By This Word Alone

Psalm 138: 7, 8a, 9b-c: Though God be high, God cares for the lowly; God perceives the haughty from afar. Though we walk in the midst of trouble, you, Abba God, keep us safe; Abba God, your love endures for ever; do not abandon the works of your hands.

Introduction

Last week I referred to the reality that we have been exposed for having lost our voice in the world thus our place and relevance in the world because we’ve forsaken the message of Christ in word and deed and have traded our spiritual authority of the reign of God for the acceptance and amicability of the kingdom of humanity. In our pursuits for intellectual validity in an age ruled by the rational and reasonable, we’ve whittled down the gospel into something easily digestible as post-enlightenment, (now) post-modern, scientific, fact and data driven, educated people. Few people (if any) are currently running to the church for help or find themselves desperate to hear what the church will do or say. The church may be stepping in to help here and there, but being a “force to be reckoned with” in the temporal realm? Nah. The mainline non-denominational, big-box churches are already in the pocket of the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of humanity eager to uphold the status-quo and gain their bit of power and prestige. And the mainline denominational churches desperate to make traditional spirituality great again were seduced into the siren song of ambiguous statements of love to make sure they kept the few they had in the pews. And let us not forget the overwhelming amount of toxicity and violence that has come from the hand of those charged to do right and keep safe the beloved of God. So, fam, we’ve achieved exactly what we were desperate to avoid: we’ve lost relevance.

To find that relevance once again, we must return to the age-old yet intellectually awkward proclamation of Jesus Christ—the one who was crucified and raised by God, the one who sets the captives free by word and in deed, flips tables, yells at winds and waves, exposes people, calls the least of these his friends and family, and has absolutely no problem confronting rulers and spiritual leaders of all stripes and types in the kingdom of Humanity. And by getting in touch with this weird, pre-modern, mythologically laden message, find ourselves (re)oriented to God, faces brazen with God’s glory and presence. In returning to the proclamation we’ve been given, we will also step in under the gracious, merciful, beautiful, light yoke of God’s expectations for us as the church—love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.

In other words, the foundation of the church is completely and totally dependent on the whacky and far-out stories of Jesus of Nazareth whom faith declares is the long-awaited Messiah of God and who is God—God of very God. It is precisely in and on these stories, these myths, where the church finds its unique identity to live and its concrete truth to speak into the world.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

For I make known again to you, siblings, the good news which I preached to you, and which you received, and in which you have stood, through which you are being saved by what words I preached to you if you holdfast, except if you believed at random. (1 Cor. 15: 1-2)

Paul gives us a clear and crisp definition of the “good news” on which, through which and by which the Church stands or falls and finds its unique identity and its concrete truth.[1] This is not some story that Paul came up with, but the very story that started the tradition of the church and will keep the church embedded as a force in the world for good and God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor. Paul says clearly to the Corinthians, I am telling you all again, my siblings, the good news I (have already) announced to you (v. 1a-b). In other words, Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the word of God that is the good news that God has proclaimed and promised from the beginning of the cosmos. He’s keeping this story very straight and clear and expects the Corinthians not to veer—in any way—from this tradition they’ve received from him. Thus, why Paul then says, and which you received (in turn[2]) and in which you have stood, and through which you are being (and will be) saved by what words I preached to you (vv. 1c-2b). They must remain on course because it is the ground under their feet. According to Paul, it is important for the Corinthians to hold fast to this particular message and not one of their own or a hodge-podge from what he said. Otherwise in straying and believ[ing] incoherently[3] (v. 2c), the Corinthians are not on solid ground and are not being saved.

For I handed over to you first and foremost what I also received… (v. 3a-b). What is the message that Paul preached and handed over and received and the Corinthians are being exhorted to hold fast to and not stray from? Each part of the crazy and whack story about Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. That Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas and then by the twelve[4] (vv. 3c-5). This is the good news, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (the gospel) Paul referenced back in v. 1, this is what he received and handed over[5] and through which the Corinthians are being saved;[6] this message, not part of it, not the comfortable bits, not another rendition. And it’s this message and its coherent grasp that is the foundation and the means by which the Corinthians are coming into an encounter with God by faith through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by this message and this alone that Christian faith and identity have its foundation, substance, and truth.[7] For Paul, the way this all works out is more than dogmatic (forced) confession and adherence, but the truth and actuality of a personal confession that is born of experiencing the summoning to life out of death of this good news.[8]

