Tag: God’s Revolution

Hearts Cleansed First

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Christians! Grow! Become AS Christ!

Psalm 51:11-13 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy Spirit from me. Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.

Introduction

Ephesians 1 called believers to remember the work of Christ as God’s word in the world. In remembering, we find Christ with us and this presence is the source of our hope. Remembering and hope then become the ground upon which we kneel and pray, giving space and time for the divine Spirit in us (the deposit and guarantor of our faith) to mold our will to the will of God moving us as participatants in God’s mission in the world made known to us in remembering Christ: bringing the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation to the beloved.

Ephesians 2 exhorted believers toward wholeness: wholeness with God, with the neighbor, and with the self by pressing into Christ’s destruction of the division-wall of the fence, the eradication of enmity, and the lessening the bite of the law as a means to creating in-groups and out-groups. This destruction, eradication, and lessening brings people of various stripes and types, walks and talks, lives and vibes together: together with God, with each other, and with themselves; this is the source of peace Christ brings to those who follow him.

Ephesians 3 encouraged believers to grow and grow! in the knowledge of God’s profound love. The believer is always growing and bringing the outer person in line with the inner person. Thus, the idea of getting to a fixed point where the believer thinks they know everything is eliminated as Ephesians leans to the reality that the believer—individually and communally—will always be in a posture of learning about God’s love made tangible in Christ because the Spirit revealing God’s self to the believers anew through remembering Christ. This process prepares and causes Christians to grow into the able partners of God.

Now the text moves from theologically infused doxological statements creating the groundwork of the believer’s life in Christ with the neighbor to the glory of God. In Ephesians 4, we turn toward the natural outpouring of faith eagerly working itself out in love toward the neighbor. Love is not only the bedrock but is the very power that motivates us and that desires to be born from us as we are born from Love.

Ephesians 4:1-16

Therefore, I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to conduct yourself in manner worthy of the vocation into which you were summoned, with all humility and gentleness, with forbearance enduring with one another in love, hastening to guard the unity of the Spirit in the peace that binds together…speaking truth in love, we might grow in every way into him, who is the head, Christ, out of whom the entire body is being fit and brought together thru every joint of the support according to the proper activity of each part causing the growth of its body for the purpose of building itself up in love. (Eph 4:1-3, 16)*

Here in Ephesians, the content swings from doxological to ethical; for the author of Ephesians, to praise God results in right Christian work[1] in the world that is (also![2]) doxological, bringing the praise of God to the lips of those encountered by the loving hands and feet of the believers.[3] The therefore and then Paul’s I, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to conduct yourself in manner worthy of the vocation into which you were summoned, provides the hinge transitioning into the ethical portion of this doxological letter. How are the Ephesians to conduct themselves? What is the worthy manner of their vocation as priests in the world? The author begs them to act with humility and gentleness, and to act with forbearance [by] enduring with one another in love. To act with humility and gentleness is, like Christ, to shrug off that which is privilege and power in the kingdom of humanity and to become as and like our neighbor in the reign of God like Christ did (ref. Phil 2).[4] And this “shrugging off” is the ground of the forbearance that is suffering with one another in love.

According to Ephesians, the believer is to identify so deeply with their neighbor that the neighbor’s problems become their problems; here, the believer cannot ignore the neighbor as if the neighbor’s well-being has no impact or import to the believer’s well-being. Rather, the believer shrugs off their own comfort, their own power, their own privilege, shrugs off their own self[5] as privatized and prioritized over the neighbor.[6] Ephesians puts the believer on the hook: to be as Christ in the world, to humble themselves, to choose to be gentle, to bear the burdens of human existence, to step in and under the trials and tribulations and refusing to let the neighbor go, to grab their hand and whisper, I will not leave you or forsake you. This, according to Ephesians, is the answer to the what now? of the season of Pentecost: we are to bring the love of Christ[7] deep into the world. And to do this, according to Ephesians, is how they will know we are Christians by our love—the unequivocal love that is our foundation of our mutuality, equity, and union with our neighbor,[8] the essence of divine peace within our lives, the substance of our life together, the marrow of our actions, and the air we breathe in and out.[9]

For we are, according to Ephesians, one body, one spirit, just as also you were summoned in one hope of your vocation; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and parent of all people… The church is one historically in remembering Christ, one currently by being in the presence of Christ through the proclamation of the Word of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and always will be one because the source of this unity is God who is before all people and through all people and in all people. In other words, the foundation and source of the church—yesterday-today-tomorrow—is always God.[10] And God is (also!) the source and foundation of our mutual love, union, and our equity among each other because we are each recipient of God’s grace given according to the measure of the free gift of Christ.

Because Christ was given to the whole cosmos (Jn 3:16) none of us can claim to have more grace than another person and none of us can try to obtain more because the divine gift of Christ is free.[11] We are all, each of us, under the headship of Christ. According to Ephesians, we are not under any human person holding authority in the kingdom of humanity, but under the divine leadership of God made known in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this church/“institution” must run differently, not like the kingdom of humanity, by lording over others assumed authority but by pressing into the omnipresent divine equity of the reign of God.[12] We may all have different vocations within this communal vocation to be priests in the world to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor (v. 11)); yet, this doesn’t indicate, according to Ephesians, a hierarchy of human beings within the body of Christ (v. 12).[13]

According to the inner logic of Ephesians, these vocations within the divine vocation to the community of believers functions in two ways: 1. assisting the body of Christ to grow into maturity[14] in the love of Christ to be as Christ in the world,[15] and 2. causing the body of Christ to grow away from being held captive like infants by the blusterous and empty yet attractive doctrine of the kingdom of humanity oriented toward deceiving and misleading(vv. 13-14). Thus, through faithful teachers and preachers and ministers[16] who speak the truth in love, so then does the entire congregation confess and live rightly into their vocation to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor.[17] The whole congregation—the entire body is being fit and brought together thru every joint … according to the proper activity of each part—is charged as a “personal partner”[18] of Christ to confess Christ not just within the unique gathering, but into the world by loving acts in word and deed.[19] According to Paul, this confession by each believer causes the growth of its body for the purpose of building itself up in love.[20]

Conclusion

Beloved, we are exhorted and begged through the words of Ephesians to grow…to grow up! [21] For the love of God, to the glory of God, and for the well-being of our neighbors, we are to grow up and be(come) the body of Christ in the world, bearing into the world by acts of love that which has been born in us through faith. As those summoned to be formed by, to live into, and to participate in God’s good will made known in Christ and deposited in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to live in humility and gentleness. We are not to be prideful about our own faith and lives as if we are superior to our neighbor. We are not to act cruelly by forcing others to conform to our ideology/ies. We are exhorted to bear the burdens of our neighbor, not turn a blind eye because we have ours as if that’s all that matters. We are to dare to live radically by adhering to divine inspired equity among humanity, willingly stepping into the voids created between groups by the kingdom of humanity to call into reality the possibility of the reign of God. We are to be the socio-political wild cards, like Christ, ready at any moment to do what it takes to bring God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation deeper into the cosmos.

