Kate Hanch, Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in 19th-Century America, Minneapolis, Fortress, 2022.
Kate Hanch’s text, Storied Witness, provides crucial information about women, three black women preachers, who would otherwise go undetected and radically underquoted by mainstream theology. Hanch centers the voices of Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth and demonstrates that these three humble and powerful women must be included in regular discourse about God and God’s work in the world. For mainstream theology, Hanch’s book is a challenge: can we broaden the scope of whom we turn to gather our theological education and research? I believe Hanch’s answer is not only a vibrant and bold “Yes!” but also “We must!” If theology—rather, good theology, or “better theology,” referring to Hanna Reichel’s work in “After Method”—is going to resist the temptation to obsolescence and survive this rampant era of welcome deconstruction, then theologians and other servants of “words about God” *must*find new pathways to talk about God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the wellbeing of God’s beloved.
The book is structured so that Elaw, Foote, and Truth all get their own spotlight. In addition to this clear structure, Hanch draws out from each essential biblical truths about God and about Christian praxis. Reading about Zipha Elaw, the reader also learns the old truth often forgotten that the Spirit of God is no respecter or persons but calls and rejuvenates the inner power to proclaim God’s good news of Christ’s life and work in liberating the captives. Yet, the reader isn’t a mere spectator here: clearly, if you are reading along as Hanch is deftly waling you through Elaw’s life and preaching, then you, too, are being addressed by God through Elaw and thus being summoned into the light of Christ to see and hear the cries of those still captive. The same goes for the chapters on Julia Foote and Sojourner Truth: the reader is unable to claim ignorance once she’s done reading these chapters, she has been solicited into becoming aware of her “bodied” “power” (Foote) and her need to be a witness to God and God’s work in Christ and God’s work in her by the power of the Holy Spirit (Truth). Essentially, Hanch puts her reader—especially her white reader—on the hook chapter after chapter.
The last chapter, “Black Women Preachers as Exemplars of a Prophetic Pastoral Theology,” weaves together the lives of these three prophetic and pastoral preachers and drives home without hesitation how robust and living theology streams forth from the lips of Elaw, Foote, and Truth. In essence, what Hanch has done in this last chapter was give her reader a “cheat sheet,” if you will, on how to do theology better with voices that are not mainlined—as in, not cis-het-white men. She lays out the ways that the previous structure of the book is limiting because one can’t pigeonhole these women into a single theme because they are each doing theology, they are each speaking about a very big God who did a big thing in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hanch builds many theology ideas around and out of the work of Elaw, Foote, and Truth; thus, Hanch, exhorts her reader to the same. Here, Hanch directs her reader to really see—in case they missed it in the pages before—how the reader’s theology can grow by engaging the work of these women, using them as her guide, and affirming the presence of the divine Spirit in their words and works without recourse to making sure they align to the voices of cis-het-white men from ages past and limited/specific encounter with God.
The one thing I was left wondering was about Hanch’s use of “bodied” and “powered.” Very creative uses of these words because I want to say “embodied” and “empowered,” as in, being given the power and the bodiedness. But maybe that’s Hanch’s point. The power and the bodiedness of these three women wasn’t to be *given* to them as if earned or merited by being good or doing well according to an earthly authority. Rather, these women took the place and occupied the space because they had their *own* power and their *own* beautiful bodies and used both because the source of that power and bodiedness is God in and of God’s self; that was all the permission Elaw, Foote, and truth needed. To my reader, it begs the question, doesn’t it?
Psalm 111:1, 10 Hallelujah! I will give thanks to Abba God with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, in the congregation. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; those who act accordingly have a good understanding; God’s praise endures for ever.
Introduction
At the end of the sermon from August 4th on Ephesians 4:1-16, there was this exhortation at the end, “Beloved, we are exhorted and begged through the words of Ephesians to grow…to grow up![1] For the love of God, to the glory of God, and for the well-being of our neighbors, we are to grow up and be(come) the body of Christ in the world, bearing into the world by acts of love that which has been born in us through faith.” That exhortation still holds here in Ephesians 4:25-5:2. The Ephesians are given not generalized commands but specific ways to work out their faith through deeds of love to the glory of God and to the wellbeing of the neighbor. These deeds produced by love are the deeds that reflect the truth of what God has done for the Ephesians through Christ and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, are the very exact way the Ephesians participate in furthering God’s mission in the world and bringing the kingdom of humanity into confrontation with the reign of God. Each of these three ethical chapters guide the Ephesians toward actions that materialize in the world what is occurring/has occurred/will occur by faith in their hearts so joined together with God.
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
On which account…do not distress the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed toward the day of redemption…Therefore, become an imitator of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as also Christ loved us and betrayed himself on our behalf—a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 4:25a, 30; 5:1-2)[2]
Considering what Christ has done and the urging of the Ephesians to grow, Paul exhorts the Ephesians to renounce untruth preferring instead that they speak truth—each one—with their neighbor because we are a part of one another. The Ephesians are to leave behind the life of lies—peddled by the kingdom of humanity—in exchange for the truth—the Word that is of the reign of God. The Ephesians are to live into truth by word and deed what God revealed in Christ and made known to them by the power of the Holy Spirit.[3] In other words, if God is love and has loved them then they—in desiring to speak the truth—share this love in word and deed toward their neighbor because, according to Ephesians, everyone is a part of everyone else.[4],[5] This orientation away from untruth and toward truth grows this community of solidarity into becoming like Christ and displaying their righteous clothing of works of love.[6] The Ephesians are to be the well clothed representatives of God in the world; wherever they go, God is there and that ground is holy (ref. Ex. 3).
A part of being so well clothed is knowing when and where to allow one’s anger to do the walking and talking:[7] if it is against injustice and oppression of the neighbor, then it is well placed and will fuel righteous deeds;[8] but, if this violent irritation[9] is to defend oneself or is because of pride, then it is ill placed and must be exposed to the light of confession so that it does not fester in the darkness. Conjoined here is the demand not to steal[10]—the one who steals no longer steals. There is no designation specifically to whom Paul is speaking, so we must keep a broad view in mind. Therefore, everyonemust grow weary working well by their own hands. Rather than this being strictly about petty theft (though it is addressing this), it’s also about obtaining money without working with one’s own hands. Theft—no matter what[11] or who[12]—is not to be tolerated. Why? So that they may have the ability to bestow to those who have needs. For Paul, the emphasis is on providing for the needy. Thus, those who earn by means of skimming off the top of what’s not theirs—not done by their own hands—are exhorted to stop and find “hard work” so to give from what is theirs. And this, in turn, becomes how those who steal out of necessity no longer need to. The exhortation is the solution.[13]
Moving along, the author brings up the “fruit of the lips” as a measure of the heart of the believer.[14] If the Ephesians are to be clothed in righteous garb, then truly their speech must reflect such a status. The Ephesians are to prevent every rotten word from leaving their mouths, rather they are to spew forth whatever is good toward the building up so that it might give grace to those who hear. The community is not only to prohibit the stealing of material goods but also the stealing of the honor and dignity of each person.[15] Words designed to destroy rather than build are to be avoided at all costs because this community who wears Christ and is to be like Christ is to see each and every word in a sacramental light, giving grace to those who hear.[16],[17] Words must be drenched in truth and love.[18]
Finally, the community is exhorted not to distress the Holy Spirit of Godin whom they have been sealed toward the day of redemption by lettingall bitterness and passionate outbursts and wrath and clamoring against each other and slandering be removed from them together with all malice. In other words, anything that tries to grab the edges of this finely stitched quilt and pull it apart and destroy it is the very cause of God’s distress.[19] To grieve the Holy Spirit, to cause God’s Spirit distress is to try to tear apart that which God has joined together: God’s self and God’s people, thus God’s people with each other. This community is to turn toward each other, reinforcing the well stitched seems, being useful [and] tender hearted toward each other, giving freely to each other just as God in Christ gave to you. The exhortation lands in the laps of the Ephesians, you who have received so much from God in Christ[20] are to build up and not tear down, you are to be compassionate and not dispassionate, you are to be useful toward each other and not useless, you are to give freely and not hoard and steal. [21]
In this way, these humble, breakable vessels become imitators of God,[22] as beloved children, and by being this way toward each other and toward their neighbors they walk in love just as Christ loved [walked in love toward] us and betrayed himself on our behalf a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. In other words, the Ephesians do not need to perform special material sacrifices to please God but they themselves are the fragrant sacrifice,[23] those who betray themselves (put themselves aside) on behalf of others—not just their family and friends, but their neighbor whomever they are—these are the imitators of God and are like Christ.[24] These are the divine representatives in the world who are inspired and sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
Working like a talented seamstress, the author of the letter to the Ephesians stitches the hearer to the fullness of God; through each intentional retelling of what God has done for us in Christ and how the Spirit applies this to our lives is a careful working over of the seam joining the two, adding layer upon layer of words as thread to forbid the joining to break. These two are one. But to be one with this God, according to the logic of Ephesians, is to be one with whom God loves: the neighbor. Thus, with the same deftness, this author-seamstress stitches each of the hearers together anchoring them—together—into God and—together—to each other. These many are one and this one is joined to God thus they are all one–dividing walls destroyed, and laws of separation rendered inoperative. The believers are chosen from the beginning of time to be those whom God will work through to further God’s divine revolution of love, life and liberation that God started, revealed in Christ, and makes available to all who hear God’s summons by the power of the Holy Spirit.
All that has transpired thus far in Ephesians brings us to the real and practical conclusions that we are not our own and that we are God’s and thus our neighbor’s. We live not for ourselves but for Christ and for the divine mission revealed by God through Christ. In this part of Ephesians, we see that every part of our existence is tied up, threaded into this divine tapestry of God’s activity in the world. Our words and thoughts carry weight, our actions have force and power, our bodies are to bear Christ into the world reminding the world that God is not dead, that there’s always another way, and that hope and peace are possible. This is not about being seduced into the slumber of saccharine positivity but about looking the kingdom of humanity square in the eye and in speaking the truth saying, “No, this is not all there is and it is not the only way…there’s more…things can be different…”
So, beloved, we love because we have first been loved.
[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 176. “Live a common life worthy of God’s grace and gift, worthy of God’s promise and plan. Grow up! Build a body fitting to Christ as the head! Love one another!”
[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 511. “Thus the whole former existence of the saints Is defined as a lie, or as living a lie; if the existentialist’ terminology has any validity as a tool for interpreting Paul, then this is the place to speak of ‘inauthentic existence.’ But while secular existentialism considers inauthenticity a deviation from each individual man’s potential, Paul measures man’s existence against the ‘truth in Jesus’ or the ‘true word,’ i.e. the Gospel, and their social effect, i.e. the fact that ‘we are members of one body.’”
[4] Barth, Ephesians, 512. “And he ‘speaks the truth in love’ who acts as a man responsible for the growth of a community ‘toward Christ’ and ‘from him’ (4:15-16).”
[5] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 188. “The ‘truth’ in Jesus of our social solidarity, that ‘we are members of one another,’ points beyond the church to the universal community that is God’s plan. It may be a ‘secret’ too well kept that we are members of one another in a universal community, but it is the truth in Jesus.”
[6] Barth, Ephesians, 512. “The command to ‘speak the truth’ includes and expresses the responsibility to be a witness to revelation, to follow Christ who gave his life for saving sinners, to show unselfish love, and to build up the fellow man to his own best.”
[7] Barth, Ephesians, 513. “…concedes that righteous anger is aroused by injustice…’Wrath against a brother’ draws judgment upon the angry man….but ‘indignation on behalf of other is one of the common bonds by which society is held together.”
