll receive when they’re revealed as God’s own through Christ and by the Holy Spirit.[9]

Having spiritually and theologically described the way the Colossians now identify with Christ in his death and resurrection while living in the world,[10] Paul spells it out for them. He writes, Therefore, you put to death the members that are of the earth: fornication, impurity, inordinate affection, coveting evil, and covetousness which is idolatry, through these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (vv.5-6). What Paul wants the Colossians to consider is that they’re now representatives of Christ and in being such, certain actions must be refused.[11] To (intentionally) persist in such activities is to incur the wrath of God, says Paul, which is none other than earning the rewards of such chosen behaviors.[12] (Keep in mind that all of the listed actions to avoid are all actions causing violence against someone else and the self, actions that cause oneself to degrade its dignity of humanity and that of another.[13] ,[14]) These “taboo” actions may have defined and described their lives before their encounter and identification with Christ by faith and God’s gift of grace, but now they are antithetical to the new life of the representative of Christ; the Colossians must, even if it takes a while, work against that old Adam who is such a good swimmer.[15] Thus why Paul writes, In which things you, you also once walked when you were living in that [life]. But now you, you take off all these things: wrath, rage, wickedness, blaspheming, abusive language out of your mouth, not lying to one another; stripping off from oneself the old person with its practices and put on [oneself] the new, the one who is being renovated into knowledge according to the image of the one who created them… (vv.7-10).

What does this new, renovated life walking in the identification with and representation of Christ look like for the Colossians in the positive sense of their being raised with Christ? Unity in distinction. [16] Paul writes, where there cannot be “Greek and Jewish”, “circumcision and uncircumcision”, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all things and in all things Christ (v.11). For those who are yoked to Christ through faith and by God’s grace, there must be no hierarchies and divisions of human beings that relegate some to dignity and others not.[17] Paul has exhorted the Colossian Christians to live in the world in a new way reflecting the economy and politics of their God who so loved the whole world that God became incarnate in Jesus the Christ the one who is the power of all powers and in whom all things of the earth find their life.[18] It’s this incarnated experience that the Colossian Christians are to emulate in their new life[19] oriented toward Christ[20] and empowered by the Holy Spirit. These are to be in the world as Christ was and now is through their witness.[21]

Conclusion

We, like the Colossians, must be reminded that our faith and deeds as Christians in the world are beautiful and messy mixes of the spiritual and temporal; we, like the Colossians, have one foot in the spiritual realm and one in the temporal realm. Where we pray doesn’t mean we won’t act; it just means that our prayers shape and form our actions in the world, in that moment, toward that need. Where we act doesn’t mean we don’t pray, but that we must so that we keep Christ as our goal. Where the world is burning doesn’t mean we should let it because we know that Christ is in control and will one day redeem the whole kit and kaboodle. Rather, knowing that Christ is all in all, we should be that much more motivated to take up our part in the healing and nurturing of our world and the lives of our neighbors.

Do you know what the neatest thing about our faith in Christ is? It’s that it’s eager to work itself out in loving deeds toward the world and for the well-being of our neighbors to the glory of God. Why is this? Because our faith is in the incarnate Word of God, God’s own Son who came as God to be in the world in human flesh to bring God and humanity and the world closer together. Therefore, we get to participate in this mission of God and bring the spiritual realm into the temporal realm by our actions in the world while bringing the temporal realm into the spiritual through our actions by faith in worship and prayer. It is not either/or; it is both/and.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, TNIGTC, eds., I. Howard Marshall, W. Ward Gasque, Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 203. “The event of death-and-resurrection was two-sided for Christ himself (2:15); a message of the cross without the resurrection would not be gospel, and a call to embrace the implications of the cross without a call also to embrace the implications of the resurrection would be poor teaching. So here: it was not enough to remind the Colossian recipients of the lifestyle and religious praxis that they no longer do or need follow out; that would have been too much like the ‘Do not’s characteristic of the Colossian Jews’ praxis (2:21). The message of the resurrection has equally positive corollaries for the believer’s daily life, which have to be spelled out to provide a sufficient counterweight to the evident attractiveness of the more traditional Jeish lifestyle…”

[3] Dunn, Colossians, 205. “The consequences for the Christian perspective are thus also clear. If Jesus, the Christ, is so highly favored and acknowledged to be God’s ‘right hand man,’ with all the power and authority to effect God’s will and to protect his own which is implicit in that claim, then Christian life should be entirely oriented by reference to this Christ.”

