Tag: Jesus the Christ

Hear (again) and Follow

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Luke 9:28-36

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

(Luke 9:34-36)

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

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

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

[4] Green, Luke, 383.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 285.

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

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

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

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We Hope Because We Are Loved

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

Introduction

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

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

So, for this reason, Paul boldly says,

Romans 8:12-25

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

Rom. 8: 12-15

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

[3] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193.

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

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

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

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

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

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Peace be with You

Psalm 116: 10-12 How shall I repay God for all the good things God has done for me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the Name of God. I will fulfill my vows to God in the presence of all God’s people.

Introduction

Last week I talked about the law and that, according to Paul in Romans, the law brings wrath. The law is felt (principally) in its discipline and rarely in its reward because to get the reward one must keep the law perfectly forever. According to Paul, in Romans 4, the law is not the medium through which Abraham was the father of many nations; this was done through faith, specifically faith and trust in the promise of God that God will do what God said God will do. If access to the promise of God is by the law, then the promise ceases to be a promise and becomes a threat because no one can keep the law all the time and perfectly. Thus, Paul told us, to be justified requires faith first and not law obedience first because faith clings to the promise of God while our deeds and works cling to the law.

Is the law bad? No, not at all. The law has its place but not as the mediator between God and people; it is secondary to the promise and is to serve the promise because the promise existed before the law. This means that the promise is this mediator—or the one who fulfills the promise. This means, for Paul, that faith—trust that God will do what God says God will do—justifies believers with God, bringing them into divine righteousness. Further, for Christians, justification is defined by faith in Christ as the divine fulfilment of the divine promise uttered all those years ago to Abraham. It is by faith solely in Christ alone by the power of the Holy Spirit the believer is justified before God. In this way, the law cannot be a means of justification. According to Paul, it is by faith or nothing because no one can become perfect by the law because of the law’s incessant hunger and demand for obedience. Thus, that the believer is justified by faith alone, the law is rendered powerless to condemn and judge the believer as wanting. Here the law is returned to its role in serving the believer in her pursuit of loving God by loving the neighbor—the reversal of the believer serving the law, which becomes self-serving and at the expense of both God and the neighbor.

But there’s even more to this concept Paul cultivates here in Romans. By faith, the believer is justified and declared righteous, but also the believer has peace, divine peace, with God, with their neighbor, with themselves because of the love of God that is now resident in the believer’s heart by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 5:1-8

Therefore, since being declared righteous out of faith we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord through whom we also have obtained access by faith to this grace in which we have stood and we boast on the basis of the hope of the glory of God…Now hope does not disgrace because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given to us. (Rom. 5:1-2, 5)[1]

Paul extends his conception of justification into the divine love of God that brings with it God’s peace surpassing understanding. The peace that Paul speaks about here is the peace of God and peace with God.[2] This peace is not dependent on obedience to the law; in law obedience there is no peace because you must always do the law, and here assurance and rest are (at best) momentary. Thus, what Paul is speaking of here is the peace that comes with trust in God that God is faithful, and God will do and has done what God has promised God will do (this is the soothed conscience).[3] And herein the believer has rest and assurance because she is at peace with God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

What is interesting here is that we’re declared righteous before we have peace; we have faith before we have peace.[4] Why? Because being told you are loved right here, right now, as you are and wherever you are solicits a request for faith, of trust and confidence in the lover proving the lover to be truthful; in this proof there is peace because you realize you do not have to perform to be accepted and loved. If the lover proves themselves to love without condition—apart from the law and despite it—then the lover is worth trusting, worth believing, worth having faith in. Thus, Paul explains, Christ died on our behalf while we were still stuck and missing the mark (sinners). God not only said that God will bless all the nations through Abraham, but God has also now, through Christ’s death and resurrection and by the power of the Holy Spirit, blessed all the nations. The lover is worthy to be trusted because the lover went into the deepest parts of human existence in solidarity with humanity, identifying with humanity and, by divine love, overcame humanity’s inability to judge rightly. Thus, God is—100%—for us, in the good, bad, and ugly.

