Why Do You Stand Looking Up?

Psalm 68:3, 5-6a: But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; let them also be merry and joyful. Parent of orphans, defender of the widowed, God is in God’s holy habitation! God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom…

Introduction

I had hamsters as a little girl; two: Peanut Butter and Jelly. Having hamsters as a kid taught me two very valuable lessons. The first was practical: hamsters and cats don’t mix; no matter how high up you store that hamster habitat, the cat—like a stealthy ninja thief—will break into it. The second was existential: humans and hamsters hold the tendency of running and running in circles in common. To be honest, as tragic as the first lesson was to learn as a young girl, the second lesson was even more tragic. While it’s not great to come home from school to catpocalypse having descended upon our humble home, it’s worse to find out for yourself you can be moving and moving and not going anywhere.

Sometimes we spend a lot of energy running in place, going back (again) to the same thing—behavior, thought, framework, tendency—to find help and yet those things leave us wanting again and again. We can feel a lack and purchase something only to be left (again) with feeling the lack. We can return to old habits to find that the same consequences still manifest. We can keep thinking we can beat the system by playing the system, only to find out that once again the system is way better at this game than we are. If you’ve ever thought, uttered, mumbled the words, “This is just how the world is…”, listen closely for the squeak, squeak, squeak of that hamster wheel. All in all, the comfort of our hamster wheel and the feeling of moving perpetuate the false notion that we are getting somewhere. We are running and running and all we are doing is standing still.

So, what if we stopped running? Maybe we need someone to throw a stick in the gear to force us out of our little round, squeaky comfort zones. But it’s always good to remember that we aren’t—in fact—hamsters; we can get off our wheels. We can leave our tube-errific habitats and fight back catpocalypse with our own armadoggon, walking as liberated beings with in the world bringing life and love to other captives so stuck in place.

Acts 1:6-14

“…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses: in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and until the end of the earth.” And after saying these things while they were watching [Jesus] was lifted up and a cloud received him from their eyes. And as they were gazing into the heaven while he was going, behold! two men stood by them in bright robes, and they said, “Men of Galilee, why have you stood looking into the heaven?…”
Acts 1:8-11a (Translation Mine)

Luke tells us that those who were gathered around Jesus came and asked him if he was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus, according to Luke, uses this question to navigate towards a discussion of something else than kingdom restoration: the reign of God extending beyond humanmade boundaries defining this or that kingdom; this is the advent of the new order, not a return to the old one.[1] The disciples are still stuck in thinking in terms of people groups and kingdoms; but God, in Christ, is thinking about the cosmos, the people of God, the entire world. In fact, this is the point of the book of Acts. We think it’s about the disciples and what they did, but it’s more of a testament to the power and action of the divine Spirit and what the Spirit will do by moving the disciples to spread the message of Christ—the message of divine love, life, and liberation—to the ends of the earth.

God isn’t interested in Israel standing still because God doesn’t stand still.[2] See, as a people who partake in the divine image, as God self-discloses so too do believers participate in that self-disclosure. God moves and is on the move: creation speaks to this, the history of Israel speaks to this, the incarnation speaks to this, the resurrection speaks to this, the ascension will speak to this, and so to the coming fulfillment of the promised descent of the Holy Spirit. So, as God moves so, too, do those who have new life in God by faith. While humans like to think God stands still causing us to have to go “back” to find God, the reality is something else: God is always a couple steps ahead of us, and in being ahead of us is able to be with us guiding us toward something new of God.[3] Thus, believers do not stand still, rather they are to be witnesses, moving, proclaiming witnesses of God’s power over death.

This is the point of Jesus’s promise that the Holy (Divine) Spirit will descend and come upon the disciples; herein the likeness to God takes on more distinctive features. Like Jesus’s life was a message of divine love, life, and liberation to people held captive and pressed and pushed to the margins, so, too, will the disciples become these very story books or divine love letters to more and more people.[4] They—by their bodies in word and deed—will announce not the establishment of human empires but the divine revolution of God’s love in the world seeking and searching for the beloved.[5] Here the ends of the earth are brought together at one point: as the disciples move by the power of the divine spirit, God’s love eclipses the notion of the villainy of otherness and the tyranny of us v. them. For where there is life-giving and love-sharing there is liberation from the captivity of death and hate (here, otherness is refused and the battle between us and them rent asunder). This isn’t about going out and making converts to a singular way of thinking—believer or die! Rather, it’s about spreading divine gifts of love, life, and liberation to all people, incorporating all people into the family of God’s life and love.

Then we get to my favorite moment in this story. As Jesus ascends—not to abandon the disciples but to be with them in a more personal and intimate way[6]—two men appear dressed in bright-like-light clothing. These two men find the disciples staring up into the sky, still, stuck, and motionless. Then they ask the most perfect question, My Dudes, why in the world are you just standing there staring up into the sky? Granted, and to be fair, the disciples have a lot going on at that moment, but the point is made: it’s time to move, move forward. It isn’t about looking up or looking back, but looking ahead; it’s about interrupting what’s grown old even if comfortable and embarking on something new. As Willie James Jennings says,

“We must never discount the next step that must be taken at the sight of Jesus’ leaving. Such a step is understandably a labored step, unsure and unclear. Nevertheless it must be taken because faith always leans forward to Jerusalem, toward the place where God waits to meet us. We are always drawn on by God to our future.”[7]

Conclusion

“People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into the heaven?” Or, People of God, why do you keep running on that hamster wheel? Our life of faith is dynamic and active. It’s not about sitting and reverencing and standing far off. It’s about standing up, and acting, and coming up close and personal—to God and to others. Our life of faith is not about just accepting things as they are, shrugging, and just rolling over; it’s about saying something new, doing something different, taking a risk, and living liberated and responsible in the world to the benefit of God’s beloved who is your neighbor.

Jesus’s ascent into heaven does not limit the spreading of the proclamation of God’s love for the entire cosmos, but, in fact, ensures that it can (and will) spread. As Christ was and is embodied, Christ can only do so much with a body—as we know. But with the promised divine Spirit that will come to the disciples to anchor and yoke them to God, this message of Christ—the incarnated proclamation of God’s love for all people—can now very much and very literally travel to the furthest reaches of the earth. It is a message that is now unrestricted by culture and context, unbound by dogma and doctrine, and unleashed from time and tense.

As the beloved of God you, by faith, are liberated by love and given new life. This is part of our Easter story. But it doesn’t end with Easter; it doesn’t end with Ascension…it is just beginning. So, again, let me ask, People of God, why do you stand looking up into the heaven? As those who have been encountered by God in the event of faith in the proclamation of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit: Go. Go forth into the world carrying and sharing the grace and mercy of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing God’s love to all…

[1] Willie James Jennings Acts Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2017. 16. “He will seal this new order, this revolution over death and the power of violence through the Holy Spirit. The Sprit is the promise of the Father to the Son and those joined to him. Indeed Acts narrates the journey of the Spirit even more deeply into the way of Jesus and the journey of Jesus more deeply into the way of the Spirit. The Spirit, companion with Jesus and his disciples, will soon spread the body of Jesus over space and time opening his life as a new home for the faith of Israel.”

[2] Jennings, Acts, 16. “Geography matters. Place matters to God. From a specific place the disciples will move forward into the world. To go from place to place is to go from people to people and to go from an old identity to a new one. Jesus prepares them for the journey of their lives by holding them in a place where the Spirit will be given to them in that place, and from that place they will be changed.”

[3] Jennings, Acts, 19. “Jesus ascends not only to establish presence through absence, but he also draws his body into the real journeys of his disciples into the world. He goes to heaven for us, ahead of us. He goes with and ahead of his disciples into the real places of this world. He is Lord of time (past, present, and future) yet walking in our time, and he is Lord of space (here and there) yet taking our spaces and places with utmost seriousness.”

[4] Jennings, Acts, 18. “They will be an irrefutable presence. They will also be witnesses of divine presence. They will give room to the witness, making their lives a stage on which the resurrected Jesus will appear and claim each creature as his own, as a site of love and desire.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 18. “The disciples will be formed by the Spirit as witnesses. They will be turned out to the world not as representatives of empires but those who will announce a revolution, the revolution of the intimate, God calling to the world. They will enter new places to become new people by joining themselves to those in Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. As Jesus announces this divine desire, he ascends.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 19. “Jesus’ ascension is in fact God claiming our space as the sites for visitation, announcing God’s desire to come to us. Gods desire will be seen in the pouring out of the Spirit in a specific place in order to enter specific places and specific lives. He ascends for our sake, not to turn away from us but to more intensely focus in on us.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 19-20.

Posted on May 21, 2023May 18, 2023 by laurenlarkin 1

Jesus is Better than Santa

Psalm 66:14-15, 17-18 Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what God has done for me. I called out to God with my mouth, and God’s praise was on my tongue. But in truth God has heard me; God has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld God’s love from me.

Introduction

I think there are times when people get Santa and God confused. When we lived in Pittsburgh, my neighbor said something to my boys about Santa one December. They either didn’t hear her or didn’t know what she was talking about; either way they looked at her with rather vapid expressions. Being one who dislikes very awkward silences, I chimed in, “Oh, we don’t do the Santa thing.” As soon as I spoke that line rather casually, I regretted it. She confronted me. I did my best to cogently explain that it made sense to me to minimize my kids’ exposure to the cornucopia of mythology shared and celebrated around that time of year—I mean, virgin births aren’t necessarily not myth; she was still rather unimpressed with my decision. She closed the conversation with one final statement, one I’ve never forgotten, “Lauren, don’t you know that Santa lives in all our hearts?” I was now the one without words and the vapid expression. Literally, speechless. I thanked her for the reminder once I got my wits about me and then shuffled the boys into the house like wrangling cats or balloons.

The comment stuck with me because I was rather terrified of the idea of someone like Santa living in my heart. I mean, the man literally keeps a record of my good and bad, right and wrong, and then that north-pole based, magical voyeur checks that darned list twice! For no other reason than to make sure I’ve rightly earned my gifts. But then thinking upon it some more, it dawned on me that there’s a tendency in our culture to ascribe to Santa the grace that is God’s and ascribe to God the judgment that is Santa’s. Truth be told… that tendency is well justified when the church and its leaders have rendered the simplicity of loving God and obeying God’s commandments the spiritual equivalent of competing in American Ninja Warrior. If God has set some sort of sadistic, masochistic, gauntlet of an obstacle course, then yes, please give me Santa; God’s terrifying.

But what if God hasn’t set such a course and it’s rather easy to love God and obey God’s commandments? What if God’s law has very little to do with you achieving your own perfection and, rather, recognizing your deep and desperate need for divine love, life, and liberation? What if it’s as uncomplicated as faith and as simple as being loved?

John 14:15-21

‘If you love me, you will observe my commandments. I, I too will ask the father/the ancestor/the elder to give you another Paraclete, so that [the Paraclete] might be with you into the ages, the spirit of truth. … The one who has my commandments and observes them that one is my beloved. And the one who loves me will be loved by my father/ancestor/elder, and I, I too will love [them] and I will appear to [them] myself.’ [1]
Jn 14:15-16, 21

What does it take to love God? Observe God’s commandments—this is discipleship; what are the commandments? To love God—this is discipleship.[2] No joke. This is exactly what Jesus is saying in this passage according to John. Even if we take a step back and look at the Big Ten from the First Testament, they can be easily broken into two commandments that are alike to each other: Love God (first tablet) and love your neighbor (second tablet). The neat thing about the gospel is the proclamation that Jesus is God’s love incarnate, thus to love Jesus is to love your neighbor because in Christ’s incarnate form he is your neighbor and he identifies with the neighbor.[3] Thus when you love Jesus you love God and your neighbor; and, according to the gospels, you can check your arithmetic: if you love God then you love Jesus and the neighbor; if you love the neighbor then you love God and Jesus. It’s all embedded in this trifold reality that God is in Jesus and Jesus identifies with the neighbor.[4] In that the gospels proclaim Jesus as divine love incarnate and this love incarnate proclaims love, life, and liberation to the captives—like all the great prophets before him caught up in the same “Spirit of Truth”—then to identify with those with whom God in Christ identified, to love those whom God in Christ loves is to love Christ thus God since God is in Christ.[5]

What John is doing in this passage is highlighting that what the world does not understand is that it’s not about me and private pursuit of righteousness and justification; to be self-righteous and to try to self-justify is to go against God because it causes the believer to be wrapped up in themselves at the expense of the neighbor and to sidestep that hunger for God. Pursuing your self-righteousness and self-justification tells God and your neighbor you do not need them; it’s the opposite of how the gospels define what it means to be holy. The encounter with God by faith,[6] on the other hand, liberates the one so encountered and releases them into the world to love like God which is like Jesus and the Spirit of truth. The one so encountered is actually liberated: from the prison of themselves; from the threat that if they don’t get it just right, they will burn; from the violence of self-chastisement over privatized sins; and, from the suffocating sensation that God is against you unless…. Here meritocracy is dashed to the ground; it’s not about you and your personal and privatized so-called-holiness, it’s about loving God and loving others and being loved by God and by others. This is what the world doesn’t get, according to John’s Jesus. The world runs on merit; but God doesn’t.[7] When the church forgot this message and made God and the spiritual realm all about merit, it abandoned the Spirit of Truth for a few pieces of silver.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is this—and this is a tough one so listen close:

Santa is not Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit.

And the second is like unto it:

Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are way better than Santa.

When all is said and done, the very thing that liberates human beings from the threat of the pursuit and demand of self-righteousness and self-justification, that liberates human beings into life and love is never achieved by merit. A prisoner can be absolutely perfect and still denied parole because grace and mercy are absent. You can strive to perform every day and still be denied that raise or promotion because someone else was younger or had the right pedigree. You can do it all correctly according to the world and still end up at the end of days destitute and desolate. Merit cannot ever be the means of liberation because you must wake up and do it all again tomorrow and all the while pray you are always able to do so.

But with God, God’s love liberates because it just loves and allows to live, God’s love creates a place in space and time for the beloved to exist as they are for who they are in whatever form they are. God’s love releases the captives from their captivity because they are liberated from the demand of merit for self-worth and self-approval, they are released from the rat-race of meritocracy, they are free to stop thinking of only themselves (because they can’t afford not to) and can start thinking of someone else. Freedom and liberation are most emphasized in the presence of others and God and not in absentia of both. The freest person I’ve ever heard of was the one who was so free he literally concerned himself with others to the point that he would even endure death to identify with God’s beloved, you.

You are loved; be loved. You are the beloved, rest. And then spread that love everywhere, bringing God’s love to God’s beloved who doubt they are or ever could be God’s beloved.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Rudolf Bultmann The Gospel of John: A Commentary Trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed; RWN Hoare and JK Riches. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1971. German: Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). 614. “V. 15: the answer to the question how a relationship of love can be established with the departed Revealer is this: it consists in the disciple fulfilling his commands.”

[3] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 557. “I: ’Yes, he is love incarnate, he himself is the new commandment; to love his message of love is to love one another.’ ‘You can also say the reverse to love people is to love him.’”

[4] Cardenal, Solentiname, 557. “I: ‘He and the Father are the same thing, the Father, who is love, sent us Jesus, love incarnate, and now he’s going to send us the spirit of love, that is, the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, which is also himself.’”

[5] Cardenal, Solentiname, 558. “I: ‘In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Yahweh, same as saying the spirit of justice and liberation. He’s the one who spoke through the prophets proclaiming the truth.’”

[6] Bultmann, John, 614. “To love him means to be obedient to his demands, and this obedience is faith.”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 559. “I: ‘In the Gospel of Saint John the world’ is the same as the system, unjust society, the status quo. Those who belong to the system, says Christ, cannot receive that spirit.’”

Posted on May 14, 2023May 10, 2023 by laurenlarkin 2

Not Even in Death

Psalm 31:5, 15-16 Into your hands I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth. My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me. Make your face to shine upon your servant, and in your loving-kindness save me.

Introduction

Part of our Easter theme is solidarity. Solidarity with each other because of our solidarity with God. We are joined to God by faith and liberation; knit together with God through new life; and we have solidarity with God in our love for God and God’s love for us. This is the axiomatic narrative thrust of the biblical witness. God does not leave the beloved (full stop). You cannot be so far removed to be outside of the long reach of God’s life-giving arm, loving embrace, and liberating hand. The prophets attest to this; the psalmists attest to this, the witness of our first parents attest to this…you are not so far gone to be beyond God. Not even being cast out of the garden created a distance between humanity and God; God has always been and always will be with, among, alongside God’s beloved: humanity, the cosmos, you and me.

But our Easter theme goes further than another reiteration of a much-needed message of God’s unyielding, never-stopping, never-giving up, always and forever love. The Easter story tells us that God even goes with us unto death. Not even death can separate you from the love of God. The images of hellfire and brimstone, of eternal torment, of punishment for sins is more the credit of John Milton’s and Dante’s imaginations than scriptural witness. God is so for you that God is for you even when you don’t want God to be. God is so for you that when you think that the most final thing about our existence—death—is the last word forever separating you from God, God says: NOPE. As Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things at hand, nor things about to be, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor what other things in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[1] You do not enter death alone but with God, thus with life, love, and liberation. The God of Jesus Christ is not only the God of the living but also those who have gone on before us into death, into God; therefore, we can say that we are blessed by God even in death just as we are in life because God is with us, in deep solidarity with us and our human condition.

Acts 7:55-60

Now being full of the holy spirit [Stephan] was gazing into heaven and he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing from the right hand of God and [Stephan] said, ‘Behold! I see the heavens being opened up completely and the son of humanity standing from the right hand of God.’…and while they were stoning Stephan he was appealing and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And after placing down the knees, he cried out in a great voice, ‘Lord, hold not this sin to them.’
Acts 7:55-56, 59-60b

There’s a tendency to focus on Stephan’s death. And by that statement I mean the fact he is killed by stoning, which was approved by the local religious authority. Let me take a moment to refresh memories about why Stephan is in the spot. First, he’s one of the seven chosen to table-service so that the apostles could maintain time and space for teaching and preaching. Table-service is *not* setting the table; table-service is a robust ministry to care for the least of these, the very apple of God’s eye, the ones who provoked the words of God born into the world by the prophets, the very people Jesus came to serve. So, Stephan is one of these chosen ones. Now, because the Spirit really doesn’t care whose title is what, the Spirit graces Stephan with the power to perform signs and wonders for and among the people. Also, the Spirit blessed Stephan with profound wisdom and boldness to preach the Goodnews to the captives. Now, Stephan, as one chosen to table-service, became the target of human jealousy. This jealousy led to lies and falsification about Stephan and ultimately thrusts him before the Sanhedrin (the council).

So, standing before the Sanhedrin, Stephan is asked by the high priest, “‘Have these things to be thus?’” (7:1). And instead of Stephan being like: “No way!” Or “Uh sure!” Stephan launches into what I like to think of as a premodern, religious, theologically and biblically sound “Well….akshually…” And proceeds to school the entire Sanhedrin in their history while accusing them of pursuing the same death-dealing course that those before them pursued contrary to God’s will. The last thing he says—before being dragged outside of the city—is,

‘You stiff -necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you, you are unceasingly striving against the Holy Spirit, you [are] just as your ancestors. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not pursue? They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, and now you, you have become betrayers and murderers. Whosoever received the law as an ordinance of angels, and yet you have not kept it.’ Now, when they heard these things, they were cut to the quick in their hearts and gnashed their teeth at [Stephan].
Acts 7:51-54

And the very next passage is the one we read this morning. This speech ending in Spirit filled accusation lands Stephan facing death, a death Saul fully agrees with (v. 58).[2] This is not about the glorification of martyrdom; this isn’t even about villainous religious leaders getting bent out of shape when someone beneath them in rank speaks out against them. Rather this is about God demonstrating solidarity with humanity in death, once again. Here we see as we did on Good Friday into Holy Saturday and in the bursting forth of Easter Sunday Morning, God stepping into the deep plight of humanity finding themselves sentenced to death. Jesus shows up and joins Stephan, suffering with Stephan as he suffered before with others so caught and held captive by death. In this moment, unlike Saul,[3] God does not side with power and prestige, but with humility and vulnerability. As the Spirit graced Stephan with great power in this moment, so too especially in this moment is God’s grace and power demonstrated for all to see; and nothing, positively nothing can separate the beloved from God, not even death.[4]

Conclusion

The collision here is very obvious: the old order v. the new order. But this collision isn’t between one group and another as much as it is between the Reign of God and the kingdom of humanity. We, too, are thrust into this collision: those of us who dare to follow Jesus out of the tomb, must leave behind the rags of the old order and don the clothes of the new one. As we’ve been given life, so we advocate for life; as we’ve been loved, so we love; as we’ve been liberated, so we liberate.

God does not threaten people with condemnation and death to get them to believe in God or to follow God or to listen to God; that’s what humans do. Rather, God steps into death, under condemnation to protect the beloved from both. God woos with love, with identification with your plight, with promise, and with liberation, solidarity, and life. Humanity threatens with violence, isolation, ostracization, captivity, and death. All those messages crafted to cause you to bend the knee out of fear are not and never have been of God; those have been crafted by human beings desperate to keep their power and control over other people, to get them to be compliant and obedient to their selfish advantage. God doesn’t need that type of response from you to be God; and if God did, wouldn’t you wonder about the insecurity of such a God?* The God that we worship here, the Creator, the parent of Jesus Christ, the source of the Holy Spirit, the substance of love is so secure that God can even still exist even when you deny God.