[8] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 190. “Anger at injustice is permitted. Indeed, an injustice not only prompts anger; it requires it. When we see the poor oppressed, we should get angry. When the ‘other’ is demeaned or insulted, we should get angry. But anger can be an occasion of sin, for seeking revenge instead of justice, for holding a grudge instead of seeking reconciliation. It is sin that is renounced.”
[9] Barth, Ephesians, 514. “A violent irritation is meant, expressed either by hiding oneself form others or by flaming looks, harmful words, inconsiderate actions, that is, something distinctly less permanent than deep-rooted wrath, anger or hostility.”
[10] Barth, Ephesians, 518. “…the ‘needy’ (whoever he may be!) is to be the beneficiary of the saint’s labor! This universality of concerns is characteristic of Ephesians.”
[11] Barth, Ephesians, 515. “…it is probably that Paul includes in the term ‘thief’ those who make money without working; who get rich at the expense of slaves or employees; who by artificial price-fixing take advantage of those in need or who cheat the community of saints after the pattern of Ananias and Sapphira…”
[12] Barth, Ephesians, 515. “However uncomplimentary it is for saints to realize that the apostle reckons with thieves in their midst, Paul fights the opinion that theft in any form may be sanctified if the thief is a member of the congregation.”
[13] Barth, Ephesians, 517. ‘In Eph 4:28 the opportunity to help the needy fellow man is the rationale for working, not self-satisfaction. What a man may gain for himself is certainly not excluded, but it is incidental to the motive here given: labor is necessary in order that the needy may live! In turn, liberal giving of the gilds of one’s labor is not recommended. As a meritorious act deserving a reward or covering sins; it is rather a recognition of God’s immeasurably rich gift…”
[14] Barth, Ephesians, 518. “The ‘fruit of the lips,’ i.e. man’s speech, reveals the quality of the tree. Bad language and foul talk defile the whole man and manifest his corruption.”
[15] Barth, Ephesians, 519. “Constructive work has to be done, and in all conversations the choice of language and subject matter has to be such that edification takes place. Obviously no room is left for empty chatter or for remarks that serve no other purpose than to detract from a person’s honor.”
[16] Barth, Ephesians, 520. “Therefore, 4:29 can be understood to say that dialogue is a sacrament.”
[17] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 196. “Our talk should bear a resemblance to the grace god gave and gives…to Christ. That grace should make us bold to speak, but also careful to talk in ways that build up the neighbor and the community. We are made agents by the grace or God, and by God’s gift and grace our own words ‘may give grace to those who hear.’ They may not be rhetorically powerful words, but they must be ‘gracious words.’”
[18] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 195. “If our talk is to be ‘speaking the truth in love,’ then it is not just talk that violates truth that we must renounce but also any talk that violates love.”
[19] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, . “We make the Spirit sad when we do not live ‘to the praise of his glory,’ when we do not serve God’s cause in the world, when we do not make ‘the secret’ known by putting ‘the new humanity’ created by Christ on display. We make the Spirit sad when we lie and when we nurse a grudge or insult a neighbor, when we do not share with the needy, when our talk is destructive to person or to the community. We make the Spirit sad whenever we are conformed to this present evil age rather than transformed by a vision of God’s good future and by a devotion to God’s cause. This is no ‘passionless’ God. When we sin, the Spirit grieves.”
[20] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 206. “Both God’s forgiveness and the practice of forgiveness within the church are, after all, works of grace. Moreover, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness—and the whole set of renunciations and exhortations in this section—find their final motive and basis in the grace of God made known in Christ.”
[21] Barth, Ephesians, 546. “Ethics makes the gospel concrete. The Ephesians are told by the apostle that there is no reason to despair of speech and labor, of thought and decision; for in the name of the Lord it is asserted that your dirty tongue, your crafty hands, and your hard and violent heart (that is, precisely you, the egotists), can and shall do what befits a ‘member of one body.’ You and no one else are to take care of the ’needs’ of others; you are to ‘build them up’; you re to perform that which is ‘good’ for many.”
[22] Barth, Ephesians, 557. “Men cannot copy the essence of God, e.g. his work as creator or redeemer, or his trinity, but they are called to imitate his love and make progress on the way of love.”
[23] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 207. “We do not seal the new covenant by our little sacrifices, but we celebrate it by living in love, by kindness, by compassion, by forgiveness, by speaking the truth, by reconciling with our enemies, by sharing with the needy, and by words that are gracious.”
[24] Barth, Ephesians, 559. “Because Christ’s love is a s unique and inimitable as God the Father’s, the Gentile-born Ephesians are brothers, have brothers, and can behave as brothers united in love. Because Christ is the first-born among many brethren…his way, including his death, invites and inspires the saints to follow in his footsteps on the way of love…”
Psalm 51:11-13 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy Spirit from me. Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
Introduction
Ephesians 1 called believers to remember the work of Christ as God’s word in the world. In remembering, we find Christ with us and this presence is the source of our hope. Remembering and hope then become the ground upon which we kneel and pray, giving space and time for the divine Spirit in us (the deposit and guarantor of our faith) to mold our will to the will of God moving us as participatants in God’s mission in the world made known to us in remembering Christ: bringing the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation to the beloved.
Ephesians 2 exhorted believers toward wholeness: wholeness with God, with the neighbor, and with the self by pressing into Christ’s destruction of the division-wall of the fence, the eradication of enmity, and the lessening the bite of the law as a means to creating in-groups and out-groups. This destruction, eradication, and lessening brings people of various stripes and types, walks and talks, lives and vibes together: together with God, with each other, and with themselves; this is the source of peace Christ brings to those who follow him.
Ephesians 3 encouraged believers to grow and grow! in the knowledge of God’s profound love. The believer is always growing and bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. Thus, the idea of getting to a fixed point where the believer thinks they know everything is eliminated as Ephesians leans to the reality that the believer—individually and communally—will always be in a posture of learning about God’s love made tangible in Christ because the Spirit revealing God’s self to the believers anew through remembering Christ. This process prepares and causes Christians to grow into the able partners of God.
Now the text moves from theologically infused doxological statements creating the groundwork of the believer’s life in Christ with the neighbor to the glory of God. In Ephesians 4, we turn toward the natural outpouring of faith eagerly working itself out in love toward the neighbor. Love is not only the bedrock but is the very power that motivates us and that desires to be born from us as we are born from Love.
Ephesians 4:1-16
Therefore, I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to conduct yourself in manner worthy of the vocation into which you were summoned, with all humility and gentleness, with forbearance enduring with one another in love, hastening to guard the unity of the Spirit in the peace that binds together…speaking truth in love, we might grow in every way into him, who is the head, Christ, out of whom the entire body is being fit and brought together thru every joint of the support according to the proper activity of each part causing the growth of its body for the purpose of building itself up in love. (Eph 4:1-3, 16)*
Here in Ephesians, the content swings from doxological to ethical; for the author of Ephesians, to praise God results in right Christian work[1] in the world that is (also![2]) doxological, bringing the praise of God to the lips of those encountered by the loving hands and feet of the believers.[3] The therefore and then Paul’s I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to conduct yourself in manner worthy of the vocation into which you were summoned, provides the hinge transitioning into the ethical portion of this doxological letter. How are the Ephesians to conduct themselves? What is the worthy manner of their vocation as priests in the world? The author begs them to act with humility and gentleness, and to act with forbearance [by] enduring with one another in love. To act with humility and gentleness is, like Christ, to shrug off that which is privilege and power in the kingdom of humanity and to become as and like our neighbor in the reign of God like Christ did (ref. Phil 2).[4] And this “shrugging off” is the ground of the forbearance that is suffering with one another in love.
According to Ephesians, the believer is to identify so deeply with their neighbor that the neighbor’s problems become their problems; here, the believer cannot ignore the neighbor as if the neighbor’s well-being has no impact or import to the believer’s well-being. Rather, the believer shrugs off their own comfort, their own power, their own privilege, shrugs off their own self[5] as privatized and prioritized over the neighbor.[6] Ephesians puts the believer on the hook: to be as Christ in the world, to humble themselves, to choose to be gentle, to bear the burdens of human existence, to step in and under the trials and tribulations and refusing to let the neighbor go, to grab their hand and whisper, I will not leave you or forsake you. This, according to Ephesians, is the answer to the what now? of the season of Pentecost: we are to bring the love of Christ[7] deep into the world. And to do this, according to Ephesians, is how they will know we are Christians by our love—the unequivocal love that is our foundation of our mutuality, equity, and union with our neighbor,[8] the essence of divine peace within our lives, the substance of our life together, the marrow of our actions, and the air we breathe in and out.[9]
For we are, according to Ephesians, one body, one spirit, just as also you were summoned in one hope of your vocation; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and parent of all people… The church is one historically in remembering Christ, one currently by being in the presence of Christ through the proclamation of the Word of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and always will be one because the source of this unity is God who is before all people and through all people and in all people. In other words, the foundation and source of the church—yesterday-today-tomorrow—is always God.[10] And God is (also!) the source and foundation of our mutual love, union, and our equity among each other because we are each recipient of God’s grace given according to the measure of the free gift of Christ.
Because Christ was given to the whole cosmos (Jn 3:16) none of us can claim to have more grace than another person and none of us can try to obtain more because the divine gift of Christ is free.[11] We are all, each of us, under the headship of Christ. According to Ephesians, we are not under any human person holding authority in the kingdom of humanity, but under the divine leadership of God made known in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this church/“institution” must run differently, not like the kingdom of humanity, by lording over others assumed authority but by pressing into the omnipresent divine equity of the reign of God.[12] We may all have different vocations within this communal vocation to be priests in the world to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor (v. 11)); yet, this doesn’t indicate, according to Ephesians, a hierarchy of human beings within the body of Christ (v. 12).[13]
According to the inner logic of Ephesians, these vocations within the divine vocation to the community of believers functions in two ways: 1. assisting the body of Christ to grow into maturity[14] in the love of Christ to be as Christ in the world,[15] and 2. causing the body of Christ to grow away from being held captive like infants by the blusterous and empty yet attractive doctrine of the kingdom of humanity oriented toward deceiving and misleading(vv. 13-14). Thus, through faithful teachers and preachers and ministers[16] who speak the truth in love, so then does the entire congregation confess and live rightly into their vocation to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor.[17] The whole congregation—the entire body is being fit and brought together thru every joint … according to the proper activity of each part—is charged as a “personal partner”[18] of Christ to confess Christ not just within the unique gathering, but into the world by loving acts in word and deed.[19] According to Paul, this confession by each believer causes the growth of its body for the purpose of building itself up in love.[20]
Conclusion
Beloved, we are exhorted and begged through the words of Ephesians to grow…to grow up![21] For the love of God, to the glory of God, and for the well-being of our neighbors, we are to grow up and be(come) the body of Christ in the world, bearing into the world by acts of love that which has been born in us through faith. As those summoned to be formed by, to live into, and to participate in God’s good will made known in Christ and deposited in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to live in humility and gentleness. We are not to be prideful about our own faith and lives as if we are superior to our neighbor. We are not to act cruelly by forcing others to conform to our ideology/ies. We are exhorted to bear the burdens of our neighbor, not turn a blind eye because we have ours as if that’s all that matters. We are to dare to live radically by adhering to divine inspired equity among humanity, willingly stepping into the voids created between groups by the kingdom of humanity to call into reality the possibility of the reign of God. We are to be the socio-political wild cards, like Christ, ready at any moment to do what it takes to bring God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation deeper into the cosmos.
*Translation mine and v. 16 with the help of my Greek professor, Ann Castro ❤
[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 131. “Ethics is fundamentally a response to God.”
[2] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 132-133. “In Ephesians… ‘therefore’ signals a link, not just a transition. It is a moral theology in the first three chapters, announcing the ‘immeasurable greatness of God’s power’…, attentive to the grace and the cause of God, but always already with an eye toward the implications of the gospel for the lives of Christians and the common life of the churches. And it is a theological morality in the last three chapters, announcing the gospel now in the imperative mood, attentive to the sort of conduct, character, and the community that are empowered and required by God’s grace and cause.”
[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 426. “Moral indoctrination therefore appears to be derived from dogmatic doctrine. However, the content of Eph 1-3 is doxological rather than dogmatic. The direct connection of the ethical chapters 4-6 with the praise of God rather than with a doctrine of God is a specific feature of Ephesians.”
[4] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 138. “This community maintains and performs this unity when the members of the community practice ‘humility and gentleness [and] patience, bearing with one another in love’ (4:2). These are virtues for living in community with those who are different from you. These are virtues to make and maintain community of peaceable difference” peace like dividing wall down peace.
[5] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 157. “The unity of the church does not require an oppressive uniformity. It requires self-giving love and peaceable difference. That is the way and the will of triune God, the ‘one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all’ (4:6). The unity of the church includes diverse people and it is nurtured and sustained by a diversity of gifts.”
[6] Barth, Ephesians, 427-428. “If to love includes bearing one’s neighbor, then love is not just an emotion or ideal of the individual soul; rather the personalities of specific neighbors and personal relations actually existing among the saints become the field and material of love. According to this passage there is no love except in relation to specific neighbors. Love is not a disposition of the soul which can be perfect in itself, without being given and shaped in ever new concrete encounters. It is always specific. Always costly, always a miraculous event.”
[7] Barth, Ephesians, 427. “The ‘love’ mentioned here is probably the brotherly love among the saints which bears testimony to God’s and Christ’s love.”
[8] Barth, Ephesians, 461. “‘Love’ needs the neighbor and is dependent upon him. The neighbor—even the one who is a burden and whose character and behavior prove cumbersome—is much more than just an occasion or test of love. He is its very material. Love is not an abstract substance or mood that can be present in a man’s heart even when there are no other sin sight and no confrontations are taking place. It does not exist in a vacuum, in abstracto, in detachment from involvement in other men’s lives. Rather it is a question of being surprised by a neighbor, accepting him, going out to him, and seeking solidarity and unity just with him even if this should mean temporary neglect of, or estrangement from, others.”
[9] Barth, Ephesians, 427. “The gracious election of the Jewish and Gentile neighbor is the presupposition, the unshakable ground, and the undying source of the saints’ mutual love. The love that rules among them is the necessary and indispensable result of God’s care for them. It is the essence of the ‘good works’ created for them, and the ground on which they are to walk…”
[10] Barth, Ephesians, 429. “The unity of the church is …. Not constituted by something underneath or inside the church or her several members. Rather it is eschatological: the reason for the church’s hope for unity, and for her commitment to unity, is ‘deposited in heaven’ (Col 1:5). Not the attainment to unity, but the guarantee of that attainment is, in the best interest of the church preserved at a place ‘out of this world.’”
[11] Barth, Ephesians, 435-436. “By providing for all saints equally, God constitutes the unity of the church. No one member possesses anything that is not given to the whole body of Christ. It is impossible for any group inside the church to claim an extra gift from the exalted Messiah.”
[12] Barth, Ephesians, 481. “…the task of the special ministers mentioned in Eph 4:11 is to be servants in that ministry which is entrusted to the whole church. Their place is not above but below the great number of saints who are not adorned by resounding titles. Every one of the special ministers is a servus servorum Dei. He is a ‘pastor’ of God’s flock who understands himself as a minister to ministers.”
[13] Barth, Ephesians, 435. “God appoints Christ to be head over church and world…; the exalted Christ will fill all, and he appoints ministers to the church… That is all!”
[14] Barth, Ephesians, 443. “The heretical teachers are bluntly accused of bad intentions. All the more do unstable and immature saints need teachers who can lead them out of error and toward solid knowledge of the truth.”
[15] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 168. “The church is Christ’s body, filled with Christ. And the church must grow into that body, ‘to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ By the grace and power and blessing of God, the church is and is called to be an agent in blessing God in words and lives of doxology, in service to God’s cause by its proclamation and its display of ta new humanity ‘to the praise of God’s glory.’ That is the final and climactic purpose of the one gift of grace God gave to the church (4:7), of the leaders Christ gave to the church, and of the many diverse gifts of the saints.”
[16] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 169. “We need teachers and leaders who hold tight to the confession of the unity creed, who hold tight to ‘the faith and knowledge of the Son of God,’ who proclaim a gospel of peaceable difference and hold us to it. Those who would divide, who would boast about some little truth they think they know well or some little good that they think they do well, and who for the sake of that little truth or that little good undercut the unity and peace that God intends, are less than faithful leaders and teachers. They are to be regarded as crafty and deceitful schemers (4:14). Our lives and our common life must be shaped by the truth o this one body, one Spirit, on hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. Instead of using speech as a weapon against other Christians, instead of engaging in deceit or speaking in ways that destroy the unity of the body, we are to ‘speak the truth in love’ (4:15)…”
[17] Barth, Ephesians, 444. v. 15 “The passage calls for the right confession, and it urges the whole church and all its members to be a confessing church.”
[18] Barth, Ephesians, 450. “The church is a personal partner…rather than an impersonal outgrowth or extension of Christ.”
[19] Barth, Ephesians, 444. “The truth entrusted to the congregation is the truth of all-conquering love. Where there is no love, the truth revealed by God is denied. Equally, without ‘truth’ there may well be a ‘conspiracy’ that aims to subjugate men to human “opinions’ (Calvin), but no solid unity and community.”
[20] Barth, Ephesians, 449. “Most likely the apostle intends to say that tin their mutual dependence and communication all church members are chosen tools of the head for communicating nourishment, vitality, unity, solidity to the body (or building) as a whole. The weakest member or part is in this case as essential to the life and unity of the whole as the strongest.”
[21] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 176. “Live a common life worthy of God’s grace and gift, worthy of God’s promise and plan. Grow up! Build a body fitting to Christ as the head! Love one another!”
Psalm 145: 10-11, 19 All your works praise you, O God, and your faithful servants bless you. They make known the glory of your kingdom and speak of your power…Abba God is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully
Introduction
Through Ephesians we’ve talked about the need for heartfelt, mind-filled remembrance of Christ’s work in the world thru the Cross and Resurrection event and how remembering this brings Christ close to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, here, we have hope. What God has done combined with God’s presence with the community through remembrance makes us hopeful because we are not abandoned and have something to participate in: the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved. And at the intersection of hope and remembrance we find ourselves bending our knee to pray, not as a last-ditch effort but to find our ground and our language so we can move through God and toward our neighbor, bringing tangible hope that is faith working itself out in action for those who are in need, on death’s door, frail and fatigued, on the verge of giving up.
Last week we dove into the peace that Christ brings us by destroying dividing walls, ridding us of hostility and enmity, and rendering inoperative laws that cause in groups and out groups. Within the Christian walk and life, the act of rebuilding walls keeping many out and few elite in, fomenting hostility and fear, and forcing the gospel to become a law in the church or the state is anathema. According to Ephesians, the followers of Christ cannot support any of these things or anything that supports these things. We have been liberated into radical equity with our neighbor through the work of Christ and the event of the Cross and Resurrection—(we are not, have never been, and will never be superior to our neighbor).
But all of this is moot if we don’t grow—individually and corporately—bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. Ephesians 3 exhorts us to grow in such a way so we can be stronger and more able partners of God participating in God’s mission in the world made known to us in Christ and inspiring our hearts, minds, and actions by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 3:14-21
…so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith. Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… (Eph. 3: 16-19a)
This portion of Ephesians is a prayer to God the Father. The hint is For this reason I bend my knees to the Father, from whom all families in heaven and on earth received [their] name… I retained the use of “Father” in the translation to highlight that Paul isn’t praying to some distant deity,[1] but to a loving parent, who is involved in our lineage and our name.[2] But the point of the passage isn’t the emphasis on “Father” but rather the “bending of my knees,” the fact that Paul prays for the Ephesians.
So, Paul prays and prays these three petitions: for 1. Inner strength, 2. Profound understanding of God’s love, and 3. Being filled with God’s fullness.[3] The request for “inner strength”—so that [God] might give to you according to the abundance of his glory the power to grow through [God’s] Spirit to align with the inner person [and] establish Christ in your hearts through faith—is a statement that nothing is taken from God[4] as God inspires and woos the believer and the congregation as a whole[5] to bring the outer person into alignment with the inner person. In other words, the wholeness of self—the receipt of the believer’s self—hinted at in chapter 2 (last week) is confirmed here in chapter 3 as Paul prays that God out of God’s abundance gives abundant strength to the believer to be a whole person by bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. According to our letter, to be loved by God is healing balm that then empowers the believer to love as they have been loved and this is done from the firm ground and fixed foundation of Christ’s love and the believer’s faith that this God (as parent) really does love them.[6]
And because Paul sees the Ephesians as grounded and substantiated in God by love, Paul can write, Having been fixed firmly on and having laid the foundation of love, [stand on love] so that you might be perfectly able to comprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and weight and depth, and to ascertain the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge… In this prayer, the author of the letter bases everything on the love of Christ—on which the Ephesians have been firmly fixed and which is the foundation under the ground where they stand in the spiritual realm. The love of Christ is the starting point for the believers in Ephesus, from here they not only understand just how massive and astounding is God’s love (which is truly beyond human understanding),[7] but from where they move, have their being, and participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the beloved. The great mystery that the Ephesians are let in on is the divine mystery that is Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension and the impact of this divine event for the cosmos. But even then, understanding those points does not now make the Ephesians perfect or filled, or the arbiters of all that is of God[8] as if there is nothing more to learn or understand; this mystery surpasses all human knowledge. [9] For Paul these two things—the alignment of the outer with the inner person and the understanding the depth of God’s love—are woven together to create the situation where the believer might be filled into all fullness of God.[10] Embedded in the prayerful entreaty is Paul’s awareness that the Ephesians can never fully be filled with God’s fullness as if it is one and done. Rather, it is to be worked out; it’s on going—happening in the future and happening right now. This is what it means to grow: to grow in strength, to grow in act, to grow in prayer and dependence on God, to grow into fullness of the relationship with God, with the neighbor, and with the self.[11]
Paul then ends with And to the one who is able to do abundantly more than all things of which we ask or we can perceive according to the one who strengthens us, to [that one] be glory in the assembly and in Christ Jesus from all the families of the ages of ages, amen. As the three petitions work themselves out in the lives of the believers by the power of God, the Spirit,[12] glory is brought to God because where this community remembers, hopes, and prays, there is God in Christ. It is this that is the firm foundation and starting point for the one community that is the temple of God who worships together and then proceeds to move through God to serve the beloved, the neighbor. And as the neighbor is served, their God’s name is blessed (hallowed,[13] honored[14]) and glory is brought to God in the community and in Christ Jesus.[15]
Conclusion
Beloved, we remember, we hope, and we pray. We have wholeness with God, with our neighbor, and with ourselves by faith in Christ as divisions, hostilities, and laws cease to pull apart in Christ. From here we grow, constantly being brought to the edge of our understanding of God’s love for us and not just for us but for our neighbor. Because, for Paul here in Ephesians, the community who is open to and able to go outside of itself is the community that is growing—individually and corporately—in the knowledge of God’s love.
Paul prays for the believers—in Ephesus, and here today—that we would completely and fully—as limited as we are—understand just how much God loves us. Paul reminds us of the work of Christ on our behalf—the great mystery of the divinely inspired cosmos—and that we—who were once far off—are now counted among the children and families of God—spanning all time and space. And all of this never for ourselves in some privatized fashion so promoted by current American evangelical theology, but in a deprivatized way: for we are so loved by God that we can bring our outer person (personal and corporate) in line with the inner person (personal and corporate) and live in the world in love as we have been loved—no dividing walls and fences, no enmity and hostility, no laws keeping some in and some out. As we remember Christ, hope, pray, embrace radical divine equity, and grow, we can work to bring love to those who suffer under the oppression of indifference, life to those who are dying and liberation to those who are captive.
[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 123-124. “The ‘every family’ would have God as ‘Father,’ and every tribe and nation would be counted among the children of God. Then the invocation could be translated, ‘Father of all families [or tribes or nations].’ It is clearly not a biological relationship that is affirmed, but the care a father takes to supply the needs of his family, as when God is praised in Psalm 68:5 as the ‘father of orphans,’ the father of the fatherless. The scope of God’s parental care is not limited to those who know to call God ‘Father.’ Its reach extends beyond those who are near, and even beyond those who have been brought near.”
[2] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 124. “This is no tribal deity, no local god, not just the god of our ancestors. This God is not just committed to the flourishing of ap articular culture, country, or family. This God is the God of ‘all the families of the earth,’ the God of ‘all things.’ And to this God alone the Jews and Gentiles of the Lycus Valley—and we—owe ultimate loyalty.”
[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 368. “Three petitions may be discerned in what follows. (a) Intercession for the inner fortification of the saints; this is unfolded in the prayer that Christ reside in their hearts (vss. 16-17). (b) supplication for their strong perception of all the dimensions of God’s will; this supplication is interpreted by a request for knowledge of Christ’s love (vss. 18-19a). (c) Petition for perfection with God’s perfection (vs. 19b).”
[4] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In remembering the ‘riches’ and ‘glory’ of the Father, Paul is convinced that God need not change or lose anything by granting the requests made to him. God is expected to act according to his nature, his character, i.e. his radiating love and power.”
[5] Barth, Ephesians, 385. “The gospel proclaimed in Ephesians is distinct from many variants of secular and religious collectivism by the vital concern shown for the enrichment, strength, stability, love, knowledge, grown, and perfection of each member of the community and, virtually, of every man.”
[6] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “If this command is a parallel to the prayer contained in 3:16, then ‘the Lord’ is the aim, focus, and source of gathering strength—he, and not some innate self that resides in the nature of man and constitutes his individual quality.”
[7] Barth, Ephesians, 369. “In Eph 3 these nouns are so arranged as to make it clear that man must be invigorated by God’s Spirit before he is able to grasp God’s manifold wisdom and hold onto it in knowledge. Paul would hardly affirm in general terms, that knowledge is power. Rather he avers that through his Spirit God empowers man to know things that are beyond the human mind, eye, ear…”
[8] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 127-128. “Paul pleads that the church will grow strong enough to hold onto the mystery of God without claiming to be able to understand that mystery fully. That is, after all, what ‘all the saints’ (Eph. 3:18), including Job, did.”
[9] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “God laid his heart bare when he showed that from eternity the Gentiles are included in his love and in the Messiah’s realm, but the saints’ knowledge and understanding of the secret is still ‘imperfect’…”
[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 128. “Here Paul prays that the church will in fact be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’…that is, with Christ…., in whom the secret was made known and who will bring the plan of God to complete fruition. That grace, that glory, that loves is not created by human beings, but it exalts human beings. It creates and restores humanity, and it strengthens the church to respond to God’s grace and glory and love, to be responsible agents in service to God’s plan.”
[11] Barth, Ephesians, 373. “While Col 1:19 and 2:9 speak of the ‘indwelling’ of ‘the whole fullness of God’ in Christ and the church, and described it as an accomplished fact, it is (despite all elements of ‘realized eschatology’) characteristic of Ephesians to speak of ‘filling’ as a process still going on.”
[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 125. “The petition is that the church will be empowered by the Spirit to grow into Christ.”
[14]Honor your Father and Mother (Ten Commandments)
[15] Barth, Ephesians, 376. “In Eph 4:4-6 Paul mentions the church first because he starts from the actual locus of God’s praise. Then he adds a reference to the Messiah Jesus to designate the basis of the that praise. The existence and manifestation of God’s glory in the church is and remains dependent upon glorification of God through the Son. The secret of God is indeed now known only to the church, but it was revealed in Christ of the benefit of the whole world.”
Psalm 23:1-3 Abba God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. Abba God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for God’s Name’s sake.
Introduction
At the end of last’s week sermon, we ended talking about remembrance, hope, and prayer. For Christians, when we gather to speak of, read of, hear of, and consume together with Christ in our weekly fellowship and worship, we are remembering Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not just remembering Christ but participating the work of God made tangible in Christ: the divine revolution and mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the beloved. This is truly εὐαγγέλιον. And if this is truly εὐαγγέλιον, then it is also the source and foundation of our hope that exists to sustain us today.
In remembering and having hope we are led to pray, to bring ourselves deeply into God, to bend our knee (literal or figurative), to be creatures fully dependent on God. We remember, we have hope, and we pray, and it is this that is the beginning of all our activity within the walls of the church and without. As mentioned last week, “Prayer does not resign the believer to non-activity as if it is the final act in the face of trouble; it is the starting point. Prayer is how the believer unites with God and God’s passion for life, love, and liberation.[1] It is the bold request for God to enter in, to act; in prayer God is spoken to and from, in prayer God is remembered, so, too, the neighbor.”[2]
But the author of Ephesians isn’t done with us yet as if it’s just about remembering and hoping and praying. But that this remembering, hoping, and praying participates in making believers one with God and with each other in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and bringing them into the true peace that surpasses all understanding.
Ephesians 2:11-22
For [Christ] is our peace, the one who made both [the Israelites and the Gentiles] one and [the one who] destroyed in his flesh the division-wall of the fence, [and] the enmity [between the two], and [the one who] rendered inoperative the law of the commands and public decrees, so that the two might build in him one new peace-making humanity… (Eph. 2:14-15)
So, the author of Ephesians verbally exhorts us (using an imperative!) to remember. To remember what? Not only Christ but who we were prior to being encountered by Christ in the event of faith. …remember that in the past you [were] Gentiles in the flesh, the ones who were called “The Uncircumcised” by the ones who were called “The Circumcised” in the flesh done by [human] hands (v. 11). But that isn’t enough; Paul asks his audience to remember, further, that they were for a time without Christ, having been alienated from the citizenship of Israel and a stranger of the covenant of the promise, not possessing hope and [were] without God in the cosmos (v 12). Paul is eager to recreate the situation for the Ephesians to cause more than just recall but real, heart-felt remembering,[3] pressing into the reality that apart from Christ they were dead in their false-steps and missing the mark (sin) (v 1), they were strangers to the promises of God, to Christ, and to the hope of God which is the hope of the reign of God in Christ.[4],[5] According to Ephesians, the Gentiles were overcome by their own desires, turned in on themselves, stuck in place by division, and consumed by hostility. This isn’t something that someone can work themselves out of, no matter how hard they try. For Paul, it is only through the encounter with Christ where one finds God, finds their neighbor, and finds themself; it is only in Christ where one finds true life, love, and liberation.[6]But at this time you who were once far off you became near by the blood of Christ (v 13). In other words, this is not done by human hands (χειροποιήτου in v 11), but by the love of God in Christ done by the power of the Spirit[7] as the down-payment in lives of the believers in Ephesus.
This is why Christ is the peace of everyone—for [Christ] is our peace (v 14a)—Children of Israel and Gentiles combined. Because, as Paul writes, the one who made both [the Israelites and the Gentiles] one and [the one who] destroyed in his flesh the division-wall of the fence, [and] the enmity [between the two], and [the one who] rendered inoperative the law of the commands and public decrees, so that the two might build in him one new peace-making humanity (vv 14b-15). There is now no longer us v. them, insiders v. outsiders, elected v. not-elected, Israel v. Gentiles, the circumcised v. the not circumcised.[8] There are not two groups, but one group. Thus, this peace Jesus brings in his own flesh, by the blood of the cross event and the glory of his resurrection is not just for privatized souls but for deprivatized humanity; it’s a socio-political event.[9] There is now no wall that keeps some in and some out, some included and some excluded; there is now (absolutely) no line—whether 2-D or 3-D—that can render some humans “good” and others “bad” based on which side of that line they fall because that line has been destroyed[10] and is now anathema for the believers and followers of Christ who benefit from the destruction of the division-wall of the fence by being included in to the heredity and mission of God by the work of Christ on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirits dwelling in their hearts.
And if the wall has been destroyed, so, too, division according to enmity,[11] which is the hostility and intolerance fomented between the two groups that was the fruit of the division wall; it is the anger of the kingdoms of humanity turned inward to tear humanity apart.[12] This includes the laws and public commandments used to make some clean and some unclean, some righteous and others unrighteous; these, too, like the wall and the enmity, have become inoperative in solidifying groups of people against each other. For Paul then writes, and so he might completely reconcile both in one body for God through the cross he killed the hostility in himself (v 16).By Christ’s work[13]—the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation for the world—there is now no wall, thus no enmity, thus no law[14] that can keep anyone out and in this radical establishment of divine equity, there is peace[15]—true peace that is not contingent on one group suffering under the weight of another.
Then the letter continues, [Christ] came and brought peace to you (all) who were far-off and peace to you (all) who were near because through him we—both in one spirit—possess access to God therefore now you are no longer a stranger and sojourner but you are a fellow citizens with the saints and of the family of God (vv 17-19). In Christ, these two have become one[16] and together they will dwell in and with God and they will have real peace—the type of peace that threatens the principalities and powers of the kingdom of humanity. [17] But this peace brought by Christ is more than reconciliation with each other, it is also reconciliation with God, thus, these two who are now one become the dwelling place of God. [18] As Paul continues, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets—Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone—in whom all building is being fitted together and grows itself into a holy temple in the lord in whom you, you also were built together into the dwelling place of God in Spirit (vv 20-22). Boldly Ephesians declares, where there is a lack of enmity and hostility, division walls and lines, laws and commands geared to keep some in and some out, there God is and there the saints of God are; no one is excluded and left out and the church is caught up in this radical inclusion and equity, snatched into this divine peace that knows absolutely positively no walls or dividing lines.[19],[20]
Conclusion
The church is without excuse here, according to Ephesians. Peace—the very peace Christ brings through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension—is peace that is not contingent on the kingdom of humanity but dependent on the reign of God. It is peace that arises in the communion of humanity with humanity, humanity with God, and humanity with creation; it is peace that manifests within and among humanity in its unity to the glory of God, which is in opposition to the “peace” (i.e. “security” (“control”)) of the kingdom of humanity that thrives on the humanity’s disunity. None of us who claim to follow Christ can afford to support systems dead set on dividing and conquering, oppressing and marginalizing, and fostering anger and fear; these systems are antithetical to the gospel of Christ and to the faith and praxis of the believer in the world before God and neighbor. None of us who claim to follow Christ can find peace (and hope) anywhere else apart from God: not in federal positions and presidents, not in parties and platforms, not in promises and progress made with human hands. We can only find true peace in our reconciliation with God, which is reconciliation with our neighbor, and, thus, these two combined give us reconciliation with ourselves because we have been made one with our neighbor and thus have become the dwelling place of God.