This is why at a Christian church it is crucial to talk about Jesus the Christ. It is not biblicism or literalism, it is all geared toward reminding the beloved they are the beloved and pointing to the representative event declaring to the entire cosmos that God loves the beloved (truly) no matter where they find themselves. To sidestep around Christ and the proclamation of Christ crucified and raised, is to demand that people trust and believe in an abstract conception of God who has not demonstrated and does not demonstrate love and trustworthiness.[5] It is also crucial to speak of Christ because the beloved is prone to defaulting back to their own habits of works righteousness and obedience to the law to assure themselves that they are okay with God.[6] But this is to seek peace before being justified by faith, it is to fabricate peace from one’s own works and not receive it as a gift of God by faith, by the pouring forth of love into our heart by the power of the Holy Spirit who resides with us, among us, and in us, confirming to us that God is truly and utterly for us, provoking us to love God for God’s own sake just as we have been so loved by God.[7]

Conclusion

Beloved, Paul tells us that the peace of God comes as a result of faith in God. This means that as we’re lovingly brought to the full exposure of who we are as we are we see God there with us, not far off as if God cannot be near but close, with us, even in the worst. And in seeing God with us as we know we’re loved and, in this knowing and being loved as we are, we have peace with God because there is no mediator between God and humanity but God’s self: Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit. Here, you are given yourself back to yourself: you are liberated to be you, fully, quirky or run of the mill, too much or too little, intense or laid back, energetic or lethargic, even absolutely positive or completely negative. And as you know—deep down in your hearts—you are you and you are loved by God, you love yourself, and as you love yourself you can give yourself to your neighbor willingly and securely, without recourse to the law and works to justify yourself to God, to your neighbor, or to yourself. And isn’t this stabilization of self, this presence of self, this confidence of self the fruit of peace? Isn’t peace being completely present without a why or wherefore (sunder warumbe[8]) with yourself, with your neighbor, and with God?

This divine peace gifted to us has an eternal quality that will not wear out or fade away because you always have access to it: in the proclamation of Christ and in the event of faith in a space dedicated to the encounter with God. And because this peace is from God, riding on the coattails of faith, given to you by the resident power of the Holy Spirit in your heart, no one can take it from you, no trial or tribulation, says Paul. It is yours, over and over again, day in and day out, it is yours because God is always for you, over and over again, day in and day out, God is for you.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2]LW 25 (Luther’s Works “Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516)” Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 285. “This is the spiritual peace of which all the prophets sing. And because this is the case, he adds the words with God. And this peace is prefigured in every peace which the children of Israel enjoyed in the days of old.”

[3] LW 25, 285. “And this is the real peace of conscience and trust in God. Just as on the contrary a spiritual disturbance is the lack of a quiet conscience and a mistrust of God.”

[4] LW 25, 285.

[5] LW 25, 286. “In the first place, the statement is directed against those who are so presumptuous as to believe that they can approach God without Christ, as if it were sufficient for them to have believed, as if thus by faith alone, but not through Christ, but beside Christ, as if beyond Christ they no longer needed Him after accepting the grace of justification. And now there are many people who from the works of faith make for themselves works of the Law and of the letter, when having received faith by Baptism and penitence, they now think that they are personally pleasing to God even without Christ, when actually both are necessary, namely, to have faith and also always to possess Christ as our Mediator in this faith.”

[6] LW 25, 287. “So at sunset the rays of the sun and the light of the sun go down together. But he who is needs the sun, rather he wants to have both the sun and the light needs the sun, rather he wants to have both the sun and the light at the same time. Therefore those who approach God through faith and not at the same time through Christ actually depart from Him. Second, the apostle is speaking against those who rely too heavily on Christ and not enough on faith, as if they were to be saved through Christ in such a way that they themselves had to do nothing and show no evidence of faith. These people have too much faith, or actually none at all. For this reason it is necessary to emphasize both points: ‘through faith’ and ‘through Christ,’ so that we do and suffer everything which we possibly can in faith in Christ.”

[7] LW 25, 294. “Thus the apostle asserts that this sublime power which is in us is not from ourselves, but must be sought from God. Thus it follows that it is poured into us, not born in us or originated in us. And this takes place through the Holy Spirit; it is not acquired by moral effort and practice, as our moral virtues are. Into our hearts, that is, into the depths and the midst and center of our hearts, not on the surface of the hart, as foam lies on water. This is the kind of love that the hypocrites have, who imagine and pretend that they have love. But a period of testing only proves the pride and impatience which lies deep within them.”

