Tag: Israel

Remember and Rejoice Even Now

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid. For God is my stronghold and my sure defense, and Abba God will be my Savior.

Introduction

Joy. Joy? In this economy?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been awash in many a meme and reel describing the harriedness of a mom during the Christmas season. From doing advanced math to figuring out the equity calibration among the presents for the kids to just making sure that things are “merry and bright” and feel like Christmas, these memes solicit a chuckle here and there as I navigate the various holiday season enterprises. The funniest memes and reels include moms who must also navigate a Christmas season with a kid who has (the audacity to have) a December birthday…

Joy. Joy? In this economy?!

But Joy is precisely what is being asked of me as I show up here, in this place. Maybe the audacity isn’t so much my kid who has a December birthday, but mine…can I have the audacity to have joy…even now?

We speak of Advent as a time of waiting and expecting; I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m waiting and expecting something I’m really just catastrophizing and imagining the worse, dreading everything. But what if the news to come is good? What if the waiting and expecting is for something remarkable, life-altering, world changing, something categorically awesome and awe-filled, something that rejuvenates tired bones and fatigued bodies, something that solicits that electrical surge of No Way! through the brain when something unbelievable happens? What if joy and its activity “rejoicing” are precisely the emotive and active prospects of this very moment, of this very economy, of this very time of waiting and expecting?

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah

Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation. And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to Abba God and call upon Abba God’s Name…

Our canticle brings us into the realm of rejoicing, whether we like or not and whether we are ready for it or not. The canticle starts with a declaration from Isaiah, “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid” (v.1). These words of Isaiah begin to conclude what has come before in the previous eleven chapters.[1] The words are not strictly Isaiah’s though, they are for the assembly. These prophetic[2] words of Isaiah 12 are liturgical words, thus, per Advent 1, they are psalmic.[3] It is not only Isaiah who praises Abba God; it is Israel’s summons to praise God because of all the good things God has done: God has been Israel’s “stronghold” and “sure defense” and God has demonstrated God’s self to be Israel’s savior (v.2). In remembering these deeds of God and the salvation they receive from God’s hand, Israel is ushered into the celebration of rejoicing and praise (v.3),[4] not unlike Moses and Israel did when they were liberated from Egypt. The words of Isaiah 12:1-6 are a litany of quotations from the psalms, other portions of Isaiah, and exodus.[5] Israel is being swept up in the great and grand salvation of God because God’s salvation is not one and done; God will always be their God thus their salvation, and they will always be God’s people in need of saving.

As the canticle continues with v. 4, “And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make God’s deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that God’s Name is exalted.” On that day…meaning, not only on back then when their foreparents stood on the shore of the sea liberated from Egyptian oppression, but on any day when God’s salvation is made known to the people shall they give thanks and call upon God. Israel has been saved, is being saved, and will be saved; Isaiah has the fullness of time in view. [6] Israel will remember that God has saved and in remembering will look forward to God’s salvation in the future; with both their past and future secured in God, Israel’s salvation is present tense and they are liberated to brings God’s justice further into the world.

With the imagery of the Passover and liberation from Egypt in mind,[7] the canticle beckons the Israelites to remember that it is a faithful remnant that call upon God’s name, who respond to God’s judgment and redemption; and this is Isaiah’s hope.[8] The remnant is not the powerful, not the leaders, not the ones out front; the remnant is hidden among the regular people, like you and me, the ones calling out to God from their squalor, from their pain, from their suffering, from their oppression, from their existential fatigue;[9] they are the ones who remember the great deeds of Abba God and abide in God.[10] Martin Luther in The Bondage of the Will, says something similar about the true church of Christ, “The Church is hidden, the saints are unknown.”[11] The promised new community which the remnant constitutes is heard, according to Isaiah; their present reality is formed by a mutual remembering of the past and this constitutes the future of Israel.[12] God’s people will not be easily snuffed out no matter where they are or where they go because God is both their defender and their salvation in every moment. It is the remnant, spread far and wide, whose voices become one as they “Sing the praises of Abba God, for Abba God has done great things, and this is known in all the world” (v.5), and as they “Cry aloud” and “ring out [their] joy” because they are anchored in God because God is with them and God is their God and they are God’s beloved. [13]And knowing an believing this, there is reason to rejoice even in the waiting and expecting; especially in the waiting and expecting.

Conclusion

In Advent, we are summoned in and asked to remember while we wait. Following the logic of Isaiah 12:1-6, when we remember we also find ourselves looking forward to God who is our past and our future. We dare to look forward, to pick up heavy heads and cast tired eyes into the great unknown and dare to look forward with confidence that God will do what God has promised God will do because God has demonstrated God’s self as trustworthy (yesterday, today, and tomorrow). In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices with that ancient remnant of Israel, those eager voices of yesteryear crying out to God. In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices to those who cry out today for God’s intervention: those who are threatened with extinction and cry out to God, those who are scared to live as they are and cry out to God, those who fear for the lives of their loved ones because of the color of their skin and cry out to God, those who only know the cold bars of captivity and cry out to God, those who cry out to God from the depth of their nakedness, hunger, thirst, and loneliness. Israel’s call in the world is to think upon the gråeat actions of God and to then participate in God’s mission in the world righting the wrongs in the world. For those of us here today, those of us also waiting and remembering, we, too, are asked to participate in righting wrongs, in identifying with the least of these, in seeking God’s justice and peace in the world.

So, as we refresh our exhausted minds by remembering once again the off-the-wall story of God coming low in the humble form of a baby born to Mary in a cave so that God’s self can identify with God’s beloved, let us also find new energy to sing and praise God, to throw our hands up and rejoice again…even now, especially now.