We cannot find peace by building the world we long for with human hands because as soon as we build it it has expired and must be torn down to allow something new to be born. We cannot find peace by turning the gospel into a law as if it can found a nation that would only gift life, love, and liberation to those who qualify. We cannot find peace by letting enmity and hostility be the mortar holding the bricks of the division-wall together. We cannot find peace by legislating Christianity because the doctrines born of the second word of God that form the tissue of the Christian Church inherently resist such socio-political ossification. We can and will only find peace by pressing further into God, clinging to God’s Word in Christ, and leaning into the guidance and leading of the Spirit of God, the guarantor of the new covenant, the down payment of our adoption into God, and the fertile soil making us one with God, with our neighbor, thus, with ourselves. It is only here, in God and with God, do we find true and lasting peace that surpasses all understanding.
[2] This portion is taken from, Lauren R.E. Larkin, “Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance,” PhD Dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), 202.
[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 254. “Repentance, decision, and gratitude are called for, not a mental recollection only.”
[4] Barth, Ephesians, 257. “In Eph 2:12 a status of strangership is described, not an event leading to estrangement.”
[5] Barth, Ephesians, 259. \“Unless Paul flippantly denied or dispossessed the Gentiles of any hope he must have meant a specific hope. This ‘hope,’ then, could be understood as fostered in the minds of the Jews, because it was founded and guaranteed in the heart of God or ‘laid up in heaven’……It is the hope for the promised messiah from the root of David…”
[6] Barth, Ephesians, 254. “Paul’s thought moves from men in the grip of ‘flesh’ (2:11), over the work performed in ‘Christ’s flesh’ (2:14, to the operation of the ‘Spirit’ (2:18). Nothing can prevent the ‘Spirit’ from operating ‘in the realm of flesh.’”
[7] Barth, Ephesians, 255. “As the building of the temple by God is contrasted to the construction of temples by men, so circumcision of the heart…highly excels handmade circumcision.”
[8] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 93. “If it was especially the Jewish Christian who needed to be reminded earlier that all are ‘sinners,’ not just the ‘uncircumcised,’ not just the Gentiles, and that all are brought from death to life by the gift of God’s grace, not by ‘works’ of the law, the Gentiles are now reminded of the promises to Israel and that it is in the Jewish Messiah that they are given a share in them.”
[9] Barth, Ephesians, 262. “Christ is praised here not primarily for the peace he bring to individual souls; rather the peace he brings is a social and political event…”
[10] Barth, Ephesians, 263-264. “The combination of the two Greek nouns yields a composite sense: it is a wall that prevents certain person from entering a house or a city (cf. 2:19), and is as much a mark of hostility (2:14, 16) as, e.g. a ghetto wall, the Iron Curtain the Berlin Wall, a racial barrier, or a railroad track that separates the right from the wrong side of the city, not to speak of the wall between state and church.”
[11] Barth, Ephesians, 264. “In this case, the ‘enmity’ is as much the object of destruction as the wall.”
[12] Barth, Ephesians, 264. “The word ‘enmity’ defines the separation between Jews and Gentiles more specifically: this segregation implies intolerance, and is a passionate, totalitarian, bellicose affair. While the ‘enmity’ mentioned at the end of vs. 16 is the one-sided enmity of man against God, the ‘enmity’ of vs. 14 is mutual among men.”
[13] Barth, Ephesians, 265. “…the context of Eph 2:15 reveals that for the author (as much as for Paul himself) the death of Christ rather than the promulgation of new decrees stood behind the abolition of the divisive statutes.”
[14] Barth, Ephesians, 264. Wall, enmity, and law “Each of these terms throws light on the others; the author wants them to be considered as synonyms.”
[15] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 96. “…God seals a ‘new covenant’ in ‘the blood of Christ.” And in that ‘new covenant’ there is a new community, a community of both Jew and Gentile, a community that shares the memory of Christ and the hope of God’s promises with a common meal.”
[16] Barth, Ephesians, 272. “After showing that the church exists only as a unity, that is, as one new man created out of Jews and Gentiles, the apostle does not proceed to split t into halves.”
[17] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 97. “But this was not merely an idea, as the reality of baptism makes clear. This was not merely an ideal that exists outside history and toward which we must strive. This was and is a reality wrought in Christ on the cross and displayed in the churches when God initiates diverse people into Christ and into the church. Ideals are powerless against the forces in this world that divide and abuse, against the principalities and power that nurture cultures of enmity. But those forces are and will be finally powerless against the promise and reality of God’s future.”
[18] Barth, Ephesians, 274. “The church herself is not reconciliation but she lives form it and manifests it. She serves the glory of God inasmuch as her members mutually assist, support, and strengthen one another. Neither jews nor Gentiles nor any individual can independently claim after Christ’s coming to offer an appropriate residence For God but Jews and Gentiles together are now ordained by God to become his temple.”
[19] Barth, Ephesians, 324-325. “Now the church is the sign of his mercy, his peace, and his nearness the whole world. If God can and will use people are who are as tempted and weak as the Christian are, then he is certainly able and willing to exclude no one from his realm. The church lives by this hope and bears witness to it publicly.”
[20] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 98. “They are called to break down the walls and to perform this new social reality by forming friendships with the people on the other side of the aisle, or on the other side of town.”
Psalm 24:1-2 The earth is Abba God’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein. For it is God who founded it upon the seas and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.
Introduction
Throughout our study of 2 Corinthians, we juggled the twin questions: “What now?” and “Will they?” What do we do now that we are in the world but not of the world, breakable creatures carrying God’s Spirit and message, charged with carrying on the mission of God in the world: the advancement of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation made incarnate in Christ and the wellbeing and benefit of the neighbor to the glory of God. Without Christ to guide the disciples, the disciples are left to figure it out by the leading of the Spirit.
We saw that Paul, in 2 Corinthians, gave us ample direction to discover that the “What now?” and “Will they?” is never answered once for all, but brought to the disciples of Christ anew every season, and that in each season the disciples of Christ must depend fully on God, cling to God’s word made known in Christ, and to follow—eyes wide open—the leading of God’s Spirit residing in their hearts and guiding their minds toward God’s wisdom and discernment in the world, impassioned with God’s passion to bring love, life, and liberation to the whole world—participation in the mission of God by faith working itself out in freedom and responsibility.
Paul seemed to leave us, though, with the reality that the Christian journey and Christian life is as hard as easy, as sorrowful as joyous, as thorn-filled as rose-filled. It is certain that as Christians who follow God, God’s Word, and God’s Spirit, we will have great existential anguish as much as we will have great existential excitement; both states are part of the Christian life in the world that is not of the world. Paul left us in the world dependent on God as we walk.
If Paul left us on earth in 2 Corinthians 12; Ephesians launches us into that third heaven Paul referenced. It is through remembrance, hope, and prayer that we, those dependent on God, continue to move through the world bringing God’s love to our neighbor and our neighbor to a loving God.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Bless God, the parent of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blesses us in Christ in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, just as God selected us in Christ before the conception of the cosmos to live holy and righteous before God in love, foreordaining us to adoption through Jesus Christ toward God according to the favorable favor of the will of God … (Eph. 1:3-6)[1]
Verses three to fourteen form one long sentence packed full of adoration, gratitude, praise, prayer, and doctrine. One of the most striking things, though, is the way this passage starts with humans blessing God. While some may feel compelled to shun this idea—preferring that it is God who blesses us so to keep God active and not passive[2]—the idea that we can bless God isn’t that foreign to our theology and prayer life. Take for example “The Lord’s Prayer” and the petition, let your name be made sacred. Isn’t God’s name already sacred? Yet the petition implies a capacity on our part to act in such a way that God’s name is praised and made holy. Thus, the idea that we bless God isn’t farfetched but makes sense: we have been made by God to be in the world and to bring God the glory God deserves through our love of God which is love of our neighbor. In other words, we are the “free otherness” from God who can return the blessing and bless God who blesses us.[3] The relationship with God by faith in Christ and the power of the Spirit is one where both the Lover and the Beloved are mutually dependent and mutually responsible.[4] God loves us, and we love God; God keeps us warm, and we keep God warm; God protects us, and we protect God.[5]
The author then moves to speak of our being blessed in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, and of our selection in Christ from the laying-down of the cosmos. All of it oriented toward holy and blameless living before God that is characterized by love. This living is at once in the temporal realm and in the spiritual realm.[6] Human being and human love, according to Ephesians, is born of God’s love to go farther into the world to bring light where there is darkness, life where there is death, liberation where there is captivity, and love where there is indifference.[7] The believer is caught up into the cosmic battle between the creation that is of the reign of God and the destruction that is of the kingdom of humanity; it is the believer who is “enlisted” to be the epicenter of spiritual and temporal activity, at once the one who is adopted through Christ toward God, according to the good pleasure of the will of God and the breakable vessel, summoned out of the mud and dust.
It is these adopted of God and summoned from the dust and mud who are also endowed with God’s grace, the ones who have been loved, the recipients of liberation and forgiveness of false-steps, and,thus, recipientsof divine wisdom working out in human prudence.[8] It is these who are enlisted to act in the world to the glory of God by God’s will and leading (by the Holy Spirit), those who are charged to carry forward God’s Word (incarnated in Christ), and to participate in the continuation of God’s mission in the world to gather up all things in Christ, the things upon the heavens and the things upon the earth, those who were given a share foreordained according to the purpose of the one who is operative in all things according to the will of God. It is these identity markers of the beloved of God in Christ who are given a reason to hope because what we see in the world isn’t all there is. As the forces of the kingdom of humanity threaten death and destruction in the temporal realm, those who believe know that there is another realm—the spiritual realm—surging alongside, eager to make itself known through those who walk with the Spirit in Christ before God, who have heard the word of truth, the good news of salvation, and those who have eyes to see that there is more here than meets the eye because they have been sealed to the Holy Spirit of promise who is the security of our inheritance of liberation to praise of the glory of God.[9]
Conclusion
The author of the letter of Ephesians wants the community to remember. Remembering is key because it is in remembering together where we hold the presence of one absent among us as if they are still present. Though Christ is gone from us, Christ is present among us and among us with those who suffer as we remember him through proclamation and through remembering that the gift of the Holy Spirit to us (individually and corporately) is “security” that what has been started by God in Christ is not yet finished and that God will show up because God has promised to do so and God’s promises do not fall flat. God is not done with God’s world because God’s people still remember, and by remembering they (re)turn their gaze to God in the present thus to the future. Herein is the good hope of something different that will bring the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation farther into the world, and, ultimately, to is consummation in Christ’s return.[10]
And we do all of it through our dependence on God realized through our prayers—corporate[11] and individual. We do not go it alone. This letter to the Ephesians is an invitation to pray, to pray with our whole selves.[12] Prayer is the groundwork of the union with God that leads to the outpouring of divine love, liberation, and life for the neighbor in the world. Prayer solicits a self-awareness needed by God and the self-needing God and needing God to speak. It is in prayer where the believer is not only reoriented to God and thus to themself, but also where they are brought close to their neighbor. Prayer also participates in new language for the believer in the world where the believer represents the neighbor to God in words articulating the septic, antiquatedness of the kingdom of humanity. But prayer does not resign the believer to non-activity as if it is the final act in the face of trouble; it is the starting point. Prayer is how the believer unites with God and God’s passion for life, love, and liberation.[13] It is the bold request for God to enter in, to act; in prayer God is spoken to and from, in prayer God is remembered, so, too, the neighbor.[14]
[2] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 43. Blessing God “…seems to make God the recipient of blessing rather than the source of all blessing It seems to render God passive.”