[8] Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry.

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Holy Spirit and Pentecostal Fire

Psalm 104:34-35, 37 I will sing to God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God; I will rejoice in God. Bless God, O my soul. Hallelujah!

Introduction

God does not leave God’s beloved. God, from the very beginning, sent out God’s Spirit to be with and among the beloved, from the beginning of light to the unendedness of dark, from the tiniest of mites to the largest of beasts, form the highest of mountains to the deepest of ocean floors, God is with God’s beloved. This is what our ancient creation myths of Genesis 1 and 2 tell us. Genesis 3 tells a tale of fracture and disruption of harmony and communion among God, humanity, creation, and one existing within each person. Yet, even in the ricochets of the fractures, God never left the beloved. Even when the beloved left the garden, God went with them. God’s Spirit suspended before and with God’s people: calling Abraham and Sarah, sustaining Isaac and Ishmael, leading Jacob, sending Moses, manifesting as fire in bushes, pillars of flame at night, in clouds during the day, in the pulling apart the waters of the Red Sea like the pulling apart the light from the dark at the beginning of creation, in tabernacles, tents, and temples. Not to mention Israel’s prophetic line speaking as God’s representatives; being filled with divine passion, they summoned and heralded to Israel the good news of God and God’s presence, exhorting them to see God not only in their own midst in their strength and power, but more importantly in the weakest of them: in the widow and orphan, in the hungry and thirsty, in the houseless and unclothed.

God does not leave the beloved because love needs the beloved. The lover who loves needs an other to love, the beloved; the beloved needs the lover to be the beloved. And the very spirit of God—the one that hovered over the face of the deep so long ago and the same one that inspired the prophets to proclaim God’s passion for God’s people—is the substance of love. As much as we are all made of start-dust, we are in equal part made of love. Love has set this whole crazy cosmic experiment in motion, and love sustains it. God is so serious about love that we declare that God’s love took on flesh. Jesus the Christ was formed in the womb of Mary and born into her love, not only to experience the power of love in his own flesh, but to love others as God. Jesus demonstrated in word and deed to the beloved that God really does love them, is really for them, really does see and know their pain and suffering (Ex. 2), really does get angry over injustice and weeps over death, and really does walk in solidarity with humanity even in death. And as you know, death cannot sever the bonds and ties of love because love remembers, love recalls. And even more than that, love resurrects, calls forth the beloved from the tomb, and sends the beloved onward and forward in love.

John 20:19-23

Therefore when it was evening on that day—the first [day] of the week—and when the door having been shut where the disciples were because of the fear of the children of Israel, Jesus came and stood in their midst and he said to them, “Peace to you.”… Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you; just as the father/elder/ancestor has sent me, so also I send you.” And after saying this, he breathed [on them] and he said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit… “[1]

John 20:19, 21-22

The disciples are locked away for agitation and fear. And what does God do? Shows up. None of these men had their act together, were stalwart emissaries of unflagging faith, or superheroes braving the persecutions. They were terrified and confused human beings, desperate for something, for anything. And, as God has done since the conception of the inception of creation, God shows up behind that locked door and brings peace to them. Why? Because God knows their fear and panic, their terror and anxiety, their desperate desire to live and when God knows these things, God feels these things, and God acts to ameliorate these things. The ascended Christ does not leave the disciples alone to figure it out or muster up their own strength; Jesus shows up and brings it to them where they are because that’s what God does.[2]

Prior to this moment, Jesus has already promised giving peace, his peace that surpasses any peace that the world can offer. It’s not that the world is bad or should be shunned, rather the world is the playground of divine love and liberation seeking and desiring the beloved. However, the systems made by humans can only provide a certain and temporary form of peace; no material possession can secure your peace—none. However, in chapter 14 of John’s gospel, Jesus’s gave these same men peace: peace I let go to you, my peace I give to you; I give to you not as the world gives. Let your heart be neither agitated nor fearful (v. 27). It doesn’t mean that this gift of peace failed. Rather, at the time they were not able to receive it because Jesus was with them, but now that he is ascended and gone from them and they are agitated and fearful, he appears to them and calls them to awareness that they have his peace.[3]