Paul then tells the Corinthians that Jesus in his resurrected state was seen by more than 500 siblings once for all, many of whom many remain until now, though some fell asleep. Afterward, he was seen by James [Jesus’s brother[9]], then by the all the apostles (vv. 6-7). Affirming the actuality of Jesus’s resurrection, Paul then presses in on the reality of the theme of Corinthians 15: God is God[10] and it’s this God who is God who is the one who brings the dead to life by grace and promise.[11] Paul writes, Then lastly as if one miscarried he was seen by also me, for I, I am the least of the apostles, of whom I am not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God; but by the grace of God I am who I am, and the grace of God toward me has not become fruitless, but to a greater degree I worked harder of them all, but not I but the grace of God in me. Through Paul’s confession and witness, those who are stuck are liberated, those who are afflicted are comforted, those who are untimely born are reborn in time, and those who are dead are made alive. According to Paul (by confession and experience), it’s the unmerited grace of God that is the breath of new life. [12] Thus, if for Paul than for the Corinthians[13]—individually and as the community.[14] It’s the promise of God fulfilled in and through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ that is the word of God that brings the dead to life,[15] gives authentic identity in the place of a sham identity, and replaces falsehood with truth.[16] It’s the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is, according to Paul, the firm foundation of the church; [17] apart from this there’s nothing to stand on, nothing to substantiate, nothing of relevance for the Christian community, the Church. Every part of Corinth’s existence is by God or not at all.

Conclusion

When the church fails to adhere to this message, when it decides what parts are worthy, reasonable, and rational at the expense of the other parts it will lose itself. In that moment, as it steps out from under and out of God’s grace and God’s word, the very thing it fears will happen: the church will cease to be relevant. But, according to Paul, the Church, sits precariously balanced on the solid word of God found in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; when the church stands on this word, proclaims this word, believes this word—as scary as that can be at times—the church finds itself square in the grace of God and supplied with God’s grace to carry on.[18] It is in adhering to this ancient claim that creates the timelessness of the church—it is the very essence of the invisible church, the ties that bind beyond human-made boundaries randomly drawn in the ground, beyond separations of generations of time, and beyond seemingly uncrossable expanses of space. It is this word that brings light where there is darkness, love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death. It is on and by this divine word—the word of Christ crucified and raised—and this word alone that the church is the church in the world to the well-being of the neighbor and to the glory of God.


[1] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1169. “The cross…remains ‘the ground and criterion’ of Christian existence and Christian identity.”

[2] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “The readers have in turn…received it. This is a happy rendering…to indicate transmission of a tradition for which the thrice-repeated καί is scarcely accidental.”

[3] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Here Paul envisages the possibility of such a superficial or confused appropriation of the gospel in which no coherent grasp of its logical or practical entailments for eschatology or for practical discipleship had been reached. Incoherent belief is different from believing in vain.”

[4] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1205. “…the twelve became a formal title for the corporate apostolic witness of those who had also followed Jesus during his earthly life, and who therefore underlined the continuity of witness to the One who was both crucified and raised.”

[5] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “Paul declares the gospel as that which is not only revealed (cf. Galatians 1 and 2) but is also ‘both transmitted and received’ and therefore in principle constitutes ‘the premises of the audience’ which provide the foundation on the basis of which Paul will develop his argument about the resurrection of the dead.”

[6] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1184-1185. Both italics and bold are part of the original text; when my emphasis, it will be noted in the footnote. “We must understand the gospel in 15:1, therefore, to denote more than the message of the resurrection, but not less. It denotes the message of salvation; in vv. 3-4 Paul endorses the shared pre-Pauline tradition which both proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ and interprets it in terms of the saving and transforming power of the God as this receives explanation and intelligibility within the frame of reference provided by the [Old Testament] scriptures.”

[7] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Paul does, however, refer to a continuity of handing on and receiving which constitutes, in effect, an early creed which declares the absolute fundamentals of Christian faith and one which Christian identity (and the experience of salvation) is built.”

[8] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1188. “There is a very close relationship between the dimension of proclamation or kerygma which declares a gospel truth claim and the dimension of confession or self-involvement which declares a personal stake in what is asserted.”

[9] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1207-1208. “…we have independent evidence that. Paul clearly regards James the Lord’s brother as an apostle…’…Paul certainly indicates that he regarded James as an apostle.’ This anticipates the point that for Paul the term apostle is always wider than the Twelve.”

