Tag: Divine Love

Joining Our Voices to the Divine Symphony

Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked…Their delight is in the law of Abba God, and they meditate on that law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.

Introduction

The church visible is a specific community of human beings with a specific summons in the world; and as the church invisible it is called to be in the world but not of the world because its fabric and substance is cultivated from and of divine spiritual essence. People both make and do not make the church. There is no church without the people (visible), but the church is not restricted to a certain group of people (invisible). Every church is called to participate as a locus of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world and in this way the church visible partakes of the long surging presence of the church invisible. We as a visible church are yoked to the larger invisible church extending through time, and we find our place in this history as we are, where we are holding space for God to show up and work through us as a site of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.

In this way, the church cannot find its comfort in the material realm, but rather it must find it in God through dependence on Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s from this posture that the church can bring comfort into the world. Thus, the metrics of success offered by the world fall flat when judging the church; it is not always the largest, the wealthiest, and the building with the most things that is the one most closely aligned to the reign of God. To be in the world and of the world is to relinquish the message of Christ for the message of the world and therein stifle the life-giving proclamation of Christ crucified and raised; a message that breaks in and interrupts the messages of the world. To sacrifice the message of Christ for an acceptable message according to the world is to sacrifice a true message of a substantial and enduring comfort for the saccharine and temporary comfort of the world.

But the church, which is built from the dust of the ground, is animated by and dependent on the breath of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God found in the encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ. The church is to be in the world and not of the world because the world and its inhabitants need a good word, a new word, a word of love, life, and liberation, one they didn’t come up with themselves.

John 17:6-19

Jesus prayed…“I am no longer in the cosmos and they, they are in the cosmos, and I, I come to you. Holy Elder, take care of them in your name which you have given to me, so that they are one just as we [, we are one]. When I was with them I, I was taking care of them in your name which you have given to me, and I guarded [them] and not one of them was lost if not the son of destruction…I, I have given to them your word, and the cosmos detested them, because they are not of the cosmos just as I, I am not of the cosmos.” (Jn 17:11-12b, 14)

This is the “Farewell Prayer.” Here, Jesus prays for his disciples, the ones he called to himself and thus to God and the same ones he is leaving. Jesus called each one by name and ushered them into the reality of God; they have been given new eyes to see, new ears to hear and thus they are now no longer of the world even though they are in it. The goal of the prayer is to make sure that the disciples whom Jesus is leaving behind in the world will remain in the truth that is God’s self-disclosure revealed by Christ (vv. 17, 19), and not fall prey to the oppression and hatred of the world thus cease remaining in Christ to seek comfort in the world.[1]

A thread that runs through the prayer is “oneness.” This oneness is part of the truth of God revealed in Christ: Jesus and God are one thus those who encounter Jesus encounter God; where Jesus goes, God goes, too.[2] When Jesus called the disciples, God called them. When they followed Jesus, they followed God. In being so summoned and in following, they become the community whose beginning is not of the world but of God even if they are in it.[3] Through Christ they have come to know God and are thus taken out of the world because they are substantiated by the word of God incarnated in Christ whom they follow and from whom they received the word of God.[4] The disciples—the ones called to form this community—make up the community that is of Jesus thus of God and this belonging to Jesus is the unique source of the community and the unique essence of its presence in the cosmos. Thus, the community cannot be of the world because its source and foundation is not temporal but spiritual; it is literally born of the spiritual substance of the word of God that is Jesus Christ and is made to be God’s incarnate presence in the world but not of the world.[5] Therefore, to try to exist outside of this divine source and be in the world and of the world will render the fledgling community nothing but a social club.

Now, as the prayer goes on, the community so prayed for by Christ is to take up the mission of God in the world that was revealed in and through Jesus’s self-witness in the world; the community is, like it’s source and forebear, to call into question the things of the world, to challenge the domination of the kingdom of humanity.[6] This is the hardship for the disciples left behind by Jesus; they will be homeless in the world but by being thusly homeless they will find their home (their being and substance, their source) in God. Here, nothing of the world can comfort them or justify their existence; they are solely and completely dependent on the Word of God in Christ.[7] And in this way they are perpetually at risk for falling into the lure of the world, thus why Jesus prays for them. They must resist the urge, and they must abide in the vine.[8]

It is through remaining and abiding in and with the vine (ch. 15), clinging to the Word of God, and being recipients of the divine, life-giving sap that is the fulfillment of the joy of Christ that is made complete in the community left behind.[9] The holiness (the consecration, the sanctifying) of the community is found in ὁ λόγος ὁ σὸς ἀλήθείᾳ έστιν (v. 17b). The identity of the community in the world is formed by the word of God that is truth; thus, it is not defined by the word of the world that is not truth. Anything apart from this word, for this community, disempowers its presence and leads it astray from the source of its life and identity and renders it merely pruned kindling; the holy community cannot depend on anything but the word of God for its love, life, and liberation in the world for the world.[10] From here and only from here anchored in the Word of God, like Jesus, can the community of Christ take up God’s divine proclamation of life, mission of love, and revolution of liberation in the world.[11]

Conclusion

Our hope as the church visible today is not to forget the source of the life of the invisible church. Now is the time to push more into the Word of God, to recall and retell the stories of Christ and the radical divine action made known through him. It is in pressing into this identity as the holy community formed and founded on the radical proclamation of God’s Word incarnate that is how we find ourselves further in the world though never of it. To press into God and God’s word is not to go backwards to some archaic time or to cling to legalism or fundamentalism; this is death because God’s word is living and breathing, not something of a year now long gone (this is to live under the kingdom of humanity). To press into God’s word and God is to press into life and movement forward into something new, different, and something that can summon the world to look up and forward (this is to live under the reign of God).

As tempting as it may seem at times to jettison this ancient and rather whacky proclamation for one a bit more tolerable to the world, I assure you that is the surest way to forfeit our identity as the Christian church in the world and give up our seat in this history. Without the foundation of the Word of God in Christ, we no longer have a unique message to bring into the world and will just blend into the background of the world’s cacophony. We cannot depend on our doctrines and institutions, some claim to God’s law, or some static conception of God of another era; recourse to this language is just the same as the world’s language…it’s recourse to temporal things that have no part in establishing spiritual realities. It is to try to grasp at dust returned to dust.

Rather as part of this long-ago prayed for community, we must hear the divine summons, dare to let go of the rope, and fall deeper into God. We must let ourselves become consumed with God’s passion for the world, for the beloved. It’s in this full dependence on God and God’s word that brings us in line with God and begins to spark the flames of divine revolution in our midst; reformation (revolution) always starts in God’s church with God’s word. In this we can join our voices to the celestial symphony and demand life where there is death, love where there is indifference, and liberation where there is captivity in the name of Christ to the glory of God.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 498. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “For the evangelist—and for the source too—the imparting of the name of God is not the transmitting of a secret, power-laden word, such as in the mysteries, or in the soul’s heavenward journey, or in magic, take effect by being spoken; rather it is the disclosure of God himself, the disclosure of the ἀλήθεια.”

[2] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “In the work that Jesus does, God himself is at work, in him God himself is encountered.”

[3] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 498. “…by [the disciples’] faith they testify that their origin does not lie in the world, but that from the very beginning they were God’s possessions. As those who preserver God’s word, mediated through the Revealer, they form the community for which he prays.”

[4] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 499. “From this kind of faith grew the true knowledge, και ἔγνωσαν ἀληθῶς…, which in turn is the means whereby faith comes to itself, καὶ ἐπίστευσαν. For what is known and what is believed are in fact the same; ὅτι παρὰ σοῦ ἐξῆλθον and ὅτι σύ με ἀπέστειλας mean the same thing. And the meaning is this: to understand Jesus as the revealer and so to come to know God (v. 3). This therefore is the Christian community: a fellowship, which does not belong to the world, but is taken out of the world; one that owes its origin to God, and is established by the Revealer’s word, recognised as such in the light of the Passion. i.e.. in the light of rejection by the world; a fellowship, that is to say, which is established only by t the faith that recognises God in Jesus.”

[5] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 500. “The community belongs to God only in so far as it belongs to Jesus; i.e. it has its origin in eternity only in so far as it holds fast to its origin in the eschatological event that is accomplished in Jesus. To say that it belongs to Jesus is significant only in that it thereby belongs to God (τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά έστιν) that it belongs to God becomes a fact only in in that it belongs to Jesus (τὰ σὰ ἐμά).”

[6] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “But what is he?  As the revealer of God he is the Judge of the world, through whom the world is called in question; and he has his δόξα in the community inasmuch as it too means judgement for the world, and that through it the world is called in question.”

[7] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 501. “His δόξα cannot be seen at the present time like the glory of a Messiah. There is no way of point to it in the world, except paradoxically, in that the community which is a stranger to the world is also an offence to it. Thus the community cannot prove itself to the world. Nor can its members comfort themselves in the things they possess…”

[8] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 502. “From what has gone before it is at once clear that the prayer for their protection is the prayer that the community which stands in the world be protected from falling back into the world’s hands, that it be kept pure in its unworldly existence.”

[9] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 506. “To say that this joy is to be shared by the disciples πεπληρωμένη, is to say, as in 15:11, that the joy they have already received through him will be brought to its culmination; the significance of turning to him in faith is found in the believer’s life becoming complete as eschatological existence.”

[10] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 509. “Marked off from the world, the community is to live in the world as holy community. But it can only enjoy this state of separation from the world in virtue of the revelation on which it is founded, which is nothing other than the word of God transmitted to it through Jesus. Hus its holiness is not due to its own quality, nor can it manufacture its differentiation from the world by itself, by its rite, its institution, or its particular way of lie; all this can only be a sign of its difference from the world, not a means of attaining it. [The community’s] holiness it therefore nothing permanent, like an inherited possession: holiness is only possible for the community by the continual realisation of tis world-annulling way of life, i.e.. by continual reference to the word that calls it out of the world, and to the truth that sets it free form the world.”