[3] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 43. “But this mysterious ‘passivity’ of God is precisely the nuance we should not neglect. By a powerful and creative word God created the universe and all that is in it, by God’s constant care God sustains it, and by God’s grace God redeems it. God is agent, active. But God creates, sustains and redeems the creation into a fertile and free otherness from God. God gives God’s creatures their own distinctive powers and upholds those powers, concurring in their own works not rendering the creation passive but active in God’s own project.”
[5] Dorothee Sölle, “Laudation from Dorothee Sölle for Carola Moosbach, June 2, 2000, “When it is related to the children: God loves you, God protects you, God warms you, I completely agree with it. But just as important is it to say to them: God is in need of you, you can warm God. Sometimes, it is also cold here to God.
[6] Barth, Ephesians, 102. “‘Spiritual blessing,’…does not mean a timeless, otherworldly, abstract blessing. Rather it describes changes effected upon and among people of flesh and blood. It means a history, that is, decisions, actions, testimonies, suffering which have been set in motion and are as yet unfinished.”
[7] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. Heavenlies “It is the mysterious and unseen realm above and behind this world. It is not another world, a different world, unconnected with this one. It is the realm at once of God, who creates and sustains this world, and of the ‘spiritual forces of evil’ (6:12), who are at work in this world to destroy it. It is the realm of a cosmic conflict. On the one side are God and his Christ; on the other are the principalities and powers who would usurp God’s rule. That cosmic conflict is that battle for sovereignty in this world, not some other one. It is the very cosmic conflict in which Christians find themselves enlisted (6:12).”
[8] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 85. “The wise man knows how and when to speak; he gives good counsel; he lives up to his gifts; his actions make sense and are successful. For this reason the conjunction ‘and’ between ‘wisdom’ and ‘prudence’ is to be understood as expository. Paul speaks of that wisdom which is operating in prudence.”
[9] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. “The decisive battle has been fought and won in this conflict, fought and won in this world, when God raise Jesus form the dead. The powers of death and doom had done their damnedest, but God raised Jesus up and set him at his right hand ‘in the heavenly places’ (1:20).”
[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 47. “Remembrance has brought us to this point. It is because this community remembers Christ that it also hopes. It hopes for the good future of God, which is the good future for God’s creation, for ‘all things.’ This good future is our ‘inheritance’ in Christ (1:11), and the Spirit is the ‘pledge,’ the earnest, of that inheritance (1:14), the firstfruits of God’s good pleasure.”
[11] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians sets its talk of God and its instructions concerning the common life in the context of prayer.”
[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians invites us to pray. Much of the first three chapters is prayer.”
[14] This paragraph is taken from, Lauren R.E. Larkin, “Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance,” PhD Dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), 202.
Psalm 48:1, 13 Great is Abba God, and highly to be praised; in the city of our God is his holy hill. This God is our God for ever and ever; Abba God shall be our guide for evermore.
Introduction
At times there are great highs in this Christian life, and then there are great lows. We see love come and then indifference; we see liberation come and then captivity; we see life come and then death. We are caught in what feels like a great tug-of-war between power eager to bring life, love, and liberation and power eager to eliminate it. To be in the world but not of the world is to have a foot in the temporal realm and in the spiritual realm, with neither feeling all that much like home while we are still here in the body. We will have joy, and we will have pain. At times our hearts will swell with gratitude; at others, they will deflate with despair. But this is part of our Christian journey in the world and so is the anguish we feel at times when injustice seems to win over justice, war over peace, death over life. This anguish causes us to feel pointless and hopeless, purposeless and directionless. But it’s here, in this very real human weakness, where God summons us to step further into the void…
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Concerning this thing, I beseeched the Lord three times so that it might [take leave] from me. And he has spoken to me, “My grace suffices for you; for power is reaches perfection in weakness.” Therefore, I will gladly boast all the more in my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell upon me. That is why I am resolved in weakness, in insult, in constraint, in persecution, and great distress on behalf of Christ; for whenever I am weak, at that time I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:8-10)
Paul begins this portion of his letter to the Corinthians by telling them about a person who—fourteen years ago—was caught up in an ecstatic encounter with God, brought up to the third heaven and that this person then heard unutterable utterances which a person is not permitted to speak. Paul speaks as one who is not sure about the details of the event—whether in the body I have known not, or outside of the body I have known not; God has known—thus the reader/hearer is led to believe it is someone else of whom Paul is speaking. So, who is this person caught up into the presence of God?[1] Most likely it’s Paul. Paul is not one to practice futile self-boasting, so he phrases the story in the third person and avoids any notion that he is any different than the Corinthians.[2] In this way, Paul speaks about divine encounter that takes one to the peaks yet without creating a chasm between himself and his audience; he didn’t do this, [3] God did.[4] In other words, as other leaders are trying to lord their power over others,[5] Paul is just like his audience because there is no hierarchy among the believers, because in God’s reign hierarchies are destroyed—all are brought low in Christ’s death to be raised in Christ’s resurrection.
So, Paul refuses to boast in himself unless he’s speaking of his own weakness—on behalf of such a one I will boast, but on behalf of myself I will not boast except in weakness. His goal is to send all attention to God, to Jesus Christ, to the power of the divine Spirit. To boast of his own encounters with God would send the attention directly to himself and away from God;[6] people would focus on him, revere him, worship him, would elevate him above themselves and make him into something he isn’t.[7] This misallocation of reverence due God perpetuates the misuse of power, exacerbates the violence of hierarchies in the kingdom of humanity, and would detract from Paul’s message: depend fully on God and God’s word and love your neighbor to God’s glory. Paul wants the Corinthians to judge him not according to one off encounters with God but by his day in and day out living by and in accordance with the gospel and in this way glory remains with God and not with Paul.
With this we get to the main message of this pericope: for Christians our weakness is the intersection of the waning of human power and the waxing of divine power. Paul tells us, On which account so that I might not be raised up, a thorn for the flesh was given to me—a messenger of Satan—so that he might strike me with a fist so that I might not be lifted up. Paul confesses that he struggles with a recurring “thing” that is a thorn in his side,[8] it is this that keeps him humble especially since his petitions to the Lord to have it removed are met with, My grace is suffices for you; for power reaches perfection in weakness. If Paul could, he’d remove this “thing,” but he is fully dependent on God to work through this recurring and persistent weakness; he is reminded of his creaturely posture before God.
Many scholars speculate about what Paul’s thorn was—something physical,[9] a person, something mental—and while I will defer to their expertise on what the particular thing is, I’d like to draw a correlation to something a bit less literal, to a correlation between Paul and his thorn and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Based on what Paul has shared about being taken up into the presence of God and overhearing unutterable utterances, I believe Paul takes a share in the divine anguish for the world. His recurring thorn is those real moments where that anguish seizes him, where his heart breaks, where he pleads with God to take this cup from him, and God’s response is to usher him forward through his weakness to allow for God’s divine power to be made known through that weakness. While not one-to-one, this is not unlike Jesus’s presence before God in the garden pleading for this cup to pass, sweating blood, feeling the weight of the task before him, burdened by his share of existential anguish over the world and God’s beloved. Jesus was brought into this moment of weakness because of his love for humanity and the world and it would be that same love that would be the source of divine power summoning him out of the earth on Easter morning. And if for Jesus, then for Paul, too. Paul was raptured with God’s love not only for him but for the beloved of God, thus this love brought him to ultimate weakness, and it was at this point, too, where he threw himself upon God and that same love reached perfection through Paul.[10] It isn’t that Paul found strength in God’s love to muscle through. It’s that he died under the weight of that divine love for the world only to be made alive by that love; in this way, Christ’s grace is sufficient because God’s love is sufficient especially when it means bringing to life out of death.
Conclusion
As those who believe in Christ we share in Christ’s anguish over the world. The love that forsakes its own comfort, forgoes its own life to bring comfort and life to the object of love, the beloved. As those so caught up in this type of divine love, we will experience the thorn of existential anguish as we are forced to witness the world reject love, life, and liberation. Our hearts will break. Our hope will wane. Our strength will falter. But in these moments we must find recourse to drive ourselves further into God through prayer, to cling tighter to the Gospel of God (Jesus Christ the incarnate word), and to collapse into the presence of the divine Spirit. It is here at the end of love where love summons us back to life and brings us forward into the world to continue participating in God’s loving, life-giving, liberating mission in the world.
This existential anguish that is a part of our love of God and the world is an essential part of our being Christian. There is no loop whole making an easier way or some winding path around having these heavy feelings and experiences. We must walk through it, one step at a time. As weak clay vessels, we must walk, eyes wide open, ears tuned to God and to the cry of our neighbor, ready to use our hands and feet to summon forward God’s love, life, and liberation for the beloved to the glory of God. And when we can’t may we throw ourselves (once again) on the mercy and grace of God because God’s grace in Christ is sufficient for us because God’s love reaches perfection through the love that has rendered us weak.
[1] [1] Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 840. “It is probable that this was Paul’s cosmology, so that when he says ἕως τρίτον οὐρανοῦ, ‘right up to the third heaven,’ he mans ‘into the presence of God.”
[2] Harris, Second Corinthians, 835. The experience is about Paul, “…he was embarrassed at needing to engage in fruitless boasting (v.1) and found in this objectifying of his experience a convenient way of distancing himself from this necessary but futile boasting that in itself did not contribute to the common good …Again, this literary technique enabled him to avoid suggesting that he was in any sense. A special kind of Christian.”
[3] Harris, Second Corinthians, 837. “Paul’s ascent was not the result of a self-induced trance or any other form of psychological preparation.”
[4] Harris, Second Corinthians, 835. “From first to last the initiative lay with God.”
[5] Harris, Second Corinthians, 837. “…Paul’s purpose may have been to draw attention to his prolonged silence about the episode; it was only the present contest with his rivals, brought on by the Corinthians’’ disloyalty to him, that had forced him (cf. 12.1, 11) to break that silence and reluctantly mention his privileged ascent to heaven.”
[6] Harris, Second Corinthians, 847. “…he was not prepared to boast about himself, about the ‘extraordinary revelations’ given him (11:7), because that would detract from the Lord’s preeminence and would suggest his own distinctiveness and eminence as a Christian or as an apostle.”
[7] Harris, Second Corinthians, 848. “He had good reason to boast if that was his wish. But he repudiates that option of self-promotion so that the Corinthians should form an accurate estimation of him and his ministry—not an opinion based on his boasting but an assessment that relied on their own observation of his conduct and their own evaluation of his teaching…”
[8] Harris, Second Corinthians, 851. “The ‘thorn,’ … was a recurrent trial that could incapacitate and humiliate him at any time. Being both past and present, ‘weakness’ was integral to Paul’s experience.”
[9] Harris, Second Corinthians, 859. “The present writer believes that some kind of physical ailment…”
[10] Harris, Second Corinthians, 863. “But we should probably find a still broader reference in ἀσθένια, a reference to attitudinal weakness, the acknowledgment of one’s creatureliness and of one’s impotence to render effective service to God without his empowering.”
Psalm 20:1-2, 7 May Abba God answer you in the day of trouble, the Name of the God of Jacob defend you; send you help from God’s holy place and strengthen you out of Zion; Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will call upon the Name of our Abba God.