But he doesn’t merely reiterate that they have his peace, he gives them the Holy Spirit to be with them from this day on, the same Spirit existing before the cosmos and the one that called Jesus forth from the tomb. This Spirit is the Spirit of God and fulfills the promise from old that God’s Spirit would dwell in the hearts of God’s people, the beloved (ref. Ez. 36:26). The peace of God is no longer a wish or a prayer but is with the disciples of Christ…literally, because they have the Spirit of God. Easter finds its fullest expression in Pentecost, for now true life is accessible to the disciples; they are (once again) being summoned from their tomb and exhorted to walk forward into the light of day, proclaiming and heralding God’s love to all.[4] Not only do the disciples have the peace of Christ with them, they have the authority of the Spirit of God to be the witnesses of Christ, they are sent not by any other person than God of very God. They are sent into the world as Christ to carry forward the mission of God: seeking and desiring the beloved, bringing life, love and liberation to the captives.

Conclusion

Pentecost secures—forever—God’s liberation and liberating of the captives. It is as powerful as Christmas and Easter; it ranks with the major feasts of the Christian tradition. It is the power of God transcending all the boundaries we create, breaking down the barriers we build, rewriting the narratives we write about ourselves, each other, creation, and God. It is the descent of the Spirit that is echoed in creation coming into recreation. It is the sound of doors being unlocked, cells sliding open, and those previously curved inward standing upright for the first time in a long time. It is the sound of bodies dancing, voices singing, and communities experiencing the liberation of God.

My dear friend and colleague, The Rev. Dr. Kate Hanch, recently published a book, Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in the 19th-Century America. In this text she tells the stories of three black women preachers: Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, and Sojourner Truth. In sharing about the religious and theological influences of Truth, she mentions that Truth’s mother, Mau Mau Bett (Elizabeth), was her first spiritual teacher, combining “her African heritage with the Dutch culture of her enslavers.”[5] It was this that opened the door, writes Kate, to Truth’s broad and deep view of God’s presence with her.[6] In addition to this, Sojourner Truth’s theology was influenced by the Dutch holiday of Pinkster…otherwise known as Pentecost.[7] The celebration of Pinkster created a space in time where liberation from oppression made its truth known in the material realm, where baptismal regeneration and the essence of the sacramental meal of thanksgiving were cultivated into a bodied celebration of the descent of the Spirit that knows no boundaries of skin color, wealth, sex, gender, age, etc.[8] Here Love descended and imparted itself to everyone; here the enslaved walked and danced free in the fullness of the glory of God, “These erotic dances enabled her to love her own body and also reminded her of the Holy Spirit who dwells with and in all bodies, Black and white, enslaved and freed.”[9]

Let us follow Truth’s lead and witness and live like God is truly present with us, rejoice like the disciples seeing Christ, and exist liberated and loved like the Spirit of God within us. And may the life-giving breath of the church, the Holy Spirit burning with Pentecostal fire, ignite the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation as we go forth into the world.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Rudolf Bultmann The Gospel of John: A Commentary Trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed; RWN Hoare and JK Riches. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1971. German: Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). 691. “Suddenly he appears in their midst, and he greets them with the customary prayer for blessing. That Jesus in the meantime had ascended to the Father, as he had said to Mary that he would (v. 17), and has now again returned to earth would be a false reflection—not only in the meaning of the source, but also in that of the Evangelist. Rather the sense is that he has ascended, and even as such he appears to the disciples; as such he is able to bestow the Spirit (v. 22)…”

[3] Bultmann, John, 691-692. “In harmony with this the εἰρήνη—and the Solemn repetition of the greeting hints that we have to understand εἰρήνη in the full sense of 14:27—which Jesus offers the disciples has in truth already been given to them in the hour of the departure (14.27). Easter is precisely the hour when their eyes are opened for that which they already possess; and vv. 19-23 are no more than the depiction of this event.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 692-693. “The fact that the narrative depicts the fulfilment of the promise in the farewell discourses is shown finally in that the Risen Jesus bestows the Spirit on the disciples through his breath (v. 22); Easter and Pentecost therefore fall together. If in 16.8-11 the task of the Spirit was described as an ἐλέγχειν, so here correspondingly the bestowal of the Spirit is accompanied by the giving of authority to the disciples (v. 23). Thus the judgment that took place in the coming of Jesus (3.19; 5.27; 9.39) is further achieved in the activity of the disciples. It is self-evident that it is not a special apostolic authority that is imparted here, but that the community as such is equipped with this authority; for as in chs. 13-16 the μαθηταί represent the community.”