[11] Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 510. “The community has a task analogous to his, and rooted in it…But it does not take over this assault or the duty to win the world solely by embarking on missionary enterprises; it does so simply by its existence.”

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Borders and Boundaries, Dismantled and Destroyed

Psalm 98:1-2 1 Sing to Abba God a new song, for God has done marvelous things. With God’s right hand and God’s holy arm has Abba God won for the victory.

Introduction

God’s boundaries are not our boundaries. This is something that’s hard for us to grasp. Historically, religious institutions formed and cultivated boundaries around who can and cannot access God. Creating in-groups and out-groups; allowing domination to sow discord and compliance through threats of shame and isolation for disobedience or different. While these impulses are often initiated with a desire to be true to God and God’s will materialized in time and space, they often—over the course of time—become archaic dogmas long grown rancid thus detrimental to human thriving. The clerics within these institutions find themselves upholding the institutional ideologies and becoming the guard-dogs of traditionalism, becoming the means through which malevolent power wields its sword against the people in the name of God. Both the official leaders and the people so led are caught up in these human-made boundaries and before any of them realize it, the whole kit and kaboodle has moved far off the mark, relinquishing the divine Spirit to maintain human control.[1]

But God’s boundaries are not our boundaries. God’s boundaries are fluid and move and flex. The movement of God through history demonstrates that divine space and time defies orderly categories soothing to nervous human consciences. What was is never all there will be. While we like to create systems and ideologies giving us assurance and allowing us to sleep in comfortability, the reality is that God’s way is not our way and because of this we are (regularly) summoned out of a life suspended in stasis into a life grounded in evolution. We are (regularly) invited to participate in the flux of the divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world: we are called to go along with God’s radical movement in the world on behalf of the beloved.

If this sounds weird, let me tell you the story of Peter and the celestial sheet of animals…

Acts 10:44-48

…for they were hearing them speaking languages and magnifying God. At that time Peter answered, “Hence, no one is able to (has the power to) to hinder the water from these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we [have received]?” (Acts 10:46-47)

Our lectionary drops us off at the tail end of chapter 10 of Acts. This is unfortunate. Chapter 10 is a hinge chapter in this book, setting up the fulfillment of the thesis of the book of Acts articulated back in chapter 1 (vv. 7-8): “Now [Jesus] said to them: ᾽It is not for you to know the times or seasons [God] has set by [God’s] own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.᾽”

So, let’s back track a bit. At the beginning of chapter 10, Peter is found in Joppa in the tent of a tanner (an unclean person). Joppa is well outside of Jerusalem but still within Judea. Thus, Peter has moved with Gospel proclamation from Jerusalem into the outer regions of Judea. Also, in chapter 10, we are introduced to Cornelius: a gentile centurion of Caesarea; Caesarea is within Samaria. Samaria was a region of Jewish faith that was not Israel and was outside of Judea and considered unclean; Samaritans and Jews proper did not get along (hence, the offense of the “Good Samaritan”). This same Cornelius receives a heavenly vision and is told to fetch Peter from Joppa and bring him to Caesarea. Thus the inaugural clear and present movement of God’s feet breaking through human-made boundaries. Every border and boundary is about to collapse.

Meanwhile, back in Joppa and before he is fetched by Cornelius’s men, Peter has a vision. A large sheet descends from heaven and on it is every kind of animal—impure and unclean. A voice from heaven tells Peter, “Get up, Peter. Kill and Eat.” Peter declines. The summons goes out again. Peter declines again. Then one more time, the divine voice commands Peter to “Get up; kill and eat.” After this the sheet returns the way it came and is gone. For Peter the command to eat one of these animals was to participate in defiling himself, making himself unclean and impure. But for God, “‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean,’” (10:15b). Dietary restrictions, marking a group clean or unclean, are eliminated. Not only does God defy human-made geographical boundaries oriented toward keeping some externally in and some out, but now there is no distinction internally, too. Boundaries and borders are dismantled and destroyed.

So, in our passage we find Peter already at Cornelius’s home. He’s spoken with Cornelius who shares with him his story. Then Peter gives a speech about the radical movement of God moving from Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth, a fulfillment of Acts 1:8. As he finishes his speech, the Spirit falls upon everyone within Cornelius’s home who listened to Peter’s words. Those who are clean (Peter) are now joined to the (formerly declared) unclean (Cornelius and his family), the Children of Israel are yoked to the Gentile converts by Spirit baptism; [2] this then moves Peter to declare who can withhold the waters of baptism from those who believe and who have received the Holy Spirit as we have? The answer to this question? “No one.” (Because the way the structure of the sentence occurs in Greek it demands a negative response.) God moves and then we follow; God touches and we respond; God comes low to be with us…we do not go high to find God.[3]

Conclusion

In this passage we see God transcending boundaries and borders, ones made by human beings. In other words, and to refer to Willie James Jennings on this passage, “We are the boundary and border God has transgressed, and that transgression is real. Here at the site of miracle, space and time are being given for Jew and Gentile together to press in deeply to the caressing of God through the flows of water on the body and the joining of our bodies together and to the body of Jesus.”[4] In other words, God has bent the rod of time and space in such a way as to make our bodies the locus of God’s movement in bringing the ends of the earth together. In this moment, no one is clean or unclean; they are just the beloved of God whether circumcised or not, whether Jewish or not, whether clean or not because all these identities and markers are false binaries holding no water because God’s water, the water of baptism, knows no male and female, child of Israel or gentile, slave or free (Gal. 3:28);[5] nothing—not time, space, geographical region, time in chronology—can prevent transcendence and transfiguration.

Baptism—of both water and Spirit—renders our preconceived notions of in and out, us and them obsolete and pointless.[6] In and through Baptism, we are brought through death into new life that is of a new (timeless) time and of a new (spaceless) space where human-made boundaries and rival groupings are history, byproducts of an old and dead life lived apart from God and faith in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.[7] Here, in and through the Baptism of water and divine Spirit, the followers of Christ are called to participate in and with God deconstructing boundaries and borders prohibiting God from being with the beloved.

[1] Jennings, “Acts,” 114. “This is the border not of God’s desire but of our need. Our senses are dull and our attention weak. We are easily distracted by other things, drawn so deeply into obsession with these things that we will worship them and make them our gods. We must have the space and time in which to have our senses trained to understand authentic divine touch. We must have the time and space to learn the way of Spirit caressing flesh, holding it, moving it, directing it toward life and light.”

[2] Willie James Jennings, “Acts”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 114. “The waters of baptism signify the joining of Jew and Gentile, not simply the acceptance of the gospel message.”

[3] Jennings, “Acts,” 114. “The Spirit confronts the disciples of Jesus with an irrepressible truth: God overcomes boundary and border. God touches first. God does not wait to be touched by us. This is the boundary not of our failure but of our truth. We cannot reach up to God and bring God down to our embrace. We are creatures. Yet God takes touch seriously and initiates the embrace.”

[4] Jennings, “Acts,” 114-115.

[5] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “This is what God wants, Jews with Gentiles, Gentiles wanting to be with Jews, and together they eat and live in peace. This is surely not the eschaton, not heaven on earth. It is simply a brief time before the chaos and questioning descend on Peter and the other disciples who will following the Spirit, before the returning to the old regime, and before the lust for the normal returns.”

[6] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “Both these questions will haunt the apostles and the church built on their witness. Yet the greatest event of this story comes after the miracle of baptism. It is the beginning of life together, ‘Then they invited him to stay on for several days’ (v 49).”

[7] Jennings, “Acts,” 115. “…in a quiet corner of the Roman Empire, in the home of a centurion, a rip in the fabric of space and time has occurred. All those who would worship Jesus may enter a new vision of intimate space and a new time that will open up endless new possibilities of life with others.”

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The Good Fruit

Psalm 22:28-29 28 To Abba God alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; all who go down to the dust fall before Abba God. My soul shall live for God; my descendants shall serve God; they shall be known as Abba God’s for ever.

Introduction

Last week, I ended the sermon with this:

The Christian walk is hard not because we have to be pious and self-righteous or force ourselves to be perfect and better than everyone else; it’s hard because to love your neighbor in the name of God is hard. In her most systematic text, Thinking About God, Dorothee Sölle writes,

“Love has its price. The cross expresses love to the endangered, threatened life of God in our world. It is no longer a question of a biophilic embracing of life which spares itself the cross. The more we love God, the threatened, endangered, crucified God, the nearer we are to [God], the more endangered we are ourselves. The message of Jesus is that the more you grow in love, the more vulnerable you make yourself.”[1]

Beloved to love is hard because it’s risky; God knows because God loves and risked everything for you, the beloved.

I didn’t know that this week’s gospel message would take that message and go deeper into the depths of Christian existence that is radically shaped by God’s love, faith in Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Following Christ out of the Jordan is risky business; following Christ out of the tomb is even more risky. Because love—the love of God and the love for the neighbor—makes us vulnerable, as vulnerable as God made God’s self in Christ for the Beloved.

John 15:1-8

I, I am the true vine and my Elder is the vinedresser. All vine-branches in me not bearing fruit [God, God] removes, and all [vine-branches] bearing fruit [God, God] prunes so that they may bear more excellent fruit…Remain in me, and I [remain] in you. Just as the vine-branch is not able to bear fruit from itself if it does not remain in the vine, in this way neither can you, you if you do not remain in me. (John 15:1-2, 4)

Our gospel brings us to Jesus’s announcement that he is the true vine, God (his parent) is the vine-dresser, and those who follow Christ are the vine-branches. This passage falls within the “farewell discourses.” Through these chapters (13-17), Jesus leaves his disciples with exhortation and guidance, warning and prayer, all things necessary for them to persist when he leaves (in chapter 18 he is arrested and is resurrected in chapter 20). So, seen through the larger discourse of the “farewell discourses” a discussion about Jesus being the true vine, God being the vine-dresser, and the disciples being vine-branches makes more sense. Thus, in being the true vine there is no other vine for the disciples to find true life apart from Jesus.[2] This is why the disciples are exhorted by Christ to remain in Christ as they go about the activity of the Spirit in the world through proclamation and prayer.[3] In other words, to isolate this passage may render it more traumatizing and scarier than it ought to be—though, that doesn’t make its message easier to digest.

Christ knows that his disciples, those near and far, will come up against turmoil and tumult in the world either indirectly (because the world is chaotic and a bit happenstance) or directly (because the message of God’s revolutionary love causes things to be right-side-up that have been up-side down for too long). Christ is eager to give his disciples something to cling to while they wander this earth without him, so that when they encounter indirect or direct suffering they know they are not alone but that God, Christ, and the Spirit are with them, walking them through this trial and tribulation.[4] And while the thrust of the passage is on the vine and the vine-branches (and which ones are or are not bearing fruit), God is pictured here in a tender and loving way who faithfully forms and shapes the lives of those who follow the vine, those who follow after Jesus.[5] In this passage we see God use the (indirect and direct) ills of this world for the well-being and benefit of those who follow after God by faith and love.[6] It is this God who is for the disciples whom the disciples have direct access to through Christ.[7]

I need to tread lightly here because I do not want to communicate that either we should be seeking out turmoil and tumult or that God in God’s self is intentionally bringing us pain. Rather, it is in turmoil and tumult where we cling tighter to the word and grip that divine hand of our beloved elder/parent with more fervor as we go through these challenges.[8] And in this we are formed (more and more) to the likeness of Christ, fashioned after God’s own heart, made one with the divine Spirit in us rendering us softer rather than harder.[9]

It is this process of moving from hard to soft, from invulnerable to vulnerable that makes Christian existence in the world painful. The world would deal us strife and encourage us to become hard and closed off; but with Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit and God walking with us, we are exhorted and encouraged to get up when we fall and not put on the world’s emotional armor so we can feel again, identify with the suffering of others again, to be as Christ again to our neighbor and in the world. We have no “human security”; rather we are to trust that even in this God is with us and God will bring comfort to these who are afflicted through our love which is informed/formed by our faith.[10] To be grafted onto the vine that is Christ and pruned as a result is to be grown into Christ and to be Christ’s body in the world searching and seeking the beloved of God, bringing liberation, loving even though its risky, and daring to live and fight for life even when death is all around.[11],[12] This is the good fruit that we bear into the world. [13]

Conclusion

As those daring enough to follow Christ out of the Jordan and then again follow him out of the tomb on Easter Morning, we are called to remain in Christ. We never move on from Christ as the source of our life and love in the world, and the reality of our liberation to participate in divine liberation of the whole world. To remain in Christ is to persist in faith even when things seem to be falling apart, are all on fire, and when everything actual is poised to dismantle anything possible. We are called to be those who represent Christ in the world, those who are from Christ, those who bring Christ close to God’s beloved who are in pain, who suffer, who lack, and to remind them and the world that Christ is not truly gone, but very present in our actions of love informed by faith.[14]

It is this from-ness, this remaining in that informs our prayer life and in this way as we are aligned with the life giving sap of the vine, and we are pruned, and become fruit-bearing vine-branches. In this way, our prayers align informed by our faith in Christ manifesting in loving deeds bringing God glory in the world. [15] Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven… To pray in this way, to remain in Christ, to bear divine fruit in the world aligned with the will of God, to be Christ’s body and to represent God in a world that is convinced God is dead is what it means to be Christ’s disciples. [16]

To quote her text, Suffering, Dorothee Sölle writes,

“Love does not cause suffering or produce it, though it must necessarily seek confrontation, since its most important concern is not the avoidance of suffering but the liberation of people. Jesus’ suffering was avoidable. He endured it voluntarily. There were other ways out, as is stressed again and again in mythical language: it would have been possible for him to come down from the cross and allow himself to be helped. To put it in political terms, he didn’t need to go to Jerusalem and could have avoided the confrontation. … To reconcile God with misery means precisely avoiding confrontation and, in fear of being formed in the image of Christ, which includes pain, putting off liberating love.”[17]

“The meaning of the cross is not to reconcile God with misery and finish us off in the paradox. The unity of cross and resurrection, failure and victory, weeping and laughing, makes the utopia of a better life possible for the first time. He who does not weep needs no utopia; to him who only weeps God remains mute.”[18]

[1] Dorothee Soelle, Thinking About God: An Introduction to Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1990), 134.

[2] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, gen. ed., RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 529-530. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966. “With the words ἐγώ εἰμι the Revealer presents himself again as the object of the world’s desire and longing; if one asks about the ‘true vine’, then the answer is given: ‘The true vine am I’. There is no comparison here, or allegory. Rather, Jesus as the true, authentic ‘vine’ is contrasted with whatever also claims to be the ‘vine’.”

[3] Bultmann, John, 529. “Thus the first part of the discourse, vv. 1-8, is an exhortation to constancy of faith in the language of μείvατε ἐν ἐμοί, …”

[4] Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14-16,” Luther’s Works, vol. 24, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1961), 194. Here after LW 24. “That is how Christ interprets the suffering which He and His Christians are to endure on earth. This is to be a benefaction and a help rather than affliction and harm. Its purpose is to enable them to bear all the better fruit and all the more, in order that we may learn to impress this on ourselves as He impresses it on Himself.”

[5] LW 24, 199. “This is an especially charming picture. God portrays Himself, not as a tyrant or a jailer but as a pious Vinedresser who tends and works His vineyard with all faithfulness and diligence, and surely does not intend to ruin it by fertilizing, hoeing, pruning, and removing superfluous leaves.”

[6] LW 24, 210. “Thus, as has been stated before, God uses all trials and suffering, not for Christendom’s harm, as the devil and the world intend, but for its welfare, so that it may thereby be purified and improved, and bear much fruit for the Vinedresser. This is what he here calls pruning, so that those who are in Christ may continue to grow and increase in strength.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 531-532. “Before the exhortation is given, the phrase καὶ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ γεωργός ἐστιν declares that Jesus’ existence for his own is ground in his existence from God, which is an indirect way of saying that as the revealer he makes it possible for his own to approach the Father.”

[8] LW 24, 211. “Therefore your suffering is not the cleanness itself, and you are not declared clean in the sight of God because of it. But it does serve to drive man to grasp and hold the Word with a better and firmer grip, in order that in this way faith may become active. The word is itself the purification of the heart if the heart adheres to it and remains faithful to it.”

[9] LW 24, 212. “Behold, thus Christ shows clearly that the cleanness of Christians does not come from the fruit they bear but that, conversely, their fruit and works spring from the cleanness which they already have from the Word, by which the heart is cleansed.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 532-533. “The relationship with God means the destruction of human security—for the believer as well. It does not provide enjoyment of peace of mind, or a state of contemplation, but demands movement, growth; its law is καρπὸν φέρειν. The nature of the fruit-bearing is not expressly stated; it is every demonstration of vitality of faith, to which, according to bb. 9-17, reciprocal love above all belongs.”

[11] LW 24, 226. “And it is done in this manner: When I am baptized or converted by the Gospel, the Holy Spirit is present. He takes me as clay and makes of me a new creature, which is endowed with a different mind, heart, and thoughts, that is, with a true knowledge of God and sincere trust in His grace. To summarize, the very essence of my heart is rendered and changed. This makes me a new plant, one that is grafted on Christ the vine and grows from Him. My holiness, righteousness, and purity do not stem from me, nor to they depend on me. They come solely from Christ and are based only in Him, in whom I am rooted by faith, just a s the sap flows from the stalk into the branches. Now I am like Him and of His kind. Both He and I are of one nature and essence, and I bear fruit in him and through Him. This fruit is not mine; it is the Vine’s.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 536. “For the Revealer is not the mediator of a doctrine that can be received once for all; his word is not a dogma, nor a view of the world, but the free word of revelation that makes alive and that establishes anew one’s whole existence.”

[13] LW 24, 226. “Thus Christ and the Christians become one loaf and one body, so that the Christian can bear good fruit—not Adam’s or his own, but Christ’s For when a Christian baptizes, preaches, consoles, exhorts, works, and suffers, he does not do this as a man descended from Adam; it is Christ who does this in Him. The lips and tongue with which the proclaims and confesses God’s Word are not his; they are Christ’s lips and tongue. The hands with which heh toils and serves his neighbor are the hands and member of Christ, who, as he says here, is in him; and he is in Christ.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 535-536. “Μέωειν is persistence in the life of faith; it is loyal steadfastness to the cause only in the sense of always allowing oneself to be encompassed, of allowing oneself to receive. The loyalty that is demanded is not primarily a continued being for, but a being from; it is not the holding of a position, but an allowing oneself to be held, corresponding to the relationship of the κλῆμα to the ἄμπελος.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 538-539. “In prayer the believer, so to speak, steps out of the movement of his life, inasmuch as the prayer is not an action that satisfies the claim of the moment—which for the believer is the demand of love. But as he prays the believer also steps out of the context of his life, in that he is certain of the prayer’s being granted, and he no longer has need to fear the future about which he prays, as of something that threatens to destroy him he can be certain that the prayer will be heard, whatever he prays for; for what else could be the content of his petition, whatever form it may take, than the Revealer’s μένειν in him, and his μένειν in the Revealer? The granting of such a prayer, which arises him out of the context of his human life in the world, is itself the documentation of his eschatological existence.”

[16] Bultmann, John, 539. “…the disciples’ union with the separated Revealer is achieved in their discipleship; and after vv. 4-6, the radical meaning of μαθητὴς εἶναι has become clear as a reciprocal μένειν ἐν.”

[17] Dorothee Sölle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1975), 164-165. Originally published as: Leiden “Themen der Theologie” ed. Hans Jürgen Schultz, Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag.

[18] Sölle, Suffering, 166.

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Love is Risky

Psalm 23:1-2, 6: Abba God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Abba God for ever.

Introduction

When I was first Christian, I was given the clear idea that being a Christian meant that I would be nice and that people would like me because I was so nice, kind, patient, and happy. I would be compliant and non-obtrusive. I would be meek and mild. I would be all things to all people in a very non-offensive and non-confrontational way. In fact, being offensive and confrontational—being the opposite of any adjective listed above—was synonymous with being “not a Christian.” So, following the logic: happy person = Christian person; grumpy person = Non-Christian person (etc.).

To be honest, I don’t know where this idea comes from. It’s not in the bible really. Yes, Paul says to rejoice and rejoice again, Jesus says not to worry, and there are many exhortations to love our neighbor and offer up service to them in the name and to the glory of God. There are even a couple (some Pauline and some pseudo-Pauline) references to being good, complaint, and prayerful citizens. But, in general, the Christian life is not particularly described as nice, happy, kind, compliant, etc. To be even more honest, I’m not sold on the idea that those we are exhorted to imitate were all that nice or happy. For instance, while Paul brought the gospel proclamation—God’s word of comfort and love—to many, he was a force to reckon with and very open about his suffering while bringing glory to God and the God’s beloved. Jesus—the incarnate Word of God who identified with the oppressed and marginalized—was quite the offensive and confrontational force toward many…how else do you think he ended up on the cross, a state instrument of death?

The reality is that the Christian life will bring us into direct conflict with both religious and civil authorities. Following in the steps of Christ as Christ’s disciples means that, like Christ, we will find ourselves confronting the false idols of our age, exposing decrepit and toxic systems, and coming face to face with structural violence meant to do harm to God’s beloved. In other words, no not everyone will like us and think we are so peachy keen and nice. If that is hard to believe, let’s turn to Luke’s story in Acts about Peter in full on confrontation with the authorities…

Acts 4:5-12

Now it happened that the rulers and the elders and the scribes of Israel were convened in Jerusalem—both Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and as many who were of the kin of the high priest—and after standing [the prisoners] in the middle, they were learning by inquiry, “By what power or in whose name did you, you do this thing?” Then Peter—by means of being filled by the Holy Spirit—said to them…” (Acts 4:5-8a)

Our lectionary drops us off with Peter and John as prisoners before the elders and rulers of the people of Israel in Jerusalem. But, how did they get there? Let’s look.

Last week, we saw Peter and John heal a man who needed healing his whole life. In response to this healing, the people of Israel are amazed and in awe of what Peter and John have done for this man. As these people gather around John and Peter, Peter begins to address the crowd with words of exposure and comfort in the proclamation of Christ raised from the dead. As a result, some Sadducees and the captain of the temple approach Peter and John and arrest them for proclaiming Jesus’s resurrection from the dead to the people.

Now, in our passage, it is the day after the arrest. As Luke tells us, Peter and John are dragged out into the middle of all the leaders (rulers, elders, scribes and the kin of the high priest) of Israel so that they, the rulers and elders, can interrogate John and Peter and find out, By what power or in whose name did you, you do this thing? Peter has a choice here…he could just say something ambiguous about God, but he doesn’t. Instead, Luke tells us, Peter being filled by the Holy Spirit said to them… The Spirit of God inspires and emboldens Peter[1] to speak light to darkness, to expose the errors of judgment and the missed mark. It’s the following speech about divine, liberating action of the oppressed that gets Peter and John in trouble with those who are in power.[2] Regular words about God do not raise eyebrows or provoke to anger; rather, it is the words demonstrating God as against those in power that will. Peter and John knew this would be the case; they’d seen it before with Jesus and it led to his death and this death would come for them, too.[3]

So, Peter, filled with the Spirit, boldly declares to the leaders of Israel and not just to a crowd of bystanders, ‘If we, we are being interrogated about the well-doing of a weak person, by what this man has been saved, let it be known to all of you and all the people of Israel, by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth—whom you, you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—this man has stood in your presence healthy.’ Peters words shatter the glass walls separating the religious and the political, what they proclaimed to the people they now proclaim to the leaders; liberation from oppression comes to liberate the oppressed and also the oppressor.[4] As a result, Peter and John are treated as criminals who thwart the law and break the social arrangement; as Willie James Jennings says in his commentary on Acts 4, “Real preaching and authentic teaching is inextricably bound to real criminality.”[5]

But something else is going on here. This scene is meant to demonstrate the power of the judges over the judged. But a reversal is happening. Rather than the judges asking the questions of the judged, Peter, the judged, turns the table and now the rulers and elders of the people of Israel are the ones being questioned. In one swift and divinely inspired word, Peter puts these judges on trial; they are now the guilty ones,[6] they are now exposed, they are now the ones who must justify their power.[7] The rulers must declare in whose name they act. And things become a bit trickier when Peter makes it clear that he and his friend are the representatives of God therefore implying the rulers and the elders are not. In and through Peter’s speech, the world is exposed as upside-down; Peter and John are caught up in the divine activity as they participate in turning it right-side up according to divine love, life, and liberation in the name of God for God’s beloved.[8]

Conclusion

Acts reminds us, from beginning to end, that the life of a Christian and the life of the Christian church is one that is hard and not easy. To follow Christ demands that we, like all his other disciples (i.e. Peter and John) will become caught up in the waterfall of divine justice for the beloved that is life, love, and liberation. And this necessarily means that we will not be nice, we will be confrontational, we may even be offensives especially to those who are benefiting being nestled comfortably in the power of an upside-down world. Willie James Jennings writes,

“The great illusion of followers of Jesus, especially those who imagine themselves leaders, is that they could live a path different from Jesus and his disciples. They believe somehow that they can be loved or at least liked or at least tolerated or even ignored by those with real power in the world.”[9]

Easter tells us that not only is our past tied up with Christ’s death and resurrection but so is our future. And if both our past and our future is so tied up with Christ, it means that our present is as well. To live into the gift of resurrected life means being lead, by the Spirit, to participate in the divine revolution of love in the world on behalf of God’s beloved. Many will be grateful; many more will not. The Christian walk is hard not because we have to be pious and self-righteous or force ourselves to be perfect and better than everyone else; it’s hard because to love your neighbor in the name of God is hard. In her most systematic text, Thinking About God, Dorothee Sölle writes,

“Love has its price. The cross expresses love to the endangered, threatened life of God in our world. It is no longer a question of a biophilic embracing of life which spares itself the cross. The more we love God, the threatened, endangered, crucified God, the nearer we are to [God], the more endangered we are ourselves. The message of Jesus is that the more you grow in love, the more vulnerable you make yourself.”[10]

Beloved to love is hard because it’s risky; God knows because God loves and risked everything for you, the beloved.

[1] Brittany E. Wilson, “Contextualizing. Masculinity in the Book of Acts: Peter and Paul as Test Cases,” in Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics, eds., Eric D. Barreto, Matthew L. Skinner, and Steve Walton (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 34. “…Luke indicates that Peter’s rhetorical savvy is not of his own doing, but of divine origin.”

[2] Willie James Jennings, “Acts”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 45. “Speaking holy words has serious consequences. These are not words that simply speak of God. There is nothing inherently serious, holy, or dangerous in God-talk. The holy words that bring consequences are words tied to the concrete liberating actions of God for broken people. Such holy words bring the speakers into direct confrontation with those in power. Jesus not only spoke such words but he was such a word.”

[3] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “The disciples know this confrontation was coming. The struggle against those in power that marked the life and death of Jesus was coming for them as well.”

[4] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “The disciples are among common people proclaiming liberation and that violence and death are no longer the ultimate power. Jesus is risen! Therefrom the site of the common, holy words touch two intersecting nerves, the religious and the political.”

[5] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “Only criminals touch nerves at this level and receive the consequences [arrest, trial, custody]…”

[6] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47-48. “The judges are in fact builders. This is the great dilemma of the advantaged in this world. They institutionalize life. They are socially ordered and they enact social order. They are inside what they create and they create what they are inside of and from within this circle they often cannot see a divine judgment being brought on them, brought against them. God judges them from the position of the judged.”

[7] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47. “The judged are questioned (the judges are not). The judged must give account of their power and authority to speak, to believe, to suggest a different world order. The judged must show connection to the powerful, to names that are recognized by those in power. Power only sees power. The judged are evaluated (the judges are not). A scale is unleashed against the judged. Their education, social pedigrees, elocution, and baring are all measured against the judges. Now the dividing line is exposed. Now the moment of judgment will begin, but not as the ruling religious and social elite imagine. They misunderstand this moment just like Herod and Pontus Pilate misunderstood it with Jesus.”

[8] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47.

[9] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “Peter spoke again…The table is being turned over, an upside down world is being turned right side up in these words of Peter. Peter stands next to the man God has healed not by the power claimed by the elites, by the judges of this world, but only through the Holy Spirit.”

[10] Dorothee Soelle, Thinking About God: An Introduction to Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1990), 134.

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It’s STILL Easter!

Psalm 4:7-8 You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase. I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep; for only you, Abba God, make me dwell in safety.

Introduction

Good news! It is STILL Easter! (And will be for another four weeks!). On Easter morning we proclaimed the good news of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and, at the same time, experienced the good news of our own resurrection into new life out of the old life that was buried in the past and captive to what was. Easter season is a continued celebration of the miracle of resurrection that is not merely a historical story but also has present tense impact. This is more than a story of something that happened long ago; it is more than a myth that has ceased to have any relevance. It is our story TODAY. It is relevant for us TODAY. It is the very foundation and source not only of the Christian Church (visible and invisible), but of our life corporate and individual.

Easter reminds us that life is unlimited and death is limited. Death is thrust up against the walls of its tomb and forced to reckon with its demise. Jesus’s resurrection is the divine yawp summoning all of us out of our tombs into new and active life in God and with God and by God. We are neither the sum of our past deeds, nor are we forced to always define ourselves by them; Easter is our summons into new and recreated life. Real life! Life to live in vibrant and authentic ways; life lived with faces turned forward, feet planted firmly on solid ground, and our ears turned and tuned to the voice of our shepherd calling us into unending life, love, and liberation in God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

All of this is ours by faith and by God’s love; even though, as Peter says below, we are part of the problem, the ones who opted to kill Jesus, the ones who confused good and evil.