[1] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 107. “The chapter offers a response to the great deeds of God’s salvation to his people in Zion that were recorded in the previous eleven chapters.”

[2] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “It seems clear that the traditional conventions of the Psalter have been reused to shape an eschatological psalm of thanksgiving into a new vehicle for the prophetic proclamation of the book.”

[3] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “…chapter 12 is dominated by the psalmic language of Israel’s liturgy.”

[4] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “Verses 3 and 6 bracket the second confession and offer further theological grounding for the call of praise by the community of faith.”

[5] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “The passage is a veritable catena of citations and allusions form other sections of Isaiah, from Exodus, and the Psalter. For example, v. 1=Isa. 5:25; v. 2a=Ex. 15:2b; v. 2b=Ex. 15.2a; v. 3=Isa. 35:10, 55:1; Ps. 105:41, 43; v. 4=Ps. 105:1, 148:13; v. 5=Ex. 15:1, 21.”

[6] Childs, Isaiah, 109-110. “The theme of salvation is repeated three times, not just as a promise extended, but a reality experienced…It is this experience of the redeeming mercy that evokes joy as an inexhaustible source of life-giving water. Moreover, as with the rest of the Psalter, the experience of salvation calls forth a witness to the rest of the world that bears testimony to the wonders of God’s might works.”

[7] Childs, Isaiah, 110. Analogy between this text and Moses’s song in Ex. 15.

[8] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “The major point to make is that chapter 12 presents the voice of the faithful remnant of Israel responding to the great deeds of God, both in judgment and redemption, which had occupied the prophets throughout the former chapters.”

[9] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “Thus an analogy is established between redeemed Israel after the deliverance from Egypt and the present remnant, who in their experience of faith already stand on a safe shore a second time after having been rescued from enemies and exiles.”

[10] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 208. “God not only asks for justice; He demands of man ‘to regard the deeds of the Lord, to see the work of His hands’ (Isa. 5:12; cf. 22:11), ‘to walk in His paths’ (Isa. 2:3). ‘If you will not believe, you will not abide’ (Isa. 7:11).”

[11] Martin Luther “Bondage of the Will” LW 33:89

[12] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “Up to now there had been the promise of anew community of faith that would emerge from the ashes of Israel’s destruction, but the actual voice of the remnant had not been heard. The presentation of this voice of praise serves to confirm that the new society of faith was not merely a future promise, but was a present reality, made concrete first in the son Shearjashub (7:3) , but above all in the sign of Immanuel (7:14). This community of faith confirms in liturgical praise its experience of God, and the choice of the idiom of the Psalter bears testimony to the liturgical actuality of the worship.”

[13] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “In the response of faith the reality of the divine presence, ‘God with us’ (Immanuel), has been experienced, pointing to the full eschatological consummation of the kingdom of God. Israel can shout in joy because the Holy One of Israel, who has always reigned over his creation (6:3), even now shows himself mighty in the midst of his people (v. 6). The eschatological tensions of the chapter testify that the remnant already shares in that for which it waits in expectation.”

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“Buried in the Past; Captive to What Was”: Christian Limitation

Psalm 107:1, 21-22 Give thanks to God, for God is good, and God’s mercy endures for ever… Let them give thanks to God for God’s mercy and the wonders God does…Let them offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and tell of Abba God’s acts with shouts of joy.

Introduction

We’ve spent the last few weeks looking outside at the global, national, and local socio-political tumult, chaos, and turmoil. There are many fires burning right now, and not enough water to put them all out. Some of these problems are so big that it feels like that save divine intervention itself, nothing will stop the death and destruction or ease the fear and anger and bring peace. Maybe God should start over again…*cue the thunder…

With all that is going around us, we can become so caught up with the tumult, chaos, and turmoil that we forget that there’s more here than meets the eye. We can become caught up in feeling helpless, hopeless, pointless, and absorbed by our limitations; we can’t make it better so why bother. It’s here we, a Christian church, forget the rock on which our identity is founded on. God. God The Creator, God the Reconciler, God the Redeemer; God who is the source of divine revolution of love and harbinger of liberation unto life. The same God who creates something out of nothing; God who resurrects the dead into life. It is this God who is fundamentally the source of our life spiritual (visible and invisible) and of our life corporate (spiritual and temporal).

Yet, it is this God we are so quick to jettison and abandon with saccharine desires to “keep the church” or “make the church relevant.” We would rather adhere to institutional order than be oriented toward this radical divine entity eager to flip the cosmos right side up. We grow embarrassed of our awkward proclamations and let the abusers, the power hungry, and the narcissists tell us what we will and will not say. We seem eager to remain silent when Jesus, God’s Word incarnate, is highjacked for violent purposes, baptizing war and genocide, oppression and alienation in the name of our Triune Abba God. We’d rather cling to the rope of the status quo and just fit in than dare to let go and fall into God, become radical, and go against the grain.