[4] Dunn, Colossians, 203. 3.1 Change of perspective, “It is the sort of change which follows form complete identification with another person or cause, when the service of that person or cause becomes all-consuming the basic determiner of all priorities, the bubbling spring of a motivation, resolution, and application which perseveres despite even repeated setbacks….What the Pauline gospel offered and emphasized by means of its passive formulations was the promise that the change was not self-contrived but rather enabled and brought about by divine grace, the same divine grace which had raised Jesus form the dead…”

[5] Dunn, Colossians, 205. What is commended here is “…a cast of mind, a settled way of looking at things, a sustained devotion to and enactment of a life cause.”

[6] Dunn, Colossians, 203. “The key factor in this new perspective is the fact that Christ has been raised and exalted…to sit on God’s right in heaven.”

[7] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “They key, once again then, is recognition of the crucial turn of events and transformation of perception of reality effected by Christ’s death and resurrection; it is this Christ-perspective which should mark out the Colossian Christians’ heavenly spirituality and enable them to see through the alternative spirituality of the Colossian philosophy.”

[8] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “The aorist is simply a powerful metaphor for the fact that when they believed in Christ in baptism they were putting their previous way of life to death and having it buried out of sight. Consequently, it should no longer be a factor in their new way of life. They have been freed by that one act to live a quite different kind of life, determined not by their old fears and loyalties but by their new and primary loyalty to Christ and by the enabling which comes from on high…”

[9] Dunn, Colossians, 208. “Despite the present hiddenness of their ‘life,’ which might make their attitudes and actions in their present living somewhat bewildering to onlookers, they could nevertheless be confident that Christ, the focus of their life, would demonstrate to all the rightness of the choice they had made in baptism”

[10] Dunn, Colossians, 207. It’s a real, tangible life, and not a spiritually conceived life disconnected from earth.

[11] Dunn, Colossians, 212. “…the person’s interaction with the wider world as through organs and limbs is what is in view. It was precisely the interaction which had characterized the Colossians’ old way of life which now targeted…”

[12] Dunn, Colossians, 216. “…the wrath take the form of God giving or allowing his human creatures what they want, leaving them to their own devise—the continuing avarice and abuse of sexual relations being its own reward.”

[13] McKnight, Colossians, 293. “…flesh mindedness leads to flesh living, while Spirit mindedness leads to spirit-drenched living…This second group becomes Spiritually wise in their relations of humility and love and harmony…the opposite is the way of discord, violence, and fractures relationships…”

[14] McKnight, Colossians, 304. “If the Roman world’s sexuality as shaped by themes of dominance, status, and indulgence (in all directions), for Paul it was shaped by holiness, love, and fidelity.”

[15] Dunn, Colossians, 213. “Paul and Timoty clearly did not harbor any illusions regarding tie converts. They did not attempt to promote a Christian perspective which was unrelated to the hard realities of daily life. On the contrary, they were all too aware of the pressures which shaped people like the Colossian Christians and which still held a seductive attraction for them. They were concerned that the Colossian believers’ death with Christ, the atrophy of old habits of evil, had not yet worked through the full extent of their bodily relationships.”

[16] Dunn, Colossians, 223. “…it is not so much that the individual categories ‘Greek,’ ‘Jew,’ ‘circumcision,’ and ‘uncircumcision’ are discounted as no longer meaningful; rather it is the way of categorizing humankind into two classes, ‘Greek and Jew,’ ‘circumcision an uncircumcision,’ is no longer appropriate. In contrast, the last to items (‘slave, free’) do not cover the complete range of human status, so we do not have ‘slave and free,’ breaking a parallelism which is a feature of the other two versions.”

[17] Dunn, Colossians, 227. “The point here, then, is once again that Christ has relativized all such distinctions, however fundamental to society, its structure, and its ongoing existence.”

[18] McKnight, Colossians, 299. “This section articulates what the gospel does to the moral life of a believer; participation in the death with Christ slays the flesh and sins that destroy and divide; in fact, it brings the Gentiles—all people (3:11)—into the one family of God alongside Isreal so that Christ ’is all and is in all.’”

[19] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 290. “Far from a summons to an un- or other worldliness, these exhortation calls the Colossians to live in the world on the basis of the rule of Christ over all the powers.”

[20] McKnight, Colossians, 29292-293. “To back up now: on the basis of their co-resurrection with Christ, the Colossians are to seek to participate in new-creation life by directing their faith and lordship toward the Christ, who rules all of creation. That rule is not yet visible to all but someday will be…To seek the thing above, then, means to live a life on earth under the resurrected King Jesus as the Lord of all creation, with the implication that Caesar is not their true lord.”

[21] McKnight, Colossians, 291. “…by ‘things above,’ Paul means a way of living constituted not by the stoicheia and skia but by the rule of Christ above, whose rule will become a reality on earth in the future.”

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Christ Our Focus; Christ our Purpose

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

What’s your purpose?

Isn’t that just the worst question? It’s a question that’s been weaponized in the self-help industry ala 1990s, early 00s, even bleeding into the 2010s. My theological heroine, Dorothee Sölle, shined light on the fact that this question was alive and well in the mid-20th century. Since the dawning of modernity and the birth of the enlightenment, we who live post both find ourselves searching for something rather elusive: purpose. Why am I here? What is my life for? What am I supposed to do, who am I supposed to be, and what existential game do I find myself in the middle of?? These questions plague us, even we who have things like agendas, plans, and clear goals. I can tell you—with a certain amount of confidence—I’m pretty close to centered on what I feel my purpose is in life; I can also tell you there are dark moments, bad days, or just pure fiascos reminding me I might not be, that I haven’t the slightest clue, and even if I am close to being exactly where I want to be, all of that can change in the blink of an eye.

The reason why this is such a deadly question, one that makes people sigh, weep, or roll over and pull bedcovers over their head is that we tie our purpose to our work (action, deed). In the pursuit of ourselves apart from God, we’ve found a new god: work; this new god knows nothing of love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace. Concurrently, we’ve fused ourselves to our work hoping to make ourselves irreplaceable and unique, but anyone can do that work, fill that job. Thus, by working so hard to become irreplaceable, we’ve become, sadly, replaceable and puts our purpose on shaky ground. When we wed our purpose to our actions, then it means that only foundation for our purpose is our work, no wonder we begin to panic as we lose ourselves in our retirements (if it doesn’t start early in mid-life). In our pursuit to make ourselves unique and irreplaceable through our work, we’ve made our work (the role, the job, the deed) the irreplaceable and not-interchangeable thing and made ourselves replaceable and interchangeable.[2]

We need to be refocused and reconsider where we, as Christians, get our purpose from. So, today, we get some help from Paul writing to the Colossians.

Colossians 1:15-28

Paul begins (continues?) in a hymn[3] extoling the work of Jesus,

[Christ] is the representative of the unseen God, firstborn over all creation because in him all things, in the heavens and upon the earth, were created, the seen and the unseen, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things have been created by him and in him. And he, he is above all things, and he has established all things in him, and he, he is the head of the body that is the congregation (vv1-18a)…

Paul has (may have?) refurbished a hymn that participated in the Jewish wisdom tradition and used it to communicate to the Colossians who this Jesus is[4] who rescued them from domination of darkness and delivered them into the reign of the Son of the love God (v14). It is here in Christ, for Paul, that the Colossians are to find their identity, their wisdom, and their purpose.[5]

The one whom they follow, listen to through the proclamation of the gospel and in prayer, and are formed into by the power of the Spirit, isn’t just a teacher or some peddler of popular theologies, philosophies, and ideologies. This one, Jesus of Nazareth, is none other than the image/representativeof God who is also the firstborn over all creation. According to Paul, Jesus is God: in both his representing God to humanity and in his being the source[6] and sustainer of creation.[7] For Paul, no one else in all biblical history and story can claim such a position and title,[8] for it is only Christ who is an “exactly similar” revelation of God;[9] to see Jesus is to see God, to encounter Jesus is to encounter God.[10] It is in and through Christ that the essence of the ruling systems of the world find the location of their essence (whether or not they actually reflect the reign of God in the temporal realm);[11] for all things are created in Christ.[12] For Paul, Christ is the source of life and of creation and is also the head of the body. In other words, Christ is the source of life of all things especially of his body who represents him in the world after his ascension and by the power of the Holy Spirit: [13] the congregation that gathers in his name and abides by his reign.[14]

Paul then adds, [Christ] is the beginning, the first born of the dead so that he, he might come [to be] first place in all things. For in [Jesus] all God’s fullness was pleased to dwell[15] and through him all things are reconciled completely in him by means of peace-making through the blood of his cross, through him whether the things upon earth or the things in the heavens (vv18b-20). For Paul, Jesus is the firstborn of creation, the image and form all of creation is given life, and the first one born from the dead in his resurrection on Easter Sunday; this makes Jesus the source of both our earthly existence as it is and the new-creation and new-life we receive by faith in him.[16] It’s this double firstborn status that gives Christ the primacy of place in the lives of all things; but it’s not the only thing for Paul. God’s fullness dwells in Christ, thus Paul not only reinforces the previously mentioned thought that Christ is the perfect image/representation of God but that the new temple is Christ.[17] It is in and through this new temple where sacrifice has been made (for final) and in which the peace of God is made among those who follow this Jesus of Nazareth who is God—no matter what their background: everyone who enters in spiritually by faith and temporally into the gathering is now one family of which Christ is the head (the source).[18]

And then Paul adds,

And you who were once alienated [from God/ from the people of God] and hostile in mind and in evil works, but now [God] reconciled completely by the body of the flesh of him through his death—to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if you remain in the faith having been firmly established and steadfast and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, that which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, I became a servant (vv21-23).

Here is where the Colossians find their firm foundation, the source of their identity, and the underlying groundwork for their purpose: Christ Jesus and the Gospel. For Paul, to be alienated from the people of God and separate from Christ is to wander this world alone, without the tools to navigate the spiritual and temporal realms. According to Paul, humanity is caught under the cosmic powers and domination of darkness; to walk about in the dark is to guarantee one hurts not only others but themselves, too. Christ came to illuminate the darkness (John 1) with the goal to liberate all who are held captive therein. Reconciliation does not happen, for Paul, apart from Christ; reconciliation of those who were alienated is only through Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit.[19] Reconciliation then, according to the hymn at the beginning of the passage, is for all people in all the world…it is not just for those with whom you agree; it is the means by which the world experiences everlasting, divine peace.[20] Not so that all become Christian, per se, but that Christians refuse to participate in actions and deeds, systems and institutions that cause tearing apart rather than pulling together, alienation rather than solidarity, death rather than life. If some of us—Christians—refuse to play the game the kingdom of humanity has thrust upon us, then we participate in being “peacemakers” which is fundamentally a way of representing Christ and allowing faith to work itself out as love. Thus, Christ—his death, resurrection, and ascension—become the foundation not only of the Colossians’ life, but also of their new life, and their new life as reconciled members of the body of Christ eager to be peace-makers in the world among their neighbors; this is what it means to be the body of Christ and part of the family of God.[21] This is the goal of their lives (not just once but every day), this the purpose of their presence (not just once but every day), the Colossians are to be as Christ in the world as Christ was before them, and by being such, they bring God’s love, life, and liberation to their neighbor.

Conclusion

Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians to refocus on the source of their life and identity gives them a new and sustainable purpose purpose while they walk this orbiting rock, waiting to be either called home by Christ or to welcome him in his hoped-for return. The Colossians need not sell themselves—body and soul—to pursuits that will only prove fruitless and trigger an existential crisis. To be focused on Christ, to have Christ and the gospel of God as their focal point repeatedly supplies them with life, identity, and purpose will never fade or go away: daily, they are called to be sharers of God’s love, life, and liberation, being peacemakers like Christ is. And, as all of scripture does, this exhortation from Paul to the Colossians isn’t just between Paul and the Colossians; it’s also an exhortation to us who read all these years later (probably, much to Paul’s surprise!).

When we go about pursuing the world to either affirm or give us our purpose in life, we end up stuck in a vicious and self-destructive pursuit of a reward that our deeds and works will never be able to give us. When we try to define ourselves by the external deeds, we become too closely identified with such things and thus, give ourselves over to the domination of action (even virtuous and altruistic action). We mustn’t start with the world and our actions. Rather, we must start with God and God’s actions toward us in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul is saying to the Colossians. When we start there, with God at the foot of the Cross and in the light of the resurrection, we are grafted into an ancient and long-enduring purpose: to live fully as we are with our neighbor whoever they are, to love both God and our neighbor as we have first been loved, and to set the captives free.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the ‘Death of God,’ trans. David Lewis (London: SCM, 1967), 27. Originally published as, Stellvertretung—Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem ‘Tode Gottes,’ Kreuz Verlag, 1965. “For whenever the individual imagines that he is unmistakable and unique, society puts him right and instructs him about exchangeability.”

[3] McKnight, Colossians, 133. “Many scholars think Col 1:15-20 reflects or is an early Christian hymn (or confession…”

[4] McKnight, Colossians, 138. “Put differently, this hymn may have origins in the Old Testament, in the Jewish wisdom tradition, as well as in Greco-Roman vocabulary, but Paul—because of Jesus, because of his incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection and exaltation—has swallowed it all up into new expression by means of his own exegesis.”

[5] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 132. “The rhetorical strategy of this hymn is to show that the audience and author are allied in a common Christocentric faith, or perhaps more refined, into a christological monotheism. In fact, it is in Christ—the one who lived, who was crucified, who was raised, and who rules, the same one who created and is the goal of creation—that true wisdom is to be found.”

[6] McKnight, Colossians, 150. “The incarnation and this comprehensive superiority are grounded in the Son’s life-giving capacity to create ‘all things.’ Everything that is not the Creator is created, and the Son rules the entire created world as its Creator.”

[7] McKnight, Colossians, 149. “His status is superior because temporally he is before all things, hierarchically he is above all things, and ontologically he sustains all things. This matters for anthropology: if Christ is the Prōtotokos, Adam is not simply the prototype of the Second Adam, but Christ is the prior Eikōn-template used to crate Adam and Eve. Christ may be the Second Adam, but Adam then, is the Second Prōtotokos-Eikōn. One might then say that, in contemplating creation—since all creation is in, through, and unto Christ—we are to encounter a manifestation of nothing less than the Son.”

[8] McKnight, Colossians, 146. “…for the apostle Paul, Jesus was himself the one and only true eikōn in bodily form, leading to the implication that we can understand Adam only trough Jesus, and not Jesus simply as the second instance of the original Adam. This, then, is not so much Adamic Christology, as if Jesus is merely Adam Version 2.0, but instead a Christological anthropology, or a christologically reframed Adam, an anthropology both embodied and ‘storied’ in Israel.”

[9] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “This God-man King or Lord rules and reveals God. That is, in Jesus—the Cruciform One—we see ‘no error, no failure,’ when it comes to an ‘exactly similar’ revelation of who God is. It is right, then, to see in eikon the ‘essence’ of God no manifest.”

[10] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “To call Jesus the eikōn of the invisible God is to say that Jesus is the one who rules over all as the Davidic king…Furthermore, eikon connotes revelation as the physical presence, or the ‘exact representation’ (Heb. 1:3), in concrete, embodied reality of the invisible God.”

[11] McKnight, Colossians, 151. “Perhaps the boldest statement is that Christ is the creator of ‘all things,’ which is spelled out in location (‘things in heaven and on earth’) and essence (‘visible and invisible’), and then the essences are given concrete terms: ‘whether thrones or powers or rules or authorities.’”

[12] McKnight, Colossians, 152. Christ “…is the essential source of life in creation, he is the agent of creation, and he is the telos of creation.”

[13] McKnight, Colossians, 156. “…the ‘head’ in this context is the one who grants and sustains life, while also creating a new kind of unity among the members.”

[14] McKnight, Colossians, 157. “In this context one must also think the term ekklēsia will have evoked a political assembly of citizens; as such, the co-opting of the term by Paul for a Christian kind of politics under King Jesus has overtones of a political alternative.”

[15] McKnight, Colossians, 160. “The son is preeminent because God’s fullness dwells in him.  But one might opt instead for a softer relationship and take all of v. 18 as grounded in the Father’s decision to locate all of the fullness in the Son.”

[16] McKnight, Colossians, 158. “…the son is the beginning of new-creation life as the first one raised from the dead, resulting in a preeminent status over all the redeemed.”

[17] McKnight, Colossians, 161. “…as Zion echoes temple and was the mountain where God as pleased to dwell….so now God dwells in the Son. Hence, we have here a Christological revision of temple theology, with echoes of new-creation theology. This divine glory indwells the Son.”

[18] McKnight, Colossians, 162. “The Son’s redemption reconciles all things, which is a peace-making work that brings together Jews and Gentiles into one family of God. The redemption here is less an ecotheology or a sociopolitical theology and more a theological and christological ecclesiology.”

[19] McKnight, Colossians, 163. Katalassō, “The linguistic game this term and its cognates play is that, first, humans are out of sorts with God (enemies…)—including the essence of captivity to the cosmic powers, which is the focus in this hymn—in need of reconciliation; second, the means of that reconciliation is King Jesus, who reconciles by means of his salvation-accomplishing events, most notably the cross and resurrection and exaltation to rule.”

[20] McKnight, Colossians, 164. “The reconciliation of our passage, then, includes the divided peoples of the Roman Empire, and it must be emphasized that that sort of reconciliation I the focus of Pauline ecclesiology in Colossians …and Ephesians…”

[21] McKnight, Colossians, 164-165. “Peace-making” “The term expresses the sense of adoption into, and behaving like, God’s family.”

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Faith’s Descent into Truth

Psalm 8:1,4-5a. Abba God our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is humanity that you should be mindful of them?

Introduction

Human beings love things that are familiar and known, predictable. At the root of this love is our nervous systems: they crave comfort and nothing brings it more comfort than what is known and familiar, safe. Knowing (roughly) what the day will bring, allows us to breathe that sigh of relief even if that daily routine is a bit banal. Getting up, coffee, eating breakfast, getting ready, going to work, coming home, making dinner, watching TV, and then going to bed with a good book, is comforting even if it’s also the reason for midlife crises.

Humans love the familiar, the predictable, the known, so much that we will persist in doing things that hinder our thriving, surviving, and living; and we’ll vehemently reject anything new that threatens our security. There’s a quote about this, “The nervous system prefers a familiar hell to an unknown heaven.” We love the familiar so much, we’ll risk relationships to maintain it, we’ll stake our livelihood on it; we’d even choose death to keep safe.

There’s a problem for Christians here. We don’t worship a God who’s “safe,” “easy to figure out”, and completely “knowable and known.” We don’t worship a God who is static and still (characteristics of death); we worship a God who is dynamic and, on the move—a God who is living! In Genesis 1, we encounter God who is actively pulling things apart to reveal God’s dynamic, life-giving, liberating love: the heavens from themselves, the waters from themselves, the land from the waters, and human beings from one to two. In the gospels we see God willing to become human so God can identify with the human plight, to live and die as one of us and then render death to its own death in Jesus. And in Pentecost, we see God, set out to pursue every last beloved in the coming and sealing divine Holy Spirit. To quote Mr. Beaver from CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, “‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.’”

So, to follow this God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is to go into the unknown, the “unsafe,” the unfamiliar; it is to be sent forward, the path backward forever sealed off. As John records in his gospel,

John 16:12-15

I still have man things to say to you, said Jesus to his disciples, but you all are not able to endure/to carry [them] right now. But as soon as the Spirit of Truth comes, [the Spirit of Truth] will guide/teach you all into all truth… (vv 12-13b). Our gospel passage is part of the “Farewell Discourses” in the gospel of John. Chapter 16 participates in two different aspects of these “Farewell Discourses”: 1. The disciples’ future in relation to the world; and 2. The disciples’ future in relation to God.[1] Our portion of scripture is in the later of the two aspects mentioned: the disciples’ future in the relation to the world. Jesus is, in 16:12-15, preparing his disciples for the future in respect/relation to God.[2] Jesus tells his disciples know that he is not telling them everything; there is more truth to endure and carry. The knee jerk reaction is to think that Jesus is not disclosing all the pain and suffering these disciples of his will have; that’s not it. He’s already addressed what they will face as they proceed into the world with out him. Here he’s talking about the divine self-disclosure of the truth of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples are not ready to hear what this truth of God is that Jesus knows and the Holy Spirit will proclaim to them. It’s not a psychological unreadiness; it’s an earthly unreadiness; because of where they are, who they are, when they are, how they are, these disciples are not ready to endure any more of the truth than that which they have at that moment.[3] The dynamic truth—the gospel of love, life, and liberation—must not be given before they are ready, otherwise it will fall flat or it will flatten those too weak to bear it. In other words, the disciples need to grow (more!) and as they do grow, by the presence of the Spirit and by faith in Christ, the same Spirit will be the vehicle of more divine self-disclosure.[4]

John’s Jesus continues, for [the Spirit of Truth] will not speak from themself, but [the Spirit of Truth] will speak what they will hear, and that which comes [the Spirit of Truth] will announce/bring back to you (v. 13c-e). Jesus puts some qualifiers on this further divine disclosure the disciples are being prepared for. Whatever truth is to be revealed by the Spirit of Truth will not diverge from God’s mission in the world or depart from the essence of Jesus Christ’s witness to God and his participation in the divine mission. There is something to encounter in the darkness of the future sitting just outside of the material bodies of the disciples, something they cannot prepare for now physically, but can mature toward by faith (trust in God). It is the Spirit of Truth who will illuminate the truth cloaked in the darkness of the future once the disciples are there, and it will also be the voice that summons the disciples into that darkness.[5] Faith will step into the darkness knowing the warm, comforting voice of God, trusting that divine voice, and following the call into more divine disclosure.[6]

And, according to John, That one [the Spirit of Truth] will render me glorious, because [the Spirit of Truth] will receive from me and will announce/bring back word to you all. All things whatever the father has, it is mine; on account of this I spoke that what [the Spirit of Truth] receives from me they will bring back word/announce to you (v 14-15). Whatever truth there is to be revealed in the future, it’s source will be God the Creator and God the Reconciler and announced by God the Sustainer. (Here’s why this is our gospel for Trinity Sunday!). The Spirit of Truth is not going to deliver some brand-new revelation or reveal some new mystery that contradicts God’s self-disclosure in Christ.[7] Concurrently, this truth that is to come that they cannot bear now will not be fabricated by the kingdom of humanity; it will be of and from and conform to the core and essence of the reign of God.[8] The Spirit of Truth will make God’s self-disclosure in Christ real for all those who are to believe; the Spirit of Truth will reveal God’s truth to the community of disciples, and this truth will adhere to the essence of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world…wherever and whenever they are.[9] It will not be an old word, or a word that has ceased to illuminate the future or will it be a summons backward. The word of truth that the Spirit of Truth will hear and bring back to the disciples will be lamp unto their feet, a map forward, a guide through unchartered territory, it will be an otherworldly voice summoning them forward into the new.[10] And this word of truth will be at the center of the community’s proclamation and praxis: the community, ushered into this divine truth will bring Jesus, thus God,[11] close to the oppressed and disenfranchised, those who are forced to live at the boarders and in the badlands of society, hidden away, fearing for their lives, just as Christ did all those many years before them.[12]