Acts 3:12-19

The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our forebears glorified God’s servant, Jesus, whom you, you handed over and whom you, you denied in the presence of Pilate, after judging [Jesus] to be released. But you, you denied the holy and righteous One and you, you demanded a murderer to be freely given to you, but the author of life you killed, whom God raised from the dead…And now, siblings, I have perceived that you acted according to ignorance just as also your leaders [did] (Acts 3:13-15, 17).

Luke puts us at the feet of Peter and John after a healing. Our ears and eyes are turned to Peter who is talking with the people of Israel who were amazed by the healing. But the point of the story isn’t the healing as much as it is an opportunity for proclamation of God’s great activity made known in the resurrection of Christ. In this way, the healing isn’t the miracle, per se; rather, the miracle is Peter and John truly witnessing to Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ.[1] In a way the “man lame from birth” now healed (v.2) isn’t very different from the two men who were blind to who Jesus was and now believe him to be the Christ, the long awaited Messiah of God’s beloved. All three were healed through Jesus, alone.[2]

Without missing a beat, Peter launches into exposing and “dangerous” language as he accuses the Israelites of their guilt against Jesus and God.[3] The temptation here is for us to remain as simple observers in the far distant audience, looking in at a “family argument” that has nothing to do with us; but that isn’t the case, not according to Good Friday.[4] For we ourselves are guilty of transposing good and evil, falling victim to comfort and familiar, and being held captive by our own security and letting innocent people suffer for our ease; thus, Peter’s keen insight (painful insight based on memory[5]) is not only for the children of Israel but for us; we are called and summoned here.[6] Like Israel, we are ignorant and guilty; or, in the language of 2024, we are captive and complicit.

But Peter’s accusation doesn’t end with accusation and condemnation; there’s hope. Repentance and absolution. You repent, therefore, and turn towards [God] so that your sins are blotted out (v. 19). In this way and in spite of the action of the crowd (the children of Israel and us), the action of the One Messiah, Jesus the Christ, is emphasized; Jesus, the one so raised by God from the dead, is the one who bestows life not to those who have earned it but to those who are dead in their trespasses![7] Here, in this moment between Peter and the crowd (between Peter and us), the tendencies of the crowd come into a full on collision with the action of Jesus.[8] The good news is that our tendencies don’t survive and God’s love does.

Conclusion

To close I want to quote Dorothee Sölle from her book, Choosing Life,

“To participate in the resurrection means that our lives don’t lead towards what is dead, are not exposed to death’s magnetic attractions. To be a Christian means that death is behind us. it no longer lies in wait for us. What awaits us is the love of which we are a part.”[9]

By being grafted into this story, we get the same confrontation with Jesus that the Israelites had as they stood before Peter and John and heard their guilt. And yet, they also heard their acceptance; thus, so do we hear our acceptance. Today, we are reminded that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is the undoing of our poor (down right bad) judgment and that divine Love triumphs even when all seems lost. We live today. We are recreated today. We rejoice today. Today, by faith in Christ, the incarnation of God’s word of love, life, and liberation, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we celebrate our new life that is abounding with God’s love, teeming with mercy and forgiveness, spilling over with joy, infused by God’s grace, swelling with divine pleasure. Beloved, continue in your Easter, resurrected life with Christ!

[1] Willie James Jennings, “Acts”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 42.   “The miraculous is not only the one healed but Peter and John, who now live on the other side of the journey of Jesus as his true witnesses.”

[2] Jennings, “Acts,” 42. “No one is healed by the power or holiness of witnesses, but only through Jesus of Nazareth.”

[3] Jennings, “Acts,” 42-43. “Peter’s words then move into the profoundly dangerous arena of accusation and guilt. Peter speaks to a specific crowd, the children of Israel, and invokes the same behavior seen in Jesus.”

[4] Jennings, “Acts,” 43. “But Peter speaks to his people. This is an in-house conversation. We have lost the sense and struggle of this family argument, this cultic contention. But what he speaks captures a reality for all peoples and their leaders. Peoples often do act in ignorance or malice, killing the innocent and allowing murderers to go free.”

[5] Jennings, “Acts,” 43. “Peter and John carry the memory of a crowd that called for Jesus’ death; But now Peter’s speech marks the path through such agonizing knowledge with its temptation toward self-indulging intellectual narcissism.”

[6] Jennings, “Acts,” 43. “Told from this angle the story of servant Jesus highlights the weakness of the many, the ease with which the crowd could be deceived to choose against their won well-being. If the many can be deceived, then what must it be like to see their deception? Luke positions Peter in that painful position of seeing and knowing what others don’t fully see.”

[7] Jennings, “Acts,” 43. “The point here is not the actions of the many but the actions of the One. The man healed is now a sign of the man resurrected from the dead, the author of life itself.”

[8] Jennings, “Acts,” 43. “Now the actions of the one confront the wayward propensities of the many.”

[9] Dorothee Sölle, Choosing Life, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1981), 91.

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Resurrected from the Past; Liberated from What Was: Easter Life!

Psalm 118:22-24 22 The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day Abba God has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Introduction

The psalmist declares: “There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: ‘The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!’” (118:15).

Let’s add our triumphant proclamation: Happy Easter! Christ is risen!

Today is a glorious and beautiful day! It is the day where we get to experience the proclamation that Christ is Risen, that death couldn’t hold him, and that life wins! It’s this day, this very morning where we hear the great echoes of God’s maternal roar, sending death backward, reeling, stumbling, and coming to rest in its own tomb, thus, giving love, life, and liberation free reign in the world.

This means, for us, our individual agony and communal limitation, our local turmoil, national chaos, and global tumult find restriction. These can only go so far considering God’s revolution of divine love, life, and liberation in the world on behalf of God’s beloved. No matter how much tumult, chaos, turmoil, limitation, and agony tantrum, rage and stomp about, they find their end in the light of God shining forth from the once sealed tomb daring to contain God’s very Son, the divine child of humanity, our brother! Good news starts today because God sounded God’s divine yawp and sent everything threatening human flourishing and thriving running for the hills, desperate to find protection from that piercing, exposing, and redeeming light of lights!

But there’s a problem I foresee coming: we will leave here today euphoric with warm and celebratory feelings only to arise on Monday as if nothing even happened. Our alarms will summon us from sleep, and we will lumber through the day as if nothing transpired between Friday 5 pm and Monday 8 am. Those who have been summoned to life this morning with Christ by faith will, in 24 hours, be those who roll over and continue to sleep as if enclosed in a tomb.

But what if … What if this ancient, whacky story of divine activity in the world, the overruling of death, the radical reordering of actuality and possibility has meaning for us today? What if it can release us from being buried in the past and captive to what was?

John 20:1-18

Now Mary had remained at the tomb weeping outside. Then, as she was weeping, she stooped low to look inside the tomb, and she beholds two angels in brightness sitting, one toward the head and one toward the feet where Jesus’s body was laid. And they say to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She says, “They took my Lord, and I do not know where they placed him.” After saying these things, she turns around and looks at Jesus standing there, and had not perceived that it is Jesus. Jesus says to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Appearing to her that it is the gardener, she says to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, answer me where you placed him, and I will remove him.” (John 20:11-15)

In John’s gospel, we meet Mary at the tomb. John brings us straight there. There is no lead up as there is in other gospels. At the end of the Gospel of Mark, the two Marys and Salome, as they go to the tomb, are worried they will not access Jesus’s body (preparing it for burial) because the stone will be too heavy for them to move. In Mark’s gospel, there is anxiety and concern. But with John, we are immediately at the tomb in the early, dark hours of the morning (v.1). Thus, John brings us straight into the crisis of Easter morning.[1] We are with Mary, we are in the dark, and we are just as startled by the things we see…The stone is rolled away, and the tomb is open.

Mary sees the tomb is opened, and instead of going further to investigate, she runs back to Peter and John (the beloved disciple). Her message—They removed the Lord from the tomb, and I have not seen where they laid him” (v. 2b)—provokes John and Peter to run to the tomb. John arrives first and stoops low to look (without entering) and sees Jesus’s death linens laid on the ground (v. 5). Then Peter follows John’s lead but enters the tomb, and he gazes at the pieces of fine linen lying there, and he sees the head cloth for the dead which was upon Jesus’s head and is now not lying with the other linens but is separate, having been rolled around into one place (vv. 6-7). Then John enters. Here it is declared, he saw and he believed; his faith in the risen Christ is kindled.[2] For never before had they remembered the writing that it is necessary that he was raised from the dead (v. 9). For John (and Peter) faith in Jesus blossomed that morning into the full faith in Jesus the Christ, the resurrected son of God.[3] They saw, they remembered, and they believed.

Then they leave the tomb and ran back (v.10). But Mary stays at the tomb, weeping outside; then, she stooped low to look inside the tomb. As she does, she is greeted not by death linens and shrouds, but by two dazzling, brightly illuminated angels, sitting where Jesus’s body was initially laid to rest (vv. 11-12). The angels ask her, Woman, why are you weeping? And she explains, they took the body of my Lord, and I do not know where they placed him (v. 13). The text does not tell us anything else about the angels; we are only told that Mary turns away from the tomb and then she sees someone whom she thinks is the gardener, but it’s Jesus (v. 14). Jesus speaks to her and asks, Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? Still, she does not recognize who he is. [4] She is stuck. Jesus is dead, for Mary. She cannot hear his voice because her focus is on Jesus’s being dead—answer me where you placed him and I will remove him (v. 15). For Mary, Jesus should still be in the tomb. Though she is facing Jesus, she cannot see him[5] because she is captive to what was, she’s buried in Good Friday. She needs to be called out of the tomb of yesterday into the resurrection of today.

And that’s what Jesus does. He calls her, Mary. Her response is one of elation and joy, Rabboni! No one can say your name like the one who loved you to the end. [6] And then Jesus adds this paradoxically cryptic yet perfect statement, “Do not fasten to me, for I have not yet ascended to my parent and your parent, my God and your God.” In other words, this is not a resuscitation of the old idea, of yesterday, of the ordinary and expected, thus the status-quo; it is something completely new, different, unexpected, unknown! [7] To be encountered by God in the event of faith is to be ushered into a new life with the Risen Christ not shuttled back into what was.[8] Mary was not called back into the tomb, but further out and away from it; she was called to lift her eyes and follow the voice of the Risen Christ unto God’s new work in the world where death no longer has the final say, yesterday is no longer a tyrant, and the past can no longer hold captive.