More than that, God is so secure in God’s self that God goes with you into your suffering, into your pain, into your anger, into your frustration, and even with you into death because God knows nothing else than God’s deep desire to be with the beloved in all things—dirty or clean, pure or impure, sinner and saint. And, as Paul eventually learned, nothing…absolutely nothing can or will ever separate you from the love of God.

*A thought influenced by Dorothee Sölle

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Richard J. Cassidy Society and Politics in the Acts of the Apostles Eugen, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1987. 79. “By it, Luke portrays Paul agreeing with the Sanhedrin members that Stephen’s activities and words could not be tolerated and agreeing with them that death by stoning was the way to put an end to them.”

[3] Willie James Jennings Acts Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2017. 73-74. “For Saul, this is a righteous righteous act. Killing in the name o. God be approved. But this approval is of the old order, not the new. Now its absurdity can be exposed. There were no doubt evil people in Israel worthy or death, but there was no one, without doubt, who was innocent enough to kill them. It is in this tension between the new order and the old that the old will assert its power in and among the faithful. Stephen has been seen as the first Christian martyr, but we must see more than a faithful witness unto death. We must also see the way faithful people can yield to the old order and kill if they believe they or God are threatened by a different witness. Stephen was executed, and his execution was approved. How often have Christians given their approval of executions, religious and political, but how often have we seen this as giving into the old order and resisting the Holy Spirit?”

[4] Jennings, Acts,72-73. “Something else, however, is happening that could easily be missed in the rushed judgment to death and the silence engendered by closed ears and grinding teeth. Stephen is being joined to God. Luke has flashed forward to a future that waits for those who follow the prophets, the apostles, and finally Jesus. God, the Holy Spirit, fills Stephen and will face death with him. This will always be the case for believers. No matter how hard they are thrown, the stones cannot separate Stephen from God. Nor can any stone, no matter its velocity, its surprising angle, or its accuracy in hitting our vulnerable places, ever separate those who know the savior from God.”

Posted on May 7, 2023May 4, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

church daring to be Church

Psalm 23:1-3 God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. 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

On Good Friday I asked, “Who’s in your corner? Who’s on your side? Who’s your ‘ride or die’? Who’s the Louise to your Thelma?”[1] This question is still relevant to me; I can’t help but sense that deep solidarity with other human beings has grown thin over the course of time. Through the myriad of moments pitting one group against another, avoiding wary sneezes and threatening sniffles, and love suffering over distance, it’s easy to feel isolated—caught between having friends and having no one to rely on…like really rely on, like show up on a Saturday at noon in the middle of August to help you move large furniture type of rely on…

While time and energy are factors, there’s a bigger one. There’s a lot of othering in our society whether socio-politically, religiously, or relationally. We’re bombarded with media images promoting material competition with others; we live in a world carrying a variety of threats to the welfare of our bodies in the world. This is the perfect environment to breed fear: fear of the other, fear of difference, fear of conflict, fear of confrontation. (And fear is always the undercurrent of anger.) And, so, we are kind of walking about half-cocked, ready to protect ourselves from a threat. In psychology this is called hyper-vigilance and hyper-vigilance has a bestie: hyper-arousal—always on the lookout for a threat, when one is perceived BOOM! Explosion!

It’s hard to gain ground with an other if there’s this type of air swirling about fragile and delicate human bodies wrapped in a rather porous and vulnerable epidermal layer. When fear and anger—hyper-vigilance and hyper-arousal—are in the mix, threatening to rear their head and shove love and grace out of the window, it makes it really hard to cultivate rich relationships extending beyond social acquaintances into, “Of course I’ll come move that mahogany armoire with you this August on a Saturday at noon!”

But I’m not hopeless; I’m not hopeless because church (the invisible and visible) exists. Now, when church is bad it can be very bad; but when it’s good, it’s so, so, so good because in this event of church-churching-well love draws human beings together into solidarity in their need and abundance, their sickness and health, and their anxiety and comfort.

Acts 2:42-47

Now, they were attending constantly to the teaching of the apostles and in fellowship; to the breaking of the bread and in prayers. …And all those who believed were up to the same [things] and they were having all things in common—they were selling both possessions and properties, and they were distributing things to all in accordance to who was having need/necessity.[2]
Acts 2:42, 44-45

There’s something spectacular about the life of the early church right after Jesus was raised. Luke describes how the “followers of the way” existed alongside the other children of the house of Israel. At this point, animosity is not the theme of the day. Luke tells us that they were attending constantly to the teachings of the apostles and in the prayers, spending their time together (καθ’ ἡμέραν τε προσκαρτεροῦντες ὁμοθυμαδὸν) in the temple (ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ) (v.46), were breaking apart the house bread, sharing in food in exhilaration and sincerity of heart, praising God, and having grace toward the entire people (τὸν λαόν). All those who believed πάντες…οἱ πιστεύοντες (v.44) lived with each other; not in name only as if neighbors who casually exchanged hellos or that two-finger wave; they were with each other by being for each other; and for no other reason than love and faith, mercy and grace, the draw of the Spirit of God into the fullness of life with the neighbor for the neighbor in the world. The reign of God born through the cracks and crevices breaking through the kingdom of humanity

Willie James Jennings writes this about our passage from Acts, “Life with Jesus must give shape to life in the Spirit.”[3] Love knows no other way than to break down barriers and hurdles hindering our ability to see each other’s humanity; everything about these early followers of the way was pulled into the community founded and built by God’s love for the world.[4] Under the draw of divine love, it becomes impossible to cling to those things that they clung to prior to encounter with God; those material markers of identity fell away like linen garments left behind in a tomb in the event of resurrection.[5] By faith, those who followed the way found their identity in God by faith in Christ, and if this then they found mutual identity with others; and not only those who also believed like they did, but among and with those who followed different paths. This is God’s heart for the world and in the world: to love others as you have been loved by God, to see the humanity in others, to give as you have received, to be wrapped up in the divine passion for the beloved, to see not an other but one just like you.[6]

Luke’s story-telling point here is not to propose fiscal or political platforms. Rather, his goal is to ask his reader to reconsider their way of faith in following the Christ by the power of the Spirit. Luke wants to demonstrate what solidarity looks like founded on divine love born of divine life and liberation.[7] This is not about refusing individuality at the expense of the community, but rather about showing how each person is intimately linked to the other in love and life: that one person’s well-being is connected to another’s well-being. It’s not about everyone thinking the same, being the same, or believing the same; it’s about valuing the humanity in another person, seeing their need, their sickness, their fear as one’s own, it’s about identifying with another’s plight as Christ, God of very God, identified with humanity’s plight not to condemn humanity, but to bring humanity into the very life of God the source of love, life, and liberation in the world as it is in heaven.[8]

Conclusion

We do not need to go this world alone. While our world is quite different from the world of the first followers of the way, it does not mean that we can’t still have solidarity with one another. What we find in Luke’s description in Acts is not a formula for church but the formation of church. The thematic structure of the story tells us that our neighbor is more important than things, that community is better than isolation, that going the distance is what love does, that being here for each other in the good and the bad, when things are going well and when they’re going poorly, when it’s a great mood or a yikes! mood. It’s about profound connection where the foundation is just shared humanity clothed in the heavenly fabric of divine love…love that knows no limits.

When church dares to put on Church, when its witness shares in the witness of Christ,[9] it can be a beautiful place of affirmation, confirmation, and solidarity in the world for the beloved. When church dares to Church, it radiates divine life into the world, beckoning those who have lost their way in the world, or those who have become alienated and isolated, or those who suffer under the weight of oppression and marginalization unto the warmth and comfort of the eternal and heavenly substance that is love that just loves.

[1] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2023/04/07/nothing-seems-to-satisfy-craving-solidarity/

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Willie James Jennings Acts Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2017. 38.

[4] Jennings, Acts, 39. “The space of this common was where life stories, life projects, plans, and purposes were being intercepted by a new orientation. This ekklēsia? Time, talent, and treasures, the trinity of possessions we know so well, would feel the pull of this holy vortex.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 39. “The real questions are not whether this holy communalism, this sacred sociality, could or would be operative, be practical in this ancient world or any world, but what must it have been like to feel the powerful pull of the life of our savior, and what energy did it take to resist the Holy Spirit, to slow down this pull enough to withhold themselves and their possessions from divine desire.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 39. “A different order of sacrifice is being performed here, one that reaches back to the very beginning of Israel. Their God does not need possessions and has never been impressed by their donation. The divine One wants people and draws us into that wanting. This is intensified giving, feverish giving that feels not only the urgent need but the divine wanting. A new kind of giving is exposed at this moment, one that binds bodies together as the first reciprocal donation where the followers will give themselves to one another.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 39-40. “Thus anything they had that might be used to bring people into sight and sound of the incarnate life, anything they had that might be used to draw people to life together and life itself and away from death and the reign of poverty, hunger, and despair—such things were being given up to God. The giving is for the sole purpose of announcing the reign of the Father’s love through the Son in the bonds of communion together with the Spirit.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 40. “Luke gives us sight of a holy wind blowing through structured and settled ways of living and possessing and pulling things apart People caught up in the love of God not only began to give thanks for their daily bread, but daily offered to God whatever they had that might speak that gracious love to others. What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods and services is a God who dares impose on us divine love.”

[9] See W. Travis McMaken’s “Definitive, Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth’s Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4” IJST Vol17/Num1 (Jan 2015) pp. 89-114.

Posted on April 30, 2023April 27, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

“What Might We Do?”

Psalm 116:2-3, 10: 2 The cords of death entangled me; the grip of the grave took hold of me; I came to grief and sorrow. Then I called upon the Name of God: “God, I pray you, save my life.” How shall I repay God for all the good things God has done for me?

Introduction

There’s something about love that’s overwhelming. I think it’s overwhelming because love just loves without why or wherefor (sunder warumbe[1])—like being in the midst of spring springing and the flowers bursting forth, they give no reason for their showy, brilliant colors, they just bloom, they just are, they just exist. Love is similar: it just loves.

The inability of locating a why or wherefore to anchor another’s love for us makes love that other-worldly substance. We are rational, sense-making, riddle-solving, concrete, fleshy, material creatures. And, to be honest, we’re quite basic. To be told, “I love you” and for no other reason than “just because” solicits furrowed brows of “why…”, skeptical vocal lilts of “…me? …Really?”, even down right toddler-like resistance, “No!” Love that loves just because is not for us; we need the whys and the wherefores, the reasons and the data.

Somewhere along the way we’ve been taught love must be verified by a reason: you love me because I’m…. We all have the thing that fills in that blank, answering the “because.” I’m: funny, smart, pretty, rich, capable, athletic, a good provider; you have to, you’re my____ (another fill in the blank)….etc. Whatever it is, it sits there like a beacon of existential validity answering the “why” we’re worthy of love, while ignoring the reality love just loves.

Sunder warumbe.