[5] Kate Hanch, Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in the 19th-Century America (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2022). Pp. 112-113.

[6] Hanch, Storied Witness, 113.

[7] Hanch, Storied Witness, 113.

[8] Hanch, Storied Witness, 114-115.

[9] Hanch, Storied Witness, 115.

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Why Do You Stand Looking Up?

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Acts 1:6-14

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

Acts 1:8-11a (Translation Mine)

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7] Jennings, Acts, 19-20.

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church daring to be Church

Psalm 23:1-3 God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for God’s Name’s sake.

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Acts 2:42-47

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

Acts 2:42, 44-45

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“What Might We Do?”

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Sunder warumbe.

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

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

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

Acts 2:37-39

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

[3] “Missing the mark”

[4] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[18] Ref. Dorothee Sölle Christ the Representative.

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Solidarity

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

Introduction

Something has to change
Undeniable dilemma
Boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear
Constant over stimulation numbs me
But I would not want you any other way
Just not enough, I need more
Nothing seems to satisfy
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive[1]

Who’s in your corner? Who’s on your side? Who’s your “ride or die”? Who’s the Louise to your Thelma?

If you’re having difficulty answering any of those questions, I don’t blame you. Names do not come readily to me, either. Over the course of the past five weeks, it’s become clear we’re in a dire spot, moment, event, era, time, whatever this is right now. The reality is that we sit in the turned-over ground of our obsession with suspicion. We are overrun by sola suspicio running amok. If there is no truth, if it’s all about my productivity, if no one is trustworthy, and if our communities lack substance to nurture where do we find anyone or anything to be for us? If our communities cannot foster relationality and can only dismiss identity and destabilize stability, who is left to be on my side, in my corner, my “ride or die”, my Louise?

I can help you change
Tired moments into pleasure
Say the word and we’ll be
Well upon our way, blend and balance
Pain and comfort, deep within you
Till you will not want me any other way
But it’s not enough, I need more
Nothing seems to satisfy
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive[2]

Sola suspicio has its place; but it cannot be where we live, it cannot be our best friend because with sola suspicio we must question and doubt everything and everyone; in this scenario the only people we can trust is ourselves. So, let us arm ourselves with weapons, horde material goods, work until our fingers bleed and our hearts stop, and keep looking over our shoulder for the threat of our replacement. There is no room for love here, there is no room for peace, there is no room for hope, there is no room for faith. There’s just nothing. And so we attempt to numb away the gnawing sensation that there could be more than this.

Something kinda sad about
The way that things have come to be
Desensitized to everything
What became of subtlety?
How can this mean anything to me
If I really don’t feel anything at all? Yeah
I’ll keep digging
Till I feel something[3]

With sola suspicio there is only one emotion left, and it’s a beast: fear. Sola suspicio demands fear. Tromping about waving its banners colored with the status quo and the unimaginative, hollering at the top of its lungs, Sola Suspicio reminds us at every turn: be afraid, nothing is true; be terrified, you are replaceable; be wary, your neighbor is not to be trusted; be alert, are you getting yours? It lures us to consume everything we can get our hands on and then soothes us into a deep post feast sleep coma. But we wake up again and are sent on more wild chases looking for something, anything, to give us sustenance.

We are craving solidarity, but nothing ever satisfies.

Isaiah 53:4-9

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah’s prophetic prayer highlights that whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, something is desperately wrong, and we are weary and faint; starvation does that to the body. This is our plight; this is not the product of divine chastisement; it’s the product of our own hands.[4] We’re caught up in the muck and mire of the tension between being held captive and being complicit in our starvation and the starvation of others. Isaiah says, all have gone astray, we have all turned to our own way.

