Tag: Gospel

Not for Law But for Love

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

What, in our lives, brings God glory? I’ll say two things up front: 1. It’s not what you think; and, 2. It’s harder than you think.

Luke 13:10-17

Luke tells us that Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath (v10). Luke gives us a location that Jesus hasn’t been in a while—not since chapter 4, when he was teaching on the Sabbath about bringing “good news to the poor” and “release the captives.”[2] Therefore, given this new scene and its corresponding component parts, Luke is providing his audience a reminder about how Jesus spoke of and understood his mission from God: liberation of the people from oppression. (This is our backdrop.) Also, since he’s in the synagogue on the Sabbath, we can safely assume that another conflict will emerge between Jesus and the religious authorities[3] as human tradition and power is confronted by divine love and mercy. [4]

Luke then tells us, And, behold!, [there was] a woman having a spirit of frailty for 18 years—she was bent double and not able to lift toward the uttermost (v11). Another character is introduced: a woman who was bent over so severely she could not stand up straight for 18 years. She is “burdened” by a spirit that is causing her to suffer, she is doubled-over under the weight of its presence, she is oppressed by evil and the demonic and this evil spirit has refused her the vitality and dignity of divinely created human life.[5] She was minding her own business, going about her task, and was not seeking either attention or healing. However, Jesus saw her[6]—God of very God saw her and cared about her. Then, Now, after perceiving her, [he] called and said to her, “Woman, you have been released from your malady,” and he placed his hands on her, and instantly she was restored/straightened again and she as giving glory to/glorifying God (vv12-13). The healing Jesus brings to this humble and burdened woman is one of “release” and restoration: she is not only released from her malady of being doubled-over but also from the spirit causing the burden; she is also returned to community (Jesus calls her to him in the midst of the people).[7] In a word, Jesus rebukes the evil spirit by declaring she is no longer oppressed and follows it up with laying his hands on her. The word of God spoke, the hand of God touched, and she was liberated, loosed from/set free from her captivity (ἀπολύω). Jesus’s word and touch bring God glory because God’s praise is found on the lips of the one liberated.

But Jesus isn’t the only one who perceives and calls. Luke tells us that the ruler of the synagogue—being indignant because Jesus healed on the Sabbath—answered and was saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which to toil; therefore on these days come and be healed and not [on] the day of the Sabbath” (v14). The religious leader isn’t wrong, it is his job to faithfully keep and study the law[8] and he’s referring to scripture here (but not quoting it (Dt. 5:13)).[9] The Sabbath was a divinely instituted law of God, what “ought to be done” was rest and not work. Here Jesus finds himself confronted by the evil Spirit in the woman, and the evil spirit[10] deeply embedded in the atmosphere around him personified by the ruler of the synagogue: law has privilege over the people.[11] This ruler of the synagogue—privileging the law over the person thus participating in the evil embedded in the atmosphere[12] —would’ve added “another umpteen centuries” to this woman’s burden rather than “break” the law to release her. Jesus, however—privileging the person over the law and thus confronting the evil embedded in the atmosphere[13]—liberated and released her even on the Sabbath. Which action caused God to be praised?[14]

Not only is Jesus’s ministry being characterized as one of “release,”[15] the very laws of God, God’s word, God’s son, God’s mission in the world is also being so characterized by “release.”[16] Luke tells us that Jesus, the lord, answered and said [to the ruler of the synagogue and the crowd], “Hypocrite! Do not everyone of you releases their cow or donkey from the manger and after leading it away gives it water? But this woman—being a daughter of Abraham—Satan bound her ten and eight years, was it not necessary [for her] to be loosed from this imprisonment on the day of the Sabbath? (vv15-16). Luke emphasizes Jesus’s authority to challenge the authority of the ruler of the synagogue. Even though the ruler of the synagogue tried to challenge Jesus and reassert his authority,[17] Jesus returns the favor. He also quotes scripture, but highlights the hypocrisy in that, according to the text, not even animals are supposed to work, thus Dt. 5:14 goes ignored.[18] Here Jesus becomes the one who has the authority to both interpret the law and scripture and God’s will and purposes in the world and opts to break the law to liberate a daughter of Abraham.[19] Here the ruler and the crowd are exposed as the ones who do not know God’s will and who do not understand the law and it’s purpose.[20] Here Jesus responds to the ruler’s “ought to be done” with his own “ought to be done”: healing, release, restoration, liberation for all humanity,[21] especially those who are a [children] of Abraham. She not only has some place in the children of Israel, but has a significant place marked by being one of the people of God who has dignity and deserves to receive God’s mercy and liberation[22] and is given a voice to glorify God which is the characteristic of the people of God.[23]

Luke closes with telling us that not only did the woman praise God, but so did the people who witnessed the deed and the subsequent exchange.[24] Luke writes, and all the crowd was rejoicing because of all the glorious things that were happening through him (v17b).

Conclusion

So, again, I’ll ask the question: What, in our lives, brings God glory?

I mentioned earlier that it’s not what you think. By this I mean that it’s not by adhering to some austere and severe way of life, it’s not embedded in some form of self-harm/mutilation (either spiritually or materially), it’s not at the end of a pilgrimage or fast or bible-study/reading, it’s not the pot of gold at the end of being strong and powerful, it’s not in our success no matter how much we give God the credit, it’s not about perfect worship and excellent doctrine, and it’s not even by clinging to the law (either human or divine) and upholding it without fail. Why? Because none of those deeds puts God and our neighbor first, and it, frankly, devalues human life to the point of being unimportant and down-right disposable, only any good by ho it serves some law. In any of these actions, as good and holy as any of them sound, there is no room for God and for our neighbor.

I also mentioned, earlier, that it’s harder than you think. By this I mean that even though it’s not about the deeds mentioned above it doesn’t mean that we bring God glory by just going along with the crowd and adhering to the kingdom of humanity and its rules and structures without question. It’s also not as easy as just choosing to be nice and people pleasing. It’s hard because we must find our identity not only in Christ but also find ourselves empowered by the Holy Spirit to be as Christ in the world and this means, in many ways, participating in the mission of God as Jesus did. Thus, it’s hard because we must be curious; we must be willing to be the fodder for challenge; we must find our voice to ask questions—specifically against the powers that control the narratives and institutions of the kingdom of humanity; we must locate the gumption to call out lies and falsehoods knowing that it might/will cause our social, political, ecclesiastical, occupational, and (even) physical demise. We must allow our faith and love of God and others to determine our posture in the world, and we must do so daily and without foreknowledge. Why is it harder than you think? Because to bring God glory caused Jesus to lose his life.

So, what does bring God glory? Jesus forever sets the answer to the question for us: by making sure people are liberated from oppression (both spiritually and materially). This means, quite frankly, that we participate in the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation, being willing to break the law as necessary to make sure our neighbors—burdened by the evil of the age that weighs them down and prevents them from having fully life—are released from their captivity within the kingdom of humanity. As Christians who have been liberated by Jesus to love God, let us also love our neighbor in and through the love that God has loved us in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and let us bring life where there is death, and sweet divine release and liberation where there is captivity. Love releases and sets free; therefore, beloved, let us love as we have been so loved by God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 520-521. “There, when teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus proclaimed ‘good news to the poor,’ ‘the good news of the kingdom of God’…Recalling that well-established script, we may assume that Luke has chosen at this fresh point of departure in the narrative to remind us of a the central concerns of Jesus’ ministry and, thus, to present Jesus engaged in the characteristic activity by means of which he fulfills  his divine mission.”

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 173. “This well-known passage is a further sign of the growing controversy between Jesus and the religious Leaders of his nation.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 173. “For in this text we have not just a miracle of healing, but the convergence of ancient and seemingly invincible powers, all coming to meet that Sabbath day in that synagogue.”

[5] Gonzalez, Luke, 173-174. “The point is that the woman cannot stand up straight, and that is demonic…With that woman there comes into the synagogue what we religious folk often try to forget: the reality of the power of evil, the reality of human suffering.”

[6] Green, Luke, 522.

[7] Green, Luke, 522-523. “When Jesus sees her, he does not go to her but calls her to him, thus inviting her to join him in front of those gathered and so to join him at the focal point of this scene. Locating this woman of such low status thus is not unrelated to the healing moment, but is directly relevant as a symbolization of her restoration within her community.”

[8] Green, Luke, 523. “The role of the synagogue ruler was to maintain the reading and faithful teaching of the law…”

[9] Green, Luke, 523. “He does not even cite the relevant texts, but grounds his view in what ‘ought to be done’—that is, in the divine will.” The woman can be healed tomorrow.

[10] Gonzalez, Luke, 174. “The confrontation points to the always lurking possibility that very good religious principles may be turned into allies of the powers of evil.”

[11] Gonzalez, Luke, 174. “On the one hand, in that woman’s suffering Satan himself confronts him. On the other, in the entire atmosphere around him, in the very law of Israel, in the leader of the synagogue, the weight of tradition seems to say that there is nothing to be done.”

[12] Gonzalez, Luke, 174. “The leader of the synagogue was defending religious principles derived from the very law of God. Yet in that very defense he was siding with the powers of evil that held the woman bent.”

[13] Green, Luke, 521. “From this ethnomedical perspective, the, this woman’s illness has a physiological expression but is rooted in a cosmological disorder. Because Luke has presented Jesus as the divine agent of salvation in whose ministry the kingdom of God is made present and in whose ministry the domain of Satan is rolled back, Luke’s depiction of this woman’s illness prepares us for a redemptive encounter of startling proportions.”

[14] Gonzalez, Luke, 174. “Jesus faces the bent-over woman, oppressed by the weight of Satan himself. To her oppression of eighteen years the religious leaders would add another of umpteen centuries: It is the Sabbath! It is a day for religious matters! Jesus saw the woman, and he called her, and he spoke to her, and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

[15] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 518.

[16] Green, Luke, 519. “…Jesus’ encounter with this woman and his ensuing interpretation of her liberation as a necessary manifestation of the divine will, an outworking of the presence of the kingdom, on this day, the Sabbath. That is, the intrusion of the indignant synagogue ruler into Jesus’ encounter with the women bent over (v 14) provides Jesus the opportunity to interpret that healing as a fulfillment of God’s purpose ,and, thus, of Jesus’ mission (vv 15-21).”

[17] Green, Luke, 523. Ruler of the Synagogue addresses the people and not Jesus, “In this way he publicly challenges Jesus’ authority as a teacher and reasserts himself as the authorized interpreter of Scripture.”

[18] Green, Luke, 524. Ruler of Synagogue’s allusion to Deut 5:13 causes Jesus to return to that text “in order to remind this debate partner that the prohibition to work extends not only to human beings but also to oxen and donkeys (Deut 5:14).”

[19] Green, Luke, 520. “…Luke introduces Jesus as ‘Lord,’ then presents him as one with authority to interpret God’s salvific purpose. Directly or indirectly, both synagogue ruler and Jesus appeal to the Scriptures, but Jesus is represented as the divinely sanctioned hermeneut.”

[20] Green, Luke, 524. Setting up a series of parallels with ref. to Deut 5:14, “From this exegesis of the Deuteronomic law and contemporary practices based on it, Jesus is able to expose the ruler of the synagogue and those who think as he does as ‘hypocrites’—that is, as persons who do not understand God’s purpose, who therefore are unable to discern accurately the meaning of the scriptures, and therefore, whose piety is a sham.”

[21] Green, Luke, 524. “On a deeper sense, though, Jesus seems content to engage the argument just as the synagogue ruler had left it, with reference to the devein will. What ‘ought’ to take place, he insists, is this: This woman out to be set free from satanic bondage on the Sabbath.”

[22] Green, Luke, 525. “…Jesus’ God’s covenantal promise and the extension of God’s covenantal mercy to Abraham….She is ‘a daughter of Abraham,’ and appellation that might signal heroic faithfulness in some other literature, but with a profoundly different significance in the Lukan narrative. She is thus presented as one of those persons denoted by others has having no place among the people of God, normally excluded from social intercourse and certainly not highly regarded for their fidelity, and yet raised up by God as children of Abraham in the sene of becoming the recipients of the mercy reserved for Abraham by God.”

[23] Green, Luke, 525-526. “She and other children of Abraham in the Lukan narrative evidence how God’s promise to Abraham is fulfilled through the activity of Jesus and how the recipients of liberation through Jesus’ ministry are thus confirmed as Abrahm’s children.”

[24] Green, Luke, 526. “He had attempted to shame Jesus but, in the end, he and those with him who oppose Jesus are shamed as the crowd sides with Jesus This also means that they side with the narrator, attributing to Jesus the status of authoritative teacher and recognizing in the ‘wonderful things he was doing’ the gracious hand of God…”

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Christ Our Focus; Christ our Purpose

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

What’s your purpose?

Isn’t that just the worst question? It’s a question that’s been weaponized in the self-help industry ala 1990s, early 00s, even bleeding into the 2010s. My theological heroine, Dorothee Sölle, shined light on the fact that this question was alive and well in the mid-20th century. Since the dawning of modernity and the birth of the enlightenment, we who live post both find ourselves searching for something rather elusive: purpose. Why am I here? What is my life for? What am I supposed to do, who am I supposed to be, and what existential game do I find myself in the middle of?? These questions plague us, even we who have things like agendas, plans, and clear goals. I can tell you—with a certain amount of confidence—I’m pretty close to centered on what I feel my purpose is in life; I can also tell you there are dark moments, bad days, or just pure fiascos reminding me I might not be, that I haven’t the slightest clue, and even if I am close to being exactly where I want to be, all of that can change in the blink of an eye.

The reason why this is such a deadly question, one that makes people sigh, weep, or roll over and pull bedcovers over their head is that we tie our purpose to our work (action, deed). In the pursuit of ourselves apart from God, we’ve found a new god: work; this new god knows nothing of love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace. Concurrently, we’ve fused ourselves to our work hoping to make ourselves irreplaceable and unique, but anyone can do that work, fill that job. Thus, by working so hard to become irreplaceable, we’ve become, sadly, replaceable and puts our purpose on shaky ground. When we wed our purpose to our actions, then it means that only foundation for our purpose is our work, no wonder we begin to panic as we lose ourselves in our retirements (if it doesn’t start early in mid-life). In our pursuit to make ourselves unique and irreplaceable through our work, we’ve made our work (the role, the job, the deed) the irreplaceable and not-interchangeable thing and made ourselves replaceable and interchangeable.[2]

We need to be refocused and reconsider where we, as Christians, get our purpose from. So, today, we get some help from Paul writing to the Colossians.

Colossians 1:15-28

Paul begins (continues?) in a hymn[3] extoling the work of Jesus,

[Christ] is the representative of the unseen God, firstborn over all creation because in him all things, in the heavens and upon the earth, were created, the seen and the unseen, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things have been created by him and in him. And he, he is above all things, and he has established all things in him, and he, he is the head of the body that is the congregation (vv1-18a)…

Paul has (may have?) refurbished a hymn that participated in the Jewish wisdom tradition and used it to communicate to the Colossians who this Jesus is[4] who rescued them from domination of darkness and delivered them into the reign of the Son of the love God (v14). It is here in Christ, for Paul, that the Colossians are to find their identity, their wisdom, and their purpose.[5]

The one whom they follow, listen to through the proclamation of the gospel and in prayer, and are formed into by the power of the Spirit, isn’t just a teacher or some peddler of popular theologies, philosophies, and ideologies. This one, Jesus of Nazareth, is none other than the image/representativeof God who is also the firstborn over all creation. According to Paul, Jesus is God: in both his representing God to humanity and in his being the source[6] and sustainer of creation.[7] For Paul, no one else in all biblical history and story can claim such a position and title,[8] for it is only Christ who is an “exactly similar” revelation of God;[9] to see Jesus is to see God, to encounter Jesus is to encounter God.[10] It is in and through Christ that the essence of the ruling systems of the world find the location of their essence (whether or not they actually reflect the reign of God in the temporal realm);[11] for all things are created in Christ.[12] For Paul, Christ is the source of life and of creation and is also the head of the body. In other words, Christ is the source of life of all things especially of his body who represents him in the world after his ascension and by the power of the Holy Spirit: [13] the congregation that gathers in his name and abides by his reign.[14]

Paul then adds, [Christ] is the beginning, the first born of the dead so that he, he might come [to be] first place in all things. For in [Jesus] all God’s fullness was pleased to dwell[15] and through him all things are reconciled completely in him by means of peace-making through the blood of his cross, through him whether the things upon earth or the things in the heavens (vv18b-20). For Paul, Jesus is the firstborn of creation, the image and form all of creation is given life, and the first one born from the dead in his resurrection on Easter Sunday; this makes Jesus the source of both our earthly existence as it is and the new-creation and new-life we receive by faith in him.[16] It’s this double firstborn status that gives Christ the primacy of place in the lives of all things; but it’s not the only thing for Paul. God’s fullness dwells in Christ, thus Paul not only reinforces the previously mentioned thought that Christ is the perfect image/representation of God but that the new temple is Christ.[17] It is in and through this new temple where sacrifice has been made (for final) and in which the peace of God is made among those who follow this Jesus of Nazareth who is God—no matter what their background: everyone who enters in spiritually by faith and temporally into the gathering is now one family of which Christ is the head (the source).[18]

And then Paul adds,

And you who were once alienated [from God/ from the people of God] and hostile in mind and in evil works, but now [God] reconciled completely by the body of the flesh of him through his death—to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if you remain in the faith having been firmly established and steadfast and not being moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, that which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, I became a servant (vv21-23).

Here is where the Colossians find their firm foundation, the source of their identity, and the underlying groundwork for their purpose: Christ Jesus and the Gospel. For Paul, to be alienated from the people of God and separate from Christ is to wander this world alone, without the tools to navigate the spiritual and temporal realms. According to Paul, humanity is caught under the cosmic powers and domination of darkness; to walk about in the dark is to guarantee one hurts not only others but themselves, too. Christ came to illuminate the darkness (John 1) with the goal to liberate all who are held captive therein. Reconciliation does not happen, for Paul, apart from Christ; reconciliation of those who were alienated is only through Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit.[19] Reconciliation then, according to the hymn at the beginning of the passage, is for all people in all the world…it is not just for those with whom you agree; it is the means by which the world experiences everlasting, divine peace.[20] Not so that all become Christian, per se, but that Christians refuse to participate in actions and deeds, systems and institutions that cause tearing apart rather than pulling together, alienation rather than solidarity, death rather than life. If some of us—Christians—refuse to play the game the kingdom of humanity has thrust upon us, then we participate in being “peacemakers” which is fundamentally a way of representing Christ and allowing faith to work itself out as love. Thus, Christ—his death, resurrection, and ascension—become the foundation not only of the Colossians’ life, but also of their new life, and their new life as reconciled members of the body of Christ eager to be peace-makers in the world among their neighbors; this is what it means to be the body of Christ and part of the family of God.[21] This is the goal of their lives (not just once but every day), this the purpose of their presence (not just once but every day), the Colossians are to be as Christ in the world as Christ was before them, and by being such, they bring God’s love, life, and liberation to their neighbor.

Conclusion

Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians to refocus on the source of their life and identity gives them a new and sustainable purpose purpose while they walk this orbiting rock, waiting to be either called home by Christ or to welcome him in his hoped-for return. The Colossians need not sell themselves—body and soul—to pursuits that will only prove fruitless and trigger an existential crisis. To be focused on Christ, to have Christ and the gospel of God as their focal point repeatedly supplies them with life, identity, and purpose will never fade or go away: daily, they are called to be sharers of God’s love, life, and liberation, being peacemakers like Christ is. And, as all of scripture does, this exhortation from Paul to the Colossians isn’t just between Paul and the Colossians; it’s also an exhortation to us who read all these years later (probably, much to Paul’s surprise!).

When we go about pursuing the world to either affirm or give us our purpose in life, we end up stuck in a vicious and self-destructive pursuit of a reward that our deeds and works will never be able to give us. When we try to define ourselves by the external deeds, we become too closely identified with such things and thus, give ourselves over to the domination of action (even virtuous and altruistic action). We mustn’t start with the world and our actions. Rather, we must start with God and God’s actions toward us in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul is saying to the Colossians. When we start there, with God at the foot of the Cross and in the light of the resurrection, we are grafted into an ancient and long-enduring purpose: to live fully as we are with our neighbor whoever they are, to love both God and our neighbor as we have first been loved, and to set the captives free.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the ‘Death of God,’ trans. David Lewis (London: SCM, 1967), 27. Originally published as, Stellvertretung—Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem ‘Tode Gottes,’ Kreuz Verlag, 1965. “For whenever the individual imagines that he is unmistakable and unique, society puts him right and instructs him about exchangeability.”

[3] McKnight, Colossians, 133. “Many scholars think Col 1:15-20 reflects or is an early Christian hymn (or confession…”

[4] McKnight, Colossians, 138. “Put differently, this hymn may have origins in the Old Testament, in the Jewish wisdom tradition, as well as in Greco-Roman vocabulary, but Paul—because of Jesus, because of his incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection and exaltation—has swallowed it all up into new expression by means of his own exegesis.”

[5] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 132. “The rhetorical strategy of this hymn is to show that the audience and author are allied in a common Christocentric faith, or perhaps more refined, into a christological monotheism. In fact, it is in Christ—the one who lived, who was crucified, who was raised, and who rules, the same one who created and is the goal of creation—that true wisdom is to be found.”

[6] McKnight, Colossians, 150. “The incarnation and this comprehensive superiority are grounded in the Son’s life-giving capacity to create ‘all things.’ Everything that is not the Creator is created, and the Son rules the entire created world as its Creator.”

[7] McKnight, Colossians, 149. “His status is superior because temporally he is before all things, hierarchically he is above all things, and ontologically he sustains all things. This matters for anthropology: if Christ is the Prōtotokos, Adam is not simply the prototype of the Second Adam, but Christ is the prior Eikōn-template used to crate Adam and Eve. Christ may be the Second Adam, but Adam then, is the Second Prōtotokos-Eikōn. One might then say that, in contemplating creation—since all creation is in, through, and unto Christ—we are to encounter a manifestation of nothing less than the Son.”

[8] McKnight, Colossians, 146. “…for the apostle Paul, Jesus was himself the one and only true eikōn in bodily form, leading to the implication that we can understand Adam only trough Jesus, and not Jesus simply as the second instance of the original Adam. This, then, is not so much Adamic Christology, as if Jesus is merely Adam Version 2.0, but instead a Christological anthropology, or a christologically reframed Adam, an anthropology both embodied and ‘storied’ in Israel.”

[9] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “This God-man King or Lord rules and reveals God. That is, in Jesus—the Cruciform One—we see ‘no error, no failure,’ when it comes to an ‘exactly similar’ revelation of who God is. It is right, then, to see in eikon the ‘essence’ of God no manifest.”

[10] McKnight, Colossians, 147. “To call Jesus the eikōn of the invisible God is to say that Jesus is the one who rules over all as the Davidic king…Furthermore, eikon connotes revelation as the physical presence, or the ‘exact representation’ (Heb. 1:3), in concrete, embodied reality of the invisible God.”

[11] McKnight, Colossians, 151. “Perhaps the boldest statement is that Christ is the creator of ‘all things,’ which is spelled out in location (‘things in heaven and on earth’) and essence (‘visible and invisible’), and then the essences are given concrete terms: ‘whether thrones or powers or rules or authorities.’”

[12] McKnight, Colossians, 152. Christ “…is the essential source of life in creation, he is the agent of creation, and he is the telos of creation.”

[13] McKnight, Colossians, 156. “…the ‘head’ in this context is the one who grants and sustains life, while also creating a new kind of unity among the members.”

[14] McKnight, Colossians, 157. “In this context one must also think the term ekklēsia will have evoked a political assembly of citizens; as such, the co-opting of the term by Paul for a Christian kind of politics under King Jesus has overtones of a political alternative.”

[15] McKnight, Colossians, 160. “The son is preeminent because God’s fullness dwells in him.  But one might opt instead for a softer relationship and take all of v. 18 as grounded in the Father’s decision to locate all of the fullness in the Son.”

[16] McKnight, Colossians, 158. “…the son is the beginning of new-creation life as the first one raised from the dead, resulting in a preeminent status over all the redeemed.”

[17] McKnight, Colossians, 161. “…as Zion echoes temple and was the mountain where God as pleased to dwell….so now God dwells in the Son. Hence, we have here a Christological revision of temple theology, with echoes of new-creation theology. This divine glory indwells the Son.”

[18] McKnight, Colossians, 162. “The Son’s redemption reconciles all things, which is a peace-making work that brings together Jews and Gentiles into one family of God. The redemption here is less an ecotheology or a sociopolitical theology and more a theological and christological ecclesiology.”

[19] McKnight, Colossians, 163. Katalassō, “The linguistic game this term and its cognates play is that, first, humans are out of sorts with God (enemies…)—including the essence of captivity to the cosmic powers, which is the focus in this hymn—in need of reconciliation; second, the means of that reconciliation is King Jesus, who reconciles by means of his salvation-accomplishing events, most notably the cross and resurrection and exaltation to rule.”

[20] McKnight, Colossians, 164. “The reconciliation of our passage, then, includes the divided peoples of the Roman Empire, and it must be emphasized that that sort of reconciliation I the focus of Pauline ecclesiology in Colossians …and Ephesians…”

[21] McKnight, Colossians, 164-165. “Peace-making” “The term expresses the sense of adoption into, and behaving like, God’s family.”

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“Rescued from Danger…Sealed for Thy Courts”: The Path of Easter!

Psalm 118: 14-16a Abba God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!

Introduction

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!

This morning, our calcified hearts prone to wander from God find rest in divine sealing made known in the unsealed, empty tomb. We who are enticed and attracted to the shiny bobbles and fluffy lures of the kingdom of humanity are now ushered into something truly new, truly beaming, truly spectacular, truly built of the divine, eternal, never tarnishing substance that is the love of God for you, the Beloved. This morning, despite our wandering, we come face to face with God in Christ, the one who lives and doesn’t die.

Even when we decided to wander from God, to turn our backs, to forget the ancient and good story, to tread and tromp on everyone and everything, to estrange ourselves, to misjudge and prejudge others unto their condemnation, and even when we preferred acts of violence and death, God sought us and found us as we were wandering “from the fold of God”[1] and set us right. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the warm blanket of the Holy Spirit. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.

Today we’re a people set back on course, eyes lifted, faces turned, fleshy hearts thumping with divine love, hands and feet eager to spread the liberation we have received, and voices ready to call forth life even when all that surrounds us in the world is death. Today we become a people who dares to believe this crazy, far-out story because today become a people brought to life by this good and ancient word of God.

Luke 24:1-12

Now after the women were made full of fear they bowed their faces to the earth; [the two men in clothing shining like lightening] said to the women, “Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead?” (Luke 24:5)

At the end of chapter 23, Luke mentions that the women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and some other women (24:10a)—saw, from a distance, where Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’s body (v.55).[2] It’s these women who now take center stage in the reception of the good news that Jesus is raised. As the men fled, the women held their ground initially in the distance and now the first ones on the scene in Luke’s resurrection story.[3]

Having seen where Joseph placed Jesus’s body (23:55), and it being the first day of the week and still in the depths of early morning, these women went to the tomb bearing the spices they prepared on Friday night (v.1 and 23:56). Keeping in mind that they prepared spices on Friday night, these women are not examples of blind faith despite the facts; for them, as well as for the men, Jesus was dead—very dead. They planned to anoint his body,[4] which wasn’t done in the rush getting his body down from the cross and into a tomb before the sunset and curses arrived (cf. Dt 21:23).

Now, when they arrived at the tomb, they found the stone having been [mysteriously[5]] rolled away from the tomb (v.2). Curious to see what happened, the women entered the tomb. And after entering the tomb they did not find the body of Jesus (v. 3). Luke then writes, while the women were perplexed/in doubt about what had happened, behold! two men approached the women [dressed] in clothing shining like lightening (v.4). The women were confused, and now they became full of fear; upon being approached by two men in dazzling clothing, Luke tells us, they bowed their faces to the earth (5a). In other words, they suddenly dropped to the ground because they were full of terror. While this is a natural and biblical response to angelic visitors, it’s also a human reaction. These women came to anoint Jesus’s body, and not only is it missing (stolen, maybe?) but now two men show up and approach them (Are we in trouble? Are they going to harm us?). Luke does a marvelous job wedding together the spiritual and temporal realities of this story growing in dramatic tension.

Luke then writes that the two gleaming men said to the women, “why are you seeking the one who lives with the dead? He is not here but was raised” (v.5b-6a).For one moment, suspend your judgment and how well you know this story. Stay here with the women hearing, for the first time, that Jesus—whom they saw crucified on Friday and sealed up in a tomb—is not dead but alive because he is risen! Instantaneously, your world is turned upside down…again! As they looked at each other (now more in astonishment and less in fear) they begin the journey of faith as it dawns on them (in their hearts and minds) that death itself has a mortal weakness: God…Is it possible? Is  Jesus alive? Imagine the grief they carried giving birth to hope…hope daring to rise to life in the depths of a tomb meant for the hopelessness of death…

Then Luke tells us that the two men exhort them, remember what he spoke to you while he was still in galilee, saying it is necessary that the son of humanity be betrayed into the hands of sinful humanity and to be crucified and on the third day to be raised up.” And as the men remind them, these women remembered [Jesus’s] words and after returning from the tomb they announced[6] all these things to the twelve and to the all the remaining people (vv. 8-9). That which they hadn’t fully grasped they did as the celestial men spoke to them;[7] they heard,[8] they believed, and they went.[9] If there were ever three phrases that sum up good discipleship, these are they.[10] The women didn’t linger, tarry, hesitate, debate, and didn’t dismiss because this message didn’t align with their social, political, or religious status-quo. They ran home and immediately told the disciples what they heard. Good news arrives!

And then it’s dismissed. Luke informs us, [the women and their words] appeared before [the men] as if silly, idle nonsense; they were disbelieving the women (v.11). The good news the women brought falls flat at the feet of the men they told; [11] save one. Peter is the only who listened and is intrigued enough to run to the tomb, and after stooping to look he saw only the piece of fine linen and then he departed toward home marveling at what had happened (v.12). According to Luke, Peter not only denied Jesus but then didn’t tell the others that the women were correct; he just remained silent and amazed. [12]  Here, Luke draws purposeful attention to the faithfulness of the women who proclaimed the good news even when it sounded ludicrous.[13] They didn’t linger among the dead; inspired by faith,[14] they ran straight into (new) life, spreading the good news of the one who is living, the risen Jesus the Christ. In this moment filled with swelling divine life, the women were resistant to wandering. They ran toward the risen Christ boldly entering a new reality and order where death succumbs to life.[15]

Conclusion

For us who are prone to wander because we forsake and forget the way of the reign of God, this morning we are given Christ himself—all of him—so that we never forget or forsake the way. For us who are addicted to treading on and tromping about the land and on others, we have received a new way to walk in the world demonstrated by the running feet of the women: swift and sensitive, eager to bring good news rather than pain! For us who find ourselves estranged by our own doing and having become strangers to God, to our neighbor, to creation, and to ourselves we are beckoned out of the oppressive col of self-imposed tombs of isolation and are given a community with God, with others, with creation, and with ourselves built on and by the love of Christ. For us who know the pain of being caught in the captivity of misjudging and prejudging others according to our own human standards, we are refused that plumbline and, instead, we are given divine love, life, and liberation as our new metrics of good and right. For us who are drunk with violence and death, we receive what we do not deserve this morning: peace and life eternal.

This morning we’re given something completely new, completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. The women who were encountered in the empty tomb were charged to stop looking for the living among the dead; their lives were never ever the same.[16] So it is with us: our call to be disciples taking up their cross and follow Jesus isn’t gone, it’s the only way we have because the path we learned from the kingdom of humanity is forever blocked off.[17] This morning, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; this morning, we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the celestial realm: he is not here he is risen! How could we ever live in the old way? Everything is now new.

Today, our willful and chaotic wandering collides with the steady path of Christ that is dangerous and not careful, that is risky and not safe, that is radical and not status quo, that will afflict and not always comfort.[18] Today we live under the weight of the question, Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead? (v. 5). Go, Beloved, and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.

[1] Fom the hymn “Come Thou Fount”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 272. “In 23:55 Luke directed our attention to the women who were present at the burial, and now he continues telling us about the activities of these women once the Sabbath rest had passed.”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 272. “It is interesting to note that here again Luke will tell parallel but different stories about the women disciples and the men…These women have been present, but have remained mostly in the background of the story, even since Luke introduced them in 8:2-3. In the narrative of the passion and burial, even while others deny Jesus or flee, these women stand firm, although at a distance. Now they come to the foreground as the first witnesses to the resurrection.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 272-273. “They, no less than the rest, believe that in the cross all has come to an end. It is time to return home to their more traditional lives. But before they do that, they must perform one least act of love for their dead Master: they must anoint his body.”

[5] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 837. “How was the stone removed? Luke’s account neglects such detail, for he wants to move quickly to the pivotal discovery of an empty tomb.”

[6] Gren, Luke, 838-839. “‘Luke underscores the faithfulness of their testimony by noting that they announced ‘all these things’—that is, what they had observed, what they had been told, and the new significance they attributed to Jesus’ passion and the absence of his corpse.”

[7] Green, Luke, 837-838. “These women come looking for Jesus, but they want to minister to him, and as they quickly discover, because they lack understanding, they are looking in the wrong place. The angels first admonish them, employing language that is reminiscent of Jesus’ rejoinder to the Sadducees in 20:38: God is not the God of the dead but of the living! That is, in spite of their devout intentions in coming to anoint Jesus’ body, these women have failed to grasp Jesus’ message about the resurrection and, thus, have not taken with appropriate gravity the power of God.”

[8] Gren, Luke, 838. “The antidote for this miscalculation is remembrance. The women are addressed as person who had themselves received Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and the angel’s message fuses Jesus’ predictions during the Galilean phase of his ministry…Thus they are reminded that the career of the Son of Man blends the two motifs of suffering and vindication, and that in doing so he fulfills the divine will.”

[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The women do not see the resurrected Jesus. The two figures at the tomb (presumably angels) simply tell them that he has risen just as he had foretold, and they believe. Luke does not even say, as do Matthew and Mark (Matt. 28:7; Mrk 16:7), that they are instructed to tell the rest of the disciples (an injunction they follow in Matthew, but not in Mark). They simply hear the witness of the two men at the tomb, and apparently on their own initiative go and tell the others.”

[10] Gren, Luke, 838. Seim qtd in. “Their reception of the resurrection message ‘confirms their discipleship and the instruction they have received as disciples.’”

[11] Green, Luke, 839-840. “The gap between male and female disciples widens, as the faithful account of the women falls on the cynical and unbelieving ears of the men. Nothing more than useless chatter—this is how their announcement is evaluated and discarded. This can be explained in at least to aways. First, the earlier situation of the women disciples is being repeated int eh case of their male counterpart; failing to grasp Jesus’ teaching regarding his suffering and resurrection, they cannot make sense of the news share d with them. At the same time, however, Luke’s ‘all this’ (v 8) cannot but include the message they had received form the angels, so that the men were given access to the significance of recent events. The dismissive response of the men is therefore better explained with reference to the fact that those doing the reporting are women in a world biased against the admissibility of women as witnesses.” Peter’s response is all the more positive.

[12] Green, Luke, 840. Amazement is not faith nor does it hint at the eventual genuine faith. “Unlike the women, [Peter] returns home with no new message to share.”

[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The contrast is such that one cannot avoid the conclusion that it is purposeful, and that Luke is stressing the faith of these women who have traveled with Jesus from Galilee, and who were the only ones who remained true throughout the entire story of the betrayal. Even though the later course of church history, with its expectation of entirely male leadership, would lead us to think otherwise, it is they who bring the message of the resurrection to the eleven, and not vice versa.”

[14] Green, Luke, 836. “The Evangelist has repeatedly noted the incapacity of the disciples to grasp this truth…but now he signals a breakthrough on the part of the women. If the male disciples continue in their obtuseness, and thus lack of faith, at least Peter response to the witness of the women by going to the tomb. His behavior portends at last the possibility of a more full understanding of Jesus’ message on their part.”

[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 274. “The resurrection is not the continuation of the story. Nor is it just its happy ending. It is the beginning of a new story, of a new age in history.”

[16] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “But the truth is that the resurrection of Jesus, and the dawning of the new with him, poses a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story. The women on their way to the tomb were planning to perform one last act of love for Jesus, and then would probably just return home to their former lives. Peter and the rest would eventually return to their boats, their nets, and the various occupations. But now the empty tomb opens new possibilities. Now there is no way back to the former life in Galilee. Even though Luke tells us that Peter simply went home after seeing the empty tomb, we will soon learn that this was not the end of it: Peter himself would eventually die on his own cross.”

[17] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The resurrection is a joyous event; but it also means that Jesus’ call for his disciples to take up their cross and follow him is still valid. The road to the old ways in Galilee is now barred. The resurrection of Jesus impels them forward to their own crosses, and indeed, we know that several of the disciples suffered violent death as the result of their following and proclaiming the Risen One.”

[18] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The full message of Easter is both of joy and of challenge. It is. The announcement of unequaled and final victory, and the call to radical, dangerous, and even painful discipleship.”

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Totally and Utterly Human

Psalm 124:6-7 Blessed be Abba God! … We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the Name of Abba God…

Introduction

Over the course of the past few weeks, we’ve seen Jesus defend his disciples from the offense of unclean hands; it’s not what goes into a person that makes them clean or unclean, but what comes out (it’s a heart issue). We’ve seen Jesus break socio-religio-political boundaries by including an unclean, gentile woman in God’s mission and reign in the world. And last week, we saw Jesus reorient the disciples toward the mission of God and away from the ideologies and dogmas of humanity thriving off notions of human power and might: to be great in the reign of God is to identify with those who have no status or power in your society; in other words it means: to be human. Throughout all these stories, there’s a common thread: discipleship.

According to Mark, to follow Jesus out of the Jordan and to the cross demands a rather radical overhaul of both the believer’s inner and outer life. It’s not about obeying traditionalisms and arcane laws long expired only rendering the outside “clean”; it’s not about boundaries and political lines keeping some in and some out; and it’s not about greatness defined by humanity’s preferential option for status. (These things perpetuate the mythologies of the kingdom of humanity serving only those who are powerful while enslaving those who are not.) Discipleship is about having/receiving a new heart, new mind, new eyes, new ears, new language, and new actions. The disciple of Christ, like Christ, must endure being the epicenter of the conflict of the reign of God being born into the world fracturing the kingdom of humanity and putting things that are upside down, right-side up.

Mark’s Jesus hammers home that discipleship is not/never about dividing lines, in-group and out-group, us v. them; none of that divisionary thinking can exist among the disciples or within each disciple. The mission and reign of God is much bigger (and better) than anyone—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—can or will imagine. The thinking that belongs to the kingdom of humanity is small and divisive; for the disciples, they must think in line with the reign of God: big…cosmically and inclusively big.

Mark 9:38-50

And then John said to [Jesus], “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and were [unsuccessfully[1]] preventing him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not prevent him, for no one—who will do a powerful work in my name—is also able to revile me quickly. For whoever is not against us, [is] for us. For whoever might give you a winecup of water because the name that you are of Christ, truly I say to you, by no means will they lose their reward.” (Mk 9:38-41)

Structurally, there’s no indication in the text that this moment is separated from where we left off last week. Thus, we can assume the same posture: Jesus is down low, the disciples are gathered around him, and a little child is in their midst. And then John speaks, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we were preventing him because he was not following us.” With this statement, it’s clear that the disciples still[2] don’t understand what it means to be disciples in the reign of God and of Christ.[3] The in-group/out-group way of thinking runs deep in the inner (and outer) lives of the disciples. When it comes to Christ, all traditional conceptions of human groupings are called into question.[4] So, the way Jesus replies to the group continues his teaching the disciples what the reign and mission of God (really) is about: It is completely inclusive and it promotes equity. The disciples need a more “welcoming [and open]” mindset[5] toward people who were not following them—which is the real offense for John;[6] anyone who is participating in the reign and mission of God in Christ’s name should not be hindered.[7] In other words, the ability to cast out demons in Jesus’s name[8] (which the Twelve failed at recently[9]) isn’t restricted to some special authority and status[10] the Twelve think they have because of their proximity to Jesus.[11]

Interestingly, when Jesus says, “Do not prevent him, for no one—who will do a powerful work in my name—is also able to revile me quickly. For whoever is not against us, [is] for us. For whoever might give you a winecup of water because the name that you are of Christ, truly I say to you, that by no means they might lose their reward.”, he’s not only broadening the mindset of the disciples, he’s (also) giving three reasons[12] why the disciples need not to be exclusive.

  1. The man is not an enemy; he’s performing exorcism in Jesus’s name thus associating himself with Jesus. Because of this association he will not be able to speak ill quickly of Jesus (et al);[13]
  2. Because of the in-group/out-group mentality expressed in John’s comments to Jesus, Jesus immediately stops cliquishness; it doesn’t belong to the reign of God;[14] and,
  3. The disciples should be kind; simple, kind acts done for those who bear Jesus’sname(i.e. giving a winecup of water) are significant and will be noticed[15] because it is service to Jesus, thus to God. Thus, they are actually with us (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν) (pace John).[16]

In this way, anything done in the name of Christ and for those who bear Christ’s name is enough;[17] no further demonstration of belonging is needed.[18] In light of this deduction, Jesus exhorts the disciples not to be so prideful[19] that they quickly draw lines in the sand organizing who’s in and who’s out, “They are to be a church, not a sect.”[20]

Jesus then discusses causing one of these little ones (potentially drawing upon the image of the child in their midst and broadening it to those who believe in [Jesus] and can be taken advantage of[21]) to stumble; Jesus emphasizes, from a different angle, the dangers of the aforementioned “cliquishness” and elitism.[22] Each of the four sayings does not really offering anything more novel than the one before it except that the focus moves from causing someone else to stumble to causing one’s own self to stumble. All four sayings work together emphasizing how bad it is to get in the way of God’s Spirit at work in the world to bolster one’s human ideas of exclusion and inequality. Unlike the person who gives a cup of water to the followers, the person who causes someone to stumble deserves the opposite of reward. According to Mark’s Jesus, the one who causes another to stumble will be thrown into Gehenna known for “punishment of the ungodly,”[23] into the flames of the unquenchable fires (in Gehenna the fires burned continually because it was Jerusalem’s garbage dump[24],[25]) and where their worm does not die (ref. to Isaiah[26]). Through these intense images, Jesus exhorts his disciples to be alert and awake because threats lurk outside and within themselves.[27] Therefore, the disciples are exhorted to deal shrewdly with themselves rather than others because—most likely—the problem isn’t the hand, eye, foot, or someone else; it’s the heart[28] and its ability to be held captive to the kingdom of humanity because of pride, a desire for greatness, and status. Rather, the disciples are to be utterly committed to God[29] and God’s reign and mission in the world; this, so they can participate in God’s mission of justice and equity (which is peace[30]) as the beautiful, fragrant, salted sacrifices they are for the well-being of the neighbor and to the glory of God.[31]

Conclusion

Jesus is going to great lengths to make sure his disciples understand that the reign of God is nothing like the kingdom of humanity. God isn’t against humanity, in fact, according to Jesus and Paul Lehmann (quoted last week), God is about humanity, so much so that God transcended God’s self and became human. This was done to elevate humanity above what humanity was/is willing to settle for. And, frankly, that’s the problem with the kingdom of humanity: it regularly settles for less than. Jesus doesn’t want his disciples consumed with notions of greatness, privilege, power, and authority; these things make human beings less human. Jesus wants his disciples to see that their humanity is anchored to their dependence on God by faith in Jesus. The world, for Jesus, needs more simple, vulnerable human beings, not more dictators and despots.

The disciples are to always choose humanity over inhumanity; this is what it means to be dedicated to and participate in God’s mission and revolution of love, life, and liberation. Thus, what keeps the disciples human is taking seriously their role as representatives of God in the world and among their neighbors. Here, our faith in Christ and our dependence on God works itself out in Spirit-filled, loving action toward the neighbor to the glory of God. Remembering whom we follow and whose we are, keeps us dependent and responsible on and to God as well as on and to our neighbor. In this divine economy, there is no elitism and division, but only equity and unity, thus peace and justice. Dorothee Sölle writes,

“The love of which the Gospel speaks is simply the radical intervention of one irreplaceable being for another; an identification which is provisional and which makes its agent dependent. Christ identified himself with God and thereby made himself dependent on God’s attaining identity himself. Anyone who identifies himself with Christ likewise represents God in the world, in suffering and in transitoriness.”[32]

The disciples mistakenly divided by who has authority and who doesn’t, who was following the right dogma and who wasn’t; Jesus set them straight: whoever is representing me in the world through deeds of love, life, and liberation, is representing God and is participating in God’s mission. They who have ears to hear, let them hear.

[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), 376. “if the imperfect tense of ἐκωλύομεν is correct …it probably indicates an unsuccessful attempt rather than the repeated prohibition of a persistent ‘offender’.”

[2] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 135. “The Twelve make one mistake after another.”

[3] France, Mark, 375. “This little didactic story follows very appropriately form the lesson of vv. 33-37, the call to disciples to be ready to receive those whom they might naturally reject, and the connections is reinforced by the repetition three times in these verse of the phrase ἐπὶ/ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου/σου … which was the reason given for receiving the child in v. 37.”

[4] France, Mark, 375. “Where the name of Jesus (i.e., a relationship with him) is concerned, natural human considerations of who is in and who is out will be subverted.”

[5] France, Mark, 376. “The effect of the pericope is to encourage a welcoming openness on the part of Jesus’ disciples which is in stark contrast to the protective exclusiveness more often associated with religious groups, not least within the Christian tradition.”

[6] France, Mark, 377. “The ground of John’s objection was not lack of success, but the use of Jesus’ name outside the group of disciples. The man’s offence is that οὐκ ἀκολουθεῖ ἡμῖν.”

[7] France, Mark, 376. “The man concerned is not a recognized member of the group of disciples, but he does profess to operate in the name of Jesus, and the results of his activity are beneficent. It is this criterion rather than a narrower group identity which the pericope accepts.”

[8] France, Mark, 376-377. “There is some other evidence in the gospels for exorcists outside the immediate circle of Jesus and his disciples…and there are a number of mentioned of exorcism, Jewish and pagan, in roughly contemporary sources…Some of them invoked the name of Jesus (after his death and resurrection), and not always with satisfactory results …This is the only mention of a similar practice during Jesus’ lifetime.”

[9] France, Mark, 376. “To make matters worse, this pericope follows hard on the story of the disciples’ failure in exorcism in 9:14-29. To see an outsider apparently succeeding where they, the chosen agents of Jesus, have failed is doubly distressing.”

[10] France, Mark, 377. What John is looking for is not so much personal allegiance and obedience to Jesus, but membership in the ‘authorised’ circle of his followers. We should perhaps understand ἡμεῖς here as specifically the Twelve, regarded as having an exclusive link with and commission from Jesus, so that other people’s association with him must be through their mediations. Even if such a possessive doctrine is not explicit, it fits John’s restrictive action and explains the terms of Jesus’ response.”

[11] France, Mark, 376. Exorcism as special feature of disciple/the twelve’s calling/authority (given by Jesus), “To find the practice carried out in the name of Jesus by someone unknown to them is therefore a severe blow to the disciples’ sense of identity, and undermines their special status. This issue of status, which underlay the teaching of vv. 33-37, is therefore still in focus.”

[12] France, Mark, 377.

[13] France, Mark, 377. “has associated himself with [Jesus] by using his name, and his choice of that authority, together with the fact of his success, marks him as being on the right side. Such a person cannot in consistency go on to speak as his enemy, and so there is no justification of Jesus’ disciples to oppose him.”

[14] France, Mark, 378. , “The Cliquishness which too easily affects a defined group of people with a sense of mission is among the ‘worldly’ values which must be challenged in the name of the kingdom of God.”

[15] France, Mark, 378. In re “reward” for giving water, “But even so small an act betokens a person’s response to Jesus in the person of his disciples…, and as such will not be unnoticed.”

[16] France, Mark, 378.

[17] Placher, Mark, 135. “The basic direction of Jesus’ response is clear enough—if people are doing good in Jesus’ name, leave them alone.”

[18] France, Mark, 378. “For Mark’s readers it is the title Χριστός which is the touchstone of a persons’ allegiance.”

[19] Placher, Mark, 135. “They are, it turns out, not making a new mistake but the same prideful, competitive ones. If someone is not part of their group, their gang, their tribe, then how dare he claim to do anything in the name of Jesus.”

[20] France, Mark, 378-379. “The three sayings collected in vv. 39-41 thus illustrate in different ways the open boundaries of the kingdom of God, where both committed disciple and sympathetic fellow traveler find their place. The unknown exorcist represents this outer circle, and is to be welcomed as such. There are indeed opponents and ‘outsiders’, as we see repeatedly in the rest of the gospel, but disciples are called on to be cautious in drawing lines of demarcation.

[21] France, Mark, 381. “As Mark’s text stands the question cannot be answered with confidence, but the context as a whole makes it unlikely that the μικροί should be understood only, or even mainly, of children. Disciples of any age are potentially vulnerable to such ‘tripping’.”

[22] France, Mark, 380. “The [following] whole little complex of sayings, like the preceding pericopes, focuses on the demands of discipleship both negatively and positively. The saying thus fit into the overall thrust of this part of the gospel, however artificially they may be linked with one another.”

[23] France, Mark, 381-382. ἡ γέεννα “…a term used in apocalyptic literature for the ultimate place of punishment of the ungodly…it had a clear and well known meaning (because of Matthew’s use}, so that its use alone would communicate adequately.”

[24] France, Mark, 382. Fire “as the agent of judgment and destruction, perhaps exploiting the origin of the word γέεννα in the valley of Hinnom…where the fires of Jerusalem’s refuse dumps burned continuously.”

[25] Placher, Mark, 137. “Gehenna was a valley south of Jerusalem where in ancient times babies were sacrificed to the Canaanite god Moloch. In the reforms under King Josiah (7th century BCE) such practices were brought to an end, and the area became a garbage dump, where refuse was continually smoldering. Gehenna was a horrible place, full of fire, smells, maggots, rats, and things in decay. Its history as a locus of child sacrifice further evokes the context here, where Jesus is singling out for condemnation hose who ‘put a stumbling block before’ or ‘trip up’ any of the ;’little ones who believe in me.’”

[26] France, Mark, 382. Worm statement, “In Isaiah the clause describes the state in which the dead bodies of God’s enemies will be seen, presumably envisaged as decomposing and burning on the battlefield.”

[27] France, Mark, 382-383. “Danger comes to the disciple not only from outside but from within…it is for the reader individually…to determine what aspect of one’s own behavior, tastes, or interests is a potential cause of spiritual downfall, and to take action accordingly.”

[28] Placher, Mark, 138. “But the hypotheticals, while true in themselves, rest on faulty premises. Our hands and feet and eyes do not cause us to sin. We ourselves, our minds, our souls, our wills—whatever language one wants to use, the source of our sin is not a part of us that can be removed with a sharp enough knife. The point of the passage, then, is to say, ‘this is how serous sin is: it would be worth cutting off part of your body to cure it. If only it were that easy. So we have to think even more deeply about sin.”

[29] France, Mark, 384. v. 49 and salt “In this context it speaks of one who follows Jesus as totally dedicated to god’s service, and warns that such dedication will inevitably be costly in terms of personal suffering.”

[30] France, Mark, 385. “The good salt which should characterize disciples consists in …or results in ….peaceful relationships. While salt as a metaphor for peacefulness is in itself an unusual use, in the OT salt symbolises a covenant…”

[31] France, Mark, 384. v. 50 symbolism of “salt” “…in symbolises the beneficial (καλόν) influence of the disciple on society…”

[32] Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the ‘Death of God,’ translated by David Lewis (London: SCM, 1967), 142. Originally published as, Stellvertretung—Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem ‘Tode Gottes,’ Kreuz Verlag, 1965. Emphasis, mine.

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Kate Hanch’s “Storied Witness”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

John 20:1-18

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] Come Thou Fount, v. 2.

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

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The Paradox of Christian Existence

Psalm 147: 1, 3, 12, 21c Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God! How pleasant it is to honor God with praise! Abba God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. God has pleasure in those who fear him, in those who await God’s gracious favor. Hallelujah!

Introduction

When I became Christian, I remember feeling liberated. Really and truly free, living in the light of God’s love for me in Christ that I felt—truly felt—by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was like being in love for the first time, nothing could dampen that sensation of liberation. Everything felt great. Until.

One day I was driving down 1-95, going somewhere to fetch something, and my eye locked on to the speed-limit sign. For the first time (ever?), I felt compelled to check my speed and slow down. When I normally wouldn’t flinch towards 5-10…ish miles over the speed limit, but this time I did flinch, I did care.

I wish I could say that was the only and last time that ever happened. It wasn’t; it kept happening. I started noticing more and more laws. But it wasn’t like I was noticing the laws and that they infringed on my liberties, but that I saw the law doing something bigger than condemning me (how could it? I was free in Christ from the condemnation of the law!). What did I see? The people being protected by these laws. I remember my heart growing heavier; it was no longer just me on those roads or in that place, I was very aware there were others. My liberation in Christ was now tainted with a burden. A burden to give a heck about my neighbor; a burden to resist myself; a burden to love like I was loved by Christ.

Everything felt different, shifted, big, heavy, real. While I knew and felt that my liberation in Christ wasn’t gone, it was now yoked to this burdened-ness. My inner world shifted from levity to serious. Why hadn’t I seen this before? Why am I seeing it now? 1 Corinthians explains this well,

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

For being free/not under restraint of all things, I am brought under subjection to all, so that I might gain more of them.…For the ones under the law [I made myself] as one under the law, not that I myself am under the law, so that I might gain the ones under the law. For the ones who are lawless, [I made myself] as a lawless one, not being lawless of God but subject to Christ, so that I might gain the lawless. I made myself as the [socio-politically] weak[1] for the [socio-politically] weak so that I might gain the [socio-politically] weak. For all people I have become all things, so that I might save some by all means. Now, I do all things through the good news, so that I might partake jointly of it. (1 Cor. 9:19, 20b-23)[2]

How does this explain what I was experiencing all those years ago as a new Christian? Let me show you. First, Paul tells the Corinthians that his boasting is not in his preaching the gospel. The reason why he doesn’t boast is because a constraint is pressed upon him. He doesn’t have a choice, he is compelled to preach the gospel not for vainglory but for the glory of God which imposes itself on him.[3] Because Paul loves Jesus, he is compelled to proclaim Christ crucified and raised to everyone who will listen, to spread the announcing of God’s good tidings for the beloved.

In fact, Paul is so compelled that if he doesn’t preach the gospel it is woe, or better yet, it is agony forhim.[4] Paul elaborates further with a relatively awkward comment about wages. For if I do this entirely by personal choice,[5] then I have my wages/reward; but, if [I do this entirely] unwillingly, then I have been entrusted with stewardship. Only those who are able to choose to do something earn a reward or “wages”; those who must, who cannot do otherwise, are called and sent, summoned and wrapped up in the divine pathos like the prophets of old.[6] Paul is so commissioned that he refuses payment for preaching the gospel; he forgoes his rights to serve his neighbor.[7]

Then Paul declares that he’s free, not under restraint, and delivered from obligation. Um, what? Paul is talking about the paradox of Christian freedom and responsibility. By faith in Christ, Paul is free, under no obligation, having no restraints laid upon; he is wrapped up in God’s love, mercy, grace, and good pleasure. However, in being so wrapped up by this God means that Paul is also taken by the Holy Spirit of God and caused to love those whom and that which God loves. By this divine Spirit of love, Paul is liberated unto God to be in service to his neighbor, God’s beloved. In this way, Paul will forgo his right to his own liberty to put himself in service to his neighbor by means of the “law of love.” He loves because he has first been loved and cannot do otherwise.

Conclusion

In the beginning of his 1520 treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther offers this about Christian existence:

A Christian person is a free lord above everything and subject to no one.
A Christian person is a devoted-peer servant of everything and subject to everyone.[8]

I bring this up not because I’ve been trying to process the full extent of what this paradox means for Christian faith and praxis in the world before God and before humanity. I bring it up because Christian existence is a paradox. It is a paradox of real, true liberation that is gifted in Christ by the love of God and it brings the believer into true and real life, consummated by the power of the Holy Spirit. But, it comes with a burden. Because, to be so wrapped up in God’s gift of love, life, and liberation, enveloped in God’s grace and mercy through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit means that I am no longer my own, refused access to the law of autonomy; it necessarily means being for my neighbor, whoever they are, to serve them, to bring them the same love, life, and liberation I have. It means to feel the love of God and feel the love of God for the neighbor. It means to see them as God sees them. It means to feel their pain with them as God so feels their pain through Christ’s identification with the oppressed and lowly.

Beloved, you cannot have freedom without responsibility. You cannot have liberation without burden. To have freedom means to be responsible, to use that freedom to serve others is evidence of your freedom. To have liberation means to be burdened with bringing that same liberation to others. To be loved is to love. To be a Christian and to become as Christ, to follow Christ, is to become as one of these others just as he did. To try to have one half of the paradox and not the other is to remain in captivity—you cannot have just liberation and no burden, freedom without responsibility. As soon as you eliminate either part of Luther’s and Paul’s paradox, you lose everything. Beloved, you have been set free to set others free.

[1] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 705. “…the weak is a designation which derives from how ‘the strong’ perceive the social relationship, in addition to denoting an objective social contrast between the influential and the vulnerable In this context the weak may mean those whose options for life and conduct were severely restricted because of their dependence on the wishes of patrons, employers, or slave owners.”

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 695. “Paul has explained that he can glory of boast only where the principle of ‘freely you received, freely give’ operates, and when a renunciation of ‘rights’ is entirely voluntary. This cannot apply in this particular case to the act of preaching alone or to proclamation itself, for, like Jeremiah, in every account of his call Paul insists that God’s compulsion presses upon him.”

[4] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. Woe to me is more about pain, “misfortune, trouble…or agony for me. It is agony if Paul tries to escape from the constraints and commission which the love and grace of ‘the hound of heaven’ presses upon him.”

[5] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. ἑκών “entirely by personal choice” because it is position against compulsion.

[6] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 696. “Hence Paul makes a logical point that only acts carried out from self-motivation or self-initiative belong to the logical order of ‘reward’; and thereby his own irresistible commission excludes such logic.”

[7] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 697. v. 18 “This verse explicates the point just made above. Only by gratuitously proclaiming the gospel gratis can Paul go beyond the preaching which God has pressed upon him as an inescapable, not voluntary, task, and thereby go ‘the second mile.’ To do this, however, he must forego a right, as he pleads with ‘the strong’ among his readers to do.”

[8] WA 7:21; LW 31:344. Translation mine.

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Illuminated and Awakened

Psalm 90:15-17 Make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us and the years in which we suffered adversity. Show your servants your works and your splendor to their children. May the graciousness of our God be upon us; prosper the work of our hands; prosper our handiwork.

Introduction

Have you gone from pitch dark to bright light? I’m guessing most of us have experienced such a thing. So, you know the pain of that experience. It’s just as painful as having very, very warm comforters yanked off your very, very toasty body in the middle of a winter’s night when the bedroom is real, real chilly. Going from one extreme (darkness, warmth) to another (brightness, cold), hurts, it’s uncomfortable, it’s also startling and fear inducing, soliciting one toward anger (especially at the person who dared to yank your warm blankets off suddenly).

So, I have some bad news: the encounter with God in the event of faith is kind of (read: exactly) going from pitch dark to bright light, or from very warm and comfortable to not so warm and very uncomfortable. You see, the gospel is God’s word of love made known to you in the pitch dark or deep in the recesses of your comforter-cocoon. It flips the light on and lets it shine into unaccustomed eyes; it yanks back the covers and summons the sleeping awake. There’s no dimmer switch on the gospel; there’s no gentle nudge to waken. When it comes to an encounter with God in the proclamation of God’s love for you made known in Christ, it’s a death—not a little bit dead but a full on and total death.

But, get this, I have some good news: where there is illuminating and awakening there is God, so there is love, there is life, and there is liberation. So, if God’s word made manifest in Christ is the word illuminating and summoning those who hear out of darkness and from under cocoons of comfortable, then those who hear are illuminated and summoned by God into God; accepted not rejected and have God’s divine love, life, and liberation to love, live, and liberate in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

For you yourselves perceive, siblings, that our entrance to you has not come by being empty but suffering previously and being insulted—as you beheld in Philippi—we spoke boldly by our God to say to you the good news of God in many struggles. For our comfort [is] not out of deceit and not out of impurity and not in guile, but just as we have been put to the test by God to be trusted [with] the good news, in this way we speak not by means of pleasing human beings but for God the one who puts our hearts to the test.[1]

1 Thess. 2:1-4

Traditionally associated with being authored by Paul, this epistle is written to small churches in Thessalonica—think northern Greece, formerly known as Macedonia. While there’s debate about the authorship of all the letters including this one and its twin, this is not the place for that discussion (and I am not the scholar you are looking for). For now, we’ll just look at the message because it’s a good one; it’s an important one.

Paul—I’m going with tradition here for ease and flow—writes to the Thessalonians a letter of exhortation and encouragement, and some reporting. The letter is filled with references to what has been going on, threaded through with reminders to remain committed to God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to continue in the faith, to love one another deeply, and to wait expectantly for the return of Christ. The letter is basically a bold reminder to love as they have been loved. Meandering through the letter, though, are references to the difficulty Paul and his cohorts experience while proclaiming the good news in other territories. (Here, Paul specifically references Philippi.)

This difficulty is worth pointing out, for Paul, while discussing their presence with the Thessalonians. Why? Because even though the Gospel is good news, it isn’t always comfortable. It can be quite comforting to have good news, however this good news—the gospel, the Word of God, Jesus the Christ—isn’t always comfortable because a lot of the work of the gospel is about bringing the one who hears to its—the gospel’s—conclusion. The gospel’s conclusion is nearly (most likely 99.9999% of the time) in opposition to the way the world and the kingdom of humanity operates. In other words, the gospel is offensive especially to those who have grown quite comfortable cloaked in the bliss of the darkness of and snuggled deep within the cocoon of the status quo.

Paul writes further,

For not at any time did we come by words of fawning, just as you have perceived, and not by a pretense of avarice, God witnesses, and not by seeking glory from humanity or from you or from others (having weighty power being as apostles of Christ). But we came vulnerable into the midst of you, like a nurse cherishing her own children. In this way being caused to long for you we were well-pleased to give a share to you not only the good news of God but also of our own souls, because you became our beloved.

1 Thess. 2:5-8

As Paul moves through this portion, he articulates well that he and his group did not come in glory and power to please humans, but came vulnerably into the divine beloved’s midst because of their deep, abiding love for the Thessalonians. Paul proclaimed the gospel because he loves the Thessalonians and in proclaiming this good news, Paul shared not only the gospel but also of his own soul. And here in is the paradox of the gospel in that it illuminates and awakens the one who hears—which is hard to endure—it does so by also anchoring the one who hears in the yoke of love with the lover. The beloved is illuminated and awakened into acceptance and not rejection.

Conclusion

I know that there are very hard moments in the journey with God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It can feel painful to be suddenly thrust from the security of darkness into the blinding and piercing light; it can be scary to be yanked out of our warm cocoon of comfortability. Yet, when God is in the mix, when Christ is the one turning on the lights and pulling back the covers, you are being ushered into something even better: into the love of God bringing new life by the liberating word of love.

It’s not easy to be faced with the truth of the situation, but you do not face that situation alone, as if it all is now on you to figure out. God is with you for God called you into the light and summoned you out of sleep and into divine love to live a present tense, liberated existence in the world. So summoned and called, you—those who hear—are no longer held captive by narratives bringing death and not life, but you are liberated to call a thing what it is and to move forward and into hard situations without recourse to ignorance or denial, to turning those lights back off or pulling the comforter back over your head.

You are the Beloved; no matter what you are facing right now, you do not face it alone for God is with you, always and forever. You have hope, you have possibility, you have love, you have life, and you have liberation from captivity. And never forget, most of all you have each other and thus you have God in your midst.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

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Hear (again) and Follow

Psalm 99:5, 9 Proclaim the greatness of our God and fall down before God’s footstool; God is the Holy One. […] Proclaim the greatness of our God and worship God upon God’s holy hill; for our God is the Holy One.

Introduction

When someone must repeat themselves, you know it’s serious. I know that in my lifetime, when I’ve had to repeat something or have something repeated to me, it’s important. The repetition beckons, “Come and listen … like, really, really listen!” It’s a moment of realization: Oh! This person isn’t joking! There’s no lol, jk, or w/e in the atmosphere. Just pure unadulterated please, for the love of God listen and see, hear and perceive!

The bad news about repetition? It’s humbling. It’s humbling to go from thinking you did perceive and comprehend what was articulated to you, and then realizing you don’t/didn’t. Truly, if the person on the other side of the dialogue and conversation is saying it again, you clearly didn’t get it—whether it’s immediately after the first time or days or weeks later. Repetition means the speaker doesn’t trust you picked up the core of the communique or that you have demonstrated that you did not hear well enough. So, sometimes saying something once isn’t enough and whatever it is must be repeated because whoever is listening isn’t really getting it (“it” being the important thing trying to be communicated). 

The good news? It’s encouraging because it means the one who is talking hasn’t given up on the listener just yet. The listener is still important to the speaker; so important that the speaker will condescend to remind—in clearer terms and with a more serious tone—hey, this is quite serious, and I love you enough to repeat it so you really, really hear me. Love is willing to beckon the beloved even if it means having to repeat oneself. 

So, this morning I have some good and bad news for you: our Gospel passage telling of Jesus’s transfiguration on the heights of some unknown mountain is divine-self repetition: God is repeating God’s self. This means, those who are following Christ haven’t quite gotten the “it” yet about who this Christ is and what he’s here to do. But it also means that God loves those hard-of-hearing-hoomans enough to repeat God’s self. 

Luke 9:28-36

Now, while [Peter] was saying these things a cloud happened and enveloped them. Now, they were afraid while entering into the cloud. And a voice sounded out of the cloud saying: “This one is my son, the one who has been chosen; listen to him!” And when the voice had sounded, Jesus was found alone. And [Peter, John and James] kept silent and reported to no one in those days nothing of these things they had perceived. [1]

(Luke 9:34-36)

Have you ever noticed that the divine declaration here is very similar to the divine declaration at Jesus’s Baptism? The scene might be different, and the number of people present fewer, but the message is the same. Thus, God is repeating God’s self.

So, Luke tells us that Jesus takes Peter, John and James up a mountain to pray. While they are there, Jesus’s appearance—amid praying[2]—transfigures: his face changes and his clothing “was gleaming bright”. Then, as if Jesus’s transfiguring wasn’t enough, two men appear and begin talking to Jesus about his “departure” from Jerusalem “which was about to be completed”. Who are these two men? Well, two beloved prophets of old: Moses and Elijah. Just like John the Baptist who carried the promise of God’s love, life, and liberation into the depths of the waters to baptize those willing to enter in, so Moses and Elijah also carried this same promise to the heights of the mountain to baptize God’s beloved in glory.

Then, consumed with baffled humanity, Peter—who was burdened for sleep along with John and James and after perceiving the glory of the other three—interrupts the glorified men and suggests the building of three tents for Jesus and the celestial visitors. There is nothing else in the second testament that makes me love Peter more than this moment. He does nothing wrong; he’s just too tired to get it, to comprehend and perceive what he sees and hears. He can see what is happening and he can hear the men talking, but the depth of the reality before him is still just right out of reach.

Then, just as he is suggesting a very human and practical thing—the building of three tents to contain the glory before him—God comes close contained in a cloud[3] and proceeds to interrupt Peter[4] (who interrupted Jesus, Moses, and Elijah) with the second iteration of a very important message: “This one is my son, the chosen one! Listen to him!” In other words, for the love of Me, love him and listen and see! Listen to me and then hear him and perceive! This is divine self-disclosure, another moment of divine self-revelation.[5] Here, as in the river Jordan before (and below), God is urging all those who have ears to hear to trust,[6] listen, and perceive:[7] another exodus from bondage is coming. If they didn’t catch it the first time it happened during Jesus’s baptism by cousin John in the Jordan, then catch it now: Moses (the liberator) has shown up accompanied by the prophet of prophets, Elijah, to discuss departure…those who are being held captive will be released, set free, loosed from captivity into the promised land,[8] into God.[9] Thus, listen to Jesus, the chosen divine son, for he is the interpreter of the law and the prophets, he is the door to life, love, and liberation, he is the truth and the way.[10] And what must Peter and others really, really listen to? Ernesto Cardenal tells us, “‘Christ is the word of God made flesh on earth, the message of God that we should love one another. That’s the word that the cloud says we must hear.’”[11]

Conclusion

While it feels like we may be bystanders here, or just some far future audience looking back in on a story about an event that happened ages ago, we are not such bystanders. We do not have the space to be an audience casually looking backward, being entertained by a story about ancient peoples just not getting it…as if we do. Because we don’t; and we must be asked to look and listen again. The key to understanding why I’m saying this is embedded in one simply Greek word Luke uses in this pericope: ἰδοὺ![12] Translated as “Behold!” or “Look!”, this is the word dismantling historical boundaries between us and Peter, John and James. We are ushered into the narrative, and we are asked (commanded!) to look and behold the events happening as if we are present! We are there, on the mountain, consumed by prayer and by a cloud, allowing our eyes to fall upon on Moses and Elijah, taking in all of Jesus’ transfigured glory; this all becomes important for us, too.[13]

We like to think that because we walk about with access to text that has been written down and translated into our language(s) we know it. But do you? Do I? Or do I need to hear it again? Maybe I need a divine repeated message that God loves me because I am too thick-skulled and too hard of hearing to hear and listen to this one whom God chose and in and through whom I am chosen by faith? Maybe in a time where chaos and tumult, fear and anger are the rule of the day, the law of the streets, the honor among the afraid and angry, maybe, just maybe I need to be reminded that God is bigger than I am, bigger than my ideas about the world and about God, bigger than whatever my most creative conceptions about life are, bigger than the deepest and widest void I can scream into, and even bigger than death.[14] Maybe, just maybe, I need this reminder so that my exhausted mind and body can be resurrected with God’s spirit, God’s breath, God’s life, love, and liberation so I can lay my hands on hope, remember mercy, recall grace, and dare to love God and my neighbor like my savior, Jesus Christ.

Beloved, take comfort: you are so loved that God is not above God’s self to repeat God’s words to you…In fact, God established this very place for you to hear again and again, to remind you, to recall to your heart the very concrete truth that you are loved so that you can go love your neighbor as you’ve been first loved by God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Green, Luke, 380. “Not only is prayer mentioned twice, but this reference follows hard on the heels of the parallel reference in v18, where prayer is represented as the setting for divine disclosure. In fact, through the use of the participial form, Luke has it that while Jesus was praying he was transfigured (ct. 3:21-22).”

[3] Cardenal, Solentiname, 285. “‘…enveloped by the mystery of God.’”

[4] Green, Luke, 383.

[5] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 377. “Luke’s transfiguration scene places a premium on the motif of sight. The ‘appearance’ of Jesus face changed, Luke’s audience is invited (along with the apostles) ‘to behold’ Moses and Elijah on the mountain with Jesus, these two OT figures appeared in glory, and the apostles ‘saw’ Jesus’ glory. Clearly, however, this ‘seeing’ is not enough, for Peter and those with him are able to witness all of this yet still seriously distort the meaning of these phenomena. From ‘seeing,’ then, the narrative turns to ‘hearing’ (vv. 35-36), after which, we are informed, the apostles told no one what they had ‘seen.’ Luke thus works in this scene with an understanding that is common in biblical narration—namely, ‘unaided human intellect cannot grasp history’s significance. One who reckons to understand the past implies a claim to God-given insight into the matter.’ The divine word illuminates; hence we may follow the narrative from the ‘seeing but not perceiving’ of vv. 28-34 to the ‘seeing and (beginning the process of) perceiving’ in v. 36. The whole scene is thus cast as a moment of revelation.”

[6] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 127. “Thus the text shows Jesus to be at least the equal of Moses and Elijah, and certainly invested with the authority of God so that his teachings are inspired: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’”

[7] Green, Luke, 384. “From an unimpeachable source, Jesus has been identified for them; as a consequence of this divine confirmation, they should regard his words, including his teaching on his destiny and the concomitant nature of discipleship (vv. 21-27), as reliable.”

[8] Green, Luke, 378. “What is the significance of these echoes? Is worth noting at the outset that, like other Hellenistic historiographers, Luke has reflected in his writing a general perception of history as the arena in which certain types of situations and characters appear. For Luke, if not for historiographers in general, this was due to his notion that historical events are divinely guided. This means that the Evangelist will have seen in the mission of Jesus a virtual, divinely ordained, reenactment of the exodus form bondage.”

[9] Cardenal, Solentiname, 284. “I: ‘In the Bible, God appears fundamentally like the God of Exodus, which is like saying the God of freedom. In the prophet Amos says that the Exodus of Israel was not the only one and that Yahweh had brought other peoples out of other slaveries. Which is like saying that Yahweh is the God of every revolution.’”

[10] Green, Luke, 384. “Indeed, as Luke will make clear, even these OT figures are now to be interpreted by Jesus, for his role as divine spokesperson has been endorsed by God himself. That is, it is not so much that the time of the law and prophets has passed as it is that Jesus has been designated as their authorized interpreter.”

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 285.

[12] Green, Luke, 381. “At the same time, Luke invites his audience to share their viewpoint through the use of ‘Look!’”

[13] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 282. “MARIA: ‘This happened when he was praying. And I think that for us too it’s important to pray. He was praying to prepare himself for what he was going to suffer.’”

[14] Gonzalez, Luke, 127. “Coming immediately after Jesus’ announcement of his sufferings and death, the transfiguration is thus a reminder that in spite of all outward signs of defeat and powerlessness, Jesus is ultimately more powerful than death and then the political and religious authorities in Jerusalem.”

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We Hope Because We Are Loved

Psalm 139:22-23 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts. Look well whether there be any wickedness in me and lead me in the way that is everlasting.

Introduction

God’s love liberates those God loves, the beloved. Good news! The Beloved is YOU! The beloved is everyone in your pew; the beloved is the person who just drove by; the beloved is each person. This is so because God’s love claims as God’s own all whom God loves—love turns the enemies of God into the beloved of God, flipping flagstones of the distance between God and the beloved, one by one, changing the space from enmity to beloved. And where love stakes claim, where love is, there God is because God is love and love loves the beloved and resides in and with and among the beloved.[1] The divine image is less about particular physical features of the flesh of the outer person, and more about the shared divine features of the spirit of the inner person. Thus, in the advent of God in the incarnated Word—Jesus the Christ[2]—the broadness of God and God’s love is made manifest for and among humanity, for and with each of us. “Furthermore, not only is the Christian a temple of God,” writes Gustavo Gutierrez, “every [person] is.”[3] It is not about our abilities and what we can do, it is not even about our talents or what makes us special; the divine image is born in and by love because those who are encountered by God in the event of faith are born again in love—this love is not only the amniotic fluid from which we burst forth, but is the genetic code of our being, the fuel of our actions, and the framework of our presence in the world. It is the spiritual and the material; it is the inner and outer; it is the entirety of cosmos. It is how we now see others: through the lens of divine love because God is in us in the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling in us. So, love is in us, and we love those whom God loves.

And, as we know, this love liberates. To believe and trust that God loves you—as you are, where you are—is to have faith that God is trustworthy, the one who has and does follow through. Faith justifies because it does what the law—all twisted up by us, by our inability—could not do: cause us to move closer to God. In other words, this faith justifies because it anchors us in God’s love where the law drew thick lines in the sand. But even though the law was exposed as weak (because of our weakness and inability), it does not mean the law is now (or was) “bad” or pointless; rather the law is good and is pointfull because it serves us in service to our neighbor.

So, for this reason, Paul boldly says,

Romans 8:12-25

Therefore, Siblings, at this time we are debtors not to the flesh in order to live according to the flesh. For, if you are living according to the flesh you intend to die; but, if [you are living according to] the spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For how many are brought to the Spirit of God, they, they are children of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery [brought] again into fear but you received a spirit of adoption by which we cry aloud “Abba, Elder!”

Rom. 8: 12-15

Those who are encountered by God in the event of faith are the ones reborn of God’s life, love, and liberation; they are liberated, freed, loosed, released from captivity, and no longer held by chains. So, Paul says, you’re not to return to a spirit of fear—as if slaves to the law—but into a spirit of intimate, personal relationship with God—as a child to a parent.[4] God is not to be feared; God is to be loved—this is Paul’s point. So, do not return to the law to qualify your relationship with God. God is to be loved, and this means God can only be served rightly by a response of love, which is faith. God is not served by mere law obedience; if so, then we would be “debtors to the flesh” and justified by our works and it would put the entire kit and kaboodle in our laps—we could lose it all, and this fosters both fear and exhaustion leading to abandoning God in heart and body because God is scary and never near, untouchable.[5]

But, from what we’ve learned in Romans, God is *very* accessible, touchable: God desires to hold, comfort you; to walk with, run with, sit with you; to laugh, cry, weep, get angry, and die on account of your missing the mark. Jesus, God’s Christ sent for God’s people, demonstrated to us that God is not to be held distantly as a holy relic of fearful worship, not to be adored from afar as if only a deity for the clean, or feared as in brought to terror. Rather, God—as Christ represented God—is a God of being close and intimate, willing to be made “unclean”, willing to go into the depths of humanity, willing to contend with death; this God, is the one who loves even when we’ve radically missed the mark (Good Friday) and shows us that even in the law of death—the aspirations of the flesh—God’s love triumphs by moving around and through death and summoning the dead to life and liberation (Easter).

It’s this God we call “Abba”, not because of fear and threat, but because of love and promise. We do not call God “Abba” because God is terrifying; we can only God “Abba” when this is the one we would run to, climb into the lap of, want to be around just because. To shriek[6] “Abba!” is to know the one we run to in our need, bombarded by world-induced-fear, and in the troubledness of the conscience. Fear would beckon us into the anything “not God”; love beckons us into nothing else but God.[7]

Here in, embedded in faith, is our hope. Hope, like faith, is not in what is seen but anchors in what is unseen now. We hope because we love; we hope because we’re loved. It’s about now. Our longing for God—straining forward, eager expectation, awaiting eagerly, looking for—is the source of our hope. All who are encountered by God in the event of faith are burdened with the longing expectation that is hope, because we’re born of the love of God and that love is not static but dynamic. It drives us forward from one day to another; it causes us to feel the plight of neighbor, to identify with those who hurt and suffer as Christ identified with them—in soul and body. We want what God wants because we’re God’s children, sharing in God’s likeness. We can’t not hope; we’ve become one with hope because we’re one with God, and we’ve become one with whom God loves: the neighbor.[8] So we hope because we love and because with God anything is possible because faith expands our hearts and minds because we share in the mind and heart of God.

Conclusion

Hope feels dastardly right now. But to love is to hope because to love is to risk vulnerability of feeling another person’s pain, like a child-bearer feels the pain of their child no matter how old that child gets. I think the problem is that we’ve conflated future expectation and present hope. Reading through the First Testament and the stories of Israel’s journey and walk with God, Israel’s hope in God is a ripe present hope based on historical stories hallmarking the past: we hope now because God has done… Today we can press on because yesterday God saw us through it.

So, Paul is telling us that hope is about God; hope is more about what God has done and the trust that is born from those stories, and that faith. If we allow God to be God (the Creator) and humans to be humans (the created, the creature) then what the future is, is God’s alone because time is in God. And we can be here, now. We can’t declare what is impossible or possible. The only terminology we’re given to speak of tomorrow is the language of yesterday’s possibility. What is is never all there is, thus we live in the collision of the impossible and possible performing revolutionary resistance to the powers threatening to take our lives and the lives of our neighbors (material, spiritual, social, sexual, financial, political, etc.).

Here in is hope’s realm. Here in is hope’s shriek, “Abba!”

Hope always takes up residence in the present with every anthology of the past stacked against her walls. Hope whispers to us: what is right now, isn’t all there is right now; there’s more here than meets the eye; all things are possible with God. Hope latches on to possibility. Hope has eyes to see this one step and not that one just changed everything. Hope has the ears to hear the whisper filled wind of history surging and coursing around our fatigued bodies. If I’ve made it this many days, to this spot, can I make it one more? It’s possible.

[1] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973. p.190. “The Biblical God is close to [humanity]; [God] is a God of communion with and commitment to [humanity].”

[2] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193. “Christ is the point of convergence of both processes. In him, in his personal uniqueness, the particular is transcended and the universal becomes concrete. In him, in his Incarnation, what is personal and internal becomes invisible. Henceforth, this will be true, in one way or another, of every [person].”

[3] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193.

[4] LW 25, 356. “…the spirit of slavery is contrasted with the spirit of sonship, and servile fear with filial love. Hence this term ‘slavery’ ought to be taken in the abstract, so that, if it is permissible to say it, the term ‘slavery’ is derived from slave as ‘sonship’ is from son.”

[5] LW 25, 357. “Second, this spirit is called the spirit of fear because this slavish fear also compels men to give up their outward obedience to the works of the Law in the time of trial. This fear ought to be called a worldly fare rather than a slavish fear, for it is not a matter of fulfilling the Law but he slavish fear of losing temporal goods or of suffering impending evils, and thus even wore than slavish fear.”

[6] Κράζομεν verb: present active indicative, 1st person plural. “We scream”, “we cry aloud”, “we shriek” (first principle part: κράζω

[7] LW 25, 358. “‘Now that you have been freed, you have not received this spirit of fear a second time, but rather the spirit of sonship in trusting faith.’ And he describes this faith in most significant words, namely, when we cry Abba! Father! For in the spirit of fear it is not possible to cry, for we can scarcely open our mouth or mumble. But faith expands the heart, the emotions, and the voice, but fear tightens up all these things and restricts them…”

[8] LW 25, 364. “Thus love transforms the lover into the beloved. Thus hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for, but what is hoped for does not appear. Therefore hope transfers him into the unknown, the hidden, and the dark shadows, so that he does not even know what he hopes for, and yet he knows what he does not hope for. Thus the soul has become hope and at the same time the thing hoped for, because it resides in that which it does not see, that is, in hope. If this hope were seen, that is, if the one who hopes and the thing hoped for mutually recognized each other, then he would no longer be transferred into the thing hoped for, that is, into hope and the unknown, but he would be carried away to things seen, and he would enjoy the known.”

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