The worst of this is we’re all quite able to imagine why we shouldn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t be loved. We know ourselves better than the one who gave us life, right? We know how “bad” we are, how ill-tempered, frustrating, irritating, debased, faulty, and failing… We don’t need another person to give us reasons why we’re unlovable. Sadly, our world amplifies this being unlovable unless… Our beloved status hangs in a dastardly imbalance, and we’re losing.

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Now after hearing [Peter] they were pierced in the heart, and they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, “What might we do, Brothers?” And Peter [said] to them, “You repent[2] (!) and be baptized each on the basis of the name of Jesus Christ for the complete forgiveness of your sins,[3] and you will lay hold of the gift of the Holy Spirit: for it is the promise to you and to your children and to all who are distant, as many as God our Lord called to God’s self.[4]
Acts 2:37-39

Luke, the author of one of the gospels and Acts, tells us that Peter raised his voice and declared to his fellow Israelites (v.14) that God made Jesus—whom you [and others[5]] crucified[6]—lord and Christ (v.36). I will never stop loving Peter. As much as I love Paul I also love Peter. These two represent to us the totality of what it means to be creatures in relation with the Creator, humans before and with God among other human beings. Peter raised his voice and declared to his religious siblings that Jesus is the Christ, God is (still) for them; they are (still) God’s beloved.[7] Peter who used his voice to deny Christ, now uses it to proclaim Christ crucified and raised as a measure of divine love for all[8]of God’s people, even those, like the disciples, who were far off or hid for shame, those who carried no pedigree or status, those who had no power and found themselves immersed in the shadow of isolation and alienation.[9]

Peter’s message emphasizes that this Jesus who was crucified and died and raised is now the divinely appointed Christ (Greek for “Messiah”) of God’s people. This man whom the house of Israel knew and crucified (they did not intervene), according to Peter, is now the Christ, the one who bears both the divine and human image (he carries Mary’s face in the world) and ushers in God’s reality.[10] And God’s reality comes into conflict and confrontation with the reality of the kingdom of humanity. What used to be right-side up to us, after our encounter with God in the raised Jesus is now upside down; Jesus once flipped tables, now he’s flipping worlds, and the disciples—even those 2023 years later—are invited to see the upside-down world made right-side up.[11]

Thus, when the hearts of those who heard were pierced, they asked, What might we do? (v. 37). This is the question of change; this is the question of divine encounter.[12] It is not that God poses to us a question in this moment, but we pose a question to God: if this is the right way to see the world, from the perspective of the one whom we crucified, what do we do now? because everything else seems wrong…[13]Not knowing what to do now because of one’s encounter with God is not a lack of faith, but evidence of it; it is also prayer, in humility there’s both a confession and a prayer for help in What might we do?

The best part of Luke’s story is Peter’s response: by means of changing their minds (repenting) and being baptized, the gifts of forgiveness of sins (missing the mark) and the receipt of the Holy Spirit are for them. And not only for them—as if it was a one-time event relegated to one generation—but also for their children and all those who are far off; for whomever God calls to God’s self. Thus anyone can be baptized, summoned unto God by God’s love made known in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.[14] Peter presents what it looks like to follow Christ out of the tomb, to be ushered through death into new life; this is not a formula it is formation.[15] There are no prerequisites here, there is no demand to look this way or that, no need to be clean or made right prior to the encounter with God in the event of faith; God loves the beloved (full stop) and this love changes the beloved, sanctifies her, causes her to live and thrive, calling the beloved over and over again unto God’s self—unto life, love, and liberation.[16] In being summoned unto God, in following Christ, it makes sense to live and live fully.[17] Sunder warumbe.

Conclusion

With the resurrection of Christ, the world is turned upside down. Death is not the final word; life is. Captivity is not the final word; liberation is. Unlovable is not the final word; beloved is. Whether you know it or not, YOU ARE LOVED. Whether you want to hear it or not, YOU ARE LOVED. And the greatest part? It has nothing to do with what you do or look like or have done or will do, you are just fully loved by God right now, as is inside and out. God is love and love just loves, no ands, ifs, or buts about.

Luke exhorts us through the words of Peter to harken to this story of God’s radical and revolutionary love in the world for the benefit and wellbeing of the beloved (not only us but especially our neighbors). We need to see ourselves grafted into this story and not mere spectators watching on from a seat in the balcony. We are the object of God’s desire and yearning, we are the goal of the divine mission of love in the world, we are needed by God because God is love and love needs the beloved. You are cherished. You are prized. You are the apple of God’s eye. You are irreplaceable.[18]

So, too, those who exist beyond the four walls of this church. The resurrection story is not a story just for us who get our ducks in a row, it’s not just for us who believe x, y, and z in just the right way and right fashion, and it’s not just for those who produce in this or that way in the world. The story of the resurrection of Christ—life out of death—is for all, for our children and those who are far off (this is what the text tells us). We are confronted today with the story of divine love and life in the world, turning the world right-side-up, liberating the captives … all the captives in the spiritual and temporal world, liberating not only souls (the inner nature) but bodies (the outer nature), too. God’s love sets us free to do something new, to live new, to love new, to be in the world as new creations, participating in God’s turning the world right-side-up for God’s beloved. Sunder warumbe.

[1] From Dorothee Soelle The Silent Cry a reference to Meister Eckhart.

[2] “Repent” can also be “change the mind” and “change the inner nature”

[3] “Missing the mark”

[4] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[5] Steve Walton, “The State They Were In: Luke’s View of the Roman Empire” Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics. Eds. Eric D. Barreto, Matthew L. Skinner, and Steve Walton. Library of New Testament Studies. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. 92. “A key passage for understanding Luke’s view is Acts 4:27-30, which asserts that opposition to Jesus is the factor which unites Pilate, Herod, the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel. To assert, as some do, that the Jewish people alone are held responsible for the death of Jesus is to overstate the case. Luke’s presentation is more nuanced, for he locates responsibility on the Jewish side with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. This is clear, not least, since it is only in Jerusalem itself that the apostles speak of ‘you’ as responsible for killing Jesus (Acts 2.36; 3.13, 14, 17; 4.10; 5.30; 7.52; cf. 5.28).”

[6] Richard J. Cassidy Society and Politics in the Acts of the Apostles Eugen, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1987. 33. “Nevertheless, the speech clearly does indict his audience and Luke subsequently reports that, when those assemble asked Peter and the apostles what they should do, Peter replied that every one of them should repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins (2:38).”

[7] Willie James Jennings Acts Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2017. 33. “This is Israel speaking to Israel, calling to their own with the good news of the intensification of their election and of the personification of the free grace that shaped their existence from its beginning.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 33. “This is precisely where the scandal that was Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s baby with all the tensions he created and all the theological, social, and political contradictions that religious and civic leaders associated with his ministry, began to spread over many bodies.”

[9] Jennings, Acts, 33-34. “This is a strange image, an unappealing icon-twelve men, none with exceptional credentials, no fabulous educational pedigrees, none with reservoirs of immense cultural capital to draw from, all standing in front of Israelites with nothing more than a message. We live in times when images create and carry so much power. For us, image and word, body and text, are inseparable, merging together, mutually constituting. Yet in this primordial moment the image standing before these gathered does not carry gravitas. It can never match its message. Nor will it ever. This is the eternal imbalance that that will mark preaching, a message far more powerful than its messengers. Indeed, image emerges here fully encased in witness.”

[10] Jennings, Acts, 35. “The Jesus you knew—crucified, dead and buried, and now alive—is both Lord and Messiah, the bearer of the divine image and reality. This is the great contradiction.”

[11] Jennings, Acts, 35. “It is the contradiction inside of which all the disciples of Jesus will live forever. Life inside this contradiction means, as Samuel Proctor said, that we may now see the world for what it is: upside down. The world, seen from the site of the crucified One, moving quickly from life toward death, is the real contradiction. Only from within the declaration of a God who was crucified will any words about God in this world, the real world, make sense.”

[12] Jennings, Acts, 36. “A change is taking place among the people of God. Faith in Israel is taking a new direction. And it all begins with a simple but terrifying question: ‘What should we do?’”

[13] Jennings, Acts, 36. “The question itself is at the door of offense. Although the irenic is concealed within the question, nonetheless, it suggests a necessary change for those already of committed faith. We must hear in this question the astounding work of the living God who will not be relegated to Israel’s past but will reveal divine faithfulness to ancient promise in the present moment. And in so doing, we see the precise way Israel’s Lord alters theological frames of reference by demanding more of those who believe.”

[14] Jennings, Acts, 37. “His response reveals language internal to the culture and theology of Israel. Repentance, forgiveness, and gift are all themes that flow through the streams of Israel’s historical consciousness. Yet now a new point of entry and departure has emerged through a new stream that flows in a new direction. All must be baptized in the new stream, baptized into Jesus.”

[15] Jennings, Acts, 37. “The trajectory of the text is not toward formula but formation. From this moment forward, life with God will be through Jesus, and this moment of baptism will yield life in a body turned toward the renewal of creation. The story of Israel has opened up, and Gods body has been joined to Israel’s body and will be joined to all who will come to the water, Luke signifies a redeemer who would bring all of Israel from death to life through these them more deeply into divine desire.”

[16] Jennings, Acts, 37-38. “Now divine hunger will be revealed. God is calling to Israel and its children and other children and their children. This calling will be contra mundi, against the world’s calling, the world’s desire for the children. It will be against this corrupt generation (v. 40). This will be the difference bound to a decision, God’s calling or the world’s calling, and at this moment the new word reveals the old tension for God’s people between listening and thus obeying the voice of the world or hearing the dabarim of Adonai, the word of the Lord.”

[17] From Dorothee Sölle’s Thinking about God.

[18] Ref. Dorothee Sölle Christ the Representative.

Posted on April 23, 2023April 20, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: God in Our Hunger

Psalm 118:22-24 I will give thanks to you, God, for you answered me and have become my salvation. The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day God has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Introduction

What Death tried to seal in a tomb, God liberated with one proclamation: “Let there be life!” And life burst forth, sentencing Death to its own tomb. Nothing gets between God and God’s beloved!

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!

What a day. It’s the singular time in the Christian liturgical calendar where the resurrection of Christ is told in the present tense and not as some distant future mythology for a special few who get their faith just right. Today, resurrection is for everyone. Today, God is for everyone. We declare today that God shook heaven and earth and liberated God’s beloved from death as the first born of all creation, the enduring symbol that death is not the final word for anyone. (Full stop.) Today we proclaim that life wins, love wins, liberation wins. Hallelujah!