*Translation mine and v. 16 with the help of my Greek professor, Ann Castro ❤

[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 131. “Ethics is fundamentally a response to God.”

[2] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 132-133. “In Ephesians… ‘therefore’ signals a link, not just a transition. It is a moral theology in the first three chapters, announcing the ‘immeasurable greatness of God’s power’…, attentive to the grace and the cause of God, but always already with an eye toward the implications of the gospel for the lives of Christians and the common life of the churches. And it is a theological morality in the last three chapters, announcing the gospel now in the imperative mood, attentive to the sort of conduct, character, and the community that are empowered and required by God’s grace and cause.”

[3] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 426. “Moral indoctrination therefore appears to be derived from dogmatic doctrine. However, the content of Eph 1-3 is doxological rather than dogmatic. The direct connection of the ethical chapters 4-6 with the praise of God rather than with a doctrine of God is a specific feature of Ephesians.”

[4] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 138. “This community maintains and performs this unity when the members of the community practice ‘humility and gentleness [and] patience, bearing with one another in love’ (4:2). These are virtues for living in community with those who are different from you. These are virtues to make and maintain community of peaceable difference” peace like dividing wall down peace.

[5] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 157. “The unity of the church does not require an oppressive uniformity. It requires self-giving love and peaceable difference. That is the way and the will of triune God, the ‘one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all’ (4:6). The unity of the church includes diverse people and it is nurtured and sustained by a diversity of gifts.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 427-428. “If to love includes bearing one’s neighbor, then love is not just an emotion or ideal of the individual soul; rather the personalities of specific neighbors and personal relations actually existing among the saints become the field and material of love. According to this passage there is no love except in relation to specific neighbors. Love is not a disposition of the soul which can be perfect in itself, without being given and shaped in ever new concrete encounters. It is always specific. Always costly, always a miraculous event.”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 427. “The ‘love’ mentioned here is probably the brotherly love among the saints which bears testimony to God’s and Christ’s love.”

[8] Barth, Ephesians, 461. “‘Love’ needs the neighbor and is dependent upon him. The neighbor—even the one who is a burden and whose character and behavior prove cumbersome—is much more than just an occasion or test of love. He is its very material. Love is not an abstract substance or mood that can be present in a man’s heart even when there are no other sin sight and no confrontations are taking place. It does not exist in a vacuum, in abstracto, in detachment from involvement in other men’s lives. Rather it is a question of being surprised by a neighbor, accepting him, going out to him, and seeking solidarity and unity just with him even if this should mean temporary neglect of, or estrangement from, others.”

[9] Barth, Ephesians, 427. “The gracious election of the Jewish and Gentile neighbor is the presupposition, the unshakable ground, and the undying source of the saints’ mutual love. The love that rules among them is the necessary and indispensable result of God’s care for them. It is the essence of the ‘good works’ created for them, and the ground on which they are to walk…”

[10] Barth, Ephesians, 429. “The unity of the church is …. Not constituted by something underneath or inside the church or her several members. Rather it is eschatological: the reason for the church’s hope for unity, and for her commitment to unity, is ‘deposited in heaven’ (Col 1:5). Not the attainment to unity, but the guarantee of that attainment is, in the best interest of the church preserved at a place ‘out of this world.’”

[11] Barth, Ephesians, 435-436. “By providing for all saints equally, God constitutes the unity of the church. No one member possesses anything that is not given to the whole body of Christ. It is impossible for any group inside the church to claim an extra gift from the exalted Messiah.”

[12] Barth, Ephesians, 481. “…the task of the special ministers mentioned in Eph 4:11 is to be servants in that ministry which is entrusted to the whole church. Their place is not above but below the great number of saints who are not adorned by resounding titles. Every one of the special ministers is a servus servorum Dei. He is a ‘pastor’ of God’s flock who understands himself as a minister to ministers.”

[13] Barth, Ephesians, 435. “God appoints Christ to be head over church and world…; the exalted Christ will fill all, and he appoints ministers to the church… That is all!”

[14] Barth, Ephesians, 443. “The heretical teachers are bluntly accused of bad intentions. All the more do unstable and immature saints need teachers who can lead them out of error and toward solid knowledge of the truth.”

[15] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 168. “The church is Christ’s body, filled with Christ. And the church must grow into that body, ‘to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ By the grace and power and blessing of God, the church is and is called to be an agent in blessing God in words and lives of doxology, in service to God’s cause by its proclamation and its display of ta new humanity ‘to the praise of God’s glory.’ That is the final and climactic purpose of the one gift of grace God gave to the church (4:7), of the leaders Christ gave to the church, and of the many diverse gifts of the saints.”

[16] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 169. “We need teachers and leaders who hold tight to the confession of the unity creed, who hold tight to ‘the faith and knowledge of the Son of God,’ who proclaim a gospel of peaceable difference and hold us to it. Those who would divide, who would boast about some little truth they think they know well or some little good that they think they do well, and who for the sake of that little truth or that little good undercut the unity and peace that God intends, are less than faithful leaders and teachers. They are to be regarded as crafty and deceitful schemers (4:14). Our lives and our common life must be shaped by the truth o this one body, one Spirit, on hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. Instead of using speech as a weapon against other Christians, instead of engaging in deceit or speaking in ways that destroy the unity of the body, we are to ‘speak the truth in love’ (4:15)…”

[17] Barth, Ephesians, 444. v. 15 “The passage calls for the right confession, and it urges the whole church and all its members to be a confessing church.”

[18] Barth, Ephesians, 450. “The church is a personal partner…rather than an impersonal outgrowth or extension of Christ.”

[19] Barth, Ephesians, 444. “The truth entrusted to the congregation is the truth of all-conquering love. Where there is no love, the truth revealed by God is denied. Equally, without ‘truth’ there may well be a ‘conspiracy’ that aims to subjugate men to human “opinions’ (Calvin), but no solid unity and community.”

[20] Barth, Ephesians, 449. “Most likely the apostle intends to say that tin their mutual dependence and communication all church members are chosen tools of the head for communicating nourishment, vitality, unity, solidity to the body (or building) as a whole. The weakest member or part is in this case as essential to the life and unity of the whole as the strongest.”

[21] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 176. “Live a common life worthy of God’s grace and gift, worthy of God’s promise and plan. Grow up! Build a body fitting to Christ as the head! Love one another!”

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A Community that Remembers

Psalm 24:1-2 The earth is Abba God’s and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein. For it is God who founded it upon the seas and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

Introduction

Throughout our study of 2 Corinthians, we juggled the twin questions: “What now?” and “Will they?” What do we do now that we are in the world but not of the world, breakable creatures carrying God’s Spirit and message, charged with carrying on the mission of God in the world: the advancement of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation made incarnate in Christ and the wellbeing and benefit of the neighbor to the glory of God. Without Christ to guide the disciples, the disciples are left to figure it out by the leading of the Spirit.