In refusing to let go of the rope we find ourselves dangling from provokes our spiritual and existential exhaustion. If you feel spiritually fatigued, this is why. All we want to do (and are trying to do) is climb back up the rope; what if we went back just a few years when things were “normal” and everyone was still here and things were going just fine, wouldn’t that be better than this? We don’t need or want rebirth, we think to ourselves. We just want our old church back. We want to go back to when it didn’t hurt so much to come to church, when decisions were easy, when we could quietly be this church gathered together. There’s a pit in our collective stomach that yells and screams: Go back! Run back to what was! Go back to that shore that was once comfort! Go back to not knowing, go back to when it was easier, go back to when things were better…I don’t care where, just go back to where it’s safe to just live…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Numbers 21:4-9

And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

We find ourselves in the book of Numbers, the fourth book of Torah that “…recounts memorable events of the Israelite wandering from Sinai, God’s mountain, to the plains of Moab, just opposite the promised land.”[1] The Israelites are still liberated from Egypt, still murmuring and grumbling, and still following God and Moses through the wilderness.[2] Our particular passage falls in the middle unit of Numbers, titled, “The Generation-long March in the Desert from Sinai to Moab.”[3] And this particular unit about the “Generation-long March in the Desert” demonstrates Israel’s “recurring cycle of murmuring and rebellion against the authority of God and Moses, by individuals or by the community as a whole.”[4] This “murmuring and rebellion” isn’t solely restricted to the people following God and Moses, but includes leaders like Aaron and Miriam—Moses’ sibling; it also include Moses himself demonstrating disloyalty to God.[5] Yet, when the murmuring and rebellion threatens to reach a fever pitch and provoke God’s beloved back to captivity, God acts and acts swiftly (e.g. the Tribe of Korah and Numbers 16).[6]

In our story, we find the Israelites fed up (again! [7]) with spontaneously generating quail, this weird coriander substance, and a lack of water. “There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loath this miserable food,” (aka Manna[8]) (v.5b).[9] God’s response? Snakes on a plain! These “snakes” were poisonous serpents with a burning bite.[10] Rightly, the people—watching “many Israelites” die because of the bites of the serpents—hie themselves to Moses. We sinned against God; intercede for us! Moses—mercifully—intercedes for them. God resolves the issue. Using God’s instrument of punishment, God tells Moses to make a seraph symbol and mount it high on a standard (v. 8). Moses does so, casting one of these serpents in bronze,[11] mounting it on a standard. Anyone who was bitten and looked up at this bronze snake was healed (v. 9). Israel, amid their dilemma and plight, are exhorted to look up at God rather than down at themselves; [12] it is not the snake that heals them, it is their right orientation toward God who is their source of love, life, and liberation. Through this bronze serpent on a pole, they are summoned to remember that God calls them to look to God and to follow God even when it means missing those creature comforts of way back when and following God into the unknown and uncomfortable. God heals Israel as they turn to God; God liberates Israel when Israel follows God.

Conclusion

God is not stuck in the past; God is not captive to what was. God summons and coaxes forward God’s beloved—all creation, from the teensiest, weensiest critter to the biggest, ziggest beast; from the ones that live deep in the oceanic abyss to the ones residing on the peakiest of mountains. God woos the beloved forward, into something NEW, into something new and of God because backward is the stuff of humanity that has long ago expired, gone sour, become septic. Liberation for Israel is not a liberation to go backward, which is a return to captivity. Rather, Israel is liberated to step forward into the unknown, dared to fall into the void of faith and God, knowing that they cannot achieve this depth of liberation and life and love apart from God. They cannot leave God in the past as if God is no longer a necessary hypothesis. For this group of people, God is the beginning and the end of their life, love and liberation…no matter how banal the food has become and how boring the water from a rock.

Beloved in Christ, we are currently in a similar plight. We are surrounded by global tumult, national chaos, and local turmoil—vicious, deadly snakes, nipping at ankles. Now is not the time to jettison God and forsake God’s word. God desires to beckon us forward out of what we know, away from what was, and to lift our heads to God’s self. To forsake any portion of the proclamation of Christ will be the nail in the coffin of the Christian church. When we forget our source of life, love, and liberation we will hand the entire story over to those who are determined to use it to bring death and destruction. If we are dead set on going backward, clinging to our comforts and ease, we will be unable to lift our head to gaze upon God’s standard fixed upon the cross, because we will be too focused on ourselves. We will miss the One who can bring and guide us toward healing, peace, mercy, grace, and justice; we will sell our identity and existence as church for a few pieces of silver. We must let faith lead us to let go of the rope and fall into God, fall into the impossible so that God may bear through us God’s divine possibility. We must each gaze up at God’s standard and sing,

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.[13]

Beloved, God calls, may our ears perk up. God comforts, may our souls be soothed. God speaks, may our ears delight in comforting words. God comes, may we run to Abba God. God is doing a new thing in this man from Nazareth, Jesus, the beloved, in whom, by whom, and through whom we are being coaxed forward, released from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Nili S. Fox, “Numbers,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 281.

[2] Fox, “Numbers,” 281. “Thus, Numbers continues the story begun in Exodus and continued in Leviticus of the escape from Egyptian servitude, the desert journey to Mount Sinai, the revelation at Sinai and giving of the law, and the building of the Tabernacle with instruction on its operation.”

[3] Fox, “Numbers,” 282.

[4] Fox, “Numbers,” 282.

[5] Fox, “Numbers,” 282.

[6] Fox, “Numbers,” 282.

[7] Fox, “Numbers,” 325. “Once again the people revolt against God and Moses.”

[8] Fox, “Numbers,” 326. “This miserable food refers to the manna.”

[9] Nili S. Fox, “Numbers,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 325. “This incident is the final recurrence of wilderness murmuring. Complaints again center around a lack of water and poor food.”

[10] Fox, “Numbers,” 326. “Seraph serpents, based on the verb, means ‘burning serpents,’ because of the poisonous bite.”

[11] Fox, “Numbers,” 325. A copper serpent more likely refers to one made of bronze, a copper-tin alloy.

[12] Fox, “Numbers,” 326. “Rabbinic interpreters were disturbed by the magical nature of this cure, and suggested that it was the glance of the afflicted to their father in heaven, rather than the snake, which effected the cure.”

[13] Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

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“Buried in the Past; Captive to What Was”: Local Turmoil

Psalm 19: 13-14 Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O God, my strength and my redeemer.

Introduction

On Lent one, our focus was on the world and its tumult. On Lent two, we turned our attention toward our own nation and its chaos. But all of that, while important, still feels a bit out of reach. Like I mentioned last week, it is easy to blind ourselves to our local problems by focusing more broadly beyond where we live. It is easy to ignore national chaos because of global tumult. And it is easy to forego attention to local turmoil, by focusing on national chaos. Again, it’s worth mentioning that giving some attention to global and national crises and unrest is a good thing. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that large problems start small; the problems we see in the world and in our nation start in our immediate surroundings. Our local communities are fractals of the globe; the problems of the globe are also present in our local communities.

Our communities are as bogged down by deep divides infecting our nation and world. Bumper stickers tell you whose side everyone is on, as well as personal yard signs and church marquees. There are a few spots here on Broadway where I’m certain two houses across the street from each other are intentionally bating the other. “Us v. Them” is a plague locally—as it is nationally and globally. It’s hard to know who to trust, and we vet each other strictly; if there’s one lapse in overlap, there’s no solidarity. Schools are being shut down and religious institutions are closing for lack of being chosen; houses are hard to buy, and so is food for many in our local populations. Neighbors barely know neighbors, or, rather, barely want to get to know neighbors (remember “block parties”?). We are individual units yoked together by a shared street name. Unity seems to be breaking down more and more and faster and faster as invisible segregation lines are drawn between rich and poor, housed and unhoused, fed and unfed, abled and differently abled, young and old.

At times it all feels so pointless. How can I even begin to chip away at barriers when I don’t have the energy to take down my own? It’s easier to be blind to my neighbor and their lives. I want to close my blinds and forget the issues of my local environment. I’m growing weary of repeating the same message…I can only preach to the choir so often before the choir grows tired, bored, and leaves. How many more attempted relationships at solidarity will fall to the ground because of unachievable expectations of a perfect fit? How long before I run out of gas and quit? It’s demoralizing trying to fill in trenches falsely separating humans from humans only to have them dug again. There’s a pit in my stomach that yells and screams: Go back! Run back to what was! Go back to that shore that was once comfort! Go back to not knowing, go back to when it was easier, go back to when things were better…I don’t care where, just go back to where it’s safe to just live…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Exodus 20:1-17

Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

In our First Testament passage we witness Israel receiving (directly) God’s Ten Commandments, or, rather, God’s “Ten Words” or “Ten Statements.”[1] The “Ten Words” arrives midway in the story of Israel’s release from Egypt and their journey toward something new. Chapter 15 marks the end of the old life of slavery and captivity and the beginning of Israel’s new life as liberated disciples of God. In chapter 16, the people grumble. It’s been (about) a week since witnessing the great event of water tearing itself apart (once again!) to create a new life of liberation and love on the other side of the Sea of Reeds; a week since “And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith I n the Lord and His servant Moses,” (14:31). It doesn’t take much to send the people back toward their old disposition, “The Israelites said to [Moses and Aaron], ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death,’” (16:3). How quickly the past lures and beckons, how quickly old captivity and its pain is forgotten.

In response to the hunger, God gives them quail (in the morning) and manna (at night) (16:13ff). And then in chapter 17 there is more traveling and more grumbling, this time about water (17:1ff). Here Moses strikes a rock and water flows (17:6-7). In chapter 18, Moses elects a council of men to help him administratively lead the people. Then in chapter 19, which seems to be about 3 months (3 new moons, v. 1), the people of God find themselves at the base of Mount Sinai, where Israel’s most defining moment with God occurs.[2] It’s here at Sinai where Moses goes up to commune with God and then bring a message back down to the people. In chapter 20, Moses brings these “Ten Words” of God to God’s people Israel. It’s these “Ten Words” that will forever define and delineate Israel’s new relationship with God.[3] Most principally, “you shall have no other Gods before me,” not yourselves and not the past. Israel shall always keep God front and center and by doing this, they keep the neighbor in their sights, too.

Through the “Ten Words,” Israel is beckoned forward unto God.” This is the Law of God; this isn’t just any law but one elevated and sanctified. These “Ten Words” are the very thing that will shape, grow, and orient Israel in the world toward their divine Creator and King[4] and toward the well-being of their neighbor in ethical praxis.[5] They will shape, and grow, and orient Israel toward God and the neighbor for all generations, in all eras, no matter where they find themselves. These “Ten Words” anchor Israel not in the world as static and stuck, but in God who is dynamic and on the move. Israel is not to go backward to Egypt to find their comfort and safety, this would be to worship other gods thus fracturing all “Ten Words.” Rather, they are called to go forward to follow God who is the God who liberated them from captivity so they can be free to follow God and God free to lead them through the days and nights of faith and love to new and abundant life.

Conclusion

God is not stuck in the past; God is not captive to what was. God summons and coaxes forward God’s beloved—all creation, from the teensiest, weensiest critter to the biggest, ziggest beast; from the ones that live deep in the oceanic abyss to the ones residing on the peakiest of mountains. God woos the beloved forward, into something NEW, into something new and of God because backward is the stuff of humanity that has long ago expired, gone sour, become septic. Liberation for Israel is not a liberation to go backward, which is a return to captivity. Rather, Israel is liberated to step forward into the unknown, dared to fall into the void of faith and God, knowing that their path will be illuminated—step by step—by the presence of God by the divine fire and cloud and formed by the “Ten Words.” With these “Ten Words,” Israel knows—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—how to walk on into God and with the neighbor.

For us, in our situation, looking around at our local situations, looking at the isolation, alienation, loneliness, lack of solidarity, the barriers, and the existential fatigue and exhaustion, we who follow Christ follow a new and different way of God. A way dedicated to and informed by these shared ancient “Ten Words” given to Israel. Through these sacred “Ten Words,” we are exhorted to be bold, to dare to love through barriers, to reach out, to keep trying, to stand up after we fall, and have the audacity not to be intimidated by the local narratives wishing to silence by means of fear and anger. However, we cannot do so if we are dead set on going backward, desperately clinging to our comforts and ease. We must let faith lead us down into the darkness, into the impossible so that God may bear through us God’s divine possibility. We, like Israel, must walk with God by cloud and pillar of fire, step by step.

Beloved, God calls, may our ears perk up. God comforts, may our souls be soothed. God speaks, may our ears delight in comforting words. God comes, may we run to Abba God. God is doing a new thing in this man from Nazareth, Jesus, the beloved, in whom, by whom, and through whom we are being coaxed forward, released from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Jeffrey H. Tigay “Exodus” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation. Eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 148. Ex. 20.1-14. “(‘Decalogue,’ form the Latin for ‘ten words,’ or ‘ten statements,’ is a more. Literal rendition of Heb than ‘Then Commandments.’) They are addressed directly to the people. No punishments are stated; obedience is motivated not by fear of punishment but by God’s absolute authority and the people’s desire to live in accordance with His will.”

[2] Tigay, “Exodus,” JPS, 145.

[3] Tigay, “Exodus,” JPS, 145-147.

[4] Tigay, “Exodus” JPS, 148. “Implicit in this biblical view is that God is Israel’s king, hence its legislator.”

[5] Tigay, “Exodus” JPS, 148. “The items in the Decalogue are arranged in two groups. Duties to God come first. Each commandment in this group contains the phrase, ‘the Lord your God.’ The second group contains duties toward fellow humans, which are depicted as being of equal concern to God.”

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and The Possibility Opens

Sermon on Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 51: 11-3 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy Spirit from me. Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit. (49)

Introduction

I was diagnosed with Dyslexia as a young girl. I didn’t read “right”. From what I recall, letters jumped places, words flipped about, the sentences moved to their own beat—every written page was a gymnastics competition and those words were gold medalists. The diagnosis strapped me with insecurities about my intelligence and a disdain for reading. According to the diagnosis, I didn’t have the potential to read well because I was a “bad” reader. I lived into the idea that I wasn’t a “reader. My act of reading exposed I didn’t have the potential to read well. In our performance and production driven economy, it’s the actuality of the act that is esteemed. I wasn’t a reader because my actions demonstrated that I wasn’t.

Referring to Aristotle’s Metaphysics: this is what is known as actuality having priority over possibility. Aristotle’s ontological priority of actuality over possibility equates to the simple equation: yet v. not-yet. “Yet” being more important than “not-yet”; “not yet” means nothing if it is never actualized into “Yet”. Even though the actual is derived from the possible (the “yet” from the “not yet”), the possible strives toward the actual (like a seed striving to become actualized as a plant). [1] For Aristotle, actuality is both origin and goal of the possible, thus the possible serves and is subordinate to that actual.[2]

In that possibility serves actuality, actuality has primary position over possibility. Actuality is preferred and determines what the possibility was. So, we can say: one wasted their potential by not realizing it into actuality. Oh, she had so much potential! we say of people who have made “bad choices.” (As if potential can be “wasted” away if it’s not acted on.) The smart student who gets Ds also gets the obligatory look of disappointment. There was potential but it was never actualized as act; thus the potential is inferior in value to the actual and rendered as pointless apart from action.

But what if Aristotle was wrong?

Jeremiah 31-34

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah 31: 31, 33

Jeremiah prophesies about a new covenant God will make between God and God’s people. This new covenant will, according to Jeremiah, “…not be like the covenant that I [God] made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke…” (Jer 31). According to Jeremiah, it is not the fault of the content of the previous covenant, but the fault of the people: [3] they are unable to perform according to the covenant established on the far side of the Red Sea as they stood in the shadow of Mt. Sinai receiving the revelation of the law, Torah.[4] Leaving the Torah outside of the people as words carved in stone—as a thing to be actualized out of human possibility—was failing. The command to love God imparted to the stones, needed to be imparted to the hearts of the people.[5] The people needed the actual to manifest the possible.

In Deuteronomy the great Shema of chapter 6 is the heart of Jewish liturgy. The word shema means: to hear so deeply that you do.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

While Israel promised that they would obey this and other commands they received from God, they didn’t. This didn’t render the Torah, the revelation of the Law, in error or wrong; rather, it exposed a deeper and bigger issue: a human inability to hear so well and so deeply that love comes forth. (The possibility of doings wasn’t manifesting into act.) In Dt 10,[6] God commands Israel to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts so that they obey God’s commands. But then, in Dt 30, Moses prophesies God’s promise that God will circumcise their hearts so that they will love God as they should.[7] The people needed the actual to manifest the possible.

Jeremiah is picking up on that promise. God is going to act on the inner life of Israel so that the love of God and of God’s people is written on their hearts of flesh rather than on tablets of stone. Relying on manifested human potential as act wasn’t working. Jeremiah stands in solidarity with God in God’s passionate zeal for God’s beloved people and creation.[8] He is filled with the divine pathos hearing God’s voice and feeling God’s love and heralds to the people this new promise: God will act not only on behalf of but also in God’s people. God will act on and in the people in a way that will create possibility for obedience to love; God will manipulate actuality, parting space like water and stopping time like the rains of the heavens and create room for the possible. Jeremiah exhorts and encourages, Shema, O Israel!

