Tag: Beloved

In Her Footsteps

“‘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

We take for granted the nature of the gospel and the generosity of Christ. Because it’s been well over 2000 years since Christ walked this earth and made an impact causing a Second Testament to be added to the Hebrew scriptures in the 4th century, we take for granted the work of Christ, the things that he did that (intentionally and unintentionally) upheaved the status-quo of the kingdom of humanity, exposed divine expectation, and made God tangible to all who were forced to be without God or convinced they were unworthy to be with God. “Immanuel, God with us,” is met with a modern, “Clearly” or “Obvs” or, a bit younger, “No cap.” The grandeur of God’s descent and condescension to become as and like us even to the point of suffering death on an instrument of state punishment as one who was considered guilty but was completely innocent, is so well known and assumed that it barely solicits awe. That God loves us is presumed to such an extent that we feel that God must love us forgetting that love is, at its root, a feeling that springs from one voluntarily and solicits corresponding voluntary action, that it will even (voluntarily and by choice) obligate itself to the beloved.

This state and relationship with the love of God made known in Christ is both a good and bad thing. It’s good, because we’ve heard the message and have taken that message in. We know how to spread that message and to make others feel it to such an extent that God’s love spreads from one beloved person to another. But it’s bad because we’ve heard it so much that we assume God’s positive disposition toward us, that Jesus would take us on granting what we so desire. While I know I’m wading in potentially troubling waters, never wanting anyone to feel they are not loved by God (because they are), I want us to take a moment today to think about the what if God didn’t identify with us, what if we weren’t part of the beloved, what if we were considered too far outside the reach of God because we weren’t part of the lost sheep of Isarel, what if we were still the enemies of God and God’s people…

Matthew 15:21-28

Matthew tells us, And Jesus left from there and withdrew to the districts of Tyre and Sidon (v21). Jesus is withdrawing after his confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes mentioned in the early part of Matthew 15. His withdrawal signifies not defeat but a need to go where he is unknown, eager to get some distance from the opposition facing him from and among his own people.[ii] So, where else would Jesus go than the regions that are not Jewish and are, in fact, antagonistic toward the Jewish people (according to the First Testaments).[iii] Surely here, among these who do not care at all about the Jewish people, Jesus would find a bit of reprieve, blend into the background, go unnoticed, and maybe even ignored.

But then…

And, behold!, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was shouting saying, “Please have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is badly possessed by a demon!” In a few words, Matthew informs his listeners that Jesus’s plan to move about in obscurity is foiled. Someone has recognized him. And not just any someone, but this someone: a Canaanite woman. Two strikes against her.[iv] First, she is Canaanite[v] and bears the history of her people being those whom God drove out of the land before Israel inhabited it and those whom God warns against because of their religious idolatry that repeatedly threatened Israel’s religious purity.[vi] Second, she is she. (If “unclean” had the capacity to double, she would be it.) And this Canaanite woman knows exactly who Jesus is; she recognizes him and this recognition solicits her bold[vii] shouting to him using Jewish Messianic titles (not to mention that Matthew uses an aorist imperative here, signaling she is pleading with God[viii]).[ix] In her overstepping,[x] she didn’t care to get the attention of anyone else in that group but Jesus’s, the Christ’s.

Bad news: her plea is rejected. Matthew writes, But [Jesus] did not answer her a word (v23a). Good news: she doesn’t stop shouting. We know this because Matthew continues by telling his audience in the rest of v23, Now his disciples drew near to him and they were asking him saying, “Please dismiss her, because she is shouting after us!” Here is the first #ShePersisted as she makes it difficult for Jesus and the disciples to proceed in anonymity. Her mama-bear like love for her daughter drives her to stay her course, social conventions be damned.[xi] Narratively, she is the first woman to speak in the Gospel of Matthew, and when she does, she openly challenges the limited religious self-conception of Israel.[xii] Her shouting is shrill, unseemly, and unsettling; the disciples are desperate to get her gone so they petition Jesus to just do what she wants, man![xiii]

Bad news: Jesus’s responds to his disciples with, ummm, no. Or, as Matthew tells it, Now [Jesus] answered and said, “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” (v24). Jesus interprets his silence to his disciples: none but the children of Israel have right and access to the ministry of Messiah.[xiv] Good news: she overhears this, dismisses religious (and social) restrictions, and comes closer! (the second, #ShePersisted!) Matthew writes, But she came and was bowed down before him saying, “Lord, please come to my aid!” (v.25).

Bad News: Jesus, according to Matthew adds insult to injury. But he answering said, “It is not good to take the bread of the children and cast it to the little dogs,” (v26). No matter how you spin it, even considering Matthew places the diminutive for dogs in Greek (τοῖς κυναρίοις ,“to/for the puppies”) in Jesus’s mouth, Jesus not only repeats to her what he said to his disciples in a more targeted way, he also insults her, playing up racial stereotypes reserved for those of this region specifically, and Gentiles in general.[xv] Jesus is clear, he only came for his own, the children (of Israel) and not for the dogs, puppies or not;[xvi] they are not the goal of the manifestation of divine revelation in Jesus. Good news: Once again, and for a third time, #ShePersisted! She takes control of the conversations and turns the parable table on Jesus,[xvii] But she said, “Yes, Lord, for even the little dogs eat from the crumbs that fell from the masters’ table,” (v27). This Canaanite woman understands the basic fact that even if Jesus’s first concern is to his people, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the world won’t feel the impact of Jesus’s presence. It seems that this Canaanite woman understands the mission of Israel better than the children of Israel. Israel was elected and called to bless all the nations of the world, to right the wrongs, to bring God’s presence close to those who were not of the chosen people.[xviii] Here, in this bold Canaanite woman’s pleading with Jesus, is one who is great in faith,[xix] faith that Jesus often finds lacking among his own people.[xx] Here and in her presence and challenge, Jesus’s ministry instantly expands.[xxi] Then answering Jesus said to her, “Woman, your faith is great! It was done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed at that very hour (v28). The impact of God in Christ sent to the lost sheep of Israel finds another home in Gentile territory. The circle of God’s children is broadening,[xxii] foreshadowing what is to come in Christ’s resurrection[xxiii] and the coming of the Paraclete where there are no dogs and only children of God by faith.[xxiv]

Conclusion

This woman had no such assumption of God’s love that we have today because of the broad and bold proclamation of the Gospel. Where we assume God loves us, this Gentile, Canaanite woman didn’t. She put everything on the line to heal her daughter. She very literally risked death to advocate and seek help for her beloved daughter as she ignored both social and religious boundaries. She did everything she could to bring liberation to one held captive.

But we, we take all this divine self-revelation in Christ for granted. And as we take it for granted we forget that we, too, are all Gentiles adopted by faith (Romans). What the Canaanite woman couldn’t even presume, we assume. And in assumption comes comfort and lethargy. No longer do we go to the boundaries and plead for boundaries to move and shift, ready to risk even death itself, rather preferring to stay and remain comfortable and cushy.

When we suspend our assumptions, we can identify with this Canaanite woman boldly challenging even Jesus’s self-identity and religious identity, challenging religious boundaries and social conventions. If you didn’t know God loved you for sure and one of your beloveds was ill, would you do the same thing she did? Would you break all conventions and ignore various social and religious laws to secure liberation for the beloved? Would you put yourself and your body on the line to see captivity obliterated and the captive set free?

This morning, we must remember that we are her heirs; we are in her family. She made the first motions to demonstrate just how far God’s love in Christ can actually go no matter how much religion, doctrine, dogma, politics, society have tried to limit and gatekeep. She has demonstrated for us and set the example for what it looks like to love someone so much, that there isn’t anything you wouldn’t do to secure their liberation and bring them true life. So, on behalf of those who find themselves threatened and rejected by the kingdom of humanity, pushed to the outskirts and margins, isolated and alienated, scared and terrified, may we remember just how amazing God’s love is in Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, dare to demand change from both the temporal and spiritual realms on behalf of these beloved.

[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), 592. “This was not a mission to the pagan cities (like Johah’s to Nineveh), but a retreat to a place where Jesus and his disciples could get away from Jewish opposition and Jewish crowds. There is no indication that he sought contact with the local people…”

[iii] France, Matthew, 591-592. “Galilee was bordered on the northwest by the Phoenician territory of which Tyre and Sidon were the principal cities, both (but especially Tyre) frequently condemned by the OT prophets as inveterate enemies of Israel.”

[iv] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 200. “Given these hostile relations, it is a bit audacious for this Canaanite woman to approach Jesus at all. Her gender as well as her ethnicity is a hindrance. According to Sharon Ringe, in first-century Palestinian society women were supposed to be invisible.”

[v] Case-Winters, Matthew, 200. “They are a rival people, even ‘the enemy,’ in Israel’s conquest of the land. They are accursed dn destined for slavey (Gen. 9:25). Israel’s victory over the Canaanites is, from the perspective of the victors, a gift of God and evidence of Israel’s elect status. It was a conquest celebrated in Israel’s traditions.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 592. “Canaanite” “…by this time was probably not a current ethnic term (like Mark’s ‘Syrophoenician’) but a part of tradition biblical vocabulary for the most persistent and insidious of Isarel’s enemies in the OT period, those whom God had driven out before his people Israel, and whose idolatrous religion was a constant threat to the religious purity of the people of Yahweh. That a ‘Canaanite,’ of all people, would receive the compassionate ministry of Israel’s Messiah would be a potent symbol to Jewish readers of the universality of the gospel…”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 201. “By her society’s standards, she has transgressed the boundaries. She might be called an ‘uppity’ woman.”

[viii] Daniel B. Wallace, “3. Request (a.k.a Entreaty, Polite Command)” in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 487-488.

[ix] France, Matthew, 593. Lord, Son of David, “She clearly has some knowledge of Judaism, and in using a Jewish messianic title she is hoping to attract the interest of a Jewish teacher who would not have expected such a title in this foreign context.”

[x] Case-Winters, Matthew, 200. “At the very least he is at the border within access of the Canaanite woman in the story. Either he is crossing the line or she is.”

[xi] France, Matthew, 593. “That she nonetheless persists in her appeal already indicates remarkable willingness to challenge social conventions (as well as a mother’s desperation).”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 201. “She is the first woman in the Gospel to speak. When she does, she dares to ‘demand her share in God’s blessing,’ challenging the whole ideology of chosenness.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 593. “Twelve strong men could presumably have driven the woman away themselves, so the fact that instead they ask Jesus to take action may suggest that by ‘Send her away’ they meant ‘Do what she wants, so that she will go away’; Jesus’ reply in v.24 suggests that sense.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 594. v. 24 “Jesus is thus putting into words what was implied by his silence in v. 23: Gentiles have no right to the ministry of the Jewish Messiah.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 594. “Not only does Jesus repeat and make more explicitly the restriction stated in v. 24, but he does so now by another metaphor which in any culture would be demeaning to those depicted as dogs over against children, but which in that context also carried the force of Jewish invective which could use ‘dog’ (an unclean animal; cf. 7:6) as a deliberately offensive term for Gentiles.”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 595. “The children are in a position of right and privilege, which the dogs cannot hope to share; what is holy is not to be given to dogs (7:6).”

[xvii] France, Matthew, 595. “Far from being the meek acquiescence which most versions imply, it is a robust refusal to accept the apparent implication of Jesus’ words. She turns Jesus’ own parable against him.”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 595. “If Gentiles are to be ‘dogs,’ then at least let the dogs have their due. The dogs do have a right to be fed, even if all they get is the leftovers. Jesus, as the Messiah of Israel…must indeed first go to his own people, but that does not mean that his mission must stop there. Her reply, whether she knows it or not, thus encapsulates the importantly biblical theology of the election of Israel not for their own benefit alone but to be a means of blessing to all nations, a light to the Gentiles.”

[xix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “She does not deny the distinctive place and priority of the ‘lost sheep of Israel,’ but she claims a place at the table of God’s blessing as well. Her ‘great faith’ stands in stark contrast to the ‘little faith’ demonstrated by Peter (14:31). She is in fact an exemplar of faith for the disciples—thought she is a woman a Gentile, and even a despised Canaanite.”

[xx] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “As the story unfolds the Canaanite woman exemplifies the great faith that Jesus does not find among his hometown folks, or the religious leaders, or the crowds, or even the disciples.”

[xxi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 202. “Her boldness, persistence, and remarkable faith empower the Canaanite woman to cross the boundaries that circumscribe here. In a sense, she empowers Jesus to do the same. Who can doubt that the love and compassion of God extends to one such as this?”

[xxii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 203. “The circle Jesus drew around the lost sheep of Israel is now expanding as he crosses the line into Gentile territory and encounters this Canaanite woman whose faith is so great.”

[xxiii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 262. “Quique: “As I see it, there are two Jesuses here: the mortal Jesus who devoted himself only to the Jews because he was a Jew, and the resurrected Jesus, who’s for everybody, who’s international.”

[xxiv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 261-262. “I said: ‘On another occasion, when Jesus praised the faith of a Roman centurion, in Capernaum, he said that later many foreigners would come from the East and the West to sit down at the banquet of the kingdom of heaven. There are no longer dogs, only children; we are all brothers and sisters. And the bread of Jesus Christ is for all to share…”

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What Now?: Not Replaced or Forsaken

“‘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

Over the course of 8 chapters, Paul crafted a biblical and theological account of the union of the Roman believers amongst themselves and with God by faith in Christ and by the Power of the Holy Spirit. He demonstrated that they are the adopted children of God, they are siblings, and , they are a family, thus they are the body of Christ: one, unified, grown together, all of them foreordained, called, justified and glorified. According to Paul and the first 8 chapters of his letter to the Romans, there is no need for infighting between the Gentil Christians and the Jewish Christians because they are family, for crying out loud! [Said like a parent quelling the incessant bickering of their children on summer break.] Paul leveled the playing field with faith, removing an over emphasis on law-obedience and a complete disregard for law-observance. These Roman Christians—every single one—are the beloved of God who loved them first. None can claim the superior way to do this thing called church and the life of faith as representatives of Christ in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In chapter 9, Paul, swept up in the good news of God’s work in Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit, reflects on his siblings who have not heard their name called by Christ. While this reflection will inevitably open a discussion on how God’s grace and the proclamation of the gospel can be resisted, we must stay here with Paul in his inner grief and outer agony over the disbelief of his Jewish siblings who follow not this way.

Romans 9:1-5

I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie—while my conscience bears witness to me by the Holy Spirit—there is great grief for me and incessant anguish for my heart. For I was praying that I myself to be accursed and excommunicated from Christ on behalf of my siblings, my kindred according to the flesh (vv1-3)

Paul’s heart and soul are broken over his kindred who currently reject Christ. At this point in Christian history, “the followers of the way” are still tightly connected to their Jewish origin (hence the need for a letter to be sent to the Romans). Paul is writing from his heartfelt and faithful position that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, the one who does and will (through those who follow the Christ by faith by the power of the Holy Spirit) right the wrongs of the world, the wrongs ushered in by Adam and Eve’s transgression against God’s law and disregard for God’s promise. Therefore, he painfully desires his siblings to follow this Messiah, Jesus the Christ of Nazareth, this man who is God. What he doesn’t know is that church history will find ample means to use these verses against the Jewish people, not only oppressing and ostracizing them but even attempting genocide.[ii] Paul never meant for these verses to be used as artillery against his siblings; this an emotionally charged[iii] moment that Paul shares with the Christians in Rome (esp. a predominantly Gentile congregation harboring animosity toward their Jewish Christian siblings[iv]). We must tread delicately and cautiously, refusing the tendency to cultivate violent doctrine and threatening dogma elevating Christians and Christianity above and as a replacement for Paul’s siblings according to the flesh.[v] For Paul and the thrust of Romans up to this moment in the letter, God calls and when God calls God doesn’t uncall.[vi] In this vulnerable moment, Paul knows his siblings in circumcision are still called, still God’s beloved…

They, They are Israelites, theirs is the adoption as children and the glory and the covenants and the institution of the mosaic law and the ministration of God and the promises; theirs is the patriarchs and out of them Christ according to the flesh, the one who is over all, God[/Christ be[vii]] blessed into the ages. Amen (vv.4-5).

Considering both the flow of chapter 8 and the fact that Paul was just caught up in Gospel fervor, doesn’t it make sense that he’d then consider his siblings according to the flesh?[viii] Doesn’t it make sense that the rapture he just felt would solicit a grief so powerful and anguish so strong that he’d turn immediately to consider his siblings who are not following Christ?[ix] In this light, Paul considers the faithfulness of God.[x] Thus, this isn’t about Christians replacing Jewish people as God’s people or the elevation of the “followers of the way” above the followers of not this way.[xi] Rather, it is about God’s historical activity coinciding with God’s current activity in foreordaining, calling, justifying, and glorifying this motley crew of faithful followers of Christ; the God of today is the same God of yesterday[xii] who called, covenanted, lead, liberated, sustained, gave the law to, and glorified the children of Abraham according to the flesh.

For Paul, these Roman “followers of the way” must never forget that both the Christ and their new covenant are sourced from the Jewish people. All of the covenants (even the new one) find their origin in the Torah and the Prophets (new covenant promises: Deut 30:6, Jer 31:31-34 and Ez 36:26-27); into these covenants (even the new one) the Roman Christians are adopted into by faith in Christ apart from any deed.[xiii] Thus, they cannot boast in the new covenant being theirs alone.[xiv] God elects and God calls; Paul has just finished writing this truth. Thus, this electing and calling holds for the Jewish people who were elected and called before these Roman followers of the way.[xv]

Conclusion

In these few verses, Paul shares and communicates his love for his siblings according to the flesh to the Romans; they are pulled into Paul’s love and, thus, God’s love because they are called to love those whom God loves.[xvi] And this is the whole point, right? Those who love what God loves are those who please God, and those who please God are saved even if they so wish to be accursed and separated from Christ so that others can be saved.[xvii]

As it was for those whose ears were the first to hear this letter, so it is for us, so many ears later. Being foreordained, called, justified, and glorified by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is not about recreating the hierarchies and structures of oppression and alienation of the kingdom of humanity. Rather, it’s about participating in the reign of God, bringing God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation to everyone. Thus, if this is true that we Christians are the adopted children of God by faith, shouldn’t we not only look like our adoptive parent but also prefer God’s will over our own, shouldn’t we be transformed through prayer and the presence of the Spirit into those who represent God and those who love whom and what God loves? We should so desire all to experience God’s grace and mercy, forgiveness and unconditional love that we’d be willing to ditch our status so that those over there who are convinced they are abandoned by God would be convinced otherwise.

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

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 155. “In [Paul’s] time, the followers of Jesus had not yet become thoroughly Gentile and separated completely from Judaism. He did not know, and he could not foresee, that Christianity and Judaism would eventually define themselves in contrast to each other, that Christianity would become the religion of the empire, and that Christians would use that power to persecute the Jews.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 156.

[iv] Lancaster, Romans, 156. Many reasons why he might be stressing this point, even “A mostly Gentile community that has been without its Jewish brothers and sisters for some times might be leaning toward the idea that the followers of Jesus should all be Gentile.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 155. “The best way to learn from him is not simply to accept his description of the Jewish situation that he knew and hoped for, but to listen carefully to what he has to say about God.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 155. “His emphasis on God’s faithfulness to those who are called according to God’s purpose leads directly into the question of God’s faithfulness to Isreal, the people who were called according to God’s purpose long before Jesus Christ.”

[vii] LW25:80 Luther “…[Christ] be blessed forever.”

[viii] LW25:379 “From this text it is very clear that love is found not only in sweetness and delight, but also in the greatest sorrow and bitterness. Indeed it rejoices and delights in bitterness and sorrow, because it regards the misery and sufferings of others as if they were its own.”

[ix] LW25:380 “In the fifth place, the whole order of the text indicates that he is speaking with most fervent zeal about their salvation. For he wants to bring Christ to them, which he certainly was not doing then. For that reason he swore a most sacred oath, because it seems incredible that a man would desire to be damned in order that the damned might be saved.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 156. “He had just affirmed that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, but what about the Jews who do not follow Jesus? Can their lack of belief in Jesus as Messiah separate them from God’s love?…Rather, he wrestles with the faithfulness of God to Israel in light of what he has said about God’s faithfulness so far. God’s faithfulness demonstrates God’s righteousness, so his argument is showing the righteousness of God.”

[xi] LW25:79 “For he who ridicules and is pleased with the damnation of his neighbor and says that he loves his neighbor, he is adding a lie to his hatred.”

[xii] LW25:79 “In their obstinacy he has seen in effect what he already knew with his intellect, namely, that it is not the righteousness of him who runs but the imputation of God, who is merciful, which saves men.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 158. “All these things that belong to Israel make Israel a people to be honored, not scorned. Furthermore, by stating they ‘belong’ to Israel, Paul is not suggesting that they have been transferred from Israel to someone else. Rather, as he will go on to argue, Gentiles are given a way to participate in them.”

[xiv] Lancaster, Romans, 157. “…the new covenant is open to the Gentiles but does not ‘belong’ to them.”

[xv] LW25:80

[xvi] LW25:381 “…to those who truly love God with a filial love and friendship which does not arise out of nature but only from the Holy Spirit, these words are most beautiful and testimonies of a perfect example. For such men freely offer themselves to the entire will of God, even to hell and eternal death, if that is what God wills, so that His will maybe fully done. Therefore they seek absolutely nothing for themselves.”

[xvii] LW25:381 “For he wills what God wills; therefore he pleases God. And if he pleases God, he is loved by Him; and if loved, then saved.”

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What Now?: Liberated Unto Life and Love

“‘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

Last week we looked at Romans 6:1-11 and saw how Paul, using baptism and faith, demonstrates that we cannot voluntarily re-yoke ourselves to sin and the death, indifference, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity. We are grown together with Christ in both his death and, thus, his resurrection through our identification by faith with Christ (and his death thus his resurrection). Being grown together provokes the imagery of grafting: we are grafted onto the branch of Jesse who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this man who is God. For us who are justified with God by faith in Christ apart from deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are forbidden from using our new spiritual liberation in a way that participates in furthering indifference, death, and captivity (intentionally); as those who are justified, we are not grafted onto and drafted into God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the neighbor to the glory of God.

Here, in the second half of Romans 6, we get our second μὴ γένοιτο! Also, we receive Paul’s profound insights about what it means to be the recipients of divine liberation as those who believe. We are not, according to Paul, free to return to our old ways and old patterns and the patterns of the kingdom of humanity. We are enslaved to God’s righteousness made known in Christ and proclaimed and promoted by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, in the second half of chapter 6, we see that our liberation in and with God is a liberation that sets us on a different path from our society and culture: we are liberated from ourselves for others and not from others for ourselves. We are not our own, we are God’s beloved children, siblings of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit and are, thusly, drafted into God’s divine mission and heavenly revolution, on earth as it is in heaven.

Romans 6:12-23

Based on what was written in vv 1-11, Paul begins the second half of Romans 6 with two prohibitions and a command/exhortation,

Therefore do not let sin be ruler in your mortal body for the purpose of subordinating it to its various[ii] impulses, and do not present your limbs as offensive weapons of unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as living out of death and your limbs as offensive weapons of righteousness for God (vv12-13).

For Paul, and based on what he explained above in vv1-11, the logical conclusion of being liberated from sin is not a backward movement but a forward trajectory where the entire person (limbs and all) is used to bring glory to God in the world. Rather than using one’s liberation and limbs for destruction and death, the Christian, for Paul, is liberated to act both defensively and offensively in and for construction and life. By refusing sin to rule in the mortal body, the corresponding sinful impulses are quieted and are refused opportunity to find footing[iii] (defense); by presenting oneself as the living and being rescued from death, the believer can use their limbs as weapons for the glory of God[iv] (offense).[v]

Thus, why Paul then says, For your sin will not rule [unless you let it[vi]] over [you], for you are not under law but under grace (v14). Here, Paul quickly correlates his earliest arguments in Romans to his argument here about the relationship of the believer to the old sinful person. As the believer is no longer defined by obedience to the law but rather is defined by God’s gift of grace received by faith, so, too, is the believer defined not by sin and its rule and impulses but by the power of God living in them by faith[vii] anchoring them to the ground of the living.[viii] The law, in and through Christ’s death and resurrection, has been put back in its proper place: not as a divine tool to condemn humans, but as a divine gift for humans to use to love their neighbor and bring glory to God (original intent); as the law is put back in its place and stripped of its power to condemn, sin itself loses ground because sin thrives where humans are convinced they are justified by the law and their own deeds and not by God’s word of promise and faith clinging to the promise.[ix]

This is why Paul then says,

What then? Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Hell/ck no! Have you not perceived that if any of you present yourself [as] obedient slaves, you are slaves whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness [through faith]? Now, thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin but you obeyed out of [your] hearts toward that which you were handed over to according to the rule of the gospel; now being liberated from sin, you were brought under subjection for righteousness (vv15-18)

In other words, what Paul is saying here, is that the Christian, though liberated is not an autonomous person—meaning, the believer is not a law unto themselves, liberated to do whatever they want to do at whatever expense to their neighbor and to God’s glory. Taking a cue from Martin Luther and his treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, the Christian is liberated from themselves for others/their neighbor to the glory of God. This notion rubs against the orientation of the person in the kingdom of humanity who believes that they are liberated from others/their neighbor for themselves. For Paul, there is no such thing as a liberation unto the self that is liberation in the true sense. Either you are a slave of sin and are free to serve sin and death, or you are a slave of God (righteousness) and are free to serve God and life. The language Paul uses in these verses highlights that there is no neutral ground here[x] and there is no blank slate; for Paul, you are either serving sin or you are serving righteousness, you are voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to sin or voluntarily selling yourself into slavery to righteousness, [xi] you are either being molded by sin or molded by the gospel[xii] and being made more Christlike,[xiii] an argument that is both highly logical and contemporary to his context (which is why Paul then says, I am speaking in a way common to humans… (v19a) and follows with a re-exhortation[xiv] toward active participation in righteousness and away from active participation in unrighteousness (v19b-c).

Wrapping up chapter 6, Paul writes,

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free/unrestrained for (had no claim to) righteousness. So then what fruit did you have at that time about which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things [is] death. But now after being liberated from sin being brought under subjection to God the fruit you have [is] sanctification, and the end [is] eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the favor/grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv20-23)

Paul presses home the point, when we are slaves to sin, we have no claim[xv] to divine righteousness and find ourselves molded to sin and its various impulses and held captive by its ruling over us (a rule ending in eternal death).[xvi] However, when we are liberated from sin by faith to be formed by the Gospel of God into Christlikeness where we receive divine eternal life.[xvii],[xviii] This means that believers, who are now slaves of God and of divine righteousness, serve the reign of God and reject the things of the kingdom of humanity that promote sin, its impulses, and its wage: indifference, captivity, and death (now and in the future).[xix] Believers, as those who have been handed over to the incarnate Word of God and are being formed by the law of love and the gospel, are forever altered,[xx] unable, according to Paul, to turn back to a life of upholding the status quo, supporting systems and ideologies that thrive in fear and anger, and promoting institutions and structures that promote death.[xxi]

Conclusion

We are free and liberated by faith and God’s grace revealed in Christ Jesus, this man who is God. However, we are not liberated unto autonomy or ease[xxii]; liberation from sin and death unto righteousness and life puts a “claim” on us,[xxiii] puts a demand on us: the law of love. Being encountered by Divine Love, reborn from Divine Love, and nourished and sustained by Divine Love means that this Divine Love puts a demand on us because Divine Love can acknowledge the demand and the claim and meet the Beloved there in the midst. To follow Christ is to endure the trial of the journey out of the Jordan to the Cross; Christians who are disciples of Christ will have lives decorated with the accolades of death and resurrection, of self-sacrifice and self-receiving, of solidarity and identity with the neighbor (esp. the oppressed). Daily the Christian will, by the grace and mercy of God, take a long hard look in the mirror, confess their complicity and captivity to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, try to be different in this world, as one scholar put it, “Being under grace, then, places us under continuing revolutionary struggle,”[xxiv] privately and publicly, just as it was for Christ—the one who was truly liberated from himself for the wellbeing of the entire world.

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

[ii] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 110. “Epithumia could include desire for many pleasurable things, including food and comfort. The control of desire was n important topic of reflection in the ancient world that resulted over time in identifying many types of passions that could get out f control Anger and fear, for instance, could be as powerful as lust.”

[iii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Spiritual well-being has to include freedom from the temptations into which the passions lead us. With no passions, sin cannot find a place to enter.”

[iv] LW 25:320 “Thus the apostle wants to say that the members of the body must not be surrendered to ‘sin,’ that is, to evil lust and to the tinder of sin, for in obeying sin they become weapons of unbelief, and out of believers they make unbelievers in that they perform the orks of unbelievers according to the lusts of sin. But we must obey God, in order that ‘our members may be instruments of righteousness to God’ …that is of the life of faith and life.”

[v] Lancaster, Romans, 110. “If Paul’s concern about epithumia is limited to sex, we will miss the many ways that sin threatens to take control of our bodies. He reminds us that by being set free from sin, we no longer have to let those desires rule our lives. In fact, we are expected to present ourselves to God, thereby accepting God’s dominion of grace and receiving God’s grace to resist their controlling power. “

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “Never our own masters, we must choose whom to serve—sin or righteousness.”

[vii] LW 25:316 “Therefore sin has dominion over all those who are under the Law…For he who is without Christ is still in his sins, even if he does good works.”

[viii] Lancaster, Romans, 111. “Grace exerts shattering power as it makes the old person die so that the new person can live.”

[ix] LW 25:316 “For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “We see that our choice is between death and life, with no middle ground.”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 114. “It was common for a person to sell oneself into slavery for economic reasons or event for eventual social advancement if serving someone of high social importance. This voluntary practice of putting oneself into servitude lies behind Paul’s explanation about presenting oneself as an obedience slave (6:16).”

[xii] LW 25:317 “For the wisdom of the flesh is opposed to the Word of God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore it is necessary that the wisdom of the flesh be changed and that it give up its form and take on the form of the Word. This takes place when through faith it takes itself captive and strips off its own crown, conforms itself to the Word, and believes the Word to be true and itself to be false.”

[xiii] Lancaster, Romans, 115. “In other words, along with the enslavement image is also an image of being molded into the likeness of Christ. Obeideicne, then, is allowing oneself to be poured into the teaching, and so take the shape of Christ. Modern minds may find it easer to embrace this image than one of slavery.”

[xiv] LW 25:321 “For through the terms ‘sanctification’ and ‘cleanness’ he is trying to convey the same concept namely, that the body should be pure, but no with just any kind of purity, but with that which comes form within, from the spirit of sanctifying faith.”

[xv] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The only freedom we have in the dominion of sin is freedom from righteousness: that is, freedom from being in right standing with God.”

[xvi] LW 25:53fn12 “That ‘sin reigns’ and ‘to obey’ sin is to consent to and do what sin desires.”

[xvii] LW 25:54fn16 “That is, you have been delivered from the form of error into the form of the Gospel…For the Word is not changed, but we are, and we yield to Him…For ‘the Word became flesh,’ so that we might be made the Word.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “if we obey sin we get what we deserve: our wages are death. If we obey God, we receive God’s free gift, grace, which bring us into the relationship with God that means eternal life.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “If honor and shame are connected to social status, and if faith in Jesus Christ overturns the usual standards for honor and shame, then their participation in the entire social system is something to be ashamed of. A system of exploitation that assigns personal value hierarchically and treats those on the lower end of that scale as worthless is s a system of death.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 116-117. “Living in the dominion of grace obedient to righteousness calls for a completely different way of life.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 116. “The followers of Jesus may not fully be extricated form that system, but where once they participated without questioning the system, now they are ashamed of it. Where once these followers of Jesus may have worked dot position themselves as high on the scale as they could, perhaps treating those below them poorly in order to get an advantage of over them, now they understand how pointless and harmful that behavior is.”

[xxii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “Being under grace does not give Christians an easy life. Instead, grace puts us under pressure between its promise and its demand.”

[xxiii] Lancaster, Romans, 117. “The very power that affirms us also makes claims on us.”

[xxiv] Lancaster, Romans, 117.

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What Now?: New Creatures by God’s Grace

“‘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

Continuing with our journey through Romans, we find ourselves in the first half of chapter 6. Here, Paul is addressing claims coming from the Roman church, specifically claims that if believers sin more than God’s grace abounds more. Paul is clear here, while we are justified by faith apart from works, we must not intentionally pursue sinful behaviors that drag and disrupt God’s revolution of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God. (Plus, we will have enough unintentional sin in our lives, we don’t need to pursue it!) We are, according to Paul, new creatures born of the waters of Baptism and are now defined by love, life, and liberation, and therefore voluntarily re-yoking ourselves to that which is indifference, that which is death, that which is captivity is not only anathema but also cut off.  

Romans 6:1b-11

Paul begins with a refutation of what is considered (by some scholars[ii]) to be a quotation from some at Rome, What then will we say? May we continue to sin, with the result that grace might superabound? Hell/ck no! We who have died to sin, how will we still live in it? (vv1-2). The question Paul asks in return is the driving theme of the chapter. It is also, especially for us, a crucial question for those who are justified by faith apart from works. Rather than the event of justification being a license to intentionally sin, it is an exhortation to live a new life. It is a gift given to be enjoyed—this is what the incarnate word is. Remember, back in chapter four, Paul gave a crystal-clear explanation of the gospel summarized by the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, [Jesus] was handed over for the sake of our trespasses and was raised for the sake of our acquittal/being pronounced justified/righteous (4:25). If we claim to believe in Christ, then we’ve come to the end of ourselves and have entered union with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. To intentionally return to the behaviors of the kingdom of humanity is to deny this belief and faith, it is to deny Christ and what Christ achieved for us because it is contrary to the very grace of God.[iii] In a sense, the claim Paul refutes makes God’s grace a human endeavor; for Paul, this is a μὴ γένοιτο! In the economy of God’s activity in the world and, especially, toward humanity, emphasis cannot fall on humans sinning to bring God’s grace. Rather, it must fall on God’s gracious activity in giving us God’s grace. Those who have been saved from the life of the dead are ushered into the life of the living and there’s no going back and certainly no human-centered way to make God’s grace abound more than it already is in Christ by the power of the Spirit. This is why Paul can then write,

Or are you ignorant that whosoever of us was baptized into Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from death by the glory of Abba God, even as also we might walk in the newness of life (vv3-4).

Paul then explains more,

For if we have become grown together with [Jesus] in the likeness of his death, but also we will be [grown together with him in the likeness of his] resurrection. Knowing this that our old person was crucified together with [Christ] so that the body of sin might be abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who dies has been declared to be righteous from sin (vv5-7).

Paul anchors the believer’s new life not in the old life and person of the kingdom of humanity, but in the new person who is of the reign of God and who identifies (by faith) with Christ’s death and resurrection. This new person is born from the trifold dipping of Christian baptism, marking the fullness of the invested Godhead and our identification with Christ in the tomb.[iv] For Paul, this is all the believer needs to cling to. The believer does not need to take matters into their own hands and cause God’s grace to manifest; God’s grace is (already) made manifest in their lives (in its fullness) because they believe. Now, it is also shared out and into the world as they proceed to live into their resurrected new life and leave the old person and body of sin to the kingdom of humanity (like: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” Mt. 8:22, Lk. 9:60). These ones are grown together with (bonded to) Christ,[v] just as they were previously bonded to and grown together with sin and the old person. Therefore, they cannot return to the old way, old life, and old person. Again, Paul is refuting any notion that believers must return to sin to make God’s grace abound; the believer causes God’s grace to abound in the world as they live into their new life by the power of the Spirit and by faith in Christ and in union with God.[vi] (But they cannot cause God’s grace to become more present in their own lives than it already is by returning to sin.) Thus, believers become midwives of God’s grace by God’s grace and are encouraged and exhorted to go further and deeper into the world bringing God’s love and grace to all, especially the oppressed. Anyone who identifies with Christ by faith and baptism has identified with Christ in his death and will identify with him in his resurrection; herein is our justification: for the one who dies is declared righteous from sin. Sin is no longer in control and no longer boss (so, too, the law[vii]); God is now in charge of this new life, and Paul exhorts the Romans to live as such going forward and not backward. Saying,

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from death, dies no longer, death no longer rules him. For he, he died, once for all he, he died to sin; but he, he lives, he, he lives to God. And in this way, you, you reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and living to/for God in Christ Jesus (vv8-11).

Conclusion

For Paul,[viii] Christ is the sacrament[ix]; it is Christ with whom we identify in both the waters of baptism and in the broken bread of the eucharist. It is not that water and bread are significant in themselves, but through them we come into contact with the dead and risen Christ; in partaking in these sacraments we identify in Christ’s three-day death and in his body broken; and as we identify so here, we can and will identify with Christ in his new life and bodily resurrection (today and tomorrow, present and future).[x] Further, to identify with Christ in his death—sacramentally and spiritually—means that we, too, like Christ our elder brother, are caused to be dead to sin, as in, sin no longer has dominion over us,[xi] eternal death,[xii] too, is rendered impotent for those who believe. (Because of Christ, death is dead, captivity is held captive, and indifference has met is own cold fate.[xiii],[xiv]) Sin’s stain and its consequence, death, are forever removed from the life of the believer;[xv] they are new creatures[xvi] (forever and daily[xvii]) no longer defined by sin but by God’s grace, no longer under the dominion of sin but under the reign of Christ.[xviii] No longer defined by death, but by life; no longer defined by captivity, but liberation; no longer defined by indifference but by love.[xix] We do not need to return…Nay! We cannot return to the sinful existence of the old person, of the kingdom of humanity; [xx] for God’s grace enters in anew every morning with God’s mercy.

Thus, we walk in all this newness, on the move because the Christian life is on the move because it is defined by Christ the gospel, defined by God and God’s Holy Spirit all of whom are always on the move looking for and seeking the beloved.[xxi]As those who identify with Christ by faith, we also identify with whom he identified: the lost, the unheard, the unvoiced, the ignored, the pushed off and pushed aside, the ones the society of the kingdom of humanity has deemed unworthy of love.

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

[ii] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 50. “…as falsifiers understand the passage, when they say, ‘Let us do evil,’ that is, let us commit sin, ‘That good may come’ (Rom. 3:8), that is, that grace may abound.”

[iii] LW 25: 50. “By no means, because this idea is absolutely contrary to the work of grace,..”

[iv] LW 25: 50-51. “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus…”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 108. “The kind of participation that baptism makes possible is an incorporation into Christ that is a secure joining for a thorough sharing, a kind of bonding.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “For Paul, baptism is s a clear sign of leaving the dominion of sin and entering the dominion of grace.”

[vii] LW 25: 308. “But he over whom sin reigns, no matter how he resists sin, is still under the Law and not under grace.”

[viii] LW 25: 310. “thus in this passage the apostle is speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ insofar as they refer to the sacrament, but not to the example.”

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

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 108. “By being buried with Jesus, we are made participants not only in his death but also in his resurrection. To be united with him in death means also being united with him in resurrection (6:5).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “[Paul] describes sin’s power as ruling power; sin has dominion over us, enslaving us to its purposes and exercising influence over us as a kind of lordship. When we are under the lordship of sin, we are bound to submit to its influence.”

[xii] LW 25: 310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good.it is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated from corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life, but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life.”

[xiii] LW 25: 311. “Just as the death of death means to act against death, which is the same things as life, so the sin of sin is righteousness.”

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

[xv] LW 25: 310. “This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostles says here [v9]…”

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

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

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 107-108. “Those who have died to sin because they have been baptized into Jesus’ death. By participating in the death of Jesus, the follower of Jesus is dying to the lordship of sin and accepting the lordship of Christ.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 108-109. “Dying to sin means that a person dies to an old way of life, and participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus means that a person enters a new way of life. The one who was crucified conquered death, and because we share in his victory, we are no longer enslaved to sin….The proper commitment to the new dominion in which we are privileged to live is to give up sin and live for God.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “To follow Jesus Christ means leaving the dominion of sin and living in the dominion of grace. If that is the case, then the follower of Jesus can no longer do the bidding of sin. By changing dominions, a person has changed lords and loyalties.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 109. “…new life in Christ is not static…Rather to walk in newness of life means to be on the move, to be ever attentive to what it means to live to God and to exercise our allegiance daily.”

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(re)Called and (re)Commissioned

“‘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

We are all called to participate in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. Everyone who can say, by the Spirit speaking through them, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3-13), is commissioned by the same Spirit to represent Jesus in the world by working for the wellbeing of the neighbor to the glory of God. Our call (individually and corporately) is a full Trinitarian affair; every person of the Godhead is not only invested but deeply involved in the life of us Christians (individually and corporately), breathing life and energy into and through our words and deeds of love and loving service born from faith. We never have to go it alone, because we are never out there fending for ourselves. The God who flung the stars and the planets into their courses has wed God’s self to us (Eph. 5), fulfilling the long promise that God will never leave or forsake God’s people.

But sometimes, we forget that our calling and our commissioning are of God. We take matters into our own hands, we confuse our thoughts and ideas for God’s thoughts and ideas, and we strive to accomplish tasks promoting the kingdom of humanity rather than the reign of God. And as we wander away, forgetting the source and substance of our call and commission, we end up hurting people, especially hurting those desperate to know the love and care of God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer.

The good news is that God calls us back from our wandering, putting in our paths teachers and leaders who remind us not only about our call and commission, but remind us—especially—that God is our ground and source. Today, God is bringing to St. Luke’s a great and capable leader and teacher, Liz, to remind you, the beautiful body of Christ, that not only does God love you always and forever, but God is your sure foundation. Today we celebrate the Great Commission that defines the lives of all Christians, and we celebrate God’s specific commissioning of Liz to help love and lead you for the wellbeing of others to the glory of God.

Matthew 28:16-20

Matthew tells his audience, Now the eleven disciples traveled into Galilee toward the mountain where Jesus appointed for them and they saw him and worshipped him, but some were of two minds (vv. 16-17). The disciples, the eleven left after Judas’s departure, follow the proclamation of the women; they are on their way to Galilee as the women told them to do, they believed the testimony of the women.[ii] (The women traveled to the tomb on Easter morning and were commanded by both the angel from heaven and Jesus himself to go and tell the disciples to travel to Galilee where they would see Jesus (Mt. 28:1-10).) The newly minted eleven are moved to obey these women, trusting that what they witnessed was true;[iii] so, they traveled to Galilee.

When Jesus is there and meets them, the disciples worship him…but not all of them. The word translated as “doubted” has more nuance to it than just intellectual “doubting”; some were of “two minds” about Jesus being in front of them, they didn’t know how to respond to this familiar Jesus who was currently unknown to them in his risen form.[iv] Caught like deer in headlights, some of the eleven froze…just like you and I would do no matter what great faith we think we have. Their hearts thudded, was it really him? Their minds short-circuited, what do we do now? Some sunk in reverence, some had to let reality sink in.

With care and concern, bringing comfort and assurance,[v] Jesus moves towards his beloveds. Matthew tells his audience,

And Jesus approached and spoke to them saying, ‘All authority in heaven and upon the earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of Abba God, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to guard over all that I commanded you. And, behold!, I, I am with you every day until the consummation of the ages (vv.18-20).

Jesus stands before these humble eleven of mixed minds and assures them: I AM. In the fullest way possible, Jesus tells them that not only has he been vindicated by God[vi] being risen from the dead, defeating death, but that this Son of Man and Son of God is now in possession of all the authority in heaven and upon the earth. His authority is fully established.[vii] TL/DR: nothing, absolutely nothing can defeat him. And in this unalterable celestial and earthly, cosmic,[viii] reality born in the risen Christ is another unalterable reality of both celestial and earthly proportions: the disciples (even though only eleven now) are restored to their place alongside Jesus as his representatives. Jesus’s “task-force” can continue to proclaim the gospel[ix] and they are commanded to do so unto the ends of the earth, proclaiming the good news not only to Israel but to all the nations including (but not limited to[x]) the Gentiles.[xi] In these shocked and humbled (very) human disciples, Jesus’s mission—God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation to bring all the world into God’s love[xii]—goes on.[xiii],[xiv],[xv]

How are the disciples to continue God’s mission made known in Jesus the Christ? By making disciples. Not by forcing people to believe (!!) but by proclaiming the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and raised and Christ’s new law of love.[xvi],[xvii] There’s no other message that participates in the furthering of God’s mission than the gospel, the proclamation of Christ. The Disciples must begin here and always begin again here at this basic message, which is the foundation of their lives, of their calling, and especially of their commissioning. Now, how they make disciples falls to two actions: baptizing and teaching. Less about “growing the church” and more about furthering the calling and commissioning of more disciples[xviii] who will, one by one and together, cause the church by the power of the Spirit.[xix] John’s baptism becomes the gateway for all people to enter into union with God as a result of faith; [xx] Jesus’s law of love will be distributed far and wide, letting it usher in the reign of God across lands and through nations, overturning the abuses and violences of the kingdom of humanity. On Good Friday, the disciples thought this Christ event was over and dead in the ground; but now, here, in this moment with Christ, what looked like an end, is a beginning…the commencement of their calling and commissioning to further God’s reign and righting wrongs.[xxi]

In this calling and commissioning are embedded two new realities for the disciples. First, is the trinitarian formula Jesus announces to them; the second is that Jesus will be with them always. According to Jesus, new disciples are to be baptized into the full name of the God-head, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer. Jesus, the Son of God and of humanity, the one who was crucified and who is now standing before them, is to be counted as God and thus Jesus’s name participates in the full name of God, the Trinity.[xxii] In other words, Jesus is God, just as the Holy Spirit is God and Abba God is God. (The I am is no mistake here.) Following this is the promise the gospel closes with:[xxiii] I, I am with you every day until the consummation of the ages. It is no mistake that Matthew closes his gospel with this promise, considering he opened it (1:21) with the announcement that Jesus was Emmanuel “God with us”;[xxiv] all of Matthew’s gospel points to the continual presence of God among God’s people.[xxv] Without the power of Christ to call them, commission them, and compel them, the disciples cannot carry out their making of disciples; this is more than just a comforting thought, it is the very source of their lives and living as sent and powered disciples.[xxvi] Because of Jesus’s resurrection and the sending of the Spirit, Jesus can be with his disciples now and forever unlike when he walked the earth with them before Good Friday.[xxvii] God is with us, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Conclusion

The calling and commissioning of the disciples is also our calling and commissioning (or, rather, recalling and recommissioning). This morning, we are called back to the root and ground of our lives as Christ’s disciples who are to live in such a way to proclaim God’s love in Christ to others and to the glory of God. We are to represent Christ in our words and deeds, knowing that we are not out here bumbling about alone; we are enveloped in the full love and presence of the Trinity, reminded of this fact every Sunday through our common worship together and in the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We do not need to make up a message; we already have one and it’s revolutionary. We do not need a new law; we already have one and it is built on and from love. We do not need to keep trying to find ourselves; we are found in Christ and given new life in him. We do not need to search for keys to unlock the captives; we have been given the key to bring liberation to all the oppressed and marginalized. This morning, hear your call and commissioning anew.

And, to Liz, you, too, are summoned this morning to help lead and instruct in the name of our Triune God. These here are now your charge (along with AliceMarie); to care for them, to bring comfort where there is affliction, and affliction where there is comfort, and, when necessary, to get into a little bit of good trouble as you participate as God’s called and commissioned leader of this humble church in Delta.

[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), 337. “The disciples…are following the instructions given for them to the women from the angel and from Jesus himself. Apparently they believed these women.”

[iii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 337-338. “Though they have not seen the risen Lord, they see the effect of the risen Lord on these women.”

[iv] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1112. “More likely it indicates that they did not know how to respond to Jesus in this new situation, where he was familiar and yet now different… [like transfiguration]”

[v] France, Matthew, 1112. Jesus “approached” Jesus came to his frightened disciples (assurance); Jesus “speaks” restoration of broken relations; and Jesus “says” words pushing their failures in the past, “swallowed up in the much greater reality of the mission to which they are now called.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 1108. “Jesus himself, risen form the dead, is now revealed in all his glory as the vindicated and enthroned Son of Man, a status which he has hitherto spoken of only as a future expectation, but which has now become a reality.”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 338. “Now there is no doubt of Jesus’ authority. God has raised him from the dead; it is a validation of his life and ministry. Now he announces ‘All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me.”

[viii] France, Matthew, 1113. “…now what had been a vision for the future, albeit the imminent future, has become present reality. The risen Jesus, vindicated over those who tied to destroy him, is now established as the universal sovereign, and his realm embraces not only the whole earth, which was to be the dominion of the ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel’s vision, but heaven as well.”

[ix] France, Matthew, 1107-1108. “In these few words many of the most central themes of the gospel reach their resolution and culmination. The preparation of the Twelve as Jesus’ task force, which had apparently ended in irreversible disaster in 26:56, is now resumed as they (or rather elven of them) are restored to their position of trust and responsibility and given the final instructions for fulfilling the emission for which they were originally called in 10:1-15.”

[x] France, Matthew, 1114. “The commission is of course to go far beyond Israel, but that does not require that Israel be excluded.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 338. “His command to the disciples is that they should ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Greek panda ta ethē). In much of Matthew ethnē means the Gentiles. The mission that was only for the ‘lost sheep of Israel’ is now decisively opened to the Gentiles.”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 339. “God’s work with Israel is not abolished or abrogated, it is rather extended outward to others who will be included even as was the Jewish eschatological hope. All will be judged—not on the basis of their religious affiliation or ethnic origin but on the basis of their love of God and neighbor as demonstrated by what they actually do.”

[xiii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 338-339. “The mission to Israel is never abrogated, just as Jesus comes not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”

[xiv] Amy-Jill Levine qtd in Case-Winters, Matthew, 339. “‘It is because the promises to Israel have been fulfilled in Jesus’ mission that the message….can now be proclaimed to the Gentiles.’”

[xv] France, Matthew, 1108.

[xvi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 339. “The outreach to the Gentiles must include the teaching of the law; teaching all nations to obey everything that Jesus, the authoritative interpret of the law, has commanded them (28:20).”

[xvii] France, Matthew, 1118. “…they are to teach not their own ideas, but what Jesus has ‘commanded,’ entellomai, a term which hitherto has been especially associated with the ’commandments’…given by God through Moses. The basis of living as the people of God will henceforth be the new ‘commandments’ give in by Jesus.”

[xviii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 339. “It should be noted that this passage is not about ‘church grown.’ It is about ‘discipling’ (teaching) and baptizing (calling people into ministry).”

[xix] France, Matthew, 1108. “And at the heart of this new community of faith is the risen Jesus himself, as he had said he would be (18:20): they are to be his disciples, obeying his commands, and sustained by his unending presence among them. This new international community will be his ekklēsia (16:18) because it is he who now holds all authority heaven and on earth (an authority greater than that which he was initially offered by Satan and refused, 4:8-10)…”

[xx] France, Matthew, 1108. “The almost imperceptible mustard seed is now about to grow into a mighty tree; the kingdom of heaven is to be established over all the earth. The baptism which John had originally instituted as a symbol of a new beginning for repentant Israel (3:1-12) is now to be extended to people from all nations.”

[xxi] France, Matthew, 1110. “For the disciples, and for Matthew’s readers, this conclusion is in fact a beginning, a commencement.”

[xxii] France, Matthew, 1118. “The human leader of the disciple group has become the rightful object of their worship. And the fact that the three divine persons are spoken of as having a single ‘name’ is a significant pointer toward the trinitarian doctrine of the three person in one God.”

[xxiii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 339.  “The gospel closes with a promise.”

[xxiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 340. “‘I am with you’ is the beginning, middle and ending of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is identified from the beginning as “Emmanuel’ (1:21), which means “God with us.’ Midway in the Gospel Jesus comes to the disciples across the storm tossed sea and addresses them with his assuring presence: ‘“Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid”’ (14:27). Now the promise is given, ‘I will be with you always, to the end of the age.’ It is the final word of the Gospel, and perhaps the only word we really need.”

[xxv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 339. “‘I am with you’ has been a central theme for the Gospel.”

[xxvi] France, Matthew, 1119. “But the presence of Jesus himself among his people…ensures that it is not simply a relationship of formal obedience. In context this assurance is focused not on the personal comfort of the individual disciple but on the successful completion of the mission entrusted to the community as a whole.”

[xxvii] France, Matthew, 1119. “Jesus’ physical presence with his disciples was limited to the period of his earthly life span, but the spiritual presence of the risen Jesus has no such limitation: it is an eternal, divine being that Jesus will be among his obedient people, ‘God with us.’”

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Clothed in Divine Righteousness: Easter Sunday!

“‘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

On Friday, we bore the crushing weight of being utterly exposed; we felt the shame of being stripped down, our few fig leaves ripped from our bodies.[ii] On Friday, we viscerally felt the depth of our fragility,[iii] our unsafety,[iv] our hurt,[v] our lostness,[vi] and our guilt.[vii] On Friday we gazed long in the mirror and what was reflected back terrified us, angered us, grieved us, made us anxious, and was detestable to us; what we saw on Friday was that we are hopeless, helpless, lifeless, groundless, and ruthless creatures who lie to themselves, preferring to kill an innocent man than attend to the infection of the mythology of control we’ve grown quite drunk on. On Friday, we were abandoned to ourselves, left to our errant judgments, and found ourselves held captive in the tomb of arrogance and desperation, tombs we’ve constructed for ourselves, tombs we are unable to escape from because we are so curved in on ourselves. On Friday we were sealed in darkness and left for dead, alienated and isolated from God, from others, and from ourselves.

But then…God.

Today, where there was darkness there is now light, where there was death there is now life. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the heated blanket of the Holy Spirit. God sent death and his siblings packing because nothing stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.

This is the goal and trajectory of God’s love: bringing that which is dead back to life, that which is encased in darkness into the light, that which is curved in on itself and loveless into belovedness. Today the oppressive burial linens of fragility, unsafety, hurt, lostness, and guilt are pulled off and we find ourselves dressed in the divine clothes of divine grace, mercy, kindness, joy, and righteousness. As God calls Jesus from the tomb, so does God call us from our self-imposed tombs. As Jesus is raised to life out of death, so, too, are we raised out of death into new life, new hope, new help, on to a new ground, with new confidence not in ourselves but in God, in love, in life, and in liberation. This morning, in our encounter with the risen Christ, our terror is quelled, our anger is released, our grief met with divine comfort, our anxiety gives way to peace that surpasses all understanding, and our detestable state is exchanged for cherished. And all of this as a gift from God to us through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; all of it dependent on God’s never-stopping, always and forever, unconditional love for us.

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!

Matthew 28:1-10

Matthew opens on the tomb. Unlike the Gospels of Mark and Luke,[viii] there is little movement here. Matthew begins at the tomb with the women Mary already there, Now late on the Sabbath as it was dawning into the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look on the tomb[ix] (v.1). As the women are already there, they know the tomb is sealed because they can see it. They are not planning to do any funeral and burial rituals; for them, what’s done is done. For Matthew, these women are not professing prodigious faith; they are there to confirm that Jesus is dead,[x] secured and sealed in the tomb, the supposed divine mission of God ended. However, God’s ways are higher than human ways: the last shall be first…[xi]

Matthew then tells us,

And, behold!, a great earthquake happened; for an angel of the Lord came down out of heaven and approaching rolled back the stone and was sitting upon it. Now the angel’s appearance was as lightening and their outer robe [was] bright as snow (vv. 2-3).

The Marys who were prepared for darkness and death find themselves immersed in the presence of the divine light, witnessing divine activity overhauling human space and time, folding death in on itself.[xii] As the male guards began shaking and (ironically[xiii]) became as corpses (v.4), the women hold ground through the earthquake caused by the angel’s arrival to roll back the stone.[xiv] Unphased by the men who are now on the ground and, thus, out of the picture,[xv] the angel of God addresses the women,

“You, you do not be afraid! For I have perceived that you are seeking Jesus, the one who has been crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he was laid. And quickly go and tell his disciples, ‘he has been raised from the dead, and, behold!, he goes before you into Galilee, there you will find him.’ Behold! I told you (vv.5-7).

Those who were last at the cross become the first at the tomb;[xvi] those who were last in the economy of the kingdom of humanity become the first in the economy of the reign of God. The discipleship of the risen Jesus does not start with men minding their own business, but with grieving women coming to confirm death; the Marys, for Matthew, become the first witnesses to the resurrection of their beloved Jesus.[xvii] As they look in the tomb, as they see emptiness, as they remember that the stone was there when they arrived,[xviii] the Marys become the first to experience life amidst death. these humble ones get to be the divinely chosen preachers of the good news: Jesus lives![xix] Where they expected to find a dead body already in decay, they find the presence of God and the altering of history forever in the victory of life over death. [xx] And it is about this victory they are commanded to declare to the disciples with the authority of heaven behind them.[xxi]

And so, as quickly as they could, they left … from the tomb with fear and great joy and they ran… (v.8a). Matthew could have stopped here like Mark did in his Gospel; but Matthew doesn’t.[xxii] The women are eager to convey the divine message to Jesus’s disciples (v.8b), but God has another gift to give. Matthew tells us, And, behold!, Jesus encountered the women saying, ‘Rejoice!’ (v.9a). Just in case they might be doubting what just happened, Jesus shows up and greets them. What they saw back at the tomb wasn’t a figment of their imagination; Jesus is raised,[xxiii] Jesus lives.[xxiv] The event is so real, in fact, that they drew near [to Jesus] and held fast his feet and bowed down to him (v.9b). This was no ghost,[xxv] this was no figment of their imagination; Jesus stood before them, talked to them, and they grabbed hold of his feet.

As they are genuflecting, Jesus exhorts them, echoing the words of the angelic messenger of God, “Do not be afraid! Go your way and proclaim to my brothers so that they may go into Galilee, and there they will see me” (v.10). Jesus refers to the disciples as “brothers”; those who failed Jesus, those who betrayed him, those who denied him, those who ran and hid, those who are still hiding, are declared “brothers” and not merely “disciples” [xxvi] Divine victory of life over death eclipses the existential death the disciples are experiencing as they are still held captive in the oppression of darkness, of silence, and of guilt. In the raising of Jesus, God’s mercy, grace, love, kindness, and forgiveness come pouring out of that tomb rather than the stench of decay, decomposition, and death. As Jesus walks the earth in his resurrected state, life, love, and liberation are on the move.

Conclusion

To us who are exposed and found naked, not in control, fragile and hopeless, unsafe and helpless, hurt and lifeless, lost and groundless, and guilty and ruthless we are given, this morning, Christ himself—all of him—so that we never again find ourselves trapped in our self-imposed tombs. For us who find comfort in the consistency of our terror, we received an assurance like the Marys holding Jesus’s feet! For us who find ourselves addicted to our anger, we are beckoned in divine pleasure and given celestial joy through the resurrected Christ, the incarnate word of God’s love for the world. For us who know the weight of grieving, we are heralded into divine comfort in the surety of God’s presence always with us in Christ, the very one who overcame death with life. For us who are suffocating under anxiety, we receive peace that surpasses understanding. For us who find ourselves stuck in detest, we find ourselves cherished.

Today we’re given something completely new,[xxvii] completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. Today, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; today we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the heavenly realm: he is not here; he has been risen! How could we ever live in the old way?

Today, our willful and chaotic self-determination collides with the steady path of Christ. Today we live under the weight that Jesus’s resurrection is not an event isolated to the past or retained for some future time, but is right now.[xxviii] We must hear our summons to go! and proclaim! in word and deed, not only telling but living in such a way that Jesus’s resurrection—thus life’s victory over death—is real for those most threatened by a world on fire, by leaders consumed with their own well-being, by institutions and systems hardwired to consume them. This morning, we, too, are resurrected and called out of our tombs to go and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and to do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.

Today, we live because Jesus is alive, [xxix] we love because Jesus is love, we are liberated because death is no match for life.

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

[ii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[iii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[iv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[v] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[vi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

[vii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7130

[viii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1097. Four distinctive features of Matthew’s account: “…the earthquake, the angel rolling away the stone, the effect on the guards, and the women’s meeting with Jesus himself on their way from the tomb.”

[ix] Τάφος

[x] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “It was not uncommon for friends to come and wait by a tomb incase an apparently dead person should revive. This might continue as far as the third day. The effect of these visits was to confirm death.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “Waiting and watching in sadness, they have become the first witnesses to the resurrection. Once again the last are first. They are also first to worship the risen Lord.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 1099.

[xiii] France, Matthew, 1100. “Note the irony that those assigned to guard the corpse themselves become ‘corpses,’ while the on they guarded is already alive. The attempt at human security has been neutralized, and the guards play no further part in the scene until they have to report back in vv. 11-15.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 1099. “…here the removal of the stone form Jesus’ tomb is attributed not to the earthquake but to the direct action of an angel. Indeed, Matthew’s connective ‘for’ suggest that the quake is itself the result, or at least the context, of the angel’s coming, so that emphasis falls on the angel rather than the earthquake.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 1100.

[xvi] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 336. “‘Last at the cross, first at the tomb,’ the women have come to watch.”

[xvii] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 618. “I: ‘In those times nobody paid much attention to women. And that’s why those women maybe didn’t run any risk, as Laureano says. Their role was only to go and weep and then embalm the body of Jesus. A humble role. But this Gospel assigns them a more important role: they were witnesses to the resurrection.’”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 1097-1098. “The action of the angel in removing the stone from the entrance to the tomb draws attention even more clearly than in the other gospels to the fact that Jesus has already left the tomb, while the stone was still in place.”

[xix] France, Matthew, 1101. “The women are not only themselves the witnesses of the empty tomb, but also the chosen messengers to convey the amazing news to Jesus’ male disciples.”

[xx] Cardenal, Solentiname, 619. “I: ‘The important thing about this story is that they find an empty tomb. They were arriving to embalm a corpse and there wasn’t any corpse.’”

[xxi] France, Matthew, 1101. Angel’s last words to women “reminiscent of the frequent TO formula, ‘The Lord has spoken’….The formula marks an authoritative pronouncement (perhaps even that the agnel speaks for God), and functions now as a call to action. The message has been delivered, and now it is up to the women to act on it.”

[xxii] France, Matthew, 1097. “Matthew’s account of the empty tomb is thus, like his account of the death of Jesus, more dramatic than Mark’s and supplies the surprisingly missing element in Mark 16:1-8, an actual encounter with the risen Jesus.”

[xxiii] France, Matthew, 1098. It’s “…a demonstration that Jesus has risen….What matters to the narrators is not when or how he left, but the simple fact that now, early on Sunday morning ‘he is not here’…”

[xxiv] Cardenal, Solentiname, 619. “Maria: ‘And afterwards he appears before them and shows them that he’s alive.’”

[xxv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 336. “The women ‘took hold of his feet.’ This latter establishes not only their posture of worship but that this resurrection appearance had ‘feet’—this is not a ghost.”

[xxvi] France, Matthew, 1103. The disciples become Jesus’s brothers, “The concept itself is not new….This time, however, it follows the abject failure of the Twelve to stand with Jesus when the pressure was on, a failure which was hardly less shameful because Jesus had predicted it in 26;31. But now it is time for the second half of that prediction to be fulfilled…and that Galilean meeting will eventually restore the family relationship which they must surely have thought had come to an end in Gethsemane.”

[xxvii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “William: ‘Resurrection is a new life, not the prolonging of this life.’”

[xxviii] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “Laureano: ‘What’s important is for us to live resurrection here, right now, and for us not to believe, as many have believed, that this world doesn’t count, that what counts is to go to heaven afterwards and all that nonsense.’”

[xxix] Cardenal, Solentiname, 621. “I: ‘It’s certain they they’ve put Jesus resurrected in heaven, in another life, in the blue beyond, so that the earth will go right on being the same, and they’ll still be injustice, and there’ll still be poor people…But he rose to be here on earth: ‘He was dead and he goes to Galilee before you.’…”

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Exposed and Naked: Clothed in Righteousness

“‘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

It failed. The grand divine experiment made tangible in Jesus of Nazareth failed. They took him. They tried him. And, they killed him. The promised coming of the kingdom stalled out and stopped. Everything they had witnessed and seen, everything they had experienced and touched, everything they had declared and heard was all now for naught. A big waste of time. A cosmic joke of grand proportions. Their tears give way to fear which then develops into anger. The oppression of their suffering I this moment was sealed by doubt, consuming them like innocent bystanders standing too close to a shore line when a tsunami hits. Where there had been light, there was now darkness. Where there had been liberation, there was now captivity. Where there had been love, there was now numbness. Where there had been life, there was now only death.

The Sabbath demanded a great deal of silence in body and mind. The people who followed Jesus—believed him to be the Messiah—were eager to enter the kingdom of God with Jesus as their great leader; these were now the ones who had to sit with their fear, anger, grief, and, for some who ditched Jesus in his final moments hanging and dying on the cross, they had to sit with their guilt. Not only did this divine experiment fail but they failed, too. And the time marking the sundown of Friday to the sundawn on Sunday morning was excruciating, burdened with great existential dread; this silence wasn’t like normal silences. It fell upon them like judgment from God; were they exiled…again? A silence so oppressive and a darkness so heavy, they might as well have been sealed in the tomb with Jesus to wait for decay and stench to arrive signaling death’s victory.

It all failed. They failed. Jesus failed. God failed.

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

1 Peter 4:1-8

Peter opens the fourth chapter of his epistle emphasizing Christ’s suffering and the correlation the believer has to that suffering. Peter writes,

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you, you also equip [yourselves] with the same thinking—because the one who suffers in the flesh has hindered sin—for the purpose of living no longer to human desires but by the will of God for the time remaining in the flesh (vv.1-2).

For Peter the suffering of Christ—a major theme in the letter[ii]—is emblematic and representative for the believer[iii] who lives in the world. It is this one who is consistently subjected to the blustering mythologies and bombastic actions of the kingdom of humanity. Thus, it is this one who must put on the mind of Christ as they suffer, taking courage that they suffer because they are hindering sin,[iv] putting an end to old associations with indifference, captivity, and death.[v] Christ’s divine glory was made tangible in and through his suffering on the cross; it is through this obscured expression of divine glory that divine glory encounters the believers in and through their own suffering in the world[vi] as they dare to live differently[vii] (hindering sin) from their coworkers, neighbors, friends, and, even, family.

Thusly, Peter continues,

For sufficient time has passed having participated in the determination of the Gentiles, having followed in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, rioting, carousal, and lawless idolatry, by which they have been surprised by your not joining in the same wasteful excess, so they slander[viii] (vv.3-4).

Peter exhorts the believers that their suffering in the world is the fruit of their hindering sin. For Peter, sin is temporal and not merely spiritual—act rather than power—thus, to hinder sin is not to become sinless but to withdraw from participating in the actions of the kingdom of humanity that are antagonistic to the reign of God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Christian is to imitate Christ[ix] in the world; the Christian is to be a representative of Christ thereby pitting themselves against the kingdom of humanity and its actions thus leading to hindering sin in their own lives,[x] concurrently condemning those who slander them.[xi] For Peter, the believer once lived like everyone else in their society, but that way is now forever blocked.[xii] It will be up to the believer to serve either that which is easiest (going along with the kingdom of humanity thus sidestepping suffering thus negating Christ) or which is hardest: forsaking the kingdom of humanity, preferring to follow Christ, enduring temporal suffering, and seeking the way and will of the reign of God.[xiii] With either choice, they will be noticed and judged[xiv] accordingly either by their neighbor or by God and thus they will suffer now or later.[xv]

This is why Peter speaks of judgment.

They, they will have to give up word to the one who readily holds to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the good-news is proclaimed even to the dead so that they might be judged according to human flesh but they might live by the Spirit as God does (vv.5-6).

Peter offers a word of encouragement and hope in these verses. The judgment that the believers will have to endure due to the slander of their neighbors still held captive by the allure of the kingdom of humanity pales in comparison to the judgment they will have when they find themselves face to face with God;[xvi],[xvii] for everyone–even the dead—is on a collision course with Abba God.[xviii] The believers can endure temporal suffering because the divine glory is theirs by their faith in Christ—partially now and in full when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead.[xix] Divine glory is also theirs by way of their zealousness to imitate and represent Christ in the world to the glory of God; for as God is glorified does God give glory.

Therefore, Peter exhorts the believers to live well and to pray and to love one another,

Now the end of all things has come near. Therefore, be of sound mind and be soberminded toward prayers. Above all things, have earnest love toward each other, because love covers a great number of sins (vv.7-8).

The believers are to live in a way emphasizing their faith in Christ and their loving orientation toward each other while resisting relapsing into old habits and forsaking doing good in the world. Prayer becomes crucial here; prayer informs and is informed by love. As one bends one’s knee (literally or metaphorically) to God in prayer (a posture of humility and dependence) one is, therein, formed by God and God’s will[xx]—thus Peter’s argument comes full circle. To pray to God in the name of Christ is to identify with Christ and, therefore, to be molded in such a way as to identify with those with whom Christ identifies. This identification is none other than divine love for the beloved. Prayer gives us access to this divine love[xxi] so we can earnestly[xxii] share it with one another[xxiii] and, more importantly, share it with the world. In this way, believers participate in God’s mission[xxiv] of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the world.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deadly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, they died; each one of them died with Christ—in hopelessness, helplessness, lifelessness, groundlessness, because of human ruthlessness. They despaired of themselves; they released all that they thought was and came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound and word, God was gearing up to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death, transforming suffering into glory—now and in the future, for all those who believe and follow him.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are stuck in our sin, set on a path toward that frightful day of judgment with no Christ to mediate, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against judgment and death and their fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. We find ourselves moved from slavishly following the ways of the kingdom of humanity and (once again) in love with the reign of God and God’s will.

Tonight, we need to be moved from such enslavement into liberation so we can live and be different in a world that is collapsing into itself, being consumed by the hurt pride and immature tantrums of people who are out of control[xxv] and the epitome of hopeless,[xxvi] helpless,[xxvii] lifeless,[xxviii] groundless,[xxix] and ruthless.[xxx] Tonight, we must find ourselves naked and exposed in our complicity and captivity to the very same and then compelled to let go. We must let go of those ways because God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to clothe us with divine grace, mercy, kindness, joy, and the righteousness of God. And these are the fruits we bring into a world devastated and destroyed by death and destruction. And even as scary as our world is right now, tonight, through the suffering of Christ, our terror is quelled, our anger is released, our grief is met with divine comfort, our anxiety gives way to peace that surpasses all understanding, and our detestable state is exchanged for cherished. Tonight, As Jesus is raised to life out of death, so, too, are we raised out of death into new life, new hope, new help, on to a new ground, with new confidence not in ourselves or debased global leadership but in God, in love, in life, and in liberation. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

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

[ii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 147.

[iii] Davids, Peter, 147. “He encourages the Christians of Northwest Asia Minor to follow the example of Christ.”

[iv] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 133. “His point is essentially that a person who suffers shows that he has given up those things against which his suffering is a protest. In other words, by suffering Christ showed his opposition to sinful living. Therefore, persecuted Christians must follow his example and say a firm no to their temptations.”

[v] Davids, Peter, 148. “What the Christian readers here put on is an ‘insight’ or a ‘point of view.’…That point of view is explained immediately: ‘the one suffering in the flesh has finished with sin….’”

[vi] Davids, Peter, 149. “While it is obvious that this is a difficult phrase, it seems most likely that (2) and (4) in the list above make the best sense of this clause, and that they are related in that (2) expresses the main point based on the underlying assumption of (4).” And the substance of (2) and (4): “…(2) when a person suffers, he breaks the power of sin (which is rooted in his flesh) over his life or atones for the sin in his life;…(4) when Christ suffered, he finished with sin (i.e., the phrase does not refer to the Christian at all)…”

[vii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134. “…all Christians were controlled by sinful desires in the past, but must no longer be so controlled for the future.”

[viii] Davids, Peter, 152. “Their reaction to this nonconformity is to slander the Christians.”

[ix] Davids, Peter, 150.

[x] Davids, Peter, 149. “First, sin in 1 Peter always indicates concrete acts of sin, not the power of sin over people…the ceasing of concrete acts that is intended. Second, the desire is to draw out a principle from Christ: he suffered for sin once in the past…with the result that he will ever have to deal with sin again. Third…the battle has an ending point. Finally, the point is that once the Christian grasps this insight he will realize from the example of Christ in 3:18-22 that he must live for God now (which means a suffering in the flesh and thus a battling of sin), for that will lead to a parallel victory (a state of having ceased form sin).”

[xi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 136. “If Christians take a firm and consistent stand against this way of life, then by implication they condemn their former associates.”

[xii] Davids, Peter, 150. “On the other hand, since the flesh is weak and fallen, it is the mode of existence in which the evil impulse in human beings operates. Believers thus have a choice: (1) they can live their remining time ‘for human desires,’ or (2) they can live it ‘for the will of God.’”

[xiii] Davids, Peter, 150. “Thus there is a clear choice between taking the path of least resistance to their natural desires and their committing themselves to follow God’s will even if it entails suffering.”

[xiv] Davids, Peter, 152. “All of this rejection was certainly painful, especially when it came in the form of rumors they could not correct and ostracism from former friends and colleagues.”

[xv] Davids, Peter, 151. “These Christians, on the other hand, had been part of the culture, so their nonparticipation was a change in behavior and thus quite noticeable.”

[xvi] Davids, Peter, 152. “While the Christians may feel abandoned by God and unable to defend themselves, it is their accusers, not they, who have a problem, for the detractors will have to answer to God.”

[xvii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 138. “Because there will be a final judgment, what the world thinks of Christians does not matter. What matters is the twofold fact that the pagans will have to answer to God for their refusal to obey him and that those who heard the believed the gospels will be vindicated by God and enjoy eternal life.”

[xviii] Davids, Peter, 153. “Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the concern of the phrase is not who will judge, but that even the dead cannot escape the final judgment…”

[xix] Davids, Peter, 155. “The point of the passage, then, is that the judgment is also the time of the vindication of Christians. They, like Christ, may have been judged as guilty by human beings according to their standards, either in that they died like other human beings, or through their being put to death …”

[xx] Davids, Peter, 156-157. “Thus our author is calling for a mental alertness that sees life correctly in the light of the coming end. This will lead to prayer—not the prayer based on daydreams and unreality, nor the prayer based on surprised desperation, but the prayer that calls upon and submits to God in the light of reality seen from God’s perspective and thus obtains power and guidance in the situation, however evil the time may be…for proper prayer is not an ‘opiate’ or escape, but rather a function of clear vision and a seeking of even clearer vision from God.”

[xxi] Davids, Peter, 157.

[xxii] Davids, Peter, 157. “Thus when applied in situations such as this it means not to slack off on love, to keep it going at full force, to be earnest about it…these Christians are to maintain their devotion to one another.”

[xxiii] Davids, Peter, 157. “The love that is so important is that for fellow-Christians. As in the whole NT…unity with and practical care for other Christians is not seen as an optional extra, but as a central part of the faith.”

[xxiv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134.

[xxv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[xxvi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[xxvii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[xxviii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[xxix] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

[xxx] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7130

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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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