Today we’re forced to recall the one person who identified deeply with the human predicament fell victim to the clutches of suspicion. Today we remember it was our inability to trust, to hope, to have faith in, and to love God more than ourselves that sent Jesus to suffer death. Today we remember that the son of God and the son of humanity hung on the cross, held by meager nails, a victim of our inability to accurately judge between good and evil. Today we’re reminded that we try soothing our existential hunger with the mythology of the kingdom of humanity: the myths of power, greed, status, and privilege. Today Christ dies because we are afraid, terrified of anything new, loyal to the lies of the status-quo. Today we stand guilty of being willing to pervert justice to our desires, bend it to our whims content with absolutely nothing rather than something.

Conclusion

In our hunger for God, we called out to God and pleaded for God to show up. And God did. God showed up in deep, deep solidarity with us; identifying with us in our weakness and vulnerability by being born and living as one of us. But it was too much for us; Christ exposed our captivity and complicity with destructive structures oriented toward death. And so we told God we wanted something else not-God.

Today God is dead; there’s no solidarity. Today, the church is gone; there’s no community. Today, relationality failed; we’re alone. Today, we sold our identity for 30 shekels; we’re replaceable. Today stability crumbled, and we’re abandoned to the hunger.

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

[1] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 1 and Chorus

[2] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 2 and Chorus

[3] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 3

[4] Abraham Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 151

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Identity

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

Psalm 121:1-3 I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from God, the maker of heaven and earth. God will not let your foot be moved and God who watches over you will not fall asleep.

Introduction

Do you know who you are? I know it sounds like a banal question, and maybe even moot. Of course, we all know who we are. I know that I am me, and I know that you are you. I know this because I am not you and you are not me. Thus, I’m sure that you know that you are you and not me because you are not me. If you were me and I were you, then we’d both be able to replace each other. And that means we would not be unique as individuals.

So, maybe I should rephrase the question: who are you as an individual apart from your relational roles and deeds? In terms of defining ourselves we default to our relationships, to our job, to our hobbies, to our interests and the activities therein to define ourselves not only to other people (to whom we feel a need always to be prepared to give justification for our existence) but also to ourselves. We cling to these things not only to define ourselves, but to validate ourselves and our existence. As we live in the wake of sola suspicio of our post-modern, post-enlightenment, even post-Theistic mindset, we are in a personal desperate way as we fight for something, anything to cling to affirm our uniqueness, validate our existence, and secure our identity.[1] But all of it is drift wood in this sea of tumult, chaos, and instability. There’s nothing secure enough in the material realm to cling that will give us a sense of self, an identity, a uniqueness and validation that won’t eventually become dust. Not even our own bodies offer us a stable constant, do they not betray us with time?

My identity is slipping through my fingers and nothing seems to satisfy.

Genesis 12:1-4a

God said to Abram, “…I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We pick up again in the book of Genesis. Here, Moses, our faithful story-teller according to tradition, is telling us about the call of Abram. Chapter 12 in Genesis follows a colorful series of events: fierce cherubim and seraphim blocking off all access and reentrance to the Garden of Eden after the rather fateful “applegate” and subsequent curses (Gen 3), the first murder (Gen 4), various human civilizations being established (Gen 5), the appearance of the Nehphilim (the byproduct of the Sons of God knowing the Daughters of Humanity) (Gen 6:1-6), a massive and destructive flood (Gen 6:7-8:22), a rainbow of divine promise (Gen 9), and the Tower of Babel (Gen 11). It’s here, at this point in the story, where God (once again) begins anew, moving from a general approach to a specific approach: God will call one person, not for any other reason than God’s love for the whole world.[2]

God’s promises and blessing to Abram suggests a reversal of the curses uttered just chapters earlier.[3] These blessings and promises highlight that Abram has done nothing to receive them; they come as a “bolt from the blue.”[4] The idea that God cannot be with God’s beloved as a result of the fall back in Genesis 3 is rendered myth in this moment. God calls Abram and blesses him; where Adam, Eve, and the serpent leave behind paradise, Abram is invited into it: paradise is union with God. Herein is the foundation for the claim that the curses are being reversed: by God’s love, Abram will be a great nation (many children, one of whom will be the Messiah, the promised child of Genesis 3) and this nation will be a blessing to the rest of the world.[5]

In this moment of hearing the divine summons, Abram, in a moment, goