Tag: Beloved

Fruitful Trees, Well Nourished

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

Introduction

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

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

Jeremiah 17:5-10

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 917-18.

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

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

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

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

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

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By This Word Alone

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

Introduction

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

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

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

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[10] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[11] hiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We Are Exposed

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Malachi 3:1-4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Come Into the Courts of God

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

Introduction

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

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

Psalm 25:1-9

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Love God = Love Neighbor

Psalm 146:4, 6 Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in Abba God…Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger.

Introduction

If we’ve learned anything from the gospel of Mark it’s that being a disciple of Christ isn’t easy and comfortable, it demands reconsideration of things familiar and comfortable, it conflicts with the way the world works and the kingdom of humanity operates, it can rupture relationships, it will force you into an inner crisis of identity. What we’ve gleaned from Mark’s Jesus about what it means to follow him clashes with common notions that being a Christian means worldly prosperity, power, popularity, and privilege (often defined by the kingdom of humanity); it clashes with the idea that being a Christian means being nice and happy; it clashes with the idea that being a Christians means allegiance to a flag or nation; it clashes with the idea that being a Christian means doing one set of things on Sunday and spending Monday through Saturday doing whatever you want.

To follow Christ as one of the disciples—those baptized and partaking of the cup—is to render one’s whole life in service to the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the wellbeing of God’s beloved (you, me, us, and especially all who suffer and are heavy laden outside of these walls). There isn’t one part of us that isn’t claimed by the Spirit of God that descended on Pentecost and now lives in us, yoking us to God by and through our faith in Christ. Mark’s Jesus takes very seriously that you are the fragile, breakable vessel of God, working through you as the epicenter of divine judgment and justice—condemning that which promotes death, indifference, and captivity and exalting that which nourishes, life, love, and liberation. This is the demand on the faithful disciple of Christ (then and now); it is the pursuit of divine love that lets them know we are Christians of the reign of God. Nothing else qualifies but to love God and love those whom God loves.

Mark 12:28-34

And then the scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher! You spoke on the basis of the truth that God is one and there is not another except this one. And to love God out of the whole heart and out of the whole intellect and out of the whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is greater than all of the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”[1]

This entire discussion is rather banal.[2] Since there are (about) 613 mitzvot (separate commands) within Genesis to Deuteronomy, discussions about  which commandments were seen “as more essential” and even debates about which ones were “light” and “heavy” happened regularly among the local scholarly network (Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees, etc.).[3] Even a “summary” of the law—some idea that ties up the Torah—was expected.[4] Thus, Jesus’s summary fits in with other Jewish summaries of the law (causing absolutely no surprise) and is extended to include the prophets.[5] The only thing that is interesting (and considered unprecedented) is that Jesus links two well-known first testament texts: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.[6]

So, why include this story in the gospel and in our lectionary? Because the most central feature of a Christian’s life of faithful discipleship is love. Fullstop. Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord your God the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord God from your whole heart, and from your whole soul and from your whole intellect and from your whole strength.’ The second [is] this, ‘You will love your neighbor as yourself.’” The entirety of the Christian life is defined by love that is born by the reign of God and made known in the kingdom of humanity (vertical and horizontal, divine and human, spiritual and material). Not only is the disciple exhorted to love God with their whole self, but they are also to love the neighbor (whoever and wherever they are[7]) in the same way; this is the way for the disciple of Christ. To prove this point and to drive it home, Jesus adds, There is no other command greater than these. Here things get a bit more interesting. Jesus has, first, not given one command but two when the scribe asked for what command is first of all? And, second, Jesus created a hierarchy between the love of God and the love of neighbor and the other commandments. According to Mark’s Jesus, there is a preferred way,[8] subjecting all other commands to these two.

The scribe’s response—“Well said, teacher! You spoke on the basis of the truth that God is one and there is not another except this one. And to love God out of the whole heart and out of the whole intellect and out of the whole strength and to love the neighbor as oneself is greater than all of the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices”—reveals two things. The first is implicit, the scribe gets something that the disciples are still trying to ascertain and understand[9] and the other scribes (and Pharisees and Sadducees) refuse to get.[10] The scribe affirms the fact that Jesus’s words are founded on truth thus revealing his own inherent disposition toward Jesus and also Jesus’s mission in the world (thus why Jesus can say to him later, “You are not far from the reign of God.”; #notallscribes[11]).[12]

The second is explicit, there is nothing within religiosity and religious traditionalism that rival these two commands. Nothing—no ritual, no tradition, no pilgrimage, no vigil, no quiet time, no eucharistic celebration, etc.—absolutely nothing is more important to the Christian life in the world before God and among the neighbor than love, love, love. Everything else is not only subverted[13] to these two commands to love God fully and completely and to love the neighbor as one loves themselves but should be viewed in support of this demand for love in two directions, vertically and horizontally. Thus, for Mark’s Jesus and this humble scribe, to love God is to love the neighbor and to love the neighbor is to love God. [14] What is essentially and primarily ruled out here is any conception of a privatized relationship between one person and God as if that’s all that matters. A disciple of Christ cannot love God and ignore their neighbor because to ignore their neighbor is to ignore God. You don’t get the option to do half of the chief commandment; it’s either both or its nothing.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever wondered what God’s will is for your life as a disciple of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, wonder no more. The entirety of your life is summoned into a robust and vigorous relationship fueled, inspired, and sustained by God’s love for the cosmos. We love because we have first been loved; we love our neighbor because God loves us, and we love God and thus love what God loves. To love God with our whole selves is a definitive mark of a disciple of Christ because it manifests as loving our neighbor as if we are loving ourselves the way God loves us (and loves our neighbor). Thus they truly will know we are Christians by our love…

To go further, and to put darker lines around what it means to love God and love the neighbor, it must be stressed that to love God is best expressed not only in devotion through prayer, worship, and glorifying, but specifically expressed in loving that which and those whom God loves. This means loving God’s justice—God’s mission of life, love, and liberation[15]—that seeks to right the wrongs created and promoted by the kingdom of humanity. Thus, to quote Felipe from Ernesto Cardenal’s The Gospel in Solentiname, “‘To love your neighbor then is to love God. You can’t love God without practicing justice. And you can’t love your neighbor without practicing that justice that God commands.’” [16] In other words, the systems of the kingdom of humanity oriented toward injustice–those systems and ideologies oriented toward death, indifference, and captivity—are to be categorically rejected by those who claim to follow Christ by faith as his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit.[17]

I can’t stress it enough that we are so very, very loved by a good, good God—a God who is love. This is worth celebrating. But if it never goes further and farther than that, then we will find ourselves distant from the reign of God. God’s love can’t be purchased and owned privately as if it can be just for ourselves. God’s love is always on the move, always seeking the object of God’s desire: God’s beloved, you, me, and more importantly, those who have been cast off and pushed to the margins by the ideologically inspired actions of the residents of the kingdom of humanity. We love because we have first been loved; we strive for justice on behalf of the neighbor, because God’s love strives for justice.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Placher, Mark, 174. “Just as it is important to note that Mark portrays this scribe in a sympathetic light, so it is worth remembering that Jesus was not saying anything radically new or at odds with the Jewish tradition.”

[3] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 477. “Given that there are, according to scribal reckoning 613 separate commandments in the five Books of Moses…the question of priority could not be avoided. The rabbis discussed which commandments were ‘heavy’ and which ‘light’, and sometimes ranked certain categories of law as more essential than others.”

[4] France, Mark, 477. “There was a natural desire for a convenient summary of the law’s requirements, a single principle form which all the rest of the Torah was derived…”

[5] France, Mark, 477.

[6] France, Mark, 477-478. “But for his explicit linking together of these two very familiar OT texts [Lv. 19:18 and Dt. 6:4-5] we have no Jewish precedent.”

[7] Placher, Mark, 174. “Further, we should love our neighbors, and there should be no limits on who counts as a neighbor.”

[8] France, Mark, 478. The “evaluative language is not typical of the rabbis, who spoke of ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ commandments, but on the understanding that all are equally valid, and who, while they might look for summarizing principles, do not seem to have ranked individual commandments as ‘first’ or ‘more important.’”

[9] France, Mark, 482. “In Mark’s previous mentions of the kingdom of God we have repeatedly noted a contrast between the divine and human perspective, and a sense of surprise, even of shock, as the unfamiliar values of God’s kingship are recognised. It is a secret given only to those who follow Jesus and hear his teaching (4.11). But here is a man who Is already a good part of the way through the readjustment of values which the kingdom of God demands and which the disciples have been so painfully confronting on the way to Jerusalem.”

[10] France, Mark, 478.

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 173. “The question is sincere, the scribe’s response to Jesus is wise, and Jesus tells him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ Mark….goes out of his way to indicate that not all Jewish scholars where corrupt or were Jesus’ opponents.”

[12] France, Mark, 482. “…the scribe’s reply has assured Jesus that his mind is well attuned to the divine perspective. This place him οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ, not yet a part of it apparently, but unlike the rich who will find it so hard to enter the kingdom of God…this man is a promising potential recruit.”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 530. “I: ‘But here he’s not talking only about false rites but true rites. He says that love is worth more than all religious rites.’”

[14] Cardenal, Solentiname, 529. “You can say, then, that those that obey the second, it’s as if they’re obeying the first. Those who don’t love God, for example, because they don’t believe in God, but love their neighbor, according to Christ it’s as if they’re obeying the first commandment.”

[15] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 528. “So to love [God] is to love liberation and justice and that’ s the same things as to love your neighbor. To love God, then, is to love love. And therefore it’s logical that the second commandment should be very similar to the first one.”

[16] Cardenal, Solentiname, 528.

[17] Placher, Mark, 175. Verses leading up to the Leviticus quotation should be considered in defining ethical action of love toward the neighbor, “Maximizing profit at all costs and cutting corners are contrary to love of neighbor.”

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Pull Together not Apart

Psalm 26:3, 11-12 For your love, Abba God, is before my eyes; I have walked faithfully with you. As for me, I will live with integrity; redeem me, Abba God, and have pity on me. My foot stands on level ground; in the full assembly I will bless the Lord.

Introduction

As of last week, we have identified clearly what the overarching question is for Mark and Mark’s audience: what does it mean to be a disciple of this man who is God, Jesus the Christ? What does it mean to be a believer who participates in the mission of the reign of God, bringing love, life, and liberation to the neighbor to the glory of God in the name of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit?

We’ve seen Jesus redefine clean and unclean, who is in and who is out, who is elevated and who is not, and who is to be hindered and who is not. Over the past four weeks, we’ve watched Jesus systematically pull down barriers and divisions, walls and fences geared toward dividing and isolating God’s beloved into factions pitted one against the other. Here we see the fractures mentioned way back in Genesis 3 rearing their violent and deadly heads. In that passage, the story goes, God cursed Adam, Eve, and the serpent and their relationships went wonky, turning upside down; where there was once equity and unity, there would be inequity and disunity; where there was once justice and peace, there would be injustice and hostility. The original bondedness articulated in Genesis 1 and 2—God and Humanity, Humanity and Humanity, Humanity and Creation—falls fractured on its way out of the Garden of Eden. Considering the poor judgment demonstrated by everyone in the Genesis 3 narrative, the three relationships are pulled apart. Now it is no longer Humanity and God, but Humanity verse God; no longer Humanity and Humanity, but Humanity against Humanity; no longer Humanity and Creation, but Humanity in opposition to Creation.

So, what we see thus far in the gospel of Mark is Jesus rectifying this separation and division, this enmity and animosity that festered long enough within these three relationships. Instead of pulling apart, Jesus is pulling together. Rather than dividing, Jesus is creating unity. Rather than pitting against each other, Jesus is reconciling and causing equity and justice thus peace. In other words, Jesus is reinforcing the grand idea that …

Mark 10:2-12

“…what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mark10:9)[1]

The main thrust of Mark’s gospel is, as was mentioned last week, discipleship. The disciples are in process of learning (again and again) that their thinking is stuck in the kingdom of humanity rather than being of the reign of God. The thinking of the reign of God is cosmically and inclusively bigger than they can imagine on their own. So, Jesus teaches them. And, in our gospel passage addressing divorce there’s still an emphasis on discipleship. Opposed to the Mosaic permissiveness of divorce, Jesus speaks against it because it is “nothing more than a devious form of adultery.”[2] At this time, for Jesus and his disciples, a Jewish man took divorce for granted while Jewish women could not divorce.[3] A husband could divorce his wife for any reason, from sexual misconduct to a poorly cooked meal.[4] Jesus will expect the disciples to take a different path concerning their own marriages; just because the world may say it’s okay to ditch your wife for one reason or another, but I say…do not divorce. Discipleship, for Mark’s Jesus, is a full life affair; every relationship matters. For Jesus, the issue is not divorce (full stop) but the force at play behind it: hardness of heart; the disciples are expected to reevaluate their relationship with what they consider to be right and good—what the kingdom of humanity judges as good and right.[5]

Interestingly, in the passage, there is a difference between the verb used by Jesus (eveteilato, “command”, v.3) and the one used by the Pharisees (epayroton, “allowed”, v.4);[6] this indicates two things: 1) The ability to divorce is not upheld by Law but rather is a “concession” because of their hardness of heart (v.5; divorce is “allowed” and not “commanded”);[7] and, 2) There is something more important than the Mosaic permission: Genesis 2:24 (vv.7-8). One important aspect of Jesus exegeting Genesis 2:24 is his emphasis on (reestablishing of) the one-flesh aspect of the marital union.[8] But there’s more to that because Genesis 2 isn’t strictly about marriage; it’s about the union of humanity with humanity. To toss another human being away because of some form of persnickety displeasure participates in the perpetuation of the fracturedness of human relationships; human beings cannot be tossed away like refuse. Rather they are to be loved as one would even love themselves. And more than that, dismissing one’s wife “just cuz” exposes one’s fractured relationship with God that is characteristic of the judgments and pleasures of the kingdom of humanity. Again, hardness of heart is the issue; the disciples are to live vulnerably with the other, fleshy hearted and all. Jesus concludes with a pronouncement, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (v.9). The concluding pronouncement suggests that those who enter the reign of God will live in light of another vision, a vision that sees relationships (with all people, but most especially with those of lower status) in light of God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, liberation.[9]

Privately to the disciples Jesus forbids remarriage for both the husband and the wife. “And he said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’” According to one scholar, “Jewish divorce was specifically with a view to remarriage: the certificate given to the divorced wife read, ‘You are free to marry any man’ (m. Git. 9:3).”[10] Jesus holds a rather uncompromising view; but it doesn’t mean one can’t divorce but that one can’t remarry. And if one can’t remarry—if she can’t remarry for her own livelihood—then it is better not to divorce and stick it out because it is for the wellbeing of another.[11] Again, the light is focused on the main point: hardness of heart.

Conclusion

If we look to Mark 10:2-12 trying to find loopholes in what Jesus says to allow for remarriage or to make the claim that divorce is never allowed in any circumstance, it misses the reality that Jesus is taking a moment to teach his disciples what it means to be human in the world where they are the epicenter of the kingdom of humanity and the reign of God. Hurting human beings in a hurting world hurt each other in grievous ways. In our passage, Jesus forbids divorce and remarriage. And this must be reconciled with the fact that Jesus’s death was for our transgressions and his resurrection was for our justification (Rom. 4:25). While we don’t use the forgiveness of sin to justify things like divorce thus make them common lacking gravity, the reality is that at times there are irreconcilable differences between people, even those who are bonded by the vows of marriage.

But to focus strictly on the “marriage” and “divorce” aspect of this teaching is to miss the point: human beings do not dismiss human beings. Rather, according to Mark’s Jesus, human beings—with a desire to be human—will identify with those with whom they have relationships and be eager to do the best by them that they can. Being a disciple doesn’t mean we don’t, can’t, or won’t call a relationship what it is especially when it’s run its course or has become harmful to everyone involved. To be a disciple is to make sure that we take all our actions seriously and see how they impact others. Disciples, according to Jesus, live a deeply transfigured, vulnerable, connected life with each other… The thing that is forbidden here in this passage is a disciple of Christ dismissing someone as if they weren’t part of the reign of God or as if they didn’t count because of their status. The other thing that is forbidden is pulling apart, dividing, and sundering what God has put together: human beings with other human beings because human beings need each other and the intimacy of that relationship of mutual need. In other words, people aren’t to be tossed away like discarded things tossed into the refuse. Rather, the disciples are to pull together when everyone else is pulling apart, no matter who they are. Everyone the disciple is in a relationship with is to be esteemed in the reign of God, treated with equity, given justice, and have access to real and everlasting peace of Christ.

[1] Because of some of my own chaos and subsequent gaffs, this week’s gospel passage and all subsequent quotations from the assigned gospel text (Mark 10:2-12) are not translated by me but, rather, taken from the NRSVUE version from www.biblegateway.com  *sheepish grin #lyfåehappens

[2] Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, (New York: Harper, 2013), 350.

[3] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 140.

[4] Placher, Mark, 141.

[5] Hays, Moral Vision, 350. “Divorce is a sign of hardness of heart; those who follow Jesus are called to a higher standard of permanent faithfulness in marriage…”

[6] Mark 10:2-4, “And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.’”

[7] Hays, Moral Vision, 350. “Those who trust in God as revealed through Jesus will not seek such an escape clause from their marriages.…and for those who believe, hardness of heart [a lack of faith in Christ] can be overcome.”

[8] Hays, Moral Vision, 350-1. “…Jesus’ exegetical comment on Genesis 2:24…reiterates the ‘one flesh’ affirmation. Sexual intercourse in marriage is not merely the satisfaction of individual appetites…but links two persons together—literally and spiritually. It effects what it symbolizes and symbolizes what it effects.”

[9] Hays, Moral Vision, 351.

[10] RT France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 393.

[11] France, Mark, 394.

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Whoever Receives One of These Little Ones

Psalm 1:1a-3c  Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked… Their delight is in the law of Abba God… They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither…

Introduction

We can feel the movements of God, we can even sense them coming from a distance like placing a hand on a railroad track and feeling the power of the locomotive surge even if still far off. But do we understand? No, we don’t. And if we do understand, we are very slow on the pick-up because God rarely acts in ways we expect (want?) God to act. It’s not that we lack common sense or reason, it’s just that the common sense we rely on and the reason we have are influenced by the kingdom of humanity and its ideologies and dogmas, and we are well soaked in that marinade.

I’m not talking about the bad things that happen to you or the good; these need a level of parsing out—what part of these events is human, chance, and divine influence, etc.—and are beyond the scope of a sermon. What I am talking about is God’s movement within the cosmos, the divine foot falls (to refer to Gen. 3) of God walking among us, of the activity of God’s mission and divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. We are trained to expect God to work within the systems and structures we’ve devised and implemented; but God doesn’t. These systems and structures—even the well-intentioned ones—run their course and expire because they’re unable to born again into a new era. So, God moves and acts again (and still!) liberating God’s beloved from these systems and structures, but mostly from themselves.

But we’re always confused, always caught off guard, always slow to understand what God said, what God’s will is in the world and how we actually participate in that will. And because we are hard of hearing and our eyesight needs (always) better lenses, we must, like the disciples, be told repeatedly—not just once at our baptisms or at our confirmations. We must be reminded every Sunday that the deeds and movements of God’s reign in the world are not to be confused with those of the kingdom of humanity. It’s why we repeatedly listen to the various Gospel authors tell us about Jesus; it’s through Jesus, for Christians, we see, hear, and encounter God, through whom we are caught up in the divine mission by the power of the Holy Spirit, through whom and by whom we even can begin to know what God’s will is in the world. It is through Jesus’s teachings to his disciples yesterday that Jesus teaches us today; it is through Jesus’s actions then that we can see God on the move now and follow.

Mark 9:30-37

And then they went into Capernaum, And then in the house it happened that he was inquiring of them, “What were you debating on the way?” And they were being silent, for on the way they were debating among themselves who [was] greatest… And then he received a child and placed them in the middle of [the disciples] and then he embraced [the child] and said to [the disciples], “Whoever receives one of these children in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me.” (Mk. 9:33-34, 36-37)

Mark starts this portion of text with And from there. From where? It’s uncertain; the gospels aren’t mean to be detailed travel diaries.[1] So, from somewhere Jesus and his crew leave, and he was not desiring to be recognized, thus they avoid popular areas by passing by the sea of Galilee.[2] Why did he avoid popular, public haunts? Jesus’s goal here is to teach the disciples.[3] The reign of God is definitely made known to the world through Jesus’s ability to heal and restore, to literally liberate people from physical, spiritual, social, political captivity, but what does that do for continuing the mission of the reign of God if no one understands beyond the wonderful but fleeting miracles? Jesus’s being in the world must transcend the wonderful physical, fleshy healings that are caught in time and space; the hearts of the disciples and all those who follow Christ must have a heart and mind transplants. They must see things through divine spectacles so that they can continue and participate in God’s mission in the world after Jesus leaves them.

So, Jesus focuses on the disciples and teaches them, “The son of humanity is being handed over into the hands of humanity, and they will kill him, and then after being killed for three days he will rise from the dead.” This isn’t new information to the disciples; it’s a reminder.[4] Jesus is being handed over, he is the object of the handing over. By whom? The subject is ambiguous.[5] Humanity is definitely in view here,[6] but so is God, for Mark—God’s power will be made known through weakness, and this is part of the mission of the reign of God the disciples will learn shortly.[7]

But they were not knowing the meaning of[8] The Word[9] and they were afraid to question him. The disciples do not understand (and this after the incident with Peter in chapter 8), and they are afraid to ask him (maybe because of the incident with Peter in chapter 8). Instead, rather than ask Jesus what he means (again) and gain understanding, they decide to debate something else among themselves, further revealing that whatever they have in mind is in direct conflict to what Jesus—thus God—has in mind.

Now, when they enter Capernaum and go to a house, Jesus questions them,[10] “What were you debating? The disciples are silent. This questioning and responding silence further expose their inability to know/understand what Jesus means.[11] For on the way toward one another they debated who [was] the greatest. So they hide, like their foreparents back in the Garden.[12]And like their foreparents, they are guilty; guilty like schoolchildren.[13] So, Jesus takes the role of the teacher because all is not well, And then he [deliberately][14] sat down and called to himself the twelve and says to them, “If someone wishes to be first they will be last of all people and a servant of all people.” Jesus exposes their question about “who is the greatest” as not only inappropriate,[15] it’s also diametrically opposed to the reign and mission of God.

Like children, Jesus must gently grab their chins and reorient their gaze to him and to God. He does this through a child, And then he received a child and placed them in the middle of [the disciples] and then he embraced [the child] and said to [the disciples], “Whoever receives one of these children in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus exhorts the disciples to see that their priorities are skewed: it’s not about being great as the kingdom of humanity defines greatness because in that economy these children have no status.[16] Rather, it’s about relinquishing the valuations of the kingdom of humanity and identifying with those who have no status within the reign of God[17] (divine equity!) and therein bringing dignity and worthiness to even the least of these in the name of Christ and to the glory of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is divine justice and greatness says Mark’s Jesus: to upend the traditional valuations of the kingdom of humanity with the divine equity of the reign of God![18]

Conclusion

To identify with these little ones, to receive these children who had no rights or self in the world[19] and treat them as if they did is how God’s glory and presence is made known and experienced in the world. To represent God, according to Mark’s Jesus, is to disabuse oneself of phantasmagorical notions of greatness and embrace weakness, to leave behind grasping for “powerful” according to humanity and opt, instead, for powerlessness according to God.[20] To care for the poor, the weak, the sick, and anyone who is experiencing some form of oppression (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) is to receive Jesus and thus to receive God and if this then it is by these ones who care for the least of these who bring Jesus thus God close to the suffering and so goes the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world to the glory of God and for the wellbeing of the neighbor (which includes our own wellbeing). According to Mark, this is the will of God, this is what God is (still) doing in the world; thus, this should be what qualifies and quantifies Christian will, our will. Christian praxis in the world is not about competing for greatness but identifying with those who lack it; this is what it means to be the grown Christian of Ephesians, and this is what it means to be simply human. To close, I want to quote a late 20th century American theologian, Paul Lehmann,

The power to will what God wills is the power to be what [humanity] has been created and purposed to be. It is the power to be and to stay human, that is, to attain wholeness or maturity. For maturity is the full development in a human being of the power to be truly and fully [themself] in being related to others who also have the power to be truly and fully themselves. The Christian koinonia is the foretaste and the sign in the world that God has always been and is contemporaneously doing what it takes to make and to keep human life human. This is the will of God ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.’[21]

Amen

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 371.

[2] France, Mark, 371. “In this area Jesus is well known, and we might expect to hear again of the gathering of enthusiastic crowds. But that is not no Jesus’ purpose., and he escapes recognition, presumably by avoiding areas of populations as he had to do in 1:45.”

[3] France, Mark, 371. “Jesus’ mission is now to teach his disciples, and that takes priority over any public activity.”

[4] France, Mark, 371. v. 31, “The imperfect tenses, as well as the fact that this is the second of a series of three such predictions, indicate that what is stated in this verse is the continuing theme of his teaching at this stage. It is thus a reminder that than adding anything new to what we already know from 8:31.”

[5] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 133-134. παραδίδωμι “It always appears in the passive voice, so that its subject remains ambiguous…Mark has already said that the Son of Man must undergo suffering, be rejected, be killed, and rise again. This is all part of a divine plan. Yet it is also the action of bad people acting out of bad motives. Mark will try in the account ahead to show through his narration how it can be both.”

[6] France, Mark, 372. “Probably the choice of the word is mainly dictated by the play on words–ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in the hands of the ἄνθροποι—a turn of phrase which is deeply ironical in the light of the sovereignty over all humanity which is predicted for the υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου in Dn. 7:14.”

[7] France, Mark, 372. “In such usage παραδίδωμι indicates that the object of the verb is in the power of the subject, and implies that the outcome is one which the object would not have chosen. There is thus an implication of hostility, even though the verb does not in itself mean to ‘betray’…[God as subject] as secondary connotation of the use of the verb in this context.”

[8] France, Mark, 372. “ἀγνοέω normally mans to be ignorant, but in relation to a saying the meaning shades easily into comprehension (‘not know the meaning of’).”

[9] France, Mark, 372. “Mark seldom uses ῥῆμα, and its use probably characterizes the saying as of special importance, a more formal pronouncement.”

[10] France, Mark, 373. “The disciples have been reluctant to question Jesus (v. 32), so he instead questions them, in order to bring out how little they have yet understood.”

[11] Placher, Mark, 134. “The disciples not only fail to understand the fate that awaits Jesus; they fail to understand what it means to follow him. The twelve have been arguing about which of them is the greatest, and, when he asks what they have been discussing, they will not tell him. They do deserve some sympathy. The faults they are manifesting lie deep in flawed human nature.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 134. “Adam and Eve try to hide form God in shame after they have disobeyed God’s command. The disciples are ashamed and refuse to answer when Jesus asks what they have been arguing about.”

[13] France, Mark, 373. Jesus “What were you talking about” question “…is a challenge to ring into the open a debate of which they are apparently ashamed, aware that Jesus will not approve. Hence their silence. There is an almost comical incongruity in the picture of these grown men acting like guilty schoolboys before the teacher an impression which is only heightened when Jesus goes on to use a child as an example to them.”

[14] France, Mark, 373. “he sat down” “This is an issue which must be addressed, and the teacher sits and summons his disciples to gather round and listen.”

[15] France, Mark, 374. “This is such a radical challenge to natural human valuation that it needs constant repetition. The preeminent status in the kingdom of God is characterized by the twin elements of lowliness…and service…The question of τίς μείζων; could hardly be more inappropriate.”

[16] France, Mark, 374.

[17] France, Mark, 374. “The child represents the lowest order in the social scale, the one who is under the authority and care of others an who has not yet achieved the right of self-determination. To ’become like a child ‘…is to forgo status and to accept the lowest place, to be a ‘little one’…”

[18] France, Mark, 374. “In this pericope there is not call…to become like a child…, but rather the injunction to ‘receive’ the child, to reverse the conventional value-scale by according important to the unimportant.”

[19] Placher, Mark, 134-135. “Jesus does not say here that we should be like children; he says we should welcome them. In the ancient world, children were not considered primarily as models of innocence….The distinctive thing about children was their lack of any rights. A father could put a newborn outside to starve to death if he had wanted a boy and got a girl or life the baby seemed weak or handicapped. Children existed for the benefit of their parents—really of their fathers.”

[20] Placher, Mark, 135. “In the Aramaic that Jesus was presumably speaking, the same word (talya) can mean either ‘child’ or ‘servant.’ Welcoming children means helping the most vulnerable. Jesus is thus not urging childishness in any form on his disciples but telling them to stop competing about who will make the top and make sure they care for those on the bottom.”

[21] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 101.

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Beloved Little Children of God

Psalm 146: 1-2, 4 Hallelujah! Praise Abba God, O my soul! I will praise Abba God as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in their God…

Introduction

Last week we were reminded that there are no external boundaries that create a Christian group; in fact, we could say that based on what we learned in Ephesians and what we learned last week boundaries—dividing walls, traditions forcing some to withdraw from and exclude others—are anathema to reign of God. If so, then why do we—Christians—seem deadest on creating barriers to inclusion with the ecclesia and God?

I ponder this question a lot because of where I find myself caught in this particular socio-political timeline. I may be too sensitive here, but the lines between who is “right” and who is “wrong” are appearing to be deeper and thicker than ever before. It feels easy to pull apart right now, to cut ties, to wipe the dust from your sandals and move on. It feels safe to fall deep into your own party of ideas and ideologies, to surround yourself with those just like you, to shrug and sidestep those “others” who don’t think like you. It even feels good to be really frustrated and angry, to give into fear, to have anxiety and worry about the global dumpster-fire we seem trapped in. Even if easy, safe, and good feels really good (and it can feel really darn good), for Christians that path is contrary to the path articulated to us by Christ, the one we are supposed to travel, to walk in, and to grow through.

In short, part of Christian praxis and identity in the world is our burden to pull together and not pull apart, to dare to step into the void of the unknown and risk our comfort and safety, and to relinquish our addiction to anger and fear so to disrupt hostility and enmity with equity and justice. We are exhorted to see that even those whom we might call “dogs” are none other than our dear siblings, beloved little children of God.

Mark 7:24-37

And then he was saying to her, ‘You permit the children to be filled first, for it is not honorable to take the bread of the children and drop it to the little house dogs.’ And she answered and says to him, ‘[Yes] Lord, even the little house dogs under the dining table eat from the crumbs of the little children.’ And he said to her, ‘On account of this word, go; the evil spirit has gone out of your daughter.’ (Mk 7:27-29)

Mark continues the story from where we left off last week. After addressing the crowd about what actually makes a person clean or unclean (hint: it’s not what goes in but what comes out), Jesus sets out: Now, from there, writes Mark, he rose and departed toward the territory of Tyre. Tyre was a region that was connected to Palestine and exerted financial dominance over Galilee; in some historical documents, the Tyrians are considered Israel’s “‘notoriously… bitterest enemies.’”[1] Within this relatively small detail, Mark demonstrates that Jesus is continuing to push boundaries—even if reluctantly,[2] And then he entered a house desiring no one to recognize him and he was not able to escape notice. Mark highlights that the message about the dissolution of boundaries, of the destruction of traditions and dividing walls of the kingdom of humanity, is not only for the house of Israel but also for the neighboring territories (and the world).[3] Jesus’s traveling participate in God’s will: Gentiles are not excluded from the mission of the reign of God and the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[4] God is for them, too; God is for the entire world and all humankind no matter the race, the color of the skin, the orientation and identity of the person.[5] If Jesus is the way to this God, then this way, this door, is wide open; [6] no one will be excluded because of random lines drawn in the sand willy-nilly separating this or that people.[7]

The story continues. Mark tells us that Jesus’s desire to go unnoticed by entering a house fails,[8] But at once, after hearing about [Jesus], a woman—whose daughter had an unclean spirit—came and fell before his feet. Now, the woman[was] Greek—Syrophoenician by race—and she was asking him to cast out the evil spirit from her little daughter. This isn’t just any person, and this isn’t just any woman. This is a desperate woman before God. This woman was willing to transcend religious tradition, social expectation, and political boundaries to heal her daughter (either her daughter or one related to her).[9] She is a thoroughly Gentile woman (the double identification emphasizes this point), and she carries the threat of ritual impurity because her daughter is possessed by an “unclean” spirit. There were many strikes against her: woman, Gentile, and unclean (ritually).[10] This woman is in great need and hears about Jesus being in Tyre and is willing to risk her wellbeing to seek healing for one whom she loves. Love does this; faith in Christ also does this.[11],[12]

But Jesus doesn’t reply to her in a way the reader would expect, considering what’s occurred thus far in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus says to her, ‘You permit the children to be filled first, for it is not honorable to take the bread of the children and drop it to the little house dogs.’ As one commentator said, Jesus’s response “is certainly not diplomatic,”[13] it is downright offensive (not only today but especially then[14]); he comes across as one who won’t help.[15] No matter how you parse it, the intentional term Jesus calls her, κυνάρια (translated as “little house dogs”), is flat-out insulting and dehumanizing (she’s a dog not a child—and this goes for her entire race).[16] At that moment, she had every reason to be discouraged.[17]

But rather than be discouraged, she seizes on a moment, or an image: Yes, Lord, even the little house dogs under the table eat from the crumbs of the young children. The “yes” is lost to our translation, but it’s there in spirit. She doesn’t disagree with the insult and then twists the image to emphasize that the little house dogs are happy to eat—even if second—the crumbs that fall to the floor and under the table; [18] in other words, it is right to let the crumbs fall into the possession of the dogs and let the dogs have their moment.[19] Theologically, what she sees here is the bold articulation of the power of the reign of God transcending not just local religious tradition but also socio-political division and boundaries; crumbs fall from the table for the children on to the floor where the dogs are.[20] Why shouldn’t they eat, too?

What happens next? Her daughter is delivered of the evil, unclean spirit. Jesus replied, this time full of grace, like one happy to be wrong,[21] and walks back his initial (human[22]) comment and heals her daughter with one (divine) word,[23],[24] On account of this word, go!; the evil spirit has gone out of your daughter. Just as he did before over dirty hands and she did just then about dogs, Jesus demonstrates that the tradition and boundaries of the kingdom of humanity are no match for the transcending power of the reign of God and the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[25] The divine equity of God’s mission in the world is pronounced here: it is not about being exclusive but inclusive; the bread of life will be shared with all no matter who they are or from where they hail.[26] She, too, is a child of God, worthy of living bread.[27]

Conclusion

According to Mark’s Jesus, no one—absolutely no one—is to be excluded from the presence of God made known in Christ and revealed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore here, in this passage from Mark, we are given every reason and motivation to pull together, to step outside of our comfort and safety, and relinquish our anger and fear. According to Mark’s Jesus, no one is so far gone to be outside of God’s great reach.

What is most paramount in this passage for us today—the thing that really jumps out at me, the thing that Mark wants his audience to understand—is that we are to be a healthy amount skeptical of the traditions and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and how these very things have infiltrated our theology and worship, causing us to gate-keep, calling it God’s will. In this passage, Mark wants us to see that Jesus turns his back on the conception of God’s will that leads to exclusivist thinking, ranking some humans as more important to God than others. Nothing is further from the truth. No one has a unique claim to God or those who belong to God. And we do not work from the idea that we are “right” as if everyone else is wrong; it’s not about right and wrong, which is the worst language to speak in; rather it’s about working from hope, hope and our being fully dependent on God and God’s word.*

Beloved, remember that you are the beloved little child of God, adopted into the family of God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit; remember, too, there are more people out there who think they are dogs and beyond God’s concern because that’s what our society has told them. To them we are sent; to them we go bringing God’s love, life, and liberation. To them and for them we bring divine equity and justice to the glory of God.

*This is inspired from Philip G. Ziegler’s AAR Paper (2023) “The Revolutionary Philanthropy of God–The Dogmatic Engine of Paul L. Lehmann’s Theological Ethics,” San Antonio, TX, p. 6. “…those who subsequently are impelled to ‘move against the focus of power’ in the existing social and political situation do not do so from a position of self–possession and strength–a position of right–but as those undone by judgment and grace and so in repentance, humility, and hope for others. Lehmann emphasizes that Christians and revolutionaries–Christians as revolutionaries–always ‘bear a righteousness not their own’ (Phil 3:9). They cannot and do not pursue their own righteousness; rather, their ethical and political adventure seeks only the righteousness of their neighbor.”

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 297. “Tyre, whose territory adjoined northern Galilee, had long been an important trading city. It had close links with Palestine, particularly under Herod the Great, and its coinage was widely circulated there; indeed, it exercised considerable economic dominance over the neighbouring area of Galilee. But it was clearly foreign territory, and Josephus…describes the Tyrians as ‘notoriously our bitterest enemies.’”

[2] France, Mark, 294. “[Jesus’s] initial intention is apparently not to engage in a ‘Gentile mission’ as such but simply to remain incognito (7:24), but events soon dictate otherwise and he responds, even if at first reluctantly, to Gentile needs.”

[3] France, Mark, 294. “The debate about purity has raised the question of how far, if at all, the mission of Jesus has a relevance beyond the community of Israel, whose observance of the Mosaic food laws was an effective practical barrier to social contact with those who did not observe them.”

[4] France, Mark, 294. “Mark’s specific deduction that Jesus’ teaching has ‘made all food clean’ signals a radically new approach which will in due time make possible the integration of Jews and Gentiles into a single community of discipleship.”

[5] France, Mark, 294. “The first pericope…highlights the racial issue, as Jesus. ‘debates’ with the Syrophoenician woman the basis on which the ‘children’s bread’ can properly be enjoyed also by the ‘dogs’…”

[6] France, Mark, 296. “Within that sequence this pericope marks the further opening of the door rather than an attempt to sing it shut again.”

[7] France, Mark, 296. “The whole encounter builds up to the totally positive conclusions of vv. 29-30, while the preceding dialogue serves to underlines the radical nature of this new stage in Jesus’ ministry into which he has allowed himself to be ‘persuaded’ by the woman’s realism and wit.”

[8] France, Mark, 297. “…Jesus wishes to get away from public attention…uses a ‘house’ for the purpose…but is unable to escape those in need.”

[9] France, Mark, 297. “…there is no doubt that here [Ἑλλην]carries its normal biblical connotation of Gentile (as opposed to Jewish), and the term Συροφοινίκισσα (the prefix Συρο- distinguished the Phoenicians of the Levant form those of North Africa around Carthage) reinforces the point. That such a woman chose to approach a Jewish healer, and even fell at his feet, indicates either desperation or a remarkable insight into the wider significance of Jesus’ ministry…”

[10] France, Mark, 297. “Few of those who approached Jesus had so much against, them, from an orthodox Jewish point of view. She was….a woman, and therefore one with whom a respectable Jewish teacher should not associate. She was a Gentile, as the double designation Ἑλληνίς Συροφοινίκισσα emphasizes. And her daughter’s condition might be expected to inspire fear and/or disgust, while the ‘uncleanness’ of the demon suggests ritual impurity.”

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 104. “Unlike Jairus, she seems to take for granted that Jesus can work cures at a distance. Before a word is exchanged, she is already presented as a woman of deep faith.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 106. “It is her faith, though, that lies at the center of the story.”

[13] France, Mark, 298. “Jesus’ response, though nowhere near as brutal as in Matthew, is certainly not diplomatic.”

[14] Placher, Mark, 104. “What he says is harsh enough in our culture, but even harsher then, in a culture where dogs were not beloved house pets but disgusting scavengers who skulked about living on garbage. Calling someone a dog was a real insult…”

[15] France, Mark, 298. “The whole tone of the sentence is negative to the point of offensiveness, and suggests that Jesus has no intention of helping the woman.”

[16] France, Mark, 298. “The use of κυνάρια seems to add gratuitously to the Semitic neighbours as unclean animals. Biblical references to dogs…are always hostile. To refer to a human being as a ‘dog’ is a deliberately offensive or dismissive….Jews typically referred to Gentiles as dogs. The diminutive form (used in biblical literature only in this pericope), perhaps indicates the status of the dogs in Jesus’ image as dogs of the house rather than of the yard, but it does not remove the harshness of picturing Gentiles en masse as ‘dogs’ as opposed to ‘children’. It is the sort of language a Gentile might expect from a Jews, but to find it in a saying of Jesus is shocking.”

[17] France, Mark, 298. “…as a response to the Gentile woman’s request it is very harsh, and does not encourage her to expect help at the present time.”

[18] France, Mark, 298-299. “Jesus’ image (and his inclusion of πρῶτον) have given the woman the cue she needs, and enable her, on the basis of his own saying, to refute his οὐκ ἔστιν καλόν and replace it with a defiant Ναί, κύριε – ‘Yes, it is right’. By using the vocative κύριε (it’s only appearance in Mark…) the woman recognizes Jesus’ authority and her dependence on his help, but need not convey any more specific theological insight; it is an appropriate address to a distinguished stranger.”

[19] France, Mark, 299. “Jesus’ own image is thus pressed to its full extent, and provides the basis for her request to be granted, not refused. It is a remarkable twist to the argument, and one which displays as much humility on the woman’s part as it does shrewdness. She does not dispute the lower place which Jesus’ saying assumes for the Gentiles, and even accepts without protest the offensive epithet ‘dog’, but insists that the dogs, too, just have their day.”

[20] France, Mark, 299. “Putting it more theologically, the mission of the Messiah of Israel, while it must of course begin with Israel, cannot be confined there. The Gentiles may have to wait, but they are not excluded from the benefits which the Messiah brings. On this basis, she is bold enough to pursue her request; even the crumbs will be enough.”

[21] France, Mark, 296. “He appears like the wise teacher who allows, and indeed incites, his pupil to mount a victorious argument against the foil of his own reluctance. He functions as what in a different context might be called ‘devil’s advocate’, and is not disappointed to be defeated’ in argument.”

[22] Placher, Mark, 106. “Here yet again humanity and divinity come together in a single narrative of a single agent—the same Jesus who loses the argument can cure her daughter.”

[23] France, Mark, 299. “Διὰ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον makes it clear that the woman’s response, and the attitude which it reveals, has changed Jesus’s apparent intention. It is of course impossible now to be sure on the basis of the printed text alone whether his words were designed to provoke such a response, or whether he genuinely did intend to refuse her request and was persuaded by her argument. Much may have been conveyed by tone of voice and gesture. But Mark, by placing the incident in the setting of the opening up of Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles…suggests that his initial reluctance should be taken with a pinch of salt.”

[24] Placher, Mark, 106. “If Mark did not show us Jesus’ initial harsh remark, we could not see the grace with which Jesus concedes defeat in an argument. That the woman does win the argument is a point any valid interpretation needs to acknowledge. To say that that could not happen is to deny Jesus’ full humanity.”

[25] France, Mark, 297. “That Jesus ultimately responded to a request from such a suppliant, and even that he was prepared to engage her in a serious dialogue, is typical of his unconcern for convention when it stood in the way of his mission.”

[26] France, Mark, 296. “As a result the reader is left more vividly aware of the reality of the problem of Jew-Gentile relations, and of the importance of the step Jesus here takes to overcome it. The woman’s ‘victory’ in the debate is a decisive watershed as a result of which the whole future course of the Christians movement is set not on the basis of Jewish exclusivism but of sharing the ‘children’s bread’.”

[27] Martin Luther, “Second Sunday in Lent,” Sermons Volume Two, trans. John Nicholas Lenker, et al, ed. John Nicholas Lenker. 2:126. “He compares her to a dog, she concedes it, and asks nothing more than that he let her be a dog, as he himself judged her to be. Where will Christ now take refuge? He is caught. Truly, people let the dog have the crumbs under the table; it is entitled to that. Therefore Christ now completely opens his heart to her and yields to her will, so that she is now no dog, but even a child of Israel.”

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Hearts Cleansed First

Psalm 45:1, 7  My heart is stirring with a noble song; let me recite what I have fashioned…my tongue shall be the pen of a skilled writer. Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your reign; you love righteousness and hate iniquity.

Introduction

We just finished discussing the text of the letter to the Ephesians where “alignment” of the inner and outer person was a core thread woven through. For the author of the letter of Ephesians, whom I refer to as Paul, the encounter with God in the event of faith rectifies and substantiates the inner person of the believer with God in the message of what Christ did in his life and death and resurrection, and which is sealed to the believer by the coming of the Holy Spirit. This “spiritual” reality is not enough for Paul, as if just being right with God on the inside is all that matters. According to the logic of Ephesians, for this inner reality to be a real thing it must be/come tangible and that means it must find expression in the temporal realm through the outer person, the body. Faith must (and wants to!) express itself through acts of love. (full stop) In other words, what is on the inside wants to find expression on the outside.

It’s not a pop-psych thing; it’s not a fad or a phase. It’s not “these kids these days!”, it’s a very important concept that must be revisited often in our lives as we grow and mature, change with new information, and after we deconstruct spiritually and intellectually, emotionally and physically. It’s such an important topic that God in Christ Jesus picks up this very concept and discusses it from a different perspective. This time, though, Jesus addresses the discrepancy between empty action toward God because of a heart that clings to human tradition.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Pharisees and some of the scribes [from Jerusalem] questioned [Jesus], “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priest, but eat bread with dirty hands? And [Jesus] said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.”

Mark opens chapter 7 with the local pharisees coming together with some of the scribes having arrived from Jerusalem.[1] Here we, the audience, are being introduced to the building crisis and intensifying controversy between Jesus and the established leadership of Israel.[2] Not just the local leadership is worried, but the larger leadership is worried; so Jerusalem dispatched a group of scribes to see about this Jesus and his claims and actions.[3] As the two groups (the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes) come together they take notice that Jesus’s disciples eat bread with unclean hands—that is, unwashed. This small oversight on the part of the disciples sparks pharisaic and scribal attention because, as Mark parenthetically explains to us, for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they might carefully wash [their] hands, holding fast to the tradition of the priest; and they do not eat unless they ritually wash themselves also from the market… According to Mark, there is a human-made[4] tradition demanding hands (and bodies from the market!) are thoroughly cleansed before consuming food. Even more, anything to do with food should be baptized (washed thoroughly): winecups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.The desire is to prevent something external and unclean from contaminating the person on the inside. So, seeing the disciples break such a tradition—running the risk of making themselves unclean—provokes the Pharisees and the scribes to question Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priests, but eat bread with unclean hands?” As Jesus is pulled into the crisis, this rather small oversight becomes a much bigger deal.[5]

The reason why this small oversight becomes significant is because it marks a very early departure of Jesus’s followers from the traditions of the priests, a departure which will become—over time—more radical.[6] Jesus takes hold of the conversation and moves it away from the banality of tradition-obedience and toward something much more significant: inner-person and outer-person alignment and obedience to God.[7] Jesus begins by calling them hypocrites and then quoting Isaiah, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ And then concludes, “Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.” In other words, Jesus has turned (flipped?) the table on the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes: it is not my disciples who have left the true tradition of reign of God; it is you who have left God as you cling to traditionalism of the kingdom of humanity.[8] According to Jesus, the existing leadership of the children of Israel have allowed God’s commands to slip away as they grabbed onto the traditions of humanity. They are the ones who are now caught in dissonance: they say they love God but their actions demonstrate that they love their own traditions more. Something is askew.

Then, according to our assigned text, Jesus turns to the crowd, and draws them into the discussion, leaving the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes to their own thoughts, “Listen to me all [of you] and understand, nothing from outside of a person is able to make them unclean by entering into them. Rather, it is that which proceeds out of/is spoken by a person which makes the person unclean. Jesus addresses the crowd because what is at stake exceeds just washing one’s hands according to the traditions of human beings; what is at stake is one’s orientation toward God (inward) and, thus, one’s orientation toward the neighbor (outward).[9] Building from the Isaiah quotation, Jesus recenters the state of the inner person (the heart) as the most important thing, as the seat of what defiles or does not defile a person.[10] It’s not a dirty pitcher or dirty hands that makes one unclean, it’s what is produced from the heart and finds its way out that makes someone unclean. Thus, why Jesus then says, For it is from within the heart of the person that the bad reasonings bursts forth….all these wicked things burst forth from within and pollute the person. In other words, you can be as ritually pure according to tradition as you want—avoiding this or that thing, person, or deed—but if your heart is still far from God then none of it matters because you are still unclean and exposes that you’ve never been thoroughly washed (baptized), from head to toe. [11] You can say you are worshipping God and love God all you want, but your actions (toward your neighbor) will speak otherwise because what’s on the inside always wants to find expression on the outside. For Mark’s Jesus, clinging to traditionalisms in the name of God reveal the heart that is turned away from the neighbor because it cannot see the oppression and marginalization being imposed on the people who are just trying to live to the best of their ability. In other words, for Jesus, the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem have forsaken the mission of the reign of God and have invested in the tyranny of the kingdom of humanity; God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation is being ignored (at best) and hindered (at worst).

Conclusion

According to Mark’s Jesus, our hearts must first be made right before we can begin to align the outer person with the inner person in a way that conforms with God’s will and the mission of the reign of God. Our hearts are repeatedly tempted to return to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and we find ourselves lured to (re)draw lines of division between the “acceptable” and “unacceptable,” the “good” and the “bad,” the “clean” and the “unclean.”[12] (Remember, according to Ephesians, humans love a good dividing wall and God loves unity.) So, Mark’s Jesus is asking us—challenging us, inviting us[13]—to reevaluate and take stock of these tendencies and to align our bodily expressions to our faith, our auditory words to God’s Word residing in our hearts, to recenter in our lives and loves those who have been otherwise left out and oppressed by the dominant culture of the kingdom of humanity (people of color, queer people, indigenous people, people who are disabled, our elders, women, etc.). We must take a deep, hard look at the ways we’ve participated in forcing obedience to external conformity on those who look different from us, act different from us, and who walk through the world differently from us, and really see how we have refused to let them be who they are inside and out, how we have denied their bodies, their stories, and their religions in the world. Our histories expose that our hearts have been far from God—calcified, cold, and dead—even though we have convinced ourselves we acted and proclaimed in God’s will and name! We must take our inner and outer alignment seriously—for Jesus is speaking to us and not “them out there” who are getting it wrong according to our books. We must begin to realize we’ve conflated the goals of our human empire for the mission of the reign of God. And it is “We” because we are being addressed, those who claim to represent God by bearing Christ’s name into the world and those who claim to participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world by the leading of the Spirit.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 276. “…not the local scribal leadership but…a delegation ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων.”

[2] France, Mark, 276. “With the beginning of chapter 7 we return to a situation of controversy and of teaching, the two closely woven together. Opposition and rejection have of course been recurrent themes in the Galilean ministry so far, but with this new pericope the tension between Jesus and the religious leadership rises to a new of mutual repudiation, and Jesus deliberately fuels the fire with a more radical pronouncement even than his controversial comments on the sabbath (vv. 15, 19).”

[3] France, Mark, 280. “The fact that in both instances they are described as having arrived …from Jerusalem probably indicates that they have come specially to investigate and/or to dispute with Jesus.”

[4] France, Mark, 280. “…it is the behaviour of Jesus’ disciples rather than his own actions which provides the point of dispute…The issue this time…is not one of obedience to the OT laws, but of rules subsequently developed in Pharisaic circles. While no doubt it could normally be expected that hands would be washed before a meal for hygienic reasons (since food was often taken from a common dish), the only hand washing required in the OT for purposes of ritual purity is that of priests before offering sacrifice…The extension o this principle to the eating of ordinary food and to Jewish people other than priests, was a matter of scribal development, and it is uncertain how far it had progressed by the time of Jesus.”

[5] France, Mark, 277. “While the issue raised by the scribes in v. 2 is at the relatively inoffensive level of ritual washing before meals (a matter on which Jews themselves held different views), by his pronouncement in v. 15 Jesus deliberately widens the discussion to include this ritual separation which constituted one of the ‘badges’ of Jewish national identity.”

[6] France, Mark, 277. The hand washing is smallish but ends up being the catalyst for the “stark polarisation of views which must pit Jesus’ new teaching irrevocably against current religious orthodoxy, and which will, in the fulness of time, lead the community of his followers outside the confines of traditional Judaism altogether.”

[7] France, Mark, 283. “Jesus’ response will therefore focus on this more fundamental issue of the relative authority of tradition as such as a guide to the will of God, rather than on the provenance of the particular tradition in question.”

[8] France, Mark, 285. “The basic charge is economically expressed by means of three contrasting pairs of words: ἀφέντες…κρατεῖτε; ἐντολὴν…παράδοσιν; θεοῦ…ἀνθρώπων. The fundamental contrast is the last—true religion is focused on God, not a merely human activity. What comes from God has the authoritative character of ἐντολή, which requires obedience; what comes from human authority is merely παράδοσις, which may or may not be of value in itself, but cannot have the same mandatory character. Yet they have held fast to the latter, while allowing the former to go by default.”

[9] France, Mark, 286. “Indeed, the Pharisees and scribes are not mentioned again; their accusation has been rebutted, and now Jesus takes the imitative in raising publicly a much more fundamental issue of purity which goes far beyond the limited question of the validity of the scribal rules for hand washing. No specific regulation is now in view, but rather the basic principle of defilement by means of external contacts which underlies all the purity laws of the To and of scribal tradition.”

[10] France, Mark, 291. “Unlike the things which do not defile because they do not make contact with the καρδία, the really defiling things are those which actually originate in the καρδία.”[10] The seat of thought and will

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 102. “The challenge is not to particular details of traditional purity laws but to the whole idea that ‘purity’ means keeping your distance from unclean persons, things, and types of food.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 103. “Worry about your own attitudes and behavior, not how you might look to others if they see you associating with the wrong people. There are no ‘wrong people’ when it comes to those Christians should care about.”

[13] Placher, Mark, 104. “Jesus invites us to let all our respectability be burned away so that nothing will distinguish us from the freaks and lunatics, and only thus to enter his reign.”

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Kate Hanch’s “Storied Witness”

Kate Hanch, Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in 19th-Century America, Minneapolis, Fortress, 2022.

Kate Hanch’s text, Storied Witness, provides crucial information about women, three black women preachers, who would otherwise go undetected and radically underquoted by mainstream theology. Hanch centers the voices of Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth and demonstrates that these three humble and powerful women must be included in regular discourse about God and God’s work in the world. For mainstream theology, Hanch’s book is a challenge: can we broaden the scope of whom we turn to gather our theological education and research? I believe Hanch’s answer is not only a vibrant and bold “Yes!” but also “We must!” If theology—rather, good theology, or “better theology,” referring to Hanna Reichel’s work in “After Method”—is going to resist the temptation to obsolescence and survive this rampant era of welcome deconstruction, then theologians and other servants of “words about God” *must*find new pathways to talk about God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the wellbeing of God’s beloved.

The book is structured so that Elaw, Foote, and Truth all get their own spotlight. In addition to this clear structure, Hanch draws out from each essential biblical truths about God and about Christian praxis. Reading about Zipha Elaw, the reader also learns the old truth often forgotten that the Spirit of God is no respecter or persons but calls and rejuvenates the inner power to proclaim God’s good news of Christ’s life and work in liberating the captives. Yet, the reader isn’t a mere spectator here: clearly, if you are reading along as Hanch is deftly waling you through Elaw’s life and preaching, then you, too, are being addressed by God through Elaw and thus being summoned into the light of Christ to see and hear the cries of those still captive. The same goes for the chapters on Julia Foote and Sojourner Truth: the reader is unable to claim ignorance once she’s done reading these chapters, she has been solicited into becoming aware of her “bodied” “power” (Foote) and her need to be a witness to God and God’s work in Christ and God’s work in her by the power of the Holy Spirit (Truth). Essentially, Hanch puts her reader—especially her white reader—on the hook chapter after chapter.

The last chapter, “Black Women Preachers as Exemplars of a Prophetic Pastoral Theology,” weaves together the lives of these three prophetic and pastoral preachers and drives home without hesitation how robust and living theology streams forth from the lips of Elaw, Foote, and Truth. In essence, what Hanch has done in this last chapter was give her reader a “cheat sheet,” if you will, on how to do theology better with voices that are not mainlined—as in, not cis-het-white men. She lays out the ways that the previous structure of the book is limiting because one can’t pigeonhole these women into a single theme because they are each doing theology, they are each speaking about a very big God who did a big thing in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hanch builds many theology ideas around and out of the work of Elaw, Foote, and Truth; thus, Hanch, exhorts her reader to the same. Here, Hanch directs her reader to really see—in case they missed it in the pages before—how the reader’s theology can grow by engaging the work of these women, using them as her guide, and affirming the presence of the divine Spirit in their words and works without recourse to making sure they align to the voices of cis-het-white men from ages past and limited/specific encounter with God.

The one thing I was left wondering was about Hanch’s use of “bodied” and “powered.” Very creative uses of these words because I want to say “embodied” and “empowered,” as in, being given the power and the bodiedness. But maybe that’s Hanch’s point. The power and the bodiedness of these three women wasn’t to be *given* to them as if earned or merited by being good or doing well according to an earthly authority. Rather, these women took the place and occupied the space because they had their *own* power and their *own* beautiful bodies and used both because the source of that power and bodiedness is God in and of God’s self; that was all the permission Elaw, Foote, and truth needed. To my reader, it begs the question, doesn’t it?

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