Conclusion

Beloveds, today begins a new era of looking forward into the light of life of the living and not into the darkness of the tomb of the dead. Why are you weeping? The Angels ask Mary. Whom do you seek?” Jesus asks Mary. Today, these questions are for us: why are weeping for what is of yesterday? What and Whom are we seeking? These two questions are one in the same question. In seeking we realize we’ve lost something; in realizing we’ve lost something we weep. In weeping we search for that which we lost. But we tend to go backward, we tend to reach behind us, to stoop low and focus on the death linens and shrouds of the things of yesterday. We are so consumed by our grief of what was and is now no longer that we cannot perceive that the loving voice asking us these questions is the divine, loving, voice of God summoning us out of and away from the tomb holding the dead. For God is not there; Jesus Christ is risen; life is not in the tomb but out in the world. Divine life, light, and love released into the world to bring God’s great revolution of love and liberation to all those who are trapped in captivity to what was and buried in the past.

  • Rather than feel helpless in the face of global tumult, we can speak a new word: a word of peace that is prayerful action. We can dare to feel helpful.
  • Rather than feel hopeless in the face of national chaos, we can speak a new word: a word of mercy that is taking a stand to protect those lives being ignored in derisive debate. We can dare to feel hopeful.
  • Rather than feel pointless in the face of local turmoil, we can speak a new word: a word of solidarity that is active presence with our neighbors. We can dare to believe that there is meaning.
  • Rather than live succumbed to the mythology of our Christian limitation, we can speak a good word of God’s love for the cosmos that is a word of Gospel proclamation in word and deed. We can dare to reclaim God’s story and believe it abounds with great possibility.
  • Rather than becoming numb to our personal agony, we can speak a new word of life that is a word of resurrection (now!). We can dare to live as if death cannot eclipse life.

So, today we stand up and take hold of the love, life, and liberation gifted to us by God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Here we raise our Ebenezer because, Here by God’s great help we’ve come![9] And we go forward and seek God among the living not among the dead. Dorothee Sölle writes, “He who seeks [Jesus] among the dead, accepts as true something that happened to him or seeks him among those who are not yet dead, ourselves. He who seeks [Jesus] among the living, seeks him with God and therefore on this our earth.”[10] Therefore, today I pray we hear our names and the name of our community called and we leave behind the linens of yesterday and the shroud of what was and step toward the one calling, beckoning, and summoning us forward into divine life! Today we celebrate because we have been loosed from the captivity of what was and resurrected from burial in the past. Today we dare to stand in the love of the present and step boldly into the life of the future. Because today God lives!

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 683-684. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “But unlike Mark’s narrative no mention is made of the purpose of Mary’s coming, and therefore there is no reflection on who could roll the stone away from the door of the grave (Mk. 16.3); it is merely reported that she sees that the stone is removed. From that she draws the conclusion (v. 2) that the body has been carried away, and—without looking into the grave?—she hastens, shocked and perplexed, to Peter and the beloved disciple in order to bring this news to them.”

[2] Bultmann, John, 684. The beloved disciple does not step into the grave; Peter does; the beloved disciple then follows and their faith is kindled.

[3] Bultmann, John, 684. What faith? “In this context the faith that is meant can only be faith in the resurrection of Jesus; it can be signified by the abs. πιστεὐειν, because this means faith in Jesus in the full sense, and so includes the resurrection faith. As to the two disciples, it is then simply reported that they return home (v. 10).”

[4] Bultmann, John, 686. She doesn’t recognize the Risen Jesus. Even when he asks her a question.

[5] Bultmann, John, 685-686. The Risen Jesus is standing behind Mary and she only sees him when she turns away from the tomb.

[6] Bultmann, John, 686. “It is possible for Jesus to be present, and yet for a man not to recognize him until his word goes home to him.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 687. “Of a surety, Jesus’ άναβαἰνειν is something definitive, and his promised (πἀλιν) ἔρχεσθαι…is not a return into an ordinary mode of life in this work, such as would permit familiar contact. The fellowship between the risen Jesus and his followers in the future will be experienced only as fellowship with the Lord who has gone to the Father, and therefore it will not be in the forms of earthly associations.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 688. “The real Easter faith therefore is that which believes this [v. 17]; it consists in understanding he offence of the cross; it is not faith in a palpable demonstration of the Risen Lord with the mundane sphere.”

[9] Come Thou Fount, v. 2.

[10] Dorothee Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, trans. Dinah Livingstone (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 60. Originally published as, Die Wahrheit ist konkret, Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1967.

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“Buried in the Past, Captive to What Was”: Global Tumult

Psalm 25:7-9 Gracious and upright is God; therefore God teaches sinners in God’s way. Abba God guides the humble in doing right and teaches God’s way to the lowly. All the paths of God are love and faithfulness to those who keep Abba God’s covenant and testimonies.

Introduction

Our world is a mess. Or at least that’s what it feels like. I know we have more access to news via our news feeds, time-lines, and favorite broadcast networks and maybe this could be the reason it feels like our world is such a mess at this moment. But I’m not sure about that. While I know that the average person has more access to knowing what is going on in the world than in eras past, I’m not convinced that’s the reason why it all feels like so much right now. I think it is a lot right now.

I don’t claim that this era is unique in comparison to other eras. I’ve studied the history of the Reformation and know that the 15th and 16th centuries were familiar with kingdoms and kings battling other kingdoms and kings for various reasons—often to serve their own vainglory (in the name of God) to assert one’s power over another kingdom to increase their own territory and reign. The only thing I can claim is that with the advancement of weaponry at human disposal, world-end feels prescient, like it really could happen at any time given the right set of conditions and circumstances, and the right wounded egos. The world feels precariously balanced between life and death. Can this earth and its inhabitants handle one more war? Can it actually put up with one more people group being put under the threat of extinction? Can our world stand under the growing and surging weight of hate and violence?

At times it all feels so helpless. What am I to do? If World War III happens, it happens; and, most likely, many of us will only know it started and not if it ended because the threat of annihilation on a global scale is not unlikely (to use a negative to put it as positively as possible). There’s a pit in my stomach that yells and screams: Go back! Run back to what was! Go back to that shore that was once comfort! Go back to not knowing, go back to when it was easier, go back to when things were better…I don’t care where, just go back to where its safe to just live…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Genesis 9:8-17

God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

This week, Moses tells us of a tale of human behavior gone rancid. Righteousness upon the earth was non-existent save a small family. According to Moses, the world was in such a state that God sent a flood to wipe all unrighteousness from the earth; God wanted to start over. And God did start over. After finding Noah and Noah’s family and after the ark was built carrying two of each kind of animal, God sent heavy rains and flooded the earth. Not a piece of land was left dry when the rains were done. Water covered the entire earth, much like the beginning in Genesis 1 when the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.

This story is hard to swallow and engage with; the cruelty of God is palpable. I mean, weren’t all those people just living as they were taught to live, accustomed to their social situations, and going about their normal lives? Isn’t this response a bit dramatic? A bit violent? A bit much? Would a God of peace and love blot out an entire generation of creation in the blink of an eye because none of it was up to God’s self-defined divine standard?

I don’t blame anyone for focusing on that aspect of the story, and I welcome it. And being aware that the violence of the flood is a part of the story, I want to stress that it’s not the only part of the story: God does not wipe away all humanity but saves a remnant and then proceeds to make a covenant with them. It’s this part of the story that functions as the modus operandi for this sermon. Without ignoring the violence, we can ask: why did God save this family and wipe out the entirety of the human kingdom, thus alleviating the world of such pestilence? Well, God doesn’t tolerate human hubris run amok that threatens life on earth—even the life of the earth itself. God also isn’t stuck in the past but is eager to walk forward into the future with God’s beloved, the righteous remnant, and to continue to establish covenants with them,[1] “everlasting” pacts stitched on the hearts of God and God’s beloved by a sign: this time, a rainbow.[2],[3]

An interesting aspect of this everlasting pact/covenant is that it’s not strictly with Noah and his descendants, as if this specific family alone benefits from the promise embedded in the technicolor bow in the sky that God will never again send the waters to cure the world of human hubris. Keeping in mind the totality of the divine cleansing of the earth, Noah, like Adam before him, now represents all humanity. [4] Thus, God vows God’s extraordinary love,[5] God’s self, and God’s eternal promise to all humanity, all flora and fauna, all the earth.[6] And not only for those present, but the bow ringing the sky—bringing assurance and comfort to all eyes resting upon it[7]—is for all generations from Noah onward, for “all their offspring until the end of the world,” to quote Martin Luther.[8]

Conclusion

God is not stuck in the past; God is not captive to what was. God summons and coaxes forward God’s beloved[9]—all creation, from the teensiest, weensiest critter to the biggest, ziggest beast; from the ones that live deep in the oceanic abyss to the ones residing on the peakiest of mountains. God woos the beloved forward, into something NEW, into something new and of God because backward is the stuff of humanity that has long ago expired, gone sour, become septic. As the waters recede for Noah and his barge of beasts, the only direction is forward into God, eyes fixed on the rainbow of divine promise, into the faith.

Beloved, we are being addressed by God in this story. We need to hear and harken to the call of God’s loving voice, beckoning us forward through this global tumult and chaos, forward into God. Martin Luther writes in his commentary on Genesis,

“We, too, need this comfort today, in order that despite a great variety of stormy weather we may have no doubt that the sluice gates of the heavens and the fountains of the deep have been closed by the Word of God. The rainbow makes its appearance even now, to be a sure sign that a universal flood will not occur in the future. Hence this promise demands also from us that we believe that God has compassion on the human race and will not rage against us in the future by means of a universal flood.”[10]

God calls, may our ears perk up. God comforts, may our souls be soothed. God speaks, may our ears delight in comforting words. God comes, may we run to Abba God. God is doing a new thing in this man from Nazareth, Jesus, the beloved, in whom, by whom, and through whom we are being coaxed forward, released from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Jon D. Levenson, “Gensis,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 24-25. “Having rescued the righteous remnant from the lethal waters, God now makes a covenant with them, just as He will with the people of Israel at Sinai after enabling them to escape across the Sea of Reeds. The closest parallel to our passage, however, is Gen. 17 (the covenant with Abraham)…”

[2] Levenson, “Genesis,” 25. “In each case, God makes an everlasting covenant or ‘pact’…memorialized by a distinctive sign the rainbow in the case of Noah…and circumcision in the case of Abraham and the Jewish people who, he is promise, shall descend from him…”

[3] LW 2:144. “Moreover, this passage also teaches us how God is wont always to link His promise with a sign, just as previously, in the third chapter, we called attention to the garments of skins with which He clothed the naked human beings as a sign that He wanted to protect, defend, and preserve them.”

[4] Levenson, “Genesis,” 25. “…‘descendants of Noah’—that is, universal humanity…”

[5] LW 2:145. “When the same matter is repeated so many times, this is an indication of God’s extraordinary affection for mankind. He is trying to hope for blessing and for the utmost forbearance.”

[6] LW 2:143-144. “…because the covenant of which this passage is speaking involves not only mankind but every living soul, it must be understood, not of the promise of the Seed but of this physical life, which even the dumb animals enjoy in common with us: this God does not intend to destroy in the future by a flood.”

[7] LW 2:145. “For this is the particular nature of signs, that they dispense comfort, not terror. To this end also the sign of the bow was established and added to the promise.”

[8] LW 2:144. “Careful note must be taken of the phrase ‘for all future generations,’ for it includes not only the human beings of that time and the animals of that time but all their offspring until the end of the world.”

[9] LW 2:145. “It is for this reason that God shows Himself benevolent in such a variety of ways and takes such extraordinary delight in pouring forth compassion, like a mother who is caressing and petting her child in order that it may finally begin to forget its tears and smile at its mother.”

[10] LW 2:146.

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The Divine Whisper: “Beloved”

Psalm 62:6-8 For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in God. Abba God alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken. In God is my safety and my honor; God is my strong rock and my refuge.

Introduction

There are voices that will turn your head no matter where you are, no matter how old you are, and no matter how long it’s been since you heard that voice. You hear it, you know it, and you look in its direction eager to see the one who spoke. What makes your head turn and your body fill with warmth, and turn? Love. A voice that caused fear would make you stop for sure, but not in the same way. You wouldn’t turn with eagerness but freeze out of fright or send you running to hide. But the voice of Love is different. Even if this voice were to be frustrated with you, there would be the unyielding synthesis with love that would soothingly resonate with our nervous systems reminding us—even here and now—we are safe with this one who speaks.

The one who bore you into the world can have the voice loaded with this substance of love. We all know the voice of this one who carried us, whose voice was the auditory backdrop as we came into existence. The voice of the children we bear into the world can also carry this substance of love. No matter how many changes they go through, how deep their voices get, or how infrequently you hear them as they drift into their own adult lives, you know it—in the cacophony of the crowd, you can locate it. Their mature voices carrying those same idiosyncrasies and inflections they had when they were no higher than your knee.

Apart from these two specific relationships, others participate in this special distinction of being a voice that stops you where you are—no matter when and no matter what. Dear friends spanning eras of life and lovers here with you or from a different era can speak to you now and you would feel the weight of the substance of love that is the marrow of their words. Humans know when they are loved by the voice of love targeting their heart, mind, soul, and body. It’s to love that our ears harken and our head turns, it’s love that sends our feet to follow this voice.

Mark 1:14-20

And then when Jesus was passing by the sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting nets in the sea, for they were fishing. And he said to them, “Come behind me, and I will make you become fishers of people!” And Immediately, leaving their nets they followed him. (Mark 1:16-18)[1]

Mark begins this story telling us that after John was handed over (by some unnamed person), Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time has been completed and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news,” (vv. 14-15). What John started, Jesus took up[2] and ushered in a new era of fulfillment of God’s promises made known in the exhortations to “change the inner person”/repent and believe the good news of God (v. 15).[3] It is here, amid proclaiming God’s good news and the inauguration of a new era, according to Mark, where Jesus begins his public activity.[4]

And how does Jesus inaugurate this public activity? Neither with pomp and circumstance nor with displays of power and might but with meager, human words summoning humble people out from the fringes unto the light of God.[5] From the edge of the sea of Galilee and from a dingy floating in water, Jesus summoned the lowly into the majesty of the liberating presence of God. And what happens when Jesus called out, “Come behind me!”? Those who were called go. There’s no time lag between the call and the response of the (now) disciples; there was no arguing, waffling, hemming and hawing…they just went (immediately!).[6] They heard Jesus summon them, and they dropped their nets and followed after him without any delay. They obey the call of God for no other reason than just because; they simply follow.[7]

As simple as Jesus’s summons, so was the disciples’ response. No grand gestures, no cleaning up, no getting right with God first…they heard and they went. All four summoned fishermen—Simon/Peter,[8] Andrew, Jacob, and John—radically departed what they knew, what was comfortable, and what was familiar to follow Jesus and receive a brand-new beginning filled with what would become uncomfortable, unknown, and strange.[9] In following when Jesus called, they were guided into a new beginning that started and will end with love. When Jesus called these humble men, Love beckoned them into the light of God by the divine voice of Love, which is none other than the divine Spirit, hovering over the deep eagerly seeking and summoning the beloved out of the deep.

Conclusion

I don’t know about you, but this story gets me every time I read it. I mean, they just followed!?!? Isn’t that beyond comprehension. I’m left with a lurking question: would I go? Would I follow this man who summoned me to come follow him? Suspending for a moment my 21st century mind, my “stranger danger,” my engrained fear of sinister, windowless vans and the large quantities of candy harbored behind those doors, would I follow Jesus? Would I give up everything and follow after this one proclaiming the kingdom of God come? Would I, could I recognize the voice of divine love summoning me out of the chaos and the deep?

To be a disciple of Christ starts with hearing, hearing the divine summons, the divine call of God to you, Jesus calling your name, the Spirit luring your heart toward this one who is the “Son of God” (Mark 1:1). To be a disciple of Christ is to hear and (immediately) follow, even if it means leaving everything behind that once defined you but no longer can because you’ve heard God’s voice in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit,[10] because you’ve heard the voice of love and can never unhear it.

Beloved, God calls you—day and night—summoning you unto God’s self, eager to bathe you in the love filling that loving, divine voice echoing throughout the halls of time, calling for you. I pray you hear the call of God in Christ, and that you drop your nets and follow this voice of love. For here, in this love is life and light, here is God, and here is your rest and comfort. No longer striving in the way of the world, desperate to fill an empty void to validate yourself or feel loved, here in the summons and in following you find the entirety of God, the very one who spoke the cosmos into existence and who now speaks to you, whispering to every fiber of your being: Beloved.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] 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), 90. “The role of the forerunner is over; the time of fulfillment has come.”

[3] France, Mark, 93. “With the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, a new era of fulfillment has begun, and it calls for response from God’s people. That response is summed up in the twin imperatives μετανοῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε.”

[4] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 31.

[5] France, Mark, 94. “The kingdom of God comes not with fanfare but trough the gradual gathering of a group of insignificant people in an unnoticed corner of provincial Galilee.”

[6] Placer, Mark, 36. “No discussion or explanation, no packing, no good-byes to family and friends.”

[7] Placer, Mark, 36. “Because it is Jesus who calls, they obey. Nor do they understand any particular content to that obedience other than simply following….”

[8] France, Mark, 95. “Mark will consistently refer to the first named disciple as Σίμων until he formally introduces the name Πέτρος as given to him by Jesus (3:16); thereafter he will consistently use Πέτρος…”

[9] France, Mark, 98. “The use of ἀπέρχομαι, rather than the simple ἕρχομαι as in 8:34, adds to the sense of radical departure and a new beginning.”

[10] Placer, Mark, 35. “John’s arrest is a signal: after the prologue the director is opening the curtain on the first scene.” Mathetes, “It was a rare enough word that Mark’s first readers/listeners would have had to learn its meaning by what followed. Being a disciple of Jesus, it emerges, means receiving his call, physically following him (and thereby giving up job, home, and normal ties to family), and risking the suffering that may ensue.”

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Free To Be For You

Psalm 139:1-4 Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether. You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me.

Introduction

Last week we were brought into the presence of a very big event initiated by a divine word, “Let there be light!” At this command, the universe was thrust in to the divine light of order and basked in the magnificence of divine approval, “It is good.” The divine word pulled the lightness from the darkness, and set the earth into its fluctuation between day and night, forever dancing and never crossing, one bowing to the other as it cedes the stage to the other.

This week our attention turns to something much smaller, but no less magnificent: our own bodies. We, inside and out, are cosmic miracles, bipedal universes, worlds thrust and caught between illumination and obscurity. We are beautiful creatures composed of paradox, reflecting the paradoxical nature of our Creator: we are soft and firm, we are rational and irrational, we are strict and lenient, we are happy and sad, we are exciting and boring, we know who we are and we have yet to be introduced to ourselves, we are marvels and unexceptional. We crave inclusion and seclusion, we want love but not that much, we want approval but, again, not that much. We are complex and simple. You’re amazing. Whether you feel it or not, you’re amazing, fearfully and wonderfully made, valued at a great price. You are worthy in your skin to be loved as you are, just as you are.

You are so amazing but yet caution must be employed with ourselves, with our bodies, with our minds. While we are amazing, (I’ll never back down from that sentiment), we are very vulnerable creatures. We are prone to being misled, lied to, fooled, lured, and carried away by fear, threat, and intimidation, pulled into a sea of the billows and waves of charlatans and con-artists selling cures, and liquid mythologies only to take proceeds from eager believers while leaving nothing but saccharine syrup. Most of all, we can be swept away by our own notions of our freedom and liberation, becoming drunk on autonomy run amok.

This is why Paul says,

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

“All things are permitted to me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are permitted to me,” but I, I will not be ruled by them. “Food [is] for digestion, and digestion [is] for food,” and God will abolish both one and the other. Now, the body is not for idolatry, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God both raised the Lord and will raise us up according to the power of God. Have you not yet known that our bodies are members of Christ? (1 Cor 6:12-15a)[1]

While the historicity of Christianity has proven itself very capable at absolutely destroying the bodily alterity and autonomy, I must call attention to the fact that this isn’t Paul’s fault. Corinthians is one of my favorite collections of letters because of how well both the body and the self are held in high regard. Not only the body of the individual, but also the body corporate. Let’s look.

Paul begins by quoting some colloquialisms that came to him (most likely) from Corinth. Both, “All things are permitted to me,” and “Food [is] for digestion, and digestion [is] for food,” are considered to be quotations from other letters sent to Paul. So, Paul jumps in contending directly with what he’s heard and challenges it based on hindering and helpful terminology with a good dose of “freedom from” and “freedom for.” For Paul, the Christian has real and total liberty in Christ but that can only go so far. While many actions can be helpful, they are so only until they become hindering to both the one doing the action or the neighbor. In other words, both individuality and community matters, neither is to be victor over the other.[2]

Now, I know we’re raised to think that w’are the masters of not only our own domains but also of our destinies. But the reality is, we’re not. As mentioned last week, there is much we can plan and much that will happen this year that falls very wide of any plan we ever made ever. So, while I have a robust amount of freedom, I must always be aware that I’m not in this alone, and that my freedom can end up being someone else’s captivity. For Paul, Christians are expected to walk and talk differently, for they’ve been liberated from themselves to be captive to their neighbor, and all of it by faith in Christ working out in loving action. To say it doctrinally, we are to live resurrection lives now[3]and that means living into the divinely gifted glory of our beautiful bodies (in alignment, inner and outer) and in unity with other humans and especially with God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is why Paul spends time talking about uniting our bodies to “idolatry.” Should we, in our liberty, just unite our bodies to anything, even things of idolatry because we are justified by faith in Christ with God by the power of Holy Spirit? Paul says, μη γενοιτο! The reason? Because, essentially, you are not your own as you may (like to) think, you can’t just do what you want.[4] Then, after exhorting the Corinthians to FLEE IDOLATRY! (v. 18a), Paul says, “Have you not known that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have from God? You are not your own, you were purchased with honor; now, glorify God in your body,” (vv. 19-20).

But what has this to do with hindering and helping, freedom from and freedom for? Well, it comes down to making absolutes and maxims about individual freedom and liberty that conflict with the liberty and freedom of the neighbor. According to Paul, that I’m a Christian united to Christ by faith, in union with God, filled with the divine Spirit and Love, means I must take into consideration (always) my community, my neighbor, the other hoomans living here with me (whether the ones produced by my own body, whom I know intimately, or the ones I’ve never encountered with my body and whose names I may never know). I am not an island, I am not my own, I am now, according to Paul, yoked to Christ and the Spirit burdened with the light yoke of just loving other people as they are, where they are; it is not for me to conform others to my ideological orientations or force neighbors to get in line with my program.[5] Rather, I’m to serve my neighbor by my faith in Christ working itself out in love to the wellbeing of my neighbor. I am to see my actions as not only helping or hindering me, but also whether or not they might be helping or hindering my neighbors both near and far. For their wellbeing is linked to my own, knowing that in doing this I, too, will benefit as my neighbor thrives in abundance that is also mine.

Conclusion

Beloved, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Your body is amazing. It is so amazing that our sacred text exhorts you to care for it, treat it well, to honor it, and use it to bring God glory because it’s the temple of the Holy Spirit. What you do to/with your body is important, it matters, our actions towards ourselves should emphasize that divine gift of love, life, and liberation gifted to us by God through Christ and the Spirit. And, this exhortation extends beyond only what you do with your body and moves toward the neighbor, taking their body into account, valuing it, considering it worthy, honoring it, making sure to hold it in regard because their body matters, too. Let us remember these ones are also the beloved of God, purchased with honor by Christ’s body, and temples of the Holy Spirit, loved by God, the same God who us first as we are, where we are.

In other words, “let us love because God in Christ loved us first,” (1 Jn 4:19).

[1] All translations mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 462. “The issue for Paul is what helps and what hinders in constituting credible corporate Christian identity as a community in corporate solidarity with Christ. Both a theology of identity and an ethic of social or interpersonal relations are aspects of the unity…at issue. If freedom  or liberty is absolutized without qualification it brings bondage, or at least threatening constraints, to the competing freedoms of others. But part of the grammar of union with Christ is to share Christ’s concern for the well-being of the other, and to let go of his or her own freedoms in order to liberation the other. The ‘mind of Christ’ (2:16) has to be relearned and rediscovered at Corinth, not least as a basis for ethics and lifestyle.”

[3] Thiselton, Corinthians, 463. “The σῶμα is not to be equated with the κοιλία, but somatic life is absorbed and transformed in the resurrection of the σῶμα in such a way that continuity as well as change characterizes the relation between the present σῶμα, i.e., present life in its totality, and the resurrection σῶμα, i.e., the transformation of the whole human self as part of the raised corporeity in Christ.”

[4] Thiselton, Corinthians, 476. “The imagery of the purchased slave underpins the point that Christian believers belong to a new master, or owner, to whom they must give account for everything. That the main emphasis falls on this point is correct…”

[5] Thiselton, Corinthians, 478. “Redemption is from a state of jeopardy by a costly act to a new state.”

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The Wind of Love; The Word of Beginning

Psalm 29:10-11 God sits enthroned above the flood; Abba God sits enthroned as King for evermore. God shall give strength to God’s people; Abba God shall give Abba God’s people the blessing of peace.

Introduction

Happy New Year! With the start of the new year, we find ourselves at the very beginning of Genesis. It seems fitting to flow right through advent into Christmas and find us at the very beginning. Due to annual rotations around the sun, we are at another beginning of our earthly revolution; so we are, in a real sense, “In the beginning…” A new year carries so much wonderful and fearful unknown. Finally, a clean slate is here, out with the cluttered one from last year. We have our new canvas, that beloved empty page, and on these surfaces we can write whatever we want… But with all that newness, there is the demand, what will you put down, write, draw, paint? What will you do with this large expanse of anything and everything laid out before you? What will be painted on your canvas that you didn’t put there yourself, what part of the story will be written by someone else?

It’s incredibly liberating and intimidating, this wide-open space presented before us. For me, I am both excited and afraid; this year will pass by carrying its ups and downs and some of it I will foresee and others I will not—that’s how it’s gone before and, I’m guessing, that is how it will continue to go each revolution around the sun. Anything can happen! And, anything can happen… So, in the flux of the paradox of liberating and intimidating, between excited and afraid, where do we find our comfort, peace, that good, good word to still the (good and bad) storms that (could be, might be?) brewing? Well, we go back to the beginning, and listen again…

Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

We do not come to Genesis looking for scientific fact. These stories of the cosmos’s start by a divine word and light born out of nothingness into somethingness are not supposed to be treated as if a textbook in a lab room, as if it would stand up under scientific scrutiny. These stories are meant to bring comfort to a people lost and wondering if God is still with them, if God cares, if they are still God’s people. If everything you know is currently thrust under the waves of chaos and tumult, it might bring comfort to remember that the entire cosmic event is nestled under the care and concern of God, the very same one who called you, your ancestors, and your ancestor’s ancestors unto God’s self. Genesis 1, from beginning to end, is very much one of those stories, crafted to bring comfort to ears longing for a good word, maybe ears longing to find stable ground after being too long caught between excitement and fear, liberation and intimidation.

Rather than being a story replete with awesome works of power and might, sending shudders of fear and awe down the spines of all who are encountered by the story, Genesis 1 opens with a rather small bang: let there be light! That’s it. That’s all. Light is born into the chaotic darkness[1] by a word spoken. This light is not the sun (created on day 4), it is of a “different order”[2] than what the darkness was that hovered over the surface of the deep. If the darkness was considered chaos, then the light is order. Into chaos, order was summoned to make room within actuality for all things new and possible. From here, the text moves forward and tells us that God “saw” the light and decided it was “good.” But the text doesn’t stop there. God then separated the light from the darkness, literally pulled the two apart and gave each a different name so confusion would never occur again. One, the darkness, was called “night,” and the other, lightness, was called “day.” Never would the two cross paths, like death and life, only one would occupy a particular space and time. By day, things will be illuminated, known, exposed; by night, they will be hidden, lost, cloaked.

Genesis 1 establishes that God is the one who speaks and when this God speaks things happen. Genesis 1 locates God behind all of it: amid the chaos calling forth order, in the tumult summoning peace, in the darkness beckoning lightness. From the depths of the deep to the peak of the summit, God is there. So, as God’s people travel in and out of various territories, at times in exile and in others in return, God will never leave them because God is in it with them—God has been and always will be with God’s people no matter where they find themselves.

Conclusion

As we find ourselves in the twixt of an old year giving way to a new year, between the excitement and fear, between liberation and intimidation let us rest assured that as much as any other time in history from the beginning of the cosmos unto this very year, God is with us, behind it all. God is in your fear and in your excitement; God walks with you in your feelings of liberation and with you in your feelings of intimidation; God is with you in your chaos and in your order, in your plans and in the events you have not planned. God is with you because God is love and love is that wind sweeping over the waters of the deep searching and seeking the beloved to bring them into the light and life of God’s divine liberation.

And later, as we look back on Christmas and ahead to Easter, let us remember that once more will God’s love hover over the waters of the deep in search of the beloved eager to bring them (back) into the light and life of God’s divine liberation. But that story is for another time. For now, there is light and that light is good.

[1] Jon D. Levenson, “Genesis,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation. Eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 13.

[2] Levenson, “Genesis,” 13.

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