Conclusion

While there is a historical and concrete audience for John’s gospel, there is, also, not one. This is my favorite thing about the John’s Gospel: as soon as we take up the text, Jesus’s prayers for and exhortations to the disciples become ours. Thus, as the disciples were summoned into the darkness of the future to behold what the Spirit of Truth will receive and bring back to them, so, too, are we. By the power, love, strength of our Triune God, we are summoned into that which we cannot predict, do not know, and cannot understand (at first). It is our faith in Christ, our union with God, and our empowerment by the Holy Spirit that will be our firm foundation as we proceed into that darkness of the future, it will be our comfort, it will be our warmth, it will be our light. We need not fear what comes, because Jesus has told us that by the Spirit of Truth God and Jesus himself will be there to receive us.

We love going backwards because going backwards is safe, and known, and predictable. We love our routines because they, too, are safe, known, and predictable. We like things to stay the same no matter how much that fixed state means our death. But, as mentioned in the beginning, we worship a Triune God of life—manifold, rich, robust, incredible, indelible, irreplaceable life. And in worshiping this God we get no choice but to embrace the darkness of the unknown, the unsafe, and the unpredictable and fall into the warm lap of Abba God, embraced by our brother Jesus, and enfolded in the heavy blanket of the Holy Spirit.

So today, hear the summons to go forward—as scared as you may be, as angry as you may be, as stubborn as you probably are—and embrace the divine truth being disclosed to you and that participates in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world on behalf of all God’s beloved.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), TOC. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966).

[2] Bultmann, John, 573. “The discourse starts again and the first words show that the subject is not, as it was before, the content of the future—the task and destiny of the disciples—but the future as such. The intention behind the prophecy of the continuance of the revelation, contained in vv. 13-15, is to bring about a state of readiness for the future, and v. 12 prepares the way for this.”

[3] Bultmann, John, 573. “Jesus still has much to say, but the disciples are not yet able to bear it. The words should not be understood psychologically; rather they indicate the essential nature of the case. Readiness for the future is not only demanded by that particular hour, but it describes the very existence of the disciple. The believer has not been taken away from the world…he has a future in it, and must withstand whatever it brings and demands.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 573. “What [the believer] has to go through, however, cannot be anticipated in words, which he could not even put together; the believer can only measure the significance and claims of what he has to undergo when he actually meets it. He anticipates the future in faith, not in foreknowledge. And thus the apparent contradiction between v. 12 and 15.15 is comprehensible: Jesus cannot state all that the future will bring, and yet he has said it all, everything, that is, that makes the believer free and ready for it.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word.”

[6] Bultmann, John, 574. “Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word. The promise is no different from that in 8.31f.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 575. “It is irrelevant from whom the Spirit hears the word, whether from Jesus or from God; for as v. 15a reminds us, they are one and the same. This means that the Spirit’s word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 575. “The statement affirms that the word that is at work in the community really is the word of revelation and not human discourse; i.e. it is like the word that Jesus spoke, which did not come from himself.” And, “The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 575. “Rather the meaning of this: the future will not be unveiled in a knowledge imparted before it happens, but it will be illuminated again and again by the word that is at work in the community.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 576. “The word of Jesus is not a collection of doctrines that is in need of supplementation, nor is it a developing principle that will only be unfolded in the history of ideas; as the Spirit’s proclamation it always remains the word spoken into the world from beyond.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 576. “…that the Spirit continues the proclamation of the word of Jesus means that it is the word of God, i.e. revelation.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 576. v. 14 “This is an express statement that the Spirit’s word does not displace or surpass the word of Jesus, as if it were something new. Rather it is the word of Jesus that will be alive in the community’s proclamation; the Spirit will ‘call it to mind’ (14.26). and herein is to be found the completion of Jesus’ glorification.”

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