We saw that Paul, in 2 Corinthians, gave us ample direction to discover that the “What now?” and “Will they?” is never answered once for all, but brought to the disciples of Christ anew every season, and that in each season the disciples of Christ must depend fully on God, cling to God’s word made known in Christ, and to follow—eyes wide open—the leading of God’s Spirit residing in their hearts and guiding their minds toward God’s wisdom and discernment in the world, impassioned with God’s passion to bring love, life, and liberation to the whole world—participation in the mission of God by faith working itself out in freedom and responsibility.

Paul seemed to leave us, though, with the reality that the Christian journey and Christian life is as hard as easy, as sorrowful as joyous, as thorn-filled as rose-filled. It is certain that as Christians who follow God, God’s Word, and God’s Spirit, we will have great existential anguish as much as we will have great existential excitement; both states are part of the Christian life in the world that is not of the world. Paul left us in the world dependent on God as we walk.

If Paul left us on earth in 2 Corinthians 12; Ephesians launches us into that third heaven Paul referenced. It is through remembrance, hope, and prayer that we, those dependent on God, continue to move through the world bringing God’s love to our neighbor and our neighbor to a loving God.

Ephesians 1:3-14

Bless God, the parent of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blesses us in Christ in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, just as God selected us in Christ before the conception of the cosmos to live holy and righteous before God in love, foreordaining us to adoption through Jesus Christ toward God according to the favorable favor of the will of God … (Eph. 1:3-6)[1]

Verses three to fourteen form one long sentence packed full of adoration, gratitude, praise, prayer, and doctrine. One of the most striking things, though, is the way this passage starts with humans blessing God. While some may feel compelled to shun this idea—preferring that it is God who blesses us so to keep God active and not passive[2]—the idea that we can bless God isn’t that foreign to our theology and prayer life. Take for example “The Lord’s Prayer” and the petition, let your name be made sacred. Isn’t God’s name already sacred? Yet the petition implies a capacity on our part to act in such a way that God’s name is praised and made holy. Thus, the idea that we bless God isn’t farfetched but makes sense: we have been made by God to be in the world and to bring God the glory God deserves through our love of God which is love of our neighbor. In other words, we are the “free otherness” from God who can return the blessing and bless God who blesses us.[3] The relationship with God by faith in Christ and the power of the Spirit is one where both the Lover and the Beloved are mutually dependent and mutually responsible.[4] God loves us, and we love God; God keeps us warm, and we keep God warm; God protects us, and we protect God.[5]

The author then moves to speak of our being blessed in every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly sphere, and of our selection in Christ from the laying-down of the cosmos. All of it oriented toward holy and blameless living before God that is characterized by love. This living is at once in the temporal realm and in the spiritual realm.[6] Human being and human love, according to Ephesians, is born of God’s love to go farther into the world to bring light where there is darkness, life where there is death, liberation where there is captivity, and love where there is indifference.[7] The believer is caught up into the cosmic battle between the creation that is of the reign of God and the destruction that is of the kingdom of humanity; it is the believer who is “enlisted” to be the epicenter of spiritual and temporal activity, at once the one who is adopted through Christ toward God, according to the good pleasure of the will of God and the breakable vessel, summoned out of the mud and dust.

It is these adopted of God and summoned from the dust and mud who are also endowed with God’s grace, the ones who have been loved, the recipients of liberation and forgiveness of false-steps, and,thus, recipientsof divine wisdom working out in human prudence.[8] It is these who are enlisted to act in the world to the glory of God by God’s will and leading (by the Holy Spirit), those who are charged to carry forward God’s Word (incarnated in Christ), and to participate in the continuation of God’s mission in the world to gather up all things in Christ, the things upon the heavens and the things upon the earth, those who were given a share foreordained according to the purpose of the one who is operative in all things according to the will of God. It is these identity markers of the beloved of God in Christ who are given a reason to hope because what we see in the world isn’t all there is. As the forces of the kingdom of humanity threaten death and destruction in the temporal realm, those who believe know that there is another realm—the spiritual realm—surging alongside, eager to make itself known through those who walk with the Spirit in Christ before God, who have heard the word of truth, the good news of salvation, and those who have eyes to see that there is more here than meets the eye because they have been sealed to the Holy Spirit of promise who is the security of our inheritance of liberation to praise of the glory of God.[9]

Conclusion

The author of the letter of Ephesians wants the community to remember. Remembering is key because it is in remembering together where we hold the presence of one absent among us as if they are still present. Though Christ is gone from us, Christ is present among us and among us with those who suffer as we remember him through proclamation and through remembering that the gift of the Holy Spirit to us (individually and corporately) is “security” that what has been started by God in Christ is not yet finished and that God will show up because God has promised to do so and God’s promises do not fall flat. God is not done with God’s world because God’s people still remember, and by remembering they (re)turn their gaze to God in the present thus to the future. Herein is the good hope of something different that will bring the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation farther into the world, and, ultimately, to is consummation in Christ’s return.[10]

And we do all of it through our dependence on God realized through our prayers—corporate[11] and individual. We do not go it alone. This letter to the Ephesians is an invitation to pray, to pray with our whole selves.[12] Prayer is the groundwork of the union with God that leads to the outpouring of divine love, liberation, and life for the neighbor in the world. Prayer solicits a self-awareness needed by God and the self-needing God and needing God to speak. It is in prayer where the believer is not only reoriented to God and thus to themself, but also where they are brought close to their neighbor. Prayer also participates in new language for the believer in the world where the believer represents the neighbor to God in words articulating the septic, antiquatedness of the kingdom of humanity. But prayer does not resign the believer to non-activity as if it is the final act in the face of trouble; it is the starting point. Prayer is how the believer unites with God and God’s passion for life, love, and liberation.[13] It is the bold request for God to enter in, to act; in prayer God is spoken to and from, in prayer God is remembered, so, too, the neighbor.[14]

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 43. Blessing God “…seems to make God the recipient of blessing rather than the source of all blessing It seems to render God passive.”

[3] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 43. “But this mysterious ‘passivity’ of God is precisely the nuance we should not neglect. By a powerful and creative word God created the universe and all that is in it, by God’s constant care God sustains it, and by God’s grace God redeems it. God is agent, active. But God creates, sustains and redeems the creation into a fertile and free otherness from God. God gives God’s creatures their own distinctive powers and upholds those powers, concurring in their own works not rendering the creation passive but active in God’s own project.”

[4] Cf Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative.

[5] Dorothee Sölle, “Laudation from Dorothee Sölle for Carola Moosbach, June 2, 2000, “When it is related to the children: God loves you, God protects you, God warms you, I completely agree with it. But just as important is it to say to them: God is in need of you, you can warm God. Sometimes, it is also cold here to God.

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 102. “‘Spiritual blessing,’…does not mean a timeless, otherworldly, abstract blessing. Rather it describes changes effected upon and among people of flesh and blood. It means a history, that is, decisions, actions, testimonies, suffering which have been set in motion and are as yet unfinished.”

[7] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. Heavenlies “It is the mysterious and unseen realm above and behind this world. It is not another world, a different world, unconnected with this one. It is the realm at once of God, who creates and sustains this world, and of the ‘spiritual forces of evil’ (6:12), who are at work in this world to destroy it. It is the realm of a cosmic conflict. On the one side are God and his Christ; on the other are the principalities and powers who would usurp God’s rule. That cosmic conflict is that battle for sovereignty in this world, not some other one. It is the very cosmic conflict in which Christians find themselves enlisted (6:12).”

[8] Barth, Markus, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1-3, The Anchor Bible Series (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), 85. “The wise man knows how and when to speak; he gives good counsel; he lives up to his gifts; his actions make sense and are successful. For this reason the conjunction ‘and’ between ‘wisdom’ and ‘prudence’ is to be understood as expository. Paul speaks of that wisdom which is operating in prudence.”

[9] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 45. “The decisive battle has been fought and won in this conflict, fought and won in this world, when God raise Jesus form the dead. The powers of death and doom had done their damnedest, but God raised Jesus up and set him at his right hand ‘in the heavenly places’ (1:20).”

[10] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 47. “Remembrance has brought us to this point. It is because this community remembers Christ that it also hopes. It hopes for the good future of God, which is the good future for God’s creation, for ‘all things.’ This good future is our ‘inheritance’ in Christ (1:11), and the Spirit is the ‘pledge,’ the earnest, of that inheritance (1:14), the firstfruits of God’s good pleasure.”

[11] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians sets its talk of God and its instructions concerning the common life in the context of prayer.”

[12] Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, 49. “Ephesians invites us to pray. Much of the first three chapters is prayer.”

[13] See Sölle, Choosing Life, pp. 92-93

[14] This paragraph is taken from, Lauren R.E. Larkin, “Leaving Heaven Behind: Paradoxical Identity as the Anchor of Dorothee Sölle’s Theology of Political Resistance,” PhD Dissertation (University of Aberdeen, 2024), 202.

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Walking by Faith

Psalm 20:1-2, 7 May Abba God answer you in the day of trouble, the Name of the God of Jacob defend you; send you help from God’s holy place and strengthen you out of Zion; Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will call upon the Name of our Abba God.

Introduction

“What now?” is the controlling question for this season of Pentecost. Paul is our faithful guide to answer this question. We’ve seen Paul exhort the Corinthians toward full dependence on God: dependence on the presence of God in the incarnate word of God and the indwelling of the Spirit of God. In whom does the Spirit of God indwell? The believers, the simple, inexpensive, breakable vessels. God trusts these “jars of clay” with God’s most precious treasure: God’s Word, the Proclamation of Christ, the bringing of God’s love, life, and liberation (in word and deed) to the beloved.

Last week we added another question to consider: “Will they?” Will those human beings deprived of God’s love, life, and liberation know we are Christians by our love? Paul moved his Corinthians—and us—toward the reality that these breakable vessels carrying God’s treasure are the epicenter of the comingling of the spiritual and temporal realms, through whom and with whom God works out God’s mission and divine revolution. This means that we must fix our gaze on that which cannot be perceived because it will never disappoint because it will never pass away. To fix our gaze on that which can be perceived will always disappoint because it will always pass away. And, For Paul, faith leads to acting/speaking into the kingdom of humanity the things that participate in the reign of God and in God’s mission and revolution of love, life, and liberation for the unloved, nearly dying, and the captive. “We, we believe, therefore we, we speak”; and we, we see, so we act. It is the Holy Spirit inspired believer who is the one who has eyes so fixed on that which cannot be perceived that they can also see that what can be perceived—within the temporal realm—fails the neighbor and hinders God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation from reaching them; and in seeing, they act/speak to open up the divine floodgates letting love, life, and liberation flow like water to the parched.

But that’s not all…there’s more to navigate in the collision of the temporal and spiritual realms.

2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17

For the love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one died on behalf of all people therefore, all people died. And he died on behalf of all people so that the one who lives might no longer live for themselves but for the one who died on behalf of all people and the one who was raised. So then, from now on we, we have perceived and continue to perceive no one according to the flesh. … So then, if anyone [is] in Christ, [they are a] new creation! The old things passed away; behold! [everything] has become new! (2 Cor. 5:14-16a, 17)

Paul begins by tightening the tension of the spiritual and temporal realities for the believer: being confident at all times because we perceive while we are at home in the body we are away from home with the Lord—we walk by faith and not by visible form—we are confident and would rather be away from home in the body and be at home with the Lord (vv. 6-8). None of this is pitting the body (the σῶμα) against the spirit (the πνεῦμα).[1]  And, none of this denies that Christ is in the believer and the believer is in Christ by the presence of the Spirit.[2] What is happening is this: there’s an emphasis on walking by faith and not by visible forms. As we are here in the body, we are not able to walk bodily with Christ so we must (for now) walk in Christ by walking in both the spiritual and temporal realm.[3] In other words, as a whole person (spirit and body) we have one foot in the spiritual realm and one foot in the temporal realm while knowing all that we see is not all that there is; this means being caught up in and confronted by both the divine pathos and human antipathy perceiving what should be and what is not.[4],[5]

So, v. 9’s exhortation makes sense:[6] Therefore we eagerly strive –whether being at home or being away from home—to be well pleasing to Christ! In other words, this tension and paradox of earthly, Christian existence doesn’t mean Paul should check-out, rather it means he should really check-in because while Paul is not bodily with Christ he is with Christ by faith and Christ is with him; where Paul goes, there Christ goes, too.[7] Thus, Paul will expend himself, lose everything on behalf of the divine word of Christ and the divine deeds of love for the captives.[8] Paul will strive to do well in the mortal body so to appear before the tribunal of Christ and may receive back what has been lost because of what was accomplished—whether good or bad—in/by the body. This is not about heaven or hell, but about assessing works and their recompense; it’s about reward not status.[9] I’m placing emphasis in this thought on the verb translated as “may receive back what has been lost.” This verb highlights that what was lost bodily while participating in God’s mission and identifying with the beloved of God (the captive, the one fighting for their life and love in the world) will be paid back. I could say it another way: it is the one who picks up their cross to follow Christ who will find their life. What goes out and into the world on behalf of the neighbor, comes back when standing face to face with Christ.

Then, Paul focuses on Christ: one’s love for Christ and Christ’s love for all people[10] which motivates Christian activity in the world.[11] For the love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one died on behalf of all people’ therefore, all people died.  It is the love of Christ shown through the cross that solicits the believer’s identification with Christ. Thus, as Christ’s death exposes the believer for who they are (sinner) the exposed one dies as Christ died.[12] Yet, it’s not only about identifying with Christ’s death, but also identifying with whom Christ identified: the oppressed, the hungry, the suffering, the sorrowful, the state disgraced and disenfranchised,[13] And he died on behalf of all people so that the one who live might no longer live for themselves but for the one who died on behalf of all people and the one who was raised. To follow Christ means to live and die as Christ did for the beloved of God—spiritually and temporally if necessary.