Today in our encounter with this story of God’s radical activity in the world through the resurrection of Christ, I get to remind you that not only does life, love, and liberation win, but these become the foundation under our feet, the thread holding together the fabric of our existence, the substance of our individual and corporate life together, and the motivation for our activity in the world. It’s this message that makes the church the Church—visible and invisible. Without it, the church doesn’t exist. This awkward, weird, scientifically baffling, nonsensical, proclamation—Christ is Risen!—is meant to be the very characteristic establishing the church—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

What’s haunting me is how quickly we prefer to move on from Easter Sunday into this makes more sense Monday, and let’s be rational Tuesday, and that’s just mythology Wednesday, and so on. We are too quick to truncate the possibility of this announcement, relegating it to the simplicity of premodern people, some single historical event, a “picture painted on a wall.”[1] I think I’d be fine with this if we, as “enlightened” and “scientific” people, didn’t have so many of our own beliefs that don’t make sense, that are “irrational”, and that qualify as “mythology”. We have our own versions of the very things we criticize previous eras of human existence for. So, I’m wondering, what if… What if this ancient, whacky story of divine activity in the world, the overruling of death, the radical reordering of actuality and possibility has meaning for me, for you, for us today?

What if it can actually recenter and stabilize? What if it can create space and hold time to find identity? What if it can shatter alienation and encourage relationality? What if it can break through false expectations and give us ground to build community? What if it means—no matter what—we have solidarity? What if it’s true?

Matthew 28:1-10

Now, the angel answered and said to the women, “You, you do not fear! For I know that you are seeking Jesus the one who has been crucified. He is not here; for he is raised just as he said. Come (!) and see (!) the place where he was laid. And quickly go and say (!) to his disciples that he is raised from the dead; and behold! He is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him. Behold! I bid you!” [2]
Mt 28:5-7

Matthew seems to have a flair for the divinely dramatic side of story telling that seems, to me, absent in the other three gospel accounts of the resurrection. Mark, Luke, and John have the women (of some number) showing up and the stone already rolled away. But Matthew? Nah. That’s not his style. Let’s go big, or let’s go home!

Matthew tells us that the women, the two Marys (Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”[3]) came to look at the tomb.[4] Now, while our text makes it sound as if Mary and (the other) Mary were merely there to express their silent condolences, there was a purpose for this “looking”: to confirm Christ’s death.[5] These two women came assuming they’d affirm the actuality of death; they weren’t expecting to leave declaring the possibility of life. Then, out of the blue…

[B]ehold!, a great earthquake happened; for an angel of the Lord descended out of heaven and drew near and rolled back the stone and then was sitting upon it…and from fear of [the angel] the guards shook and they became as dead.

A massive shaking of the ground, an angel in dazzling brightness descending and rolling back a massive stone, and big guards falling over, stiff as boards because they are terrified. Matthew skips no beats here in adding scientific perplexity to vibrant narrative pizzazz; he’s got a point and it’s not just for entertainment. What’s his point? This: Jesus didn’t need the stone removed to leave the tomb.[6] The Angel does it for pure divine dramatic effect. So, this is Matthew hollering at the top of his lungs: JESUS IS RISEN! And God had everything to do with it! this isn’t a “resurrection” story, it’s a “he is not here!” story.[7] It’s a “No one gets between God and the Beloved!” story.

The angel beckons the two Marys to come and see, because the angel knows they are seeking Jesus, the one who has been crucified.[8] Then the angel charges the women to go and proclaim to the disciples that Jesus is not dead, that he has gone on before them into Galilee, and that they’ll see him there. These humble women, dismissed by much of society, are charged by the angelic visitor, a representative of the celestial estate, to be the first to proclaim[9] good news to the sorrowful, to the regretful, to the ones who ran off, to the one who denied three times. It’s these very ones Jesus declares as “my brothers”;[10] they in the midst of their alienation, isolation, loneliness, shame and regret are summoned unto God, affirmed as the beloved because nothing…not-one-thing can separate them from the love of God.

Conclusion

Today, we celebrate, let our voices ring out with the splendor of heart felt Hallelujahs!, throw our hands up in the air, dance with delight like children, and rejoice that death doesn’t triumph over life. When everything looked as it if was dead and gone, God stepped in and breathed life into dry bones.[11] When our hostility toward God felt like an eternal fracture, God bent low and mended it.[12] When our tongues grew parched from reciting unfulfilled promises, God brought us the water of heaven.[13] When our bodies grew exhausted under the constant threat of the thunder of doom creeping about our lives and relationships, God cleared out the clouds and let the light of God’s countenance shine over us.[14] Today, in the resurrection of Christ, God comes near to you, to me, to all of us and is for us.[15]

Today God is in our hunger for stability; we are stabilized.
Today God is in our hunger for identity; we are irreplaceable.
Today God is in our hunger for relationality; we are with others.
Today God is in our hunger for community; we are seen, known, and loved here.
Today God is in our hunger for solidarity; we are not nor ever will be forsaken.

Today, in the resurrection of Christ, sola suspicio, reaches its limit; it has nothing to say to a people who are aware of their hunger, no longer satisfied with consuming themselves to death. Today, in being confronted with this radical story of divine love, life, and liberation we are awakened in our spirits. Today our hearts quicken with possibility, with what if and why not. Today our imaginations are reinvigorated, daring to dream of a world filled with justice, peace, mercy, love, and life. Today, wrapped up in the story of He is not here! we have the audacity to defy nothing with something, what-is with what-could-be, captivity with liberation. Today we come face to face with our hunger, with the reality that resurrection is not of the past but is right now, that we desire more than what we have grown accustomed to accepting and receiving. Today, we realize that our hunger is God’s hungering divine passion for the beloved; thus, today, we see that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is a summons to us to rise from the dead and join the living and God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for all people.

“The word of love lives, it happens, it is spoken and it is heard. As this word, Jesus is raised from the dead. The story of love does not end on Calvary but begins there.”[16]

Today we taunt death with the fullness of life and dare to follow Jesus out of our tombs; today we are bold to say beyond the limits of reason and suspicion:

“I believe in the crucified Lord who is alive, the failure which didn’t fail, the defenceless man whom God did not forsake, the man who loved, with whose cause God identified God’s self. God says yes to what we usually, with good reason, deny. God makes him the lifebringer, whom we thought of as lost in unreality. … God did not arm the defenceless man, God did not let him come to grief, as reason would suppose, but God approved of his defencelessness, accepted and loved him and raised him up. To believe in [Christ] means to follow his way. He who seeks him among the living, seeks him with God and therefore on this our earth.”[17]

(for part 1 click here, part 2 click here, part 3 click here, part 4 click here, part 5 click here, Good Friday click here)

[1] Luther qtd in Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, Trans. Dinah Livingstone. New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1969. 58.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] ἠ ἄλλη Μαρία

[4] Θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον

[5] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2015. 336. “The effect of these visits was to confirm death. The women who come to perform this sad task of confirming death instead find themselves running tor Joy, announcing life. Waiting and watching in sadness, they have become the first witnesses to the resurrection. Once again the last are first. They are also first to worship the risen Lord.”

R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. 1097. “The action of the angel in removing the stone from the entrance to the tomb draws attention even more clearly than in the other gospels to the fact that Jesus has already left the tomb, while the stone was still in place.”

[7] France, Matthew, 1098. “This is not an account of the resurrection of Jesus (as some editors still unaccountably describe it in their section headings), but a demonstration that Jesus has risen. We are not told at what point between the burial on Friday evening and the opening of the tomb on Sunday morning Jesus actually left the tomb, though the repeated ‘third day/three days’ language (and even more the ‘three days and three nights’ of 12:40) presupposes that he was in the tomb for most of that period. What matters to the narrators is not when or how he left, but the simple fact that now, early on Sunday morning, ‘he is not here’ (v.6).”

[8] Ἰησοῦν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον

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

[10] France, Matthew, 1103. “my brothers” “This time, however, it follows the abject failure of the Twelve to stand with Jesus when the pressure was on, a failure which was hardly less shameful because Jesus had predicted it in 26:31. But now it is time for the second half of that prediction to be fulfilled ( 26:32), and that Galilean meeting will eventually restore the family relationship which they must surely have thought had come to an end in Gethsemane.”

[11] Reference to Lent 5 Sermon, Ezekiel 37:1-14.

[12] Reference to Lent 3 Sermon, Romans 5:1-11.

[13] Reference to Lent 2 Sermon, Genesis12:1-4a.

[14] Reference to Lent 1 Sermon, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7.

[15][15] Reference to Good Friday Sermon Isaiah 53

[16] Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, 80-81.

[17] Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, 59-60. The masculine pronouns for God rewritten as God/God’s

Posted on April 9, 2023April 9, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Relationality

(for part 1 click here, for part 2 click here, for part 3 click here )

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before God our Creator. For God is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand. Oh, that today you would hearken to God’s voice!

Introduction

Have you gotten out of the habit of communing with other people? I think I have. Well, to be honest, being social is very low on my list of things I regularly think about. When we first lived in Grand Junction in 2014, it took about ten months before I realized that the looming feeling I had was something called “loneliness.” Have you heard of it? I don’t get lonely; I can go for a very long time without any social interaction. A. Very. Long. Time. So, when I had this weird sensation and finally realized that there’s a term for it and that it there’s no drug to take to eliminate it, I struck out to make a friend. Just one. And I did! Lyuda and I have been friends since late 2015.

But this story feels like a distant memory of eras long gone. I’m reminded it’s been awhile since I’ve done something like that: gone out and made a new friend. I think it’s something to do with what we’ve suffered over the past few years. Now, as I said, it takes me a long to get “lonely”, but three years in? It feels especially tangible right now, right on the surface. Do you feel lonely? If you do, you are not alone. We’re all lonely. We’re just now starting to pull together and peek heads out of our shells…three years later. For three years, we’ve been bombarded with the fear of a virus that is very contagious, making it impossible to share place and space with others. Not to mention the caustic socio-political environment, tearing friendships apart, families asunder, and drawing thick lines in the sand. So, we’ve became pros at shutting down and closing off because our lives depended on it; we’ve become experts at speaking vapidly to stave off emotional outbursts, or worse? So, the coming back is hard… at times, too hard; isn’t it just easier to stay in, stay closed, stay distant, stay safe? I’m fine on my own, …right?

I fear we’re losing our relationality and nothing seems to satisfy.

Romans 5:1-11

For if while being hostile to God we were reconciled to God by means of the death of God’s son, much more since being reconciled we will be saved by his life. But not only [that] but even boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we now received reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10-11)[1]

At the core of what Paul is saying here in Romans, is that by virtue of the believer’s relationship with God through Christ, they are given space and time with God and with each other. Paul begins by explaining that in being justified we have peace with God and not only with God but with the world even in the midst of not having peace with other people.[2] During Advent I mentioned, “Peace exists because God is and God is within us.”[3] Herein is the foundation of that peace, according to Paul: God reconciles us to God through God’s son, Jesus. If this peace is done by works, we do not have a guarantee that peace with God exists. However, if it is by God’s doing, it’s secured and constant because it’s promised and God fulfills God’s promises. Every day we are justified and made right with God, every day we have union with God by faith because it’s by God’s mercy and not our own actions and even in spite of them.