Introduction
“What now?” is the controlling question for this season of Pentecost. Paul is our faithful guide to answer this question. We’ve seen Paul exhort the Corinthians toward full dependence on God: dependence on the presence of God in the incarnate word of God and the indwelling of the Spirit of God. In whom does the Spirit of God indwell? The believers, the simple, inexpensive, breakable vessels. God trusts these “jars of clay” with God’s most precious treasure: God’s Word, the Proclamation of Christ, the bringing of God’s love, life, and liberation (in word and deed) to the beloved.
Last week we added another question to consider: “Will they?” Will those human beings deprived of God’s love, life, and liberation know we are Christians by our love? Paul moved his Corinthians—and us—toward the reality that these breakable vessels carrying God’s treasure are the epicenter of the comingling of the spiritual and temporal realms, through whom and with whom God works out God’s mission and divine revolution. This means that we must fix our gaze on that which cannot be perceived because it will never disappoint because it will never pass away. To fix our gaze on that which can be perceived will always disappoint because it will always pass away. And, For Paul, faith leads to acting/speaking into the kingdom of humanity the things that participate in the reign of God and in God’s mission and revolution of love, life, and liberation for the unloved, nearly dying, and the captive. “We, we believe, therefore we, we speak”; and we, we see, so we act. It is the Holy Spirit inspired believer who is the one who has eyes so fixed on that which cannot be perceived that they can also see that what can be perceived—within the temporal realm—fails the neighbor and hinders God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation from reaching them; and in seeing, they act/speak to open up the divine floodgates letting love, life, and liberation flow like water to the parched.
But that’s not all…there’s more to navigate in the collision of the temporal and spiritual realms.
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17
For the love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one died on behalf of all people therefore, all people died. And he died on behalf of all people so that the one who lives might no longer live for themselves but for the one who died on behalf of all people and the one who was raised. So then, from now on we, we have perceived and continue to perceive no one according to the flesh. … So then, if anyone [is] in Christ, [they are a] new creation! The old things passed away; behold! [everything] has become new! (2 Cor. 5:14-16a, 17)
Paul begins by tightening the tension of the spiritual and temporal realities for the believer: being confident at all times because we perceive while we are at home in the body we are away from home with the Lord—we walk by faith and not by visible form—we are confident and would rather be away from home in the body and be at home with the Lord (vv. 6-8). None of this is pitting the body (the σῶμα) against the spirit (the πνεῦμα).[1] And, none of this denies that Christ is in the believer and the believer is in Christ by the presence of the Spirit.[2] What is happening is this: there’s an emphasis on walking by faith and not by visible forms. As we are here in the body, we are not able to walk bodily with Christ so we must (for now) walk in Christ by walking in both the spiritual and temporal realm.[3] In other words, as a whole person (spirit and body) we have one foot in the spiritual realm and one foot in the temporal realm while knowing all that we see is not all that there is; this means being caught up in and confronted by both the divine pathos and human antipathy perceiving what should be and what is not.[4],[5]
So, v. 9’s exhortation makes sense:[6]Therefore we eagerly strive –whether being at home or being away from home—to be well pleasing to Christ! In other words, this tension and paradox of earthly, Christian existence doesn’t mean Paul should check-out, rather it means he should really check-in because while Paul is not bodily with Christ he is with Christ by faith and Christ is with him; where Paul goes, there Christ goes, too.[7] Thus, Paul will expend himself, lose everything on behalf of the divine word of Christ and the divine deeds of love for the captives.[8] Paul will strive to do well in the mortal body so to appear before the tribunal of Christ and may receive back what has been lost because of what was accomplished—whether good or bad—in/by the body. This is not about heaven or hell, but about assessing works and their recompense; it’s about reward not status.[9] I’m placing emphasis in this thought on the verb translated as “may receive back what has been lost.” This verb highlights that what was lost bodily while participating in God’s mission and identifying with the beloved of God (the captive, the one fighting for their life and love in the world) will be paid back. I could say it another way: it is the one who picks up their cross to follow Christ who will find their life. What goes out and into the world on behalf of the neighbor, comes back when standing face to face with Christ.
Then, Paul focuses on Christ: one’s love for Christ and Christ’s love for all people[10] which motivates Christian activity in the world.[11]For the love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one died on behalf of all people’ therefore, all people died. It is the love of Christ shown through the cross that solicits the believer’s identification with Christ. Thus, as Christ’s death exposes the believer for who they are (sinner) the exposed one dies as Christ died.[12] Yet, it’s not only about identifying with Christ’s death, but also identifying with whom Christ identified: the oppressed, the hungry, the suffering, the sorrowful, the state disgraced and disenfranchised,[13]And he died on behalf of all people so that the one who live might no longer live for themselves but for the one who died on behalf of all people and the one who was raised. To follow Christ means to live and die as Christ did for the beloved of God—spiritually and temporally if necessary.
But not just identifying with Christ’s death but with Christ’s resurrected life and being recreated by faith. Thus, Paul can say, So then, from now on we, we have perceived and continue to perceive no one according to the flesh. … if anyone [is] in Christ, [they are a] new creation! The old things passed away; behold! [everything] has become new! The liberation of the believer by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is liberation into and for the well-being of the world, the neighbor, especially for those who are fighting to live, to love, to be liberated and all of it to the glory of God.[14] This recreation demands a change of address; the believer may live in the kingdom of humanity but her address is of the reign of God.[15] Thus, she has no excuse here according to Paul: not only does she walk by faith, she operates in the world by faith, refusing to judge anyone according to the flesh.[16],[17] She is a totally new creation, seeing the world differently, operating in the world differently, speaking into the world differently finding the source of her motivation in the word of God to the Glory of God.[18]
Conclusion
Christ came into the world not for Christ’s self, but for the world, for the beloved, for the neighbor, for you. And as those who have been adopted into God by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit—living in, with, and among you—you are now grafted into and solicited to participate in God’s mission and revolution in the world to make this world better, to arrest if from the hands of those who are dead set on destroying it for their own gain, power, and ego. To walk by faith is to see by faith and if to see by faith, to speak by faith, act by faith, and to do it all as breakable vessels fully dependent on God carrying the valuable treasure of God’s love, life, and liberation within ourselves. To walk by faith is to walk with one foot always in the temporal realm and one foot in the spiritual realm, to be aware that you are, by faith, the epicenter of human and divine activity in the world to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor.
(This does not mean creating a calcified and static Christian nation-state, because the spiritual realm and the temporal realm can never be one and the same realm this side of Christ’s coming again; they always exist distinctly and alongside each other. The spiritual realm and its believers—whoever they are—are always there to highlight how the kingdoms of humanity fail not only other human beings but also God’s mission and revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world. Every day believers are new creations, letting that which is no longer helpful to human and cosmic thriving to slip away and, like midwives, ushering in that which is helpful to human and cosmic thriving. Thus, the believer must always liberated from the temporal realm by the spiritual realm by faith and by being a new creature everyday we can see that where there is not love we must bring love, where there is not life we must bring life, where there is not liberation we must bring liberation.)
[1] Harris, Second Corinthians, 395. “Paul has in mind the physical body as the locus of human existence on earth, the frail and mortal σῶμα ψυχικόν. His thought here is neither dualistic…nor derogatory…He is affirming that to be living on earth in a physical body inevitably means distance—indeed exile—from the risen Lord, who lives in heaven in a spiritual body.”
[2] Harris, Second Corinthians, 397-398. “The separation, Paul answers, is relative not absolute: though absent from sight, the Lord is present to faith, yet it is not until he is present also to sight that Christian existence will reach its true goal of consummated fellowship with him.”
[3] Harris, Second Corinthians, 396. “To be ἐν Χριστῷ does not yet mean to be σὺν Χριστῷ (Phil. 1:23). Unlike Christ, Paul had his residence on earth, not heaven, but he recognized that his true home, his ultimate residence, was πρὸς τὸν κύριον (v.8); in this sense he was an exile, absent from his home with the Lord…And if an exile, also a pilgrim (cf. περιπατοῦμεν, v.7). But as well as regarding his separation from Christ as ‘spatial,’ Paul may he viewed it as ‘somatic.’ It is not simply a case of Christ’s being ‘there’ and Christians’ being ‘here’; until Christians have doffed their earthly bodies and donned their heavenly, they are separated from their Lord by the difference between two modes of being, the σῶμα ψυχικόν and the σῶμα πνευματικόν.”
[4] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “…to lead a life of faith is to see only baffling, mirrored reflections of reality and to have incomplete knowledge…”
[5] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “…living in the realm of faith is indistinguishable from hoping for what is still unseen…”
[6] Harris, Second Corinthians, 404. “Paul’s constant ambition to know Christ’s approval (v. 9) was the direct consequence or obvious corollary of his awareness that death would terminate his absence form Christ and inaugurate a περιπατεῖν διὰ εἶδους πρὸς τὸν κῦριον (vv. 6-8). To entertain the hope of person-to-person communion with Christ after death (v. 8b) inevitably and naturally prompted the aspiration of gaining acceptance in his eyes before and after death.”
[7] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “‘Where the Spirit is, there is expectation.’ As long as Paul was required to ‘walk in the realm of faith,’ he was distant from the Lord and yet possessed of the pledge of the Spirit that a ‘walking in the realm of sight’ was to follow.”
[8] Harris, Second Corinthians, 405. “Vv. 8-10 well illustrate the interrelatedness of eschatology and ethics. Paul’s constant ambition to gain Christ’s approval (v. 9) was prompted by two facts relating to the future of his destiny of dwelling with the Lord (v. 8) and his coming accountability to Christ (v. 10).”
[9] Harris, Second Corinthians, 409. “Since, then, the tribunal of Christ is concerned with assessment of works, not the determination of destiny, it will be apparent that the Pauline concepts of justification on the basis of faith and recompense in accordance with works may be complementary. Not status but reward is determined ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ βήατος τοῦ Χριστοῦ, for justification as the acquisition of a right standing before God anticipates the verdict of the Last Judgment.”
[10] Harris, Second Corinthians, 421. “When Christ died, he was acting both on behalf of and in the place of all human beings.”
[11] Harris, Second Corinthians, 419. “No one doubts that believers’ love for Christ motivates their actions, but here Paul is concentrating on an earlier stage of motivation, namely the love shown by Christ in dying for humankind.”
[12] Harris, Second Corinthians, 421. “When Christ died, all died; what is more, his death involved their death.”
[13] Harris, Second Corinthians, 422. “The intended result of the death of Christ was the Christian’s renunciation of self-seeking and self-pleasing and the pursuit of a Christ-centered life filled with action for the benefit of others, as was Christ’s life…”
[14] Harris, Second Corinthians, 426. “…reflects a distinctive Christian outlook.”
[15] Harris, Second Corinthians, 423. “…‘for Paul, freedom means transfer from one dominion to another: from law to grace (Ro . 6:14) from sin to righteousness (Rom. 6:18), from death to life (Rom. 6:21-23), from flesh to Spirit (Rom. 8:4ff); or, as he puts it here, from self to Christ…’”
[16] Harris, Second Corinthians, 427. “Paul is affirming that with the advent of the era of salvation in Christ, and eve since his own conversion to Christ, he has ceased making superficial, mechanical judgments about other people on the basis of outward appearances—such as national origin, social status, intellectual capability, physical attribute, or even charismatic endowment and pneumatic displace…”
[17] Harris, Second Corinthians, 429. “…Paul is rejecting (in v. 16a) any assessment of human beings that is based on the human or worldly preoccupation with externals.”