No longer will Israel have to wrestle with the inner failure of potential failing to become actual, with hearts that listen but do not truly hear. Rather, they will be caught in the divine activity that is oriented toward possibility. When God sweeps in and moves God’s people, in that actuality there is possibility. Thus, we say with confidence: with God all things are possible. God acts in our time and space, in our material realm and makes room for things that were not but now can be. In God’s economy it is not that possibility serves actuality, that potential serves act, but the opposite: actuality serves possibility, act serves potential, and the possible has primacy over what is actual.

Conclusion

It was in high school, during the later half of Junior year, where I wanted to receive untimed testing for the SATs. I was, as the test concluded in elementary school, dyslexic. My guidance councilor thought it was a good idea, but I had to be tested first before I’d be granted untimed testing. So, I sat for a test. A week later I sat with the examiner as she gave me my results. She explained before she went over my test that the test answers are scored on a scale of 1-14, 14 being the highest number and 1 being the lowest. The higher the score, the less a need for untimed testing. She opened my results and showed me a list of 14s and 12s with a 10 here and there. She laughed kindly, I’m sorry, there’s no way I can recommend an untimed test with these high scores. I was baffled. Where did my dyslexia go? I asked. Apparently, your brain fixed it, she replied. Becoming a good reader had nothing to do with “potential” made “actual” but about actuality making space and time for the possibility of being a good reader.

We take the actual and make it the final because we are taken with our deeds and actions as the final verdict of who we are as human beings on this planet; we’ve believed the lie that actuality has priority over possibility. We put too much stock in actions as determinant of who and what a person is. And this means we are focused on the past that we miss the divine activity of the future right in front of us for us.[1] We get wrapped up in what is, we miss what could be. What is isn’t all there is. And what is allows us the creativity and imagination to dream of what isn’t yet. As those encountered by God in the event of faith, we are people of possibility rather than only actuality. Here in lies our hope. A pandemic has disrupted what is; so, what could be? Where can we go from here? Can we dare to be people who face the anti-Asian racism plaguing this land, that eight lives were taken for no other reason than hate? Can our society meet the survival needs of people who find themselves stuck between two choices, work or don’t work, where both end in death? Can our society fight for the lives of Black, Indigenous people of color? Can our society become a safe place for people to be who they are, what they are, and love those whom they love freely?

What we have now doesn’t have to be what we have tomorrow; what we’re accustomed to isn’t all there is. Possibility has priority over actuality. There’s more than what the eye can see. Because sometimes the man on the donkey is a divine king in disguise and a state sanctioned instrument of death becomes a tool for the victory of life. For the beloved, what is isn’t ever all there is.

[1] Heschel Prophets 211 “Here, knowledge is not the same as thought, comprehension, gnosis or mystical participation in the ultimate essence. Knowledge of God is action toward man, sharing His concern for justice; sympathy in action. Inner identification with God’s will and concern is the goal of the new covenant…”

[1]   The quotation is from Aristotle’s Metaphysics “(2) In time it is prior in this sense: the actual which is identical in species though not in number with a potentially existing thing is prior to it. I mean that to this particular man who now exists actually and to the corn and to the seeing subject the matter and the seed and that which is capable of seeing, which are potentially a man and corn and seeing, but not yet actually, so are prior in time; but prior in time to these are other actually existing things, from which they were produced. For from the potentially existant the actually existing is always produced by an actually existant thing, e.g. man from man, musician by musician; there is always a first mover, and the mover already exists actually. We have said in our account of substance that everything that is produced is something produced from something and by something, and that the same in species as it” 1049b 19-28.

[2]   Eberhard Jüngel “Possibility”. 99-100. Referring to Aristotle: “So actuality is the origin and goal of all that comes into being, and possibility exists for the sake of actuality. Possibility stands in teleological relation to actuality.”

[3] JPS Study Bible Marvin A. Sweeney “Jeremiah” Eds Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler Jeremiah 31:31 New York, NY: OUP 2004 “The new covenant has been interpreted by Christians as a prophecy of the new covenant though Jesus (New Testament means new covenant), but here it refers to the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile and the reconstruction of the Temple. According to this passage, it is not the content of the new covenant which will be different, but how it is learned.”

[4] Exodus 19:1ff

[5] JPS Study Bible Jeremiah 31:33-34 “God places the Teaching, i.e., the Torah, in the inmost being or heart of the people so that the covenant cannot be broken again. This idea is developed in later Lurianic kabbalah, which maintains that all persons have a divine spark within. Since it is so inscribed, there will be no need for the Torah to be taught.”

[6] Deuteronomy 10:12-22, “12 So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God[c] and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14 Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15 yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.”

[7] 6 Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. 7 The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on the adversaries who took advantage of you. 8 Then you shall again obey the Lord, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, 9 and the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, 10 when you obey the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

[8] Abraham J. Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 25 “The prophet is not a mouthpiece, but a person; not an instrument, but a partner, an associate of God. Emotional detachment would be understandable only if there were a command which required the suppression of emotion, forbidding one to serve God ‘with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.’ God, we are told, asks not only for ‘works,’ for action, but above all for love, awe, and fear. We are called upon to ‘wash’ our hearts (Jer. 4:14), to remove ‘the foreskin’ of the heart (Jer. 4:4), to return with the whole heart (Jer. 3:10). ‘You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart’ (Jer. 29:13). The new covenant which the Lord will make with the house of Israel will be written upon their hearts (Jer. 31:31-34).”

[9] Heschel Prophets 211 “Here, knowledge is not the same as thought, comprehension, gnosis or mystical participation in the ultimate essence. Knowledge of God is action toward man, sharing His concern for justice; sympathy in action. Inner identification with God’s will and concern is the goal of the new covenant…”

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Doubt and Encounter

Second Sunday of Easter Meditation: John 20:26-28

(video at the end of the post)

 

“…Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (Jn 20:26d-28).