By faith in Christ we have peace with God because by clinging to the promises of God we declare God to be truthful and true, rendering to God the things belonging to God: honor, delight, and trustworthiness (this is what it means that we “boast on the basis of hope of the glory of God”). In this way our relationship with God is aligned by our union with God; and if the relationship with God is aligned so, too, is our relationship with the world. In this new alignment with the world born from being children of God by faith,[4] we have peace with the world, because reconciliation with God allows us to interact with the world and with other people in a liberated way unencumbered from the burden of using the world and other people as means to an end (i.e. to secure a good relationship with God).

Paul anchors suffering and endurance in this union with God that we have by faith in Christ. Because we stand (“we are established”) in the grace of God, we have hope because we receive the love of God having been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit having been given to us. According to Paul, our union with God is the means by which we endure tribulations, for where we are God is, so, too is God’s love for us and the world. Therefore, our hope does not disgrace or shame because God promises to be present in our afflictions and sufferings and God is trustworthy and honest, because by Christ we have seen God suffer on our behalf.[5]

Paul reminds his audience that if they received all of this while they were hostile (ἐχθρὰ ὄντες) to God and still missing the mark (ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν), then how much more will they receive in their reconciliation and union with God. Now God establishes God’s love for us, yet while we still missing the mark, Christ died on behalf of us. It is our missing the mark that brings Christ to the cross, for our ability to determine good from evil runs askew, as promised back in Genesis 3. Yet, even though we put Christ to death, God resurrects him meeting our demand for death with God’s gift of life.[6] This is love, this is grace: not giving someone what they deserve but giving them that which they do not deserve. Where we had the right to be judged and condemned for Christ’s death, we are given life, love and liberation.[7]

Now, receiving this divine grace and love while we were still hostile to God, how much more do we receive as those reconciled? We receive God, we receive the whole world, we receive ourselves in right relation with God and the World, thus with others.

Conclusion

We are rightly timid to derive our relationality from our own strength, trying desperately to reduplicate past experiences. We are right to be nervous to venture outside and commune with others, putting ourselves in physically vulnerable situations beyond our control. We are far from being out of the woods of the pandemic, and there are new bugs around, putting precious lives at risk. It is right to be cautious with whom you share your dreams and wishes for the world; the caustic socio-political climate that started back in 2016 is still percolating—for many people things are continuing to go backwards, away from what they had, or thought they had. Relationality right now is intimidating: with neighbors, with friends, with family, maybe even with ourselves.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we reverse this trend of losing relationality, this threat of loneliness? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for relationality.

As those who have been encountered by God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are those who have been given life, love, and liberation. We are given union with God, we are given solid ground to endure the hardest tribulations with the most amount of hope. We are not given hope founded on false expectations for the future; rather, we are given hope that is present tense, that calls to mind what God has done, thus remembering what God said God will do. This type of hope is here, it is now, it is in spite of the world, transcends the world, and is for the world.[8] In our union with God we do not need to run away from chaos of multiple relational fractures or cling to what is behind denying the disordered relationality at hand. Rather, we can stand here, where we are, in the chaos and tumult, in the trial and tribulation, and know we are not alone for God resides with those whom God loves, with those who suffer, with those who have the audacity to experience their awakened hunger for God.

In this way, beloved, we are not alone; through God’s love for us we are not alone for we are with God. And if we are with God then we are with each other. It’s here where we’re brought further out of ourselves and our desperate attempts to keep ourselves from the difficulties of this life, from the anxiety of what lies outside the security of our homes, and from fear of the other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find relationality with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 43. “Since we are justified through God’s imputation, therefore by faith, not by works, we have peace the world and with God, although not yet with men and the flesh ….”

[3] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/12/04/peace-even-now/

[4] LW 25, 43-44. “Through whom , as our Mediator, we have obtained access, to God by loving and knowing and delighting in Him, by faith, because there will be no salvation through Christ without faith, to this grace, of peace, remission of sins, and justification, in which we stand, through the firm confession of faith, and we rejoice, not in a present thing before men but in our hope of sharing the glory, the exaltation, that is, the glorification in the future life of the sons of God, those who are of God.”

[5] LW 25, 44. “And endurance produces trial that we might be proved by God and found without deceit and guile and hypocrisy, and trial hope, that is, of ‘the glory of God,’ as has been said (v. 2). 5. And hope does not disappoint us, because it neither deserts nor fails us. All these things, I say, happen because the love, etc.,’ because the love, which creates an insuperable attachment, of God, that is, from God, has been poured, freely poured out, not received by merit, into our hearts, because love performs its works voluntarily; for works done unwillingly and by force do not endure, by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, through Christ from God the Father”

[6] LW 25, 44-45. “For hardly, it is extraordinary, I say, to die for the ungodly, for what is righteous, that is, for the sake of righteousness and truth, will one die—though perhaps, it is customary to die, for what is good, for its usefulness and desired features, one will dare even to die. 8. But God, the Father, shows, He makes it more commendable and worthy of love than all these things, His love, with which He loves us, for us, that is, the love which has been given to us, because on His part, in that while we were yet sinners, which he earlier (v. 6) expressed with ‘while we were still weak,’ at the right time (an expression which is not in the Greek at this point but only above) Christ died for us, the ungodly, so that we might not die in all eternity.”

[7] LW 25, 45. “For if, while were enemies, because of our sins, we were reconciled, so that we were not deserving of perdition, to God, not by our own merits or those of anyone else, except by the death of His Son; much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we, as His own, be saved by His life, in his resurrection to eternal life. 11. And not only so, do we rejoice in tribulations, but we also rejoice in God, that is, because we have a God and He is our own God, because He has given Himself to us, through our Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator, through whom we have now received our reconciliation, the remission of sins, so that we may receive God Himself, through One. I say. Christ.”

[8] I’m reminded here of similar tones in this post by J. Scott Jackson, http://derevth.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-peace-that-disturbs-berrigans.html

Posted on March 12, 2023March 12, 2023 by laurenlarkin 4

“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Stability

(for part 1 click here)

Psalm 32:6-9 6 “I will confess my transgressions to God.” Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin. Therefore all the faithful will make their prayers to you in time of trouble; when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach them. You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Introduction

The past few years and the last few months have felt like walking on water. Now, before you get the idea that I’m either comparing myself to Jesus the Christ, the son of God and humanity, or that I’ve felt so light and effervescent, I need to tell you that is not the case. By “walking on water” I mean: navigating the wind and the waves of life. Thrust upward only to be left falling downward as the surface drops, swept left and then swept all the way right, and smacked forward and backward by liquid turned solid by force and velocity.

There’s no way to extricate myself from this unending sea of waves and wind. It’s water as far as the eye can see. I fear something swimming just close enough but beyond my ability to see through murky water to prickle my skin with its sinister swish-swish-swishes right below my feet. The threat of doom leaves its own trauma. My other fear is becoming so water logged that I forget my real needs, that I confuse swallowing sea water for satisfying hunger, that I just become one with my environment, that I’ll give up or forget to keep fighting. When humans go about just surviving, they end up learning how to just survive and forget that life is so much more than just surviving.

Everything right now feels so unstable and nothing seems to satisfy.

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:1-4)

Here, early in Genesis, we are offered a story. A story well known to us. Moses (the traditionally assumed author) tells us that after God created Adam, God brought Adam into the garden. Here, Adam was to work and care for creation. God gave Adam two commandments: eat from any tree but do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The consequence? “‘In that day you eat of it you will surely die.’” (v.17b) From our perspective this command seems astounding, and the consequence atrocious. Why would God implement such a command and consequence? Why would the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil be punished severely? Why is God keeping this power from us?

One of the issues is our evaluation of good and evil. These are not just moral executive decisions. According to the JPS Study Bible, we have to reframe our understanding of “knowing” away from a post-enlightenment, scientific revolution outlook to one that offers a more wholistic picture of “knowing.” We know intellectually, but we also know experientially; therefore, there is not only knowing about good and evil, but knowing morally good and evil and (even more) knowing through experience things pleasant and painful.[1] And in these experiences, in this knowing morally, and even in knowing about good and evil there is death. It’s not so much a punishment as it is a consequence of finding ourselves suffering in the midst of good and evil, pulled this way and that, torn through with doubt and inner conflict, suffering from (even unto death) the force of evil in the world.

Then, enter the serpent. In chapter 3, Moses tells us the serpent comes along and strikes up a conversation with Eve. The serpent asks a trick question, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”; there’s no yes or no here, and Eve knows it.[2] So, she answers the serpent, and this response opens up a means by which the serpent can attack further. Eve says, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ As she quotes the law differently than it was handed to Adam, the serpent can certainly show her that she can touch it without dying, and here in the chaos of conflict with what one knows and sees and the inner doubt over divine credibility surges.[3] Then the serpent presses further adding in just the right amount of potential divine jealousy: seems God doesn’t want you to have the same power God has…”[4] The deal is sealed when she takes and eats of the apple and hands it to Adam, who was with her the entire time. The one who taught her the law failed to teach it to her rightly, and was himself subject to contemplating another word apart from God’s word.[5] Upheaval was already underway.[6]

Here the couple is thrust into tumult; what was, is now no longer. They were comfortable, now they are uncomfortable. Here they are falling from “true wisdom,” to quote Martin Luther, and “…[plunged] into utter blindness.”[7] They are now saddled with the weight of determining moral good and moral evil, held hostage by the onslaught of pleasure or pain, and chased by the threats of weal and woe. All of their relationships are now upended, their relationship with God, with each other, with themselves, and with creation; the ricochet of the sound of fracturing forever heard in the echo of lightening of the storm clouds threatening doom and in the rumble of their hunger pains.

Conclusion

How do we find stability in the midst of chaos and tumult? Do we really forego peace and comfort until our leaders figure it out? Do we run from each wave? Hide from the wind? I know there’s power finding stability in yourself, but it only lasts for so long. One strong gust or undulation and it topples. No material object can ever offer us the stability we so crave, all of it is of the dust and to dust it will return. There is no job, no amount of money, no home, no relationship secure enough to depend on no matter what. This is what we learned through skepticism: nothing is permanent; so, nothing is permanent. We are all one precarious moment from a free fall.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we navigate all this instability? We must look beyond ourselves and our consumption. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for stability.

Dorothee Sölle writes this in her book, On Earth as in Heaven,

There is a spiritual that begins with the words, ‘Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart….’ When I hear this song, I ask myself when was the last time I felt the Spirit? And I would like to ask you: When was the last time you felt the Spirit move-on what occasion, where, why, when? The song ‘Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart’ awakens my spiritual hunger, the hunger without which we can, of course, vegetate but not live.[8]

Stability will always be found through and in awakened spiritual hunger, spiritual hunger and need for God. Spiritual hunger will bring us back—time and time again—to the age-old story of unconditional love, resurrected life, and present tense liberation.[9] It is here in this particular story where we are met and reminded of a covenant that runs steady, has no boundaries, and can safely carry us to solid ground over and over again.