[10] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[11] hiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[12] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1208. “The emphasis lies in the undeserved grace of God…who chooses to give life and new creation to those reckoned as dead, or, in Paul’s case, both a miscarried, aborted foetuswhose stance had benhostileto Christ and to the new people of God.”

[13] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1213. “‘Ecumenicity’ is not the lowest common denominator in a miscellany of individual experiences. For Paul it is defined by the common kerygma of a shared, transmitted gospel tradition, anchored in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as ἐν πρώτοις.”

[14] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1194. “…the promise of God which remains steadfast…depends entirely on God’s sovereign will and gift of grace to give life to the dead…, who as the dead have no power to create or to resume life as God’s chosen community.”

[15] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1210. “Given Paul’s association of this encounter with the resurrected life as one of new creation…it seems most probably that Paul perceives himself as one who was unable to contribute anything to an encounter win which God’s sovereign grace was all, even to the extent to giving life to one who was humanly beyond all hope. This precisely reflects the theme of resurrection as God’s sovereign gift of life to the dead…”

[16] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1195. “…the transfer ‘from death to life’ thereby provides a new identity for a new community: God can ‘raise up’ children of Abraham from the stones….hence Paul uses this figure of the ‘nothingness’ of death to expound the establishing of the divine promise of life and identity  to the nothings, to the disinherited, to the Gentiles.”

[17] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1211. V. 10 “We come to the heart of Paul’s point Underserved, unmerited grace (χάρις) which springs from the free, sovereign love of God alone and becomes operative in human life not only determines Paul’s life and apostolic vocation but also characterizes all Christian existence, not least the promise of resurrection and the reality of the activity of Christ as Lord.”

[18] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1212. “The emphasis on labor reminds us that difficulty and cost in Christian work, far from suggesting an absence of God’s grace, presupposes the gift of such grace to prosecute the work through all obstacles…The theme of grace in and through ‘weakness’ is one which Paul constantly urges to Corinth.”

Joining Our Voices to the Divine Symphony

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

Introduction

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

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

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

John 17:6-19

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A Hopeless Undertaking”

The following is a quote from Dorothee Sölle’s The Truth is Concrete (1969). It’s from the eleventh (and last) chapter, “Church outside the Church.” I bring this quote to light because it highlights Sölle’s prophetic witness and her keen insight. What she says here, I believe, applies to the C/church today. In 2024, we are in no better spot when it comes to desperate attempts to validate the C/church’s presence in the world. And the worst part, which I find well articulated here in Sölle’s words, is that the church prefers recourse to archaic structures and systems and useless assertions of power and demand, conformance and performance that seem to deny our technological and scientific advancements OR pretend that the human person is all fact and data, pure material truth without need of a reinvigoration of the retelling of our sacred myths (the enlightened and intellectual denominations (so proud) often jettison the very awkward message of the Christian sacred text and, thus, relinquish full interpretive control to the fundamentalist, rightist wing). Anyway, here are some words written about 55 years ago; enjoy and find within a summons to reconsider “Concrete Truth”:

“The main points in the structure are boundaries, danger, fear. The great enemy, the devil in ever new shape, is the world. The Church is always ready to forget that Christ has got the power over the dominions and that his victory is not just personal salvation of the individual but he has also changed the face of the world. We may remark in the last two hundred years that the situation of the Church has become more and more complicated, with the progress of secularization. She can no longer rely on the ancient pre-scientific fear-bound imaginations. She is losing her authority, her dominant position, she has become one power among many, and must therefore defend herself! She defends herself externally by virtue of claims to power which bear more or less weight according to the political situation. Internally she deals with her loss of authority by trying to preserve an outdated social structure. She proclaims that a part of the world, the past world, is unassailable and not subject to historical change. Then she bullies people to perform certain tasks which are made into conditions of membership of the Christian community. Somewhat unwillingly, she builds her walls and demands a way of life whose style and social norms and image are necessarily bourgeois. She demands, which is worse, the sort of community adherence which can no longer be expected, since people have less and less desire for this kind of thing. She demands, finally, that people should be interested in an ancient document, the Bible. These demands clearly constitute high walls. They are attempts to arrest the progress of secularization, at least in this area. It is a hopeless undertaking.”

p. 102-103