[18] Harris, Second Corinthians, 434. “When a person becomes a Christian, he or she experiences a total restructuring of life that alters its whole fabric—thinking, feeling, willing, and acting. Anyone who is ‘in Christ’ is ‘Under new Management’ and has ‘Altered Priorities Ahead,’ to use the wording sometimes found in shop windows and …on roads.”
Psalm 104:34-37a 34 I will sing to Abba God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God; I will rejoice in Abba God. Bless God, O my soul!
Introduction
Last week, Jesus prayed for his disciples to have the fortitude to remain in the Word of God. Being not of the world but remaining in the world means that this fledgling community belonging to Christ needed to remember that their creation as this fledgling community was solely based and sustained on God’s Word proclaimed in and through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this one who is God. As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he knew that the hatred of the world toward this new community of God would try to eclipse the joy and confidence of these faithful. So, he prayed. He prayed that they would remain one as Jesus and God are one, because they are stronger together as a group, and the world loves to divide and conquer. He prayed for the sustaining of their identity, that they remember whose they are, because the world will do whatever it can to make the forget. He prayed for them to be protected in their new creation (new eyes, new ears, new words), because the world will try to steal from their new creation, forcing them to relinquish new eyes and ears, holding their proclamation hostage, demanding they forsake their divinely gifted life, love, and liberation.
Jesus knew they needed help. This little community—barely a smoldering wick—was about to be launched into the world to fend for themselves. They would be assaulted on every side because of who they were and what they said: they, like their Christ, were to become the locus of God’s revolutionary activity in the world; their message would echo Jesus’s, calling into question the kingdom of humanity, exposing the upside-down world, and proclaiming the words of the divine revolution in the world for the oppressed. Jesus knew they were sitting ducks and without God, they would not make it far because this community was not a community created by human strength so it could not be sustained by human strength. So, this community needed something bigger and stronger, something that is of the same substance as the word that not only called this community into being but also the entire cosmos.
Jesus prayed on behalf of the community, asking for God to show up. And God did.
Enter the Paraclete!
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
“But I, I say to you the truth, it is profitable to you that I, I go away. For if I do not go away, the paraclete cannot come to you. But, if I go, I will send them to you. And coming, that one will convict the cosmos concerning sin and concerning justice and concerning judgment…I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them just now. But, whenever this one comes, the Spirit of Truth, they will guide you in every kind of truth, for they will not speak from themself, but as much as you listen they will bring back word to you. (Jn 16:7-8, 12-13)
The lectionary loops us back into John 15 after bringing us to John 17 last week. Thus, according to the logic of the lectionary, Jesus’s promise of the Spirit is the fulfillment of the prayer to God to protect, guide, and strengthen the disciples who will be left in the world. But the advent of the Spirit, the Paraclete, is more than just a helper for those who will be left by Jesus; they are the very foundation of the church, as we say in our creed every Sunday: the Spirit is the “life-giving breath of the church.” For it is through, with, and by the Spirit that the work and word of Christ started in the body of Jesus will transition to the work and word of the fledgling community, who is now transfigured into the body of Christ in the world in Christ’s absence.[1] It is by the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, that God’s will and mission in the world will continue to be made known to the beloved in and through the new community of God.
Jesus—the Reconciler—must leave the disciples and return to God the Creator so that the Spirit of God—the Redeemer—can be sent into the world, specifically into the hearts of the disciples, to continue the work of God in the world. The work of the Spirit is to continue to reveal God in the world by means of the light of truth that is the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ.[2] In this way, God’s self-revelation and mission in the world is not cut short by Jesus’s bodily absence; through the Spirit rather than the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ, does the Word and mission of God begin to transcend not only geographical boundaries (Acts 10 fulfilling Acts 1:8) but will also transcend chronological boundaries. By the sending of the Spirit, the Word of God will continue in the world, the light of truth will continue to illuminate hearts and minds from one era to another, in one context to a completely different one, through decades, centuries, and millennia.[3] It is through the witness of the Spirit in the lives of the disciples that witnesses back to Christ and thus forward to God[4] that is the continual fuel for the fire of divine revolution setting human hearts ablaze like match sticks—one by one.[5]
It is for this reason that Jesus both addresses the disciples’ impending grief (being left alone in the world in distress)[6] and exhorts them toward joy: even though they will grieve Jesus’s absence, feel fear and anxiety, they will be comforted by God’s Spirit, the Paraclete, who will usher them further into God’s truth and into God’s reality thus farther and deeper into God.[7] This is why Jesus turns the conversation toward what the Paraclete will do when they show up, because it is through the disciples (and through the church that will be born through their bodies and the Word of God) that the Paraclete will expose the world’s misconceptions of sin, justice, and judgment.[8] In this way and to quote Rudolf Bultmann, “The world is accused, and the Paraclete is the prosecutor.”[9] With the Paraclete set loose in the world through the disciples, human sin is exposed by divine righteousness,[10] human justice is brought to trial by divine justice, [11] and human judgment is found guilty by divine judgment.[12] Thus, God’s truth continues to be the light of the world from one era to another, within one context and then in another, living in one heart and at the same time in a completely different heart. The one word of God is always new in every moment as a word of revelation; it is not static doctrine, archaic dogma, suffocating fundamentalism, and deadly legalism. Rather, it is always a new living-word summoning the dead in their tombs into life in the world.[13]
Thus, Jesus can assure the disciples that even though he has much more to teach them, he will leave that to the Paraclete who will guide them (teach/lead) into every kind of truth further revealing Christ into the world, further instigating God’s divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world in pursuit of the God’s beloved. The Paraclete will not lead the disciples (those then and those now) to a static conception of God or into a conception of God so different there must be a break with this history set out through Christ, but into God’s self-disclosure made known in the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus.[14] In other words, divine truth will be revealed in every moment as the present moment—whatever/wherever—is revealed by the divine word and ushered into divine comfort by the Paraclete, who is the Spirit of Truth.[15] Starting first with the community—whatever/wherever—and billowing outward into the world.
Conclusion
Those first disciples lost their main, they lost Jesus whom they loved dearly—they staked their lives on this love of Christ, and then he left them. The distress they felt was real; it’s a distress that we feel today, feeling left/abandoned by God without Jesus to be here with us bodily. But the Paraclete remains in the world and always with the disciples of Christ, those who are thrust by faith into God and are dependent on God’s word. Our God is Triune, three persons one God; personal and close, at all times, in all eras. God is not dead, dear ones; God is alive, God is here, God is with us, and God is within us. Martin Luther writes about this portion of the Gospel of John, “Therefore God has been gracious to us and has given us a Comforter to counteract this spirit of terror—a Comforter, who, as God Himself, is much stronger with His comfort than the devil is with his terror.”[16] The one who lives in us and through us is the one who can bend space and time to become one spot and moment so that all time and all space is in this God of presence, revelation, and comfort.
Yet comfort only comes when God’s truth exposes and reveals us, the way we miss the mark, our decrepit ideas, broken systems, and violent ideologies. By the presence of the spirit—it’s conviction—we cannot pretend not to see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. We do not have the luxury of undoing God’s summoning of us out from our tombs back at Easter. By the Spirit, the Paraclete, this humble community, bends its knees, confesses, and finds absolution by faith in Christ and union with God. Through the conviction and exposure of the Paraclete, divine comfort becomes true comfort—not the comfort of the world that is fleeting, comfort that lasts through thick and thin because it’s built out of the stuff of the infinite and not finite, of the eternal and not terminal, out of the substance of God and not the substance of humanity.
God’s Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, the Prosecutor comes to bring God close to us through the light of truth to live with us and among us and in us, to work in and through us the divine revolution of God’s love, life, and liberation in the world. Today we rejoice because Christ’s joy is made complete in us through the sending of the Paraclete who binds us to God through Christ. We can let go of the rope and fall into God because God will show up because God never left us.
[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 552. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “After Jesus’ departure, the situation on earth will remain unchanged in as much as the offence which Jesus’ work offered the world will not disappear. The witness, which till now he had borne to himself, will be taken over by the Paraclete, the Helper, whom he will send from the Father.”
[2] Bultmann, John, 553. “The ἀλθείας is for him the self-revelatory divine reality, and the function of the Spirit consists in bestowing revelation by continuing Jesus’ revelatory work, as is stated by the words μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ…”
[3] Bultmann, John, 553. “Jesus will send this Spirit from the Father, and from the Father he will come forth. This two-fold designation makes the reference to the idea of revelation certain’ even after Jesus’ departure, God’s revelation will be mediated through him: he it is, who sends the Spirit…who bears witness to him; but he does so in his unity with the Gather, who has made him Revealer; he sends the Spirit from the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father, just as it is said in 14.16 that the Father sends the Spirit at the son’s request, or in 14.26 that he sends him ‘in the name’ of the Son. All these expressions say the same thing.”
[4] Bultmann, John, 554. “Thus their being with him ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς has not come to an end with his farewell, but continues further; and this is the only basis on which their witness is possible. Their witness is not , therefore, a historical account of that which was, but—however much it is based on that which was—it is ‘repetition,’ ‘a calling to mind,’ in the light of their present relationship with. Him. In that case it is perfectly clear that their witness and that of the Spirit are identical.”
[5] Bultmann, John, 553-554. “The word μαρτυρήσει indicates that the Spirit is the power of the proclamation in the community, and this is made fully clear by the juxtaposition of the disciples’ witness and that of the Spirit: καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε (v. 27). For the witness borne by the disciples is not something secondary, running alongside the witness of the spirit.” And “Their preaching is to be a ‘repetition’ of his preaching, or a ‘calling to mind,’…” (554)
[6] Bultmann, John, 558. “They are not asking where he is going to—the answer would be: to the father, and that would solve their difficulty—but they are in λύπη because they are about to be left in their distress.”
[8] Bultmann, John, 560-561. “Only in the word was Jesus the Revealer, and only in the word will he continue to be it; for the Paraclete, who is take his place, is the word. The word is very far from being a closed doctrine, or complex of statements, not on the other hand is it the historical account of Jesus’s life. It is the living word; that is, paradoxically, the word which is spoken by the community itself, for the Paraclete is the Spirt that is at work in the community.”
[10] Bultmann, John, 563. “The world understands sin as revolt against its own standards an ideals, the things which give it security. But to shut oneself off from the revelation that calls all worldly security in question and opens up another security—that is real sin, in contrast to which all that used to be sinful was only temporary and passing.”
[11] Bultmann, John, 565. ‘For the world , this victory is just as much a κρυπτόν (7.4) as is the real nature of ἁμαρτία; as the world sees things, to suffer the wreckage of death means condemnation by God; the world can only see victory in what is visible. But the significance of the victory lies precisely in the overcoming of the visible by the invisible; this is why the world does not know that it is condemned, or that it is conquered. But this is what the Paraclete will show.”
[12] Bultmann, John, 565. “In each case the world thinks it possesses the criteria for this judgment in its concepts of ἁμαρτία and δικαιοσύνη. But as it deceived itself over the meaning of A and D, so too it fails to see that the χρίσις is already ensuing, that the prince of this world is already judged; i.e. it fails to see that it is itself already judged—condemned for holding on to itself, to it s own standards and ideals, to what can be seen.”
[13] Bultmann, John, 561. “For the word is at the same time spoken into a situation; i.e. it is spoken as the word of revelation against it. If therefore the community has any understanding of the word of revelation that brings it into being, it can and must know that it has always to interpret the word afresh and to speak it into its own present as the word that is always the same—that word that is the same because it is always new.”
[14] Bultmann, John, 575. “This means that the Spirits’ word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh. The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”
[15] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word. Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word.”
[16] Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14-16,” Luther’s Works, vol. 24, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1961), 291.
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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