Right now, I need God. Right now, God is my constant and my stability because God’s story never changes: God in Christ comes low to walk with those who are hungry, those who crave stability and whispers I will never leave you or forsake you, no matter how bad it gets no matter how scared you are, I am with you. It’s here where I’m brought further out of myself and my desperate attempts at false stability to find true stability…with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 16. “Knowledge of good and bad may be a merism, a figure of speech in which polar opposites denote a totality…But knowledge can have an experiential, not only an intellectual, sense in biblical Heb and ‘good and bad’ can mean either ‘weal and woe or ‘moral good and moral evil.’ The forbidden tree offers an experience that is both pleasant and painful; it awakens those who partake of it to the higher knowledge and to the pain that both come with moral choice.”

[2] Levenson, “Genesis”, The Jewish Study Bible, 16. “His question is tricky and does not admit of a yes-or-no answer. The woman, who has never heard the commandment directly (2.16-17), paraphrases it loosely. Why she adds the prohibition on touching the fruit is unclear…”

[3] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 16-17. “Tragically, this praiseworthy act gave the snake his opening. ‘He touched the tree with his hands and his feet, and shook it until its fruits dropped to the ground,’ thus undermining the credibility of God’s entire commandment in the woman’s mind…”

[4] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 17. “The serpent impugns God’s motives, attributing the command to jealousy. Whereas in the first creation account human beings are God-like creatures exercising dominion…here their ambition to be like God or like divine beings is the root of the expulsion from Eden.”

[5] LW 1 147. “For the chief temptation was to listen to another word and to depart from the one which God had previously spoken: that they would die if they ate from it.”

[6] LW 1 105. “This sermon was delivered on the sixth day; and if, as the text indicates, Adam alone heard it, he later on informed Eve of it.”

[7] LW 1 161.

[8] Sölle On Earth 93

[9] Sölle On Earth ix-x.

Posted on February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 by laurenlarkin 5

Up the Mountain and Down Again

Psalm 99:2-4 God is great in Zion; God is high above all peoples. Let them confess God’s Name, which is great and awesome; God is the Holy One. “O mighty [and royal], lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.”

Introduction

Sometimes I wonder how often we include ourselves in the proclamation from the gospel of John: God so loved the world in this way, God sent God’s only son. We completely ignore that we are, have been, and will be invited in to the divine party we eagerly watch from outside, faces pressed against window panes, unable to hear the summons and invitation to the party because of the loud ruckus in our own heads. We can’t imagine hearing the summons and invitation. God loves the world, sure; but, does God love me?

I think we get trapped in our curiosity, wondering why God would love me? I mean, it makes sense that God would love you, you are just loveable. But me? Nah. I’m a huge bag of mess and not quite good enough to be truly and really loved by God. Even if I try to comprehend the idea that maybe God loves me, I will probably justify that potential love with some my productivity: maybe God loves me because I’m special in this way? maybe God loves me because of my talent? because I’m quite good at _______? Or, maybe God loves me because God has to…

Would I ever dare to think that God loves me just cuz? That God desires and wants me… just cuz? Love and desire untethered to a reason, a why, or wherefore. What the mystic Meister Eckhart (the mid 13^th/early 14^th century catholic theologian) calls the sunder warumbe: without a why or wherefore (as translated by Dorothee Sölle). We are hard wired to put justifications and reasons on why we do x and why we do z, because the world demands we justify our actions, our bodies, our being, our existence, and whom we love. But when it comes to love, to desire, to the lover being with the beloved these reasons and justifications fall flat. Love just loves. Love just is. Love loves the beloved (full stop).

Love wants to be with the beloved, close to the beloved, in all the profoundness and banality of the beloved, even when the beloved says silly things out of fear and reverence surrounded by bright light and dense cloud, accompanied by Moses and Elijah and two other disciples. Love goes with us, up the mountain and back down.

Matthew 17:1-9

And behold! Moses appeared to them and Elijah was talking with him. And Peter took up the conversation and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will make here three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah…” Yet, while he was speaking, behold! a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold! a voice out from the cloud saying “This one is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased. You listen to him!”[1]

The story of Jesus’s transfiguration is well known. It’s a powerful story, and Matthew does an excellent job demonstrating the intersection of divine glory and human frailty. The story of Jesus’s transfiguration as told by Matthew might be my favorite example of Peter being wonderfully Peter: totally human. In fact, the flow from chapter 16 to chapter 17 works well. These two chapters demonstrate the variability of Peter’s humanity, from profound insight that is a near mountain-top experience, to being chastised for rebuking Jesus’s prophetic utterances about the trajectory of his ministry that is like an experience of being dropped down the backside of the mountain. So it goes for the one on whom Jesus will build his church: full of both great and not so great moments. Not everything Peter does is infallible—at least not at this point in church history!

In Chapter 17, Peter is one of the three who go with Jesus up the high-mountain, to the heights of the intersection of heaven and earth; maybe Peter wondered if something divine would happen, wasn’t his religious history replete with stories of divine encounter on such mountaintops?[2] The reader probably has more information than Peter does considering that Matthew makes frequent overlapping references between Moses and Jesus,[3] leading the reader to draw the connection between Moses and Jesus’s authority to interpret the law.[4]And even hints that Jesus might even be better than Moses.[5]

But for Peter and his two friends, this is all unfolding before them. As they ascend the mountain, they witness Jesus transfigured by bright light and his clothes radiated the same bright light (Jesus doesn’t change forms, he remains the same Jesus).[6] And as they are taking in Jesus’s divine glowing transfiguration, Moses and Elijah show up! And Elijah is talking with Moses and then… Peter. Peter literally inserts himself, he “took up the conversation” and asks Jesus if he should build some tents. Far from being ridiculous request, it made sense; the glory of God shines about him and two of God’s divine prophets show up and why not make tents? Isn’t that where the glory of God dwells?[7] In tents and tabernacles? And then, just as he took hold of the conversation, God takes it back and declares that this one, Jesus, is God’s son and all should listen to him. Immediately, the event is over. God does not dwell high up on the mountain, but among God’s people; the disciples and Jesus will go back down to proceed with God’s mission of divine love for the beloved; Jesus and the disciples will minister in the valleys and not be secluded up high on the mountain tops.[8]

Peter follows Jesus when he is called; Peter follows Jesus up the mountain; Peter will also follow Jesus down the mountain. [9] But this relationship is not one-sided. Jesus called Peter because Jesus loved Peter; Jesus lifted up Peter when he fell on his face in fear on the mountain top because he loved him; and, Jesus will accompany him down into the valley because he loved him. Be raised up, says Jesus, and be not afraid…because I am with you, now and always, up on the mountain and down low in the valley, and where you go I will go too, now and always.

This event that merely altered Jesus’s appearance ultimately changed Peter inside and out;[10] Peter (and the other disciples with him) come to know that Love goes with them, up the mountain and back down.

Conclusion

Beloved, make note that Jesus did not stay up on the mountain, kicking it with Elijah and Moses. Peter was not able to build those tents, let alone finish his thought before God sent everyone back down. God is known among God’s people, not up high and separated from them. Jesus shows us the love of God by descending the mountain to be with us even if it means he goes to his demise. Yes, there is great glory and affirmation at the top of the mountain, but what would any of it mean if it stayed there? God comes low: in spirit hovering over the darkness, in creative words bursting forth in life and light, in fire and clouds, in the law, through the prophets, and in the love of Christ.

So, beloved, God so loved the world and you! that God came back down the mountain. God so loves you that you are beckoned to ascend the mountain so that you can come back down with Christ and share in the divine summons and mission of spreading love and life in the world to those who are deprived of such love and life. You are so called to be changed by this encounter with God in Christ that you can do nothing else but follow Jesus up the mountain and back down.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2015. 212. “The vision (v. 9) we call the transfiguration takes place on the ‘high mountain’ which has traditionally been associated with revelation and profound religions experience. Symbolically, it is a place where heaven touches earth.”

[3] Case-Winters, Matthew, 212. Tons of overlap with Moses and Jesus in Matthew, “This association is made more prominent in chapter 17 where there are at least seven points of parallel between Jesus in the transfiguration and Moses at Sinai.”

[4] Case-Winters, Matthew, 213. “These multiple associations reinforce identity of Jesus with Moses and affirm Jesus’ role as the authoritative interpreter of the law.”

[5] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. 645. “But this pericope reinforces the perception of the careful reader of ch. 2 that Jesus comes, as Moses did long ago, to fulfill God’s purpose of deliverance for his people. At the same time, he is also clearly marked out as a greater than Moses, both by the heavenly voice which speaks of him alone in terms never used of Moses, and by the fact that Moses and Elijah soon disappear, leaving Jesus alone to carry Out the final act of deliverance.”

[6] France, Matthew, 647. “The visual ‘transformation’ is not so much a physical alteration an added dimension of glory; it is the same Jesus, but now with an awesome brightness ‘like the sun’ and ‘like light.’ Or, one might better say, with the of earthly conditions temporarily stripped away, so that the true nature of God’s ‘beloved Son’ (v. 5) can for once be seen.”

[7] Case-Winters, Matthew, 213. “’There is an association with the tents or tabernacles that housed the ark of the covenant in the wilderness wanderings. God’s presence in the Holy of Holies in the Temple was also identified is the shekinah.”

[8] Case-Winters, Matthew, 214. “Peters proposal, however, is wrong-footed on several counts, as what follows his offer will make clear. There will be no dwelling upon the mountain top in ‘spiritual retreat’ from the world. Jesus and the disciples are very soon thereafter called to come down from the high places and minister in the valley where great need awaits them.”

[9] Case-Winters, Matthew, 215. “In this story the ascent to the heights of the mountain and “peak” experiences of encounter with God is followed by descent into suffering and service in the valley of need where God’s calling beckons. Ascent and descent are inextricably bound for the followers of Jesus. Just as they were for him.”

[10] France, Matthew, 643. “If what happened there provided Jesus himself with reassurance for his coming mission, we are told nothing of this; it is the disciples’ Christological understanding which is being enhanced, and the discussion as they return down the mountain (vv. 10-13) similarly focuses entirely on their grasp of the eschatological timetable.”

Posted on February 19, 2023February 16, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

On Being Salt and Light

Psalm 112: 1, 4-6 1 Hallelujah! Happy are they who fear God and have great delight in God’s commandments! Light shines in the darkness for the upright; the righteous are merciful and full of compassion. It is good for them to be generous in lending and to manage their affairs with justice. For they will never be shaken; the righteous will be kept in everlasting remembrance.

Introduction

Light is important. Very. Especially regarding what you’re drinking. Let me explain:

I get up early, I have since I’ve attempted to overlap having kids and having degrees. That extra 60-90 minutes before littles get up gave me time to have some quiet and some study (and some coffee…LOTS). In order to get up early without being an inconvenience or a disturbance to anyone else, I learned how to do everything in the dark, from getting out of the bedroom and getting into workout clothes. I am one with the darkness.