Thomas the doubter. We have more patience for the denials of Peter than we do the doubt of Thomas. In the history of “The Top Ten Best Moments of the Disciples,” it seems (often) that Thomas’s doubt ranks just above Judas’s betrayal. Don’t be such a doubting Thomas. Words that silence questions and confusion unto shame and condemnation. It’s only slightly better than being called a Judas.

Shade is thrown in Thomas’s direction because his disbelief hits too close to home. That Thomas’s doubt is recorded for all posterity reminds me, at least once a year, that doubt is…is possible. It reminds me that I do, in fact, doubt. It reminds you that you doubt. Thomas’s story hits the core of our insecurities and tells us that it doesn’t matter how many degrees we have or how many times we’ve read through the bible or how reasonable and rational our apologies for God are…we doubt. All of us.

This doubt feels deadly in a tradition that is orthodox, meaning (simply): right thought. Doubting can seem like unfaithfulness and willful rejection of what God has done and said and this means divine rejection. If I doubt, am I lost? If I am lost, will I be found? Is it all up to me? Jesus even says to Thomas, “‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,’” (Jn 20:29). In this moment it seems that Thomas is chastised for not believing because he wanted physical proof (a very human and rational thing to ask for). We are scared to doubt because there seems to be big risk attached.

The good news is, Thomas isn’t lost, left, and abandoned. Zoom out and look at the story as a whole. What we see are those characteristics that are the trademarks of God: long-suffering, patient, merciful, abounding in lovingkindness, and gracious. Thomas doubts; Jesus shows up. In his doubt, Thomas comes face to face with God. Thomas encounters God in the event of faith and what bursts forth from his human lips is a confession: confession of faith and confession of his lack of faith.[1]

In this story, Thomas is truly human. In the first instance he stands on his reason alone where he cannot believe what has been told to him by his peers. In the next moment, Thomas is encountered by God in Christ and believes. “My Lord and my God!” Says Thomas. Thomas sees here what he could not see before based on mere testimony. Thomas, in this moment, sees Jesus as he desires to be seen as the incarnate word of God (John 1). Behold, God!

It is not that we think, but that we doubt where we find ourselves at the core of what it means to be human. Because it is here, in doubt, where we look beyond ourselves, beyond the narrow framework of our mind and imagination. Doubt is our confession of being human. And it’s in this confession where we are, ironically, so very close to God. More often than not, doubt is not that we are far from God, but that we are so close…as close as Jacob, Israel, wrestling with God.

 

 

[1] Thoughts here and following influenced by Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Trans. GR Beasley-Murray and RWN Hoare, JK Riches. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1971. (pp. 689-697).

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Numbers and Reckoning with God’s Self-Disclosure

Sancta Colloquia episode 104 ft. Liam Miller

This isn’t the first time I’ve had the privilege of talking with Liam Miller (Twitter: @liammiller87). Earlier this year I was honored to be a guest speaker for his Jesus 12/24 online conference. I had a blast, thus, when an opportunity presented itself for me to have another dialogue with Liam, I took it. In this episode, Liam and I are talking about the book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, the fourth of five books that make up Israel’s Torah. Liam does an excellent job walking us through large portions of the book of Numbers or, as he refers to it, “The Book of the Wilderness.” What was supposed to be a relatively short(ish) travel through the wilderness, turns into an epic journey that is repeatedly marked by God’s radical self-disclosure, the Israelites hard and stubborn hearts (and their craving for leeks), and the encounter of the two. But while there are plenty of hard things to face in the book of Numbers, things that don’t make sense, Liam guides us to the goal: hope. Hope that is embedded in recognizing, as Liam says, “the inscrutability of our own lives.” We are dependent completely on God, this God who is not to be objectified. And while this could seem terrifying, it’s not. We are undone and redone over and over again as we dare to walk forward into so much unknown and be encountered by the oncoming future; we find ourselves not swallowed up unto the pit of the earth, but into the encounter with God in the event of faith that leads to through death to life, where we find ourselves new creations and utterly human and completely beautiful.

Intrigued? You should be. Listen here via Screaming Pods (https://www.screamingpods.com/)

A huge THANK YOU to my friend and producer Sean Duregger (Twitter: @seanCduregger) and Screaming Pods (Twitter: @ScreamingPods) for hosting Sancta Colloquia (Twitter: @SanctaColloquia).

Liam Miller is the Uniting Church in Australia Chaplain at Macquarie University. He is just weeks away from completing his MDiv and Pilgrim Theological College, and is a candidate for minister of the Word in the Very same Uniting Church. He trained and (sometimes) worked as an actor, and before trading stage lights for Christ candles. He lives in a house with his wife, 18 month old daughter,, brother, and a dog called Zeus who is afraid of thunder.

Here’s the video I reference in the introduction to the show from Liam’s YouTube channel featuring Dr. David Congdon.

And here are two more interviews I highly recommend:

Here are some resources from Liam for further reading and studying and ways to connect with more of Liam’s work:

The Heart of Torah vol.2: Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Rabbi Shai Held

Numbers, Dennis Olson (Interpretation Series)

Womanist Midrash, Wilda Gafney

Systematic Theology vol 1. The Doctrine of God, Katherine Sonderegger

Bewilderments, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Biblical Truths by Dale Martin

Twitter: @liammiller87
Website: www.loverinserepeat.com
Podcast: Love Rinse Repeat
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/LiamMQUT

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Shema, O Israel!

Luke 8:19-21 (Homily)

The following is a Homily I delivered this morning to the student body of the private high school where I teach theology and religion.

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” But he said to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” (Luke 8:19-21)

On Saturday, Robert Bowers opened up gunfire on Jews who were attending their Synagogue on the Sabbath, in Pittsburgh, PA. The attack was explicitly fueled by anti-Semitism, substantiated by white supremacy and nationalism, with a not-so-thinly-veiled vein of Christian Zionism. These Jews were gathered there, in their Synagogue, in their sanctuary to worship God, to rest (it was the Sabbath). To hear the Word of YWHW, their Lord, their God. They were there to be brought face to face with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; they were there to hear the story of God’s activity and promises for and to them. They were there to receive life. Rather, that sanctuary, that rest, turned into chaos, fear, panic, and most grievous death.

 

One of the components of the Jewish liturgy said regularly, is something called the “Shema.” It’s considered a prayer of allegiance to God, a centerpiece of Jewish worship and prayer life. It’s the heart of the Law. The Shema, a prayer of the people of Israel, is from the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 6. If you didn’t know, Deuteronomy is one of the first five books, the fifth in fact, of the beginning of the portion of our Christian bible that we refer to as the Old Testament. But for modern Jews, as it was for those Israelites way back when, this is not the Old Testament, but The Testament. And this prayer functions as the heart of the portion of what is considered the Torah, the Law, which make up the first five books of our Old Testament.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Dt 6:4-9)

“Shema, O Israel!” Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might…And do these things. The word “Shema” is translated as “Hear” in our text of Deuteronomy. But “hear” is not the fullest rendering of what Shema actually and truly means. To translate it rightly, we should say, “Hear and Obey” hear so deeply that you actually do what is commanded of you. Hear and obey. This hearing and doing is the mark of the Israelite. Hearing results in the fear of the Lord, which we know about in terms of faith, and fear or the Lord, faith, is that which is the foundation of our activity, our vibrant activity in the world as God’s image, God’s representatives and reflections in the world, having dominion and caring for the earth and for all who inhabit it. To hear and to do is to be the righteous one that Micah, the minor prophet of the Old Testament, looks for in the streets where he finds none that are righteous. Through Micah, the Lord proclaims to Israel that what is desired by God’s very heart are not sacrifices and burnt offerings, but love and humility and justice.

With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

To do and be the good Israelite is to hear the word of God and to be so moved to act rightly and to do justice.

 

For Christians, Jesus is the embodiment of the Shema: he is the one who hears and does. He is the righteous Israelite who walks humbly with his God, does justice, loves kindness. He does the Law in full: Jesus loves God and loves his neighbor (the entire world). And in being the embodiment of these commands fulfills them. But we go very astray if we think “fulfillment” now means we are only to “think and pray” for those who suffer horrible atrocities such as this and all the other shootings and bombings and terror attacks in our country. We aren’t off such a hook. There’s a massive systemic problem that is infecting and has infected our country. And its names are legion: anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and nationalism. And worst of all, American Christianity has seemed to tether itself to the last (thus also to the three former) and it’s not okay.

 

Our passage today is the stuff of a word that is hard. Jesus says, “‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’” There’s nothing easy about this text. There’s no way around what Christ says here and what is explicitly said: those who hear and do the will of God are those who are related to Christ, who are his brothers and his mother. Not “think” the will of God, not even “pray” the will of God. But “do” the will of God. And in saying these things, Jesus links those who follow him with those of Israel and binds them to the Shema back in Deuteronomy 6: Hear! Hear, O Israel… hear so well that you do. Christians are not off the hook, we might think we are, but we’re not. Saved by faith for good works. Not merely good doctrine but good practice.

 

Jesus died for our sins and rose for our justification, Paul explains to us in the book of Romans (4:25). But this wasn’t so that our eyes would remain blind to carnage or our ears to remain deaf to cries of the people. But as Jesus did throughout his ministry on earth and continues to do through the power of the Holy Spirit in the world: he opens our ears and restores our sight so we can hear and see clearly, so that we can call a thing what it is, so that we can face evil and address it, fight back without fear of what the future holds for that is held in Christ.

 

As a priest in the Episcopal tradition and a future doctor of the church, I cannot tolerate the violence and horror that is taking people hostage. I can no longer sit idle or turn a blind eye to the suffering of my fellow brothers and sisters at the hands of extremists and white supremacists. And I cannot tolerate a corrupted, debased, and distorted version of the gospel that is used to support and service such hatred, fear, and oppression. I can’t because the very spirit that lives in me is the very spirit of God and God hates those things. The Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and raised from the dead and ascended into heaven is the stuff of the love of God for the world, of liberty for the captives, for the oppressed, for those who are weary and burdened and down trodden; to put it into service to do anything but these things is to lose the gospel altogether and to render Christ’s sacrifice for the world pointless. Thus, I cannot just watch, think comforting thoughts, and pray, I must proclaim. I must ask you to wake up, look around, and hear the cries of those who are suffering and hear the cries of those whose cries have been silenced.

 

A rabbi I follow on Twitter[1] wrote a piece for the Washington Post about the synagogue massacre. She writes,

In Judaism, when someone dies, we often say, “May their memory be for a blessing.” This time, it is all of our obligation to make it so. We must mourn and lament and grieve for the lives stolen from the world. We must rage at the baseless hatred and reckless lack of protections that made these senseless killings possible in the first place. And we must honor the memories of those who were murdered by fighting for a world that values every life — refugee and citizen, of every race and religion — and that creates cultures and policies that reflect those values.[2]

I can still speak out; you can still speak out. So we must.

 

 

 

 

[1] Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (Twitter: @TheRaDR)

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/28/victims-tree-life-synagogue-massacre-are-martyrs/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.04a7b3830002

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