But not just identifying with Christ’s death but with Christ’s resurrected life and being recreated by faith. Thus, Paul can say, So then, from now on we, we have perceived and continue to perceive no one according to the flesh. … if anyone [is] in Christ, [they are a] new creation! The old things passed away; behold! [everything] has become new! The liberation of the believer by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is liberation into and for the well-being of the world, the neighbor, especially for those who are fighting to live, to love, to be liberated and all of it to the glory of God.[14] This recreation demands a change of address; the believer may live in the kingdom of humanity but her address is of the reign of God.[15] Thus, she has no excuse here according to Paul: not only does she walk by faith, she operates in the world by faith, refusing to judge anyone according to the flesh.[16],[17] She is a totally new creation, seeing the world differently, operating in the world differently, speaking into the world differently finding the source of her motivation in the word of God to the Glory of God.[18]

Conclusion

Christ came into the world not for Christ’s self, but for the world, for the beloved, for the neighbor, for you. And as those who have been adopted into God by faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit—living in, with, and among you—you are now grafted into and solicited to participate in God’s mission and revolution in the world to make this world better, to arrest if from the hands of those who are dead set on destroying it for their own gain, power, and ego. To walk by faith is to see by faith and if to see by faith, to speak by faith, act by faith, and to do it all as breakable vessels fully dependent on God carrying the valuable treasure of God’s love, life, and liberation within ourselves. To walk by faith is to walk with one foot always in the temporal realm and one foot in the spiritual realm, to be aware that you are, by faith, the epicenter of human and divine activity in the world to the glory of God and the well-being of the neighbor.

(This does not mean creating a calcified and static Christian nation-state, because the spiritual realm and the temporal realm can never be one and the same realm this side of Christ’s coming again; they always exist distinctly and alongside each other. The spiritual realm and its believers—whoever they are—are always there to highlight how the kingdoms of humanity fail not only other human beings but also God’s mission and revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world. Every day believers are new creations, letting that which is no longer helpful to human and cosmic thriving to slip away and, like midwives, ushering in that which is helpful to human and cosmic thriving. Thus, the believer must always liberated from the temporal realm by the spiritual realm by faith and by being a new creature everyday we can see that where there is not love we must bring love, where there is not life we must bring life, where there is not liberation we must bring liberation.)

[1] Harris, Second Corinthians, 395. “Paul has in mind the physical body as the locus of human existence on earth, the frail and mortal σῶμα ψυχικόν. His thought here is neither dualistic…nor derogatory…He is affirming that to be living on earth in a physical body inevitably means distance—indeed exile—from the risen Lord, who lives in heaven in a spiritual body.”

[2] Harris, Second Corinthians, 397-398. “The separation, Paul answers, is relative not absolute: though absent from sight, the Lord is present to faith, yet it is not until he is present also to sight that Christian existence will reach its true goal of consummated fellowship with him.”

[3] Harris, Second Corinthians, 396. “To be ἐν Χριστῷ does not yet mean to be σὺν Χριστῷ (Phil. 1:23). Unlike Christ, Paul had his residence on earth, not heaven, but he recognized that his true home, his ultimate residence, was πρὸς τὸν κύριον (v.8); in this sense he was an exile, absent from his home with the Lord…And if an exile, also a pilgrim (cf. περιπατοῦμεν, v.7). But as well as regarding his separation from Christ as ‘spatial,’ Paul may he viewed it as ‘somatic.’ It is not simply a case of Christ’s being ‘there’ and Christians’ being ‘here’; until Christians have doffed their earthly bodies and donned their heavenly, they are separated from their Lord by the difference between two modes of being, the σῶμα ψυχικόν and the σῶμα πνευματικόν.”

[4] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “…to lead a life of faith is to see only baffling, mirrored reflections of reality and to have incomplete knowledge…”

[5] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “…living in the realm of faith is indistinguishable from hoping for what is still unseen…”

[6] Harris, Second Corinthians, 404. “Paul’s constant ambition to know Christ’s approval (v. 9) was the direct consequence or obvious corollary of his awareness that death would terminate his absence form Christ and inaugurate a περιπατεῖν διὰ εἶδους πρὸς τὸν κῦριον (vv. 6-8). To entertain the hope of person-to-person communion with Christ after death (v. 8b) inevitably and naturally prompted the aspiration of gaining acceptance in his eyes before and after death.”

[7] Harris, Second Corinthians, 399. “‘Where the Spirit is, there is expectation.’ As long as Paul was required to ‘walk in the realm of faith,’ he was distant from the Lord and yet possessed of the pledge of the Spirit that a ‘walking in the realm of sight’ was to follow.”

[8] Harris, Second Corinthians, 405. “Vv. 8-10 well illustrate the interrelatedness of eschatology and ethics. Paul’s constant ambition to gain Christ’s approval (v. 9) was prompted by two facts relating to the future of his destiny of dwelling with the Lord (v. 8) and his coming accountability to Christ (v. 10).”

[9] Harris, Second Corinthians, 409. “Since, then, the tribunal of Christ is concerned with assessment of works, not the determination of destiny, it will be apparent that the Pauline concepts of justification on the basis of faith and recompense in accordance with works may be complementary. Not status but reward is determined ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ βήατος τοῦ Χριστοῦ, for justification as the acquisition of a right standing before God anticipates the verdict of the Last Judgment.”

[10] Harris, Second Corinthians, 421. “When Christ died, he was acting both on behalf of and in the place of all human beings.”

[11] Harris, Second Corinthians, 419. “No one doubts that believers’ love for Christ motivates their actions, but here Paul is concentrating on an earlier stage of motivation, namely the love shown by Christ in dying for humankind.”

[12] Harris, Second Corinthians, 421. “When Christ died, all died; what is more, his death involved their death.”

[13] Harris, Second Corinthians, 422. “The intended result of the death of Christ was the Christian’s renunciation of self-seeking and self-pleasing and the pursuit of a Christ-centered life filled with action for the benefit of others, as was Christ’s life…”

[14] Harris, Second Corinthians, 426. “…reflects a distinctive Christian outlook.”

[15] Harris, Second Corinthians, 423. “…‘for Paul, freedom means transfer from one dominion to another: from law to grace (Ro . 6:14) from sin to righteousness (Rom. 6:18), from death to life (Rom. 6:21-23), from flesh to Spirit (Rom. 8:4ff); or, as he puts it here, from self to Christ…’”

[16] Harris, Second Corinthians, 427. “Paul is affirming that with the advent of the era of salvation in Christ, and eve since his own conversion to Christ, he has ceased making superficial, mechanical judgments about other people on the basis of outward appearances—such as national origin, social status, intellectual capability, physical attribute, or even charismatic endowment and pneumatic displace…”

[17] Harris, Second Corinthians, 429. “…Paul is rejecting (in v. 16a) any assessment of human beings that is based on the human or worldly preoccupation with externals.”

[18] Harris, Second Corinthians, 434. “When a person becomes a Christian, he or she experiences a total restructuring of life that alters its whole fabric—thinking, feeling, willing, and acting. Anyone who is ‘in Christ’ is ‘Under new Management’ and has ‘Altered Priorities Ahead,’ to use the wording sometimes found in shop windows and …on roads.”