One morning, when we lived in Louisiana, I woke up with my soft-music alarm, stretched, and sat up. It was four in the morning, and barely any light penetrated my cocoon of darkness. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stretched one more time. Then, I reached over to the large glass of water I prepared the night before, and, in the dark, started drinking like I did every morning. But then…there was a gentle bump against my lip. My sleepy state cruised straight into FULLY AWAKE and, as I lifted the glass to catch the minimal light through the blind from the street, all I could tell was that there was a mass in my water. The self-control I needed in that moment surfaced, and I did not scream. I took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly and then gingerly and quietly rushed to the kitchen. Flipped on all the lights, and there it was: a very, very, very large cockroach floating atop my water. Dead, like Gregor Samsa at the end of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, but not due to starvation but to drowning.

Again, without making a noise, I dealt with the crime scene and quickly returned to schedule as usual.

Light is important. Very.

Matthew 5:13-20

You, you are the light of the cosmos. A city being laid above a hill is not able to be hidden. No one lighting a lamp then places it under a basket but up on the lampstand, and it shines for all those in the house. In this way, let your light shine before people, in order that they may perceive your good works and may glorify your [Abba God] in the heavens.[1] (vv. 14-16)

For Matthew, light is also very important, but for very different reasons than the one I experienced in the midst of the dark, tender moment between me and mi amada cucaracha. Matthew begins this narrative by telling us that Jesus continues his teaching to his disciples—still located among the hills as last week. This time Jesus is talking about salt and light and how both are necessary for the earth and the cosmos—this is how the disciples participate in the divine mission of God in the world.[2] The disciples are to be the salt providing flavor[3] to and preservation of the earth;[4] salt that’s no longer salty is pointless, useless, and tossed out. This isn’t so much about people being rejected unto the furthest reaches of the universe and not so much about being condemned unto damnation. Rather, this is about assimilation to what is, the status-quo, nary making a wave or ruckus, never marching to a different beat, beige among beige. For instance, if the world is filled with injustice and the disciples go along with it, then they are as if they are no longer salty, they aren’t altering the flavor of the world, they aren’t adding dimension to it, they are refusing[5] the full beauty and glory of the earth.[6] If the world is unloving then the salt is the love of God brought by the peddlers of that love, the disciples, those grafted into the great line of prophets.[7]

Then Jesus mentions they’re to be the light. The light is not best used under a basket, hidden from the sight of others. Rather, it is to light up the darkness, cut through the banality of life, illuminate dimness, awaken to alertness, and expose humanity and show us where the very, very, very large insects are. (Because they might just be floating in our water!) Not only does the light emanate outward into the cosmos, but the light also draws in from the cosmos. The city on the hill (playing with the imagery laying out in front of him with the disciples among the hill[8]) will be the city letting their light so shine that others are drawn to it. This light is love and this love is of God. Thus, this is no closed group, sequestered away from humanity,[9] refusing the familiarity of humanity, consumed with their own private righteousness;[10] rather this group is open, having porous boundaries, welcoming those who’ve come from afar to admire the light, to feel the light warm their faces and exhausted bodies, to give them hope, to give them peace, to give them mercy, to give them the very love of Abba God.[11]

In this way the disciples’ righteousness and execution of justice will exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees.[12] Jesus tells the disciples that the law is not going anywhere; it’s here to stay. But it’s not about meeting each of the 613 mitzvot; it’s about God, God’s love, God’s justice in the world, the kingdom of heaven come close to humanity.[13] In other words, Jesus promises fulfillment[14] of the law not by doing it all but by comprehending the deeper meaning of the law, that it entails. This isn’t merely about our obedience to be clean and pure according to the law allowing the law to dethrone God and force humanity to be in service to the law. Rather, Jesus’s promised fulfillment of the law is about putting it in its rightful place in service to people thus bringing glory to God in that it directs the people of God to God, thus to the love of God, thus to the love of the neighbor.[15] In other words, Jesus doesn’t abrogate the law but defines it for the disciples: this is not the law of ritual purity but the law of love.

Conclusion

Salt makes food better and it can even preserve it. Light gives assurance to the step and can even prevent us from consuming that which we shouldn’t. In this moment, we are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. This is our calling, beloved. But this is not our calling because somehow we have to muster up our saltiness or our illuminative parts like fireflies in the middle of a summer night. Rather, our saltiness and our illumination come from our union with God in faith, it comes from our encounter with God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is the fruit of our new life. And this fruit is not for our consumption alone, but to share out in the world with everyone. And this relatedness of our being with others is the principal point of being salt and light…it is for others, for the love of others.

“Love needs the presence and involvement of another being; love cannot exist without the other. Self-sufficiency is a concept of the lonely and unrelated person. To conceive of creation in the framework of unrelatedness is to deprive creation of its most central element—love. Whatever meaning we find in the concept of creation, in a creator, and in our having been created hinges on love. The concept of creation is rendered empty and meaningless if it is not out of love that God created the world.”[16]
Dorothee Sölle

You, beloved, are the salt and the light because you are the beloved, the ones who are so radically loved by the creator of the cosmos—the one who flung all the great lights into the night sky and nestled each grain of that savory mineral among water and rocks. And because you have been so loved by such a One, you get to partake in this sharing of salt and light on the earth and within the cosmos by sharing that divine love with others here, and outside these walls. And, maybe, especially with those outside of these walls. Let us so share our salt and light with the world, bringing to the world the love of Abba God, saying to those whom we meet, “O taste and see that [God] is good; happy are those who take refuge in [God]” (Ps 34:8).

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2015. 78-79. “It is prefaced with ‘salt and light’ sayings addressed to the disciples in a way that points them toward their mission in the world. Neither salt nor light exists tor its own sake. The salt needs to stay salty to fulfill its function and the light needs to be lifted up to give light. These metaphors imply a turning outward toward mission in the world.”

[3] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 94. “ADAN: ‘It seems to me it’s because every meal should have salt. A meal without salt has no taste. We must give taste to the world.’”

[4] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. 174. “The two most significant uses of salt in the ancient world were for flavoring and for the preservation of food, and either or both of those uses would provide an appropriate sense here: the disciples are to provide flavor to the world they live in (perhaps with the thought of salt as wisdom, as in Col 4:6 and in some rabbinic sayings), and/or they are to help to prevent its corruption. The two ideas are not incompatible; disciples are to make the world a better place.”

[5] France, Matthew, 173. “Sir 39:26 lists salt as one of the essentials for human life; cf. Sop. 15:8, ‘The world cannot endure without salt.’ Disciples are no less essential to the well-being of “the earth,” which here refers to human life in general.”

[6] Cardenal, Solentiname, 94. “JULIO: ‘By liberating it. Because a world filled with injustice is tasteless. Mainly for the poor, life like that has no taste.’” And “OLIVIA: ‘It seems to me that the salt has got lost when instead of preserving justice on earth, Christians have let injustice multiply more… We Christians wanted to prevent that, but we haven’t. Instead, Christians have sided with injustice, with capitalism. We have sided with selfishness. We have been a useless salt.’” And “FELIPE: ‘Christianity that stopped being Christian, that’s the salt that doesn’t salt any more.’”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 95. “MARCELINO: ‘I think that ‘salt’ is the Gospel word given to us so that we’ll practicing love, so that everybody will have it. Because salt is a thing that you never deny to anybody. When somebody is very stingy they say that he wouldn’t give you salt for a sour prune. That’s why Jesus says have salt, which means to have love shared out among everybody, and so we’ll have everything shared out, we’ll all be equal and we’ll live united and in peace.’”

[8] France, Matthew, 175. “Here the light which Jesus brings is also provided by his disciples, who will soon be commissioned to share in his ministry of proclamation and deliverance. Cf. the mission of God’s servant to be ‘a light to the nations’ (Isa 42:6; 49:6). The world needs that light, and it is through the disciples that it must be made visible. The world (kosmos; not the “earth,” gē, as in v. 13) again refers to the world of people, as the application in v. 16 makes clear; cf. the call to Christians to shine in the kosmos (Phil 2:15).”

[9] Case-Winters, Matthew, 79. “In passing, the illustration of a city set on a hill is also employed. The community of disciples cannot be a closed community, an ‘introverted secret society shielding itself from the world.’ Its witness Is public.”

[10] France, Matthew, 176. “The metaphor thus suited a variety of applications, but here the context indicates that it is about the effect which the life of disciples must have on those around them. It thus takes for granted that the ‘job description’ of a disciple is not fulfilled by private personal holiness, but includes the witness of public exposure.”

[11] France, Matthew, 177. “It is only as is distinctive lifestyle is visible to others that it can have its desired effect. But that effect is also now spelled out not as the improvement and enlightenment of society as such, but rather as the glorifying of God by those outside the disciple community. The subject of this discourse, and the aim of the discipleship which it promotes, is not so much the betterment of life on earth as implementation of the reign of God. The goal of disciples’ witness is not that others emulate their way of life. or applaud their probity, but that they recognize the source of their distinctive lifestyle in ‘Your Father in heaven.’”

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

[13] Case-Winters, Matthew, 80. “There is a balance of Jesus’ obligation to the law and the prophets and his authority to interpret their weightier matters. The commandments of the Torah are not all of the same weight. Jesus argues later that love and compassion for the neighbor outweighs matters such as cultic observance (12:1-14; 22:40). He chides the scribes and Pharisees because they ‘tithe the mint, dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith.’ Jesus’ own life is an exemplar of attending to the weightier matters.”

[14] France, Matthew, 182. “In the light of Matthew’s use of this verb elsewhere, and the evident importance it has for his understanding of the relation between the authoritative words of the OT and their contemporary outworking, the sense here is not likely to be concerned either with Jesus’ actions in relation to the law or even his teaching about it, but rather the way in which he ‘fulfills’ the pattern laid down in the law and the prophets.”

[15] France, Matthew, 183. “In the light of that concept, and of the general sense of ‘fulfill’ in Matthew, we might then paraphrase Jesus’ words here as follows: ‘Far from wanting to set aside the law and the prophets, it is my role to bring into being that to which they have pointed forward, to carry them into a new era of fulfillment.’ On this understanding the authority of the law and the prophets is not abol1shed. They remain the authoritative word of God. But their role will no longer be the same, now that what they pointed forward to has come, and it will be for Jesus’ followers to discern in the light of his teaching and practice what is now the right way to apply those texts in the new situation which his coming has created. From now on it will be the authoritative teaching of Jesus which must govern his disciples’ understanding and practical application of the law.”

[16] Dorothee Sölle To Work and To Love: A Theology of Creation with Shirley A. Cloyes. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984. 16

Posted on February 5, 2023February 2, 2023 by laurenlarkin 0

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