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The [extra] Ordinary Time of Pentecost

Psalm 139:16-17 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

Introduction

The beauty of “ordinary time” is that, quite frankly, it is anything but ordinary. If we are following the story line and taking seriously the extensive breadth of the reach of the Triune God extending through space and time, then we are left—after Pentecost/Trinity Sunday—in the exact same spot the disciples were left when Jesus ascended to God and the Paraclete descended to be with, in, and among the disciples, bringing God intimately close. Being left behind by Christ and yet indwelled by the Spirit, the disciples had to figure out how to move forward, one step at a time. Be not mistaken, even if this (visible) church has been around for decades and the larger (invisible) church for millennia, we are, as of this Sunday, (re)located—through story and narrative—back at the beginning, with the recently left and spiritually emboldened disciples.

While it may seem odd that this is the case, it’s only odd because the story seems chopped off at Pentecost/Trinity Sunday, truncated to the time between Advent 1 and Pentecost/Trinity Sunday as if the church is only about the feasts of Christ and not of the continual feast of the Spirit. We dismiss this liturgical season as a non-event. It’s banal, nothing really changes, we have nothing to celebrate or events to plan; no one makes a point to come to church because it’s Pentecost 16. It’s a “down-time” for the church. Vacations happen now. It’s time that isn’t time, it seems to exist at the end of and before time as if the story stops with Pentecost and picks up again with Advent. But it’s the start and end of time; it is during the long season of Pentecost, of ordinary time, where we see time begin for the church—begin and end in God.

So, if we are taking the story—the entire story—very seriously then we can see (and hear!) that during every season of Pentecost we are re-called, re-substantiated, re-created, re-minded that our story, our being, our presence in the world, is dependent and nurtured and sustained by God in God for God’s glory. And every year we must figure out, once again, what it means to be such as us in this world, at this time, in this shape and form. And in this way, the church’s liturgical “ordinary time” becomes the most EXTRAordinary because here it becomes personal and public, here we wrestle with God, here we watch as God continues unfolding the stories—from Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost—in our living (together as this church here in this building and together as the church outside of this building). Here we are called to find ways to participate in God’s mission and proclamation in the world, and here we are forced to ask the same question the disciples asked when they found themselves needing to become a new community in the world of God for God’s glory: what now?

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

For we do not preach ourselves but Lord Christ Jesus, and ourselves as your slaves through Jesus. Because God—the one who says “Let light be radiant out of darkness”—radiated [and continues to radiate] in our hearts toward the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor 4:5-6)

So, as we dive into [extra]Ordinary Time, we are presented with Paul, in a letter to the Corinthians, reminding them that this isn’t about them but about God. It was started by God, it is being sustained by God, and it will continue to go forward by God’s power. This isn’t about us in the sense that we are to proclaim our ideas of what the church is or should be or our own authority. Rather, we proclaim what God has done (from Christmas to Pentecost) for the beloved which includes us,[1] thus continuing the story forward through our proclamation, making Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost real for others.

What does Paul say we proclaim? Jesus Christ is Lord. This, for Paul, is the foundation of our confession—then and now.[2] It is the public and private confession—inspired by the Holy Spirit—that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Christ, that Jesus is God’s child, the author of the cosmos and the church, that death and evil don’t have the final word but hope and life do, that Jesus is the righteous judge of all, and that all of this demands a rejection of former allegiances in the kingdom of humanity.[3] Thus, for this reason, Paul says that he does not proclaim himself but Christ Jesus, Lord; and, for this reason, Paul insists on the importance of the neighbor (the beloved of God) and the demand that insistence makes on the believer to forsake “personal rights,” because that is exactly what Christ did while he was here.[4]

Behind all of this is Paul’s personal confession that everything that he is doing and saying, and the basic establishment of the church is all God’s doing. There’s no way that Paul would see himself as a slave to his neighbor apart from the illumination of God’s word in his heart; everything Paul does and says is informed by God who beckons cosmic light to be born in cosmic darkness and who is the same one who beckons the light of the Gospel to be born in darkened hearts by the power of the divine Spirit.[5],[6],[7]

And how does God make God’s illumination known? Through fragile and expendable vessels, cheap and unattractive. It is human beings, in frail bodies, who are charged with the “privileged guardianship” of the message of God’s word.[8] (Priceless contents enveloped by meager, breakable material.[9]) And by virtue of everything being dependent on God, these fragile, breakable, relatively worthless vessels become the most powerful of God[10] through their call to take up and participate in the mission and proclamation of God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world, on behalf of God’s beloved.[11] Thus, Paul lists the ways human weakness is made strong through God’s divine power.[12] The disciples of God by God’s power and word sustaining them are distressed but not restricted, perplexed but not thwarted, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed (vv. 8-9). Paul, as a meager, breakable vessel, is utterly dependent on God’s power.[13] And it is through this human weakness and fragility that God’s strength and durability are made known through Paul; it is in the daily dying of the disciples as they move forward step by step as this new community called into God’s mission and proclamation in the world where God’s life is made manifest; in the disciples’ suffering, Jesus’s risen life is articulated and made real.[14]

Conclusion

So this simple season of Pentecost is [extra]Ordinary Time because we are reminded that everything about our entire enterprise as the church (both as church visible and participant in the church invisible) is totally and completely dependent on God: Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. Everything we are, have been, and will be is defined and dependent on the work of the triune God in three persons: We are each called together corporately and individually to God by God through the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ proclaimed and made known to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. God calls us, God determines us, God sustains us. We are each here together as this body of Christ called by name, determined as this church in this time at this moment in history, and sustained to participate in God’s mission and proclamation in the world. It’s this utter and total dependence—this being called, determined, and sustained—that makes every day in this “Ordinary” season positively extraordinary.

And by saying this it means that we have a vital role to play in this mission of God in the world, the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation aimed toward upending broken human systems and ideologies determined to bring indifference, death, and captivity. Sometimes, when stressing utter dependence it’s tempting to “let go and let God” as if you are nothing more than a puppet on divine hand in God’s drama. But this would be the opposite of being in the world but not of the world, the opposite of being filled with the presence of the divine spirit (the Paraclete) who comes to expose and judge the world in the way it has failed to support and defend all of God’s beloved. So, going into this season of Pentecost, our longest liturgical season, we are to press into the Spirit to find our strength and resolve and be guided by that same Spirit to actively participate in the mission of God in the world made known to us in Christ. We are to face the question, what now?, head on and dare to answer it for us and for the world, today and then again next week. We are to be in the world as breakable and fragile vessels, members of God’s royal army, not wielding weapons esteemed and sanctioned by the military. Rather, we wield the divine instruments of God: the declaration of love, the bringing of liberation, and the affirmation of life.

[1] Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 331. “…[Paul] may be observing that though he sought to commend himself to everyone person’s conscience….he never advertised or heralded himself, never pressed personal claims.”

[2] Harris, Corinthians, 332. “…κύριον is predicative, ‘Jesus Christ as Lord.’ The two earliest Christological confessions were ὀ Χριστὸς, ‘Jesus is the Messiah’… and κύριος Ἰησοῦς ‘Jesus is Lord’…”

[3] Harris, Corinthians, 332.

[4] Harris, Corinthians, 333. “[Paul] envisaged his relationship to Christ and his relationship to fellow Christians as one of slavery, that is, as unquestioning service for the benefit of the other, as the result of the unconditional but voluntary surrender of all personal rights. In this lowly service to others, Paul was following in the footsteps of his Lord, who himself had adopted the status and role of a δοῦλος…”

[5] Harris, Corinthians, 333-334. “It was because God had dispelled his darkness by illuminating his heart and had given him a knowledge of Christ he wished to share. The spiritual principle is this; the person who has light (v. 5) is responsible to share that light (v. 4).

[6] Harris, Corinthians, 335. “Paul is not only depicting the heart as by nature dark through sin but also implying that conversion is the replacement of that darkness by light, a theme frequently expressed in the NT.”

[7] Harris, Corinthians, 335. “…the knowledge that produces illumination is nothing other than knowledge of the gospel.”

[8] Harris, Corinthians, 339.

[9] Harris, Corinthians, 340. “Such vessels were regarded as fragile and as expendable because the were cheap and often unattractive. So the paradox Paul is expressing is that although the container is relatively worthless…the content are priceless. Although the gospel treasure is indescribably valuable, the gospel’s ministers are of little value in comparison.”

[10] Harris, Corinthians, 340. “σκεύη refers to whole persons, who, although insignificant and weak in themselves, become God’s powerful instruments in communicating the treasure of the gospel.”

[11] Harris, Corinthians, 341. “Because the gospel treasure has been entrusted to fail mortals who lack inherent power, the δύναμις displayed through preaching and in suffering is demonstrably divine and not human.”

[12] Harris, Corinthians, 342. “…the first element in each antithesis illustrates human weakness, the second illustrates divine power.”

[13] Harris, Corinthians, 345. “…it is clear that in Paul’s estimation this ‘hardship catalogue’ demonstrates, not his virtuous character or his buoyant self-sufficiency or his steadfast courage amid adversity…but his utter dependence as a frail human being on the superlative excellent…of God’s power.”

[14] Harris, Corinthians, 347. “First, the resurrection life of Jesus is evident at precisely the same time as there is a ‘carrying around’ of his dying. Indeed, the very purpose of the believer’s identification with Jesus in his sufferings is to provide an opportunity of the display of Jesus’ risen life. Second, one and the same physical body is the place where the sufferings of Jesus are repeated and where his risen power if manifested.”

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The Paraclete Cometh

Psalm 104:34-37a 34 I will sing to Abba God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God; I will rejoice in Abba God. Bless God, O my soul!

Introduction

Last week, Jesus prayed for his disciples to have the fortitude to remain in the Word of God. Being not of the world but remaining in the world means that this fledgling community belonging to Christ needed to remember that their creation as this fledgling community was solely based and sustained on God’s Word proclaimed in and through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this one who is God. As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he knew that the hatred of the world toward this new community of God would try to eclipse the joy and confidence of these faithful. So, he prayed. He prayed that they would remain one as Jesus and God are one, because they are stronger together as a group, and the world loves to divide and conquer. He prayed for the sustaining of their identity, that they remember whose they are, because the world will do whatever it can to make the forget. He prayed for them to be protected in their new creation (new eyes, new ears, new words), because the world will try to steal from their new creation, forcing them to relinquish new eyes and ears, holding their proclamation hostage, demanding they forsake their divinely gifted life, love, and liberation.

Jesus knew they needed help. This little community—barely a smoldering wick—was about to be launched into the world to fend for themselves. They would be assaulted on every side because of who they were and what they said: they, like their Christ, were to become the locus of God’s revolutionary activity in the world; their message would echo Jesus’s, calling into question the kingdom of humanity, exposing the upside-down world, and proclaiming the words of the divine revolution in the world for the oppressed. Jesus knew they were sitting ducks and without God, they would not make it far because this community was not a community created by human strength so it could not be sustained by human strength. So, this community needed something bigger and stronger, something that is of the same substance as the word that not only called this community into being but also the entire cosmos.

Jesus prayed on behalf of the community, asking for God to show up. And God did.

Enter the Paraclete!

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

“But I, I say to you the truth, it is profitable to you that I, I go away. For if I do not go away, the paraclete cannot come to you. But, if I go, I will send them to you. And coming, that one will convict the cosmos concerning sin and concerning justice and concerning judgment…I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them just now. But, whenever this one comes, the Spirit of Truth, they will guide you in every kind of truth, for they will not speak from themself, but as much as you listen they will bring back word to you. (Jn 16:7-8, 12-13)

The lectionary loops us back into John 15 after bringing us to John 17 last week. Thus, according to the logic of the lectionary, Jesus’s promise of the Spirit is the fulfillment of the prayer to God to protect, guide, and strengthen the disciples who will be left in the world. But the advent of the Spirit, the Paraclete, is more than just a helper for those who will be left by Jesus; they are the very foundation of the church, as we say in our creed every Sunday: the Spirit is the “life-giving breath of the church.” For it is through, with, and by the Spirit that the work and word of Christ started in the body of Jesus will transition to the work and word of the fledgling community, who is now transfigured into the body of Christ in the world in Christ’s absence.[1] It is by the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, that God’s will and mission in the world will continue to be made known to the beloved in and through the new community of God.

Jesus—the Reconciler—must leave the disciples and return to God the Creator so that the Spirit of God—the Redeemer—can be sent into the world, specifically into the hearts of the disciples, to continue the work of God in the world. The work of the Spirit is to continue to reveal God in the world by means of the light of truth that is the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ.[2] In this way, God’s self-revelation and mission in the world is not cut short by Jesus’s bodily absence; through the Spirit rather than the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ, does the Word and mission of God begin to transcend not only geographical boundaries (Acts 10 fulfilling Acts 1:8) but will also transcend chronological boundaries. By the sending of the Spirit, the Word of God will continue in the world, the light of truth will continue to illuminate hearts and minds from one era to another, in one context to a completely different one, through decades, centuries, and millennia.[3] It is through the witness of the Spirit in the lives of the disciples that witnesses back to Christ and thus forward to God[4] that is the continual fuel for the fire of divine revolution setting human hearts ablaze like match sticks—one by one.[5]

It is for this reason that Jesus both addresses the disciples’ impending grief (being left alone in the world in distress)[6] and exhorts them toward joy: even though they will grieve Jesus’s absence, feel fear and anxiety, they will be comforted by God’s Spirit, the Paraclete, who will usher them further into God’s truth and into God’s reality thus farther and deeper into God.[7] This is why Jesus turns the conversation toward what the Paraclete will do when they show up, because it is through the disciples (and through the church that will be born through their bodies and the Word of God) that the Paraclete will expose the world’s misconceptions of sin, justice, and judgment.[8] In this way and to quote Rudolf Bultmann, “The world is accused, and the Paraclete is the prosecutor.”[9] With the Paraclete set loose in the world through the disciples, human sin is exposed by divine righteousness,[10] human justice is brought to trial by divine justice, [11] and human judgment is found guilty by divine judgment.[12] Thus, God’s truth continues to be the light of the world from one era to another, within one context and then in another, living in one heart and at the same time in a completely different heart. The one word of God is always new in every moment as a word of revelation; it is not static doctrine, archaic dogma, suffocating fundamentalism, and deadly legalism. Rather, it is always a new living-word summoning the dead in their tombs into life in the world.[13]

Thus, Jesus can assure the disciples that even though he has much more to teach them, he will leave that to the Paraclete who will guide them (teach/lead) into every kind of truth further revealing Christ into the world, further instigating God’s divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world in pursuit of the God’s beloved. The Paraclete will not lead the disciples (those then and those now) to a static conception of God or into a conception of God so different there must be a break with this history set out through Christ, but into God’s self-disclosure made known in the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus.[14] In other words, divine truth will be revealed in every moment as the present moment—whatever/wherever—is revealed by the divine word and ushered into divine comfort by the Paraclete, who is the Spirit of Truth.[15] Starting first with the community—whatever/wherever—and billowing outward into the world.

Conclusion

Those first disciples lost their main, they lost Jesus whom they loved dearly—they staked their lives on this love of Christ, and then he left them. The distress they felt was real; it’s a distress that we feel today, feeling left/abandoned by God without Jesus to be here with us bodily. But the Paraclete remains in the world and always with the disciples of Christ, those who are thrust by faith into God and are dependent on God’s word. Our God is Triune, three persons one God; personal and close, at all times, in all eras. God is not dead, dear ones; God is alive, God is here, God is with us, and God is within us. Martin Luther writes about this portion of the Gospel of John, “Therefore God has been gracious to us and has given us a Comforter to counteract this spirit of terror—a Comforter, who, as God Himself, is much stronger with His comfort than the devil is with his terror.”[16] The one who lives in us and through us is the one who can bend space and time to become one spot and moment so that all time and all space is in this God of presence, revelation, and comfort.

Yet comfort only comes when God’s truth exposes and reveals us, the way we miss the mark, our decrepit ideas, broken systems, and violent ideologies. By the presence of the spirit—it’s conviction—we cannot pretend not to see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. We do not have the luxury of undoing God’s summoning of us out from our tombs back at Easter. By the Spirit, the Paraclete, this humble community, bends its knees, confesses, and finds absolution by faith in Christ and union with God. Through the conviction and exposure of the Paraclete, divine comfort becomes true comfort—not the comfort of the world that is fleeting, comfort that lasts through thick and thin because it’s built out of the stuff of the infinite and not finite, of the eternal and not terminal, out of the substance of God and not the substance of humanity.

God’s Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, the Prosecutor comes to bring God close to us through the light of truth to live with us and among us and in us, to work in and through us the divine revolution of God’s love, life, and liberation in the world. Today we rejoice because Christ’s joy is made complete in us through the sending of the Paraclete who binds us to God through Christ. We can let go of the rope and fall into God because God will show up because God never left us.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 552. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “After Jesus’ departure, the situation on earth will remain unchanged in as much as the offence which Jesus’ work offered the world will not disappear. The witness, which till now he had borne to himself, will be taken over by the Paraclete, the Helper, whom he will send from the Father.”

[2] Bultmann, John, 553. “The ἀλθείας is for him the self-revelatory divine reality, and the function of the Spirit consists in bestowing revelation by continuing Jesus’ revelatory work, as is stated by the words μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ…”

[3] Bultmann, John, 553. “Jesus will send this Spirit from the Father, and from the Father he will come forth. This two-fold designation makes the reference to the idea of revelation certain’ even after Jesus’ departure, God’s revelation will be mediated through him: he it is, who sends the Spirit…who bears witness to him; but he does so in his unity with the Gather, who has made him Revealer; he sends the Spirit from the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father, just as it is said in 14.16 that the Father sends the Spirit at the son’s request, or in 14.26 that he sends him ‘in the name’ of the Son. All these expressions say the same thing.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 554. “Thus their being with him ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς has not come to an end with his farewell, but continues further; and this is the only basis on which their witness is possible. Their witness is not , therefore, a historical account of that which was, but—however much it is based on that which was—it is ‘repetition,’ ‘a calling to mind,’ in the light of their present relationship with. Him. In that case it is perfectly clear that their witness and that of the Spirit are identical.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 553-554. “The word μαρτυρήσει indicates that the Spirit is the power of the proclamation in the community, and this is made fully clear by the juxtaposition of the disciples’ witness and that of the Spirit: καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε (v. 27). For the witness borne by the disciples is not something secondary, running alongside the witness of the spirit.” And “Their preaching is to be a ‘repetition’ of his preaching, or a ‘calling to mind,’…” (554)

[6] Bultmann, John, 558. “They are not asking where he is going to—the answer would be: to the father, and that would solve their difficulty—but they are in λύπη because they are about to be left in their distress.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 558.

[8] Bultmann, John, 560-561. “Only in the word was Jesus the Revealer, and only in the word will he continue to be it; for the Paraclete, who is take his place, is the word. The word is very far from being a closed doctrine, or complex of statements, not on the other hand is it the historical account of Jesus’s life. It is the living word; that is, paradoxically, the word which is spoken by the community itself, for the Paraclete is the Spirt that is at work in the community.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 562.

[10] Bultmann, John, 563. “The world understands sin as revolt against its own standards an ideals, the things which give it security. But to shut oneself off from the revelation that calls all worldly security in question and opens up another security—that is real sin, in contrast to which all that used to be sinful was only temporary and passing.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 565. ‘For the world , this victory is just as much a κρυπτόν (7.4) as is the real nature of ἁμαρτία; as the world sees things, to suffer the wreckage of death means condemnation by God; the world can only see victory in what is visible. But the significance of the victory lies precisely in the overcoming of the visible by the invisible; this is why the world does not know that it is condemned, or that it is conquered. But this is what the Paraclete will show.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 565. “In each case the world thinks it possesses the criteria for this judgment in its concepts of ἁμαρτία and δικαιοσύνη. But as it deceived itself over the meaning of A and D, so too it fails to see that the χρίσις is already ensuing, that the prince of this world is already judged; i.e. it fails to see that it is itself already judged—condemned for holding on to itself, to it s own standards and ideals, to what can be seen.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 561. “For the word is at the same time spoken into a situation; i.e. it is spoken as the word of revelation against it. If therefore the community has any understanding of the word of revelation that brings it into being, it can and must know that it has always to interpret the word afresh and to speak it into its own present as the word that is always the same—that word that is the same because it is always new.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 575. “This means that the Spirits’ word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh. The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word. Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word.”

[16] Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14-16,” Luther’s Works, vol. 24, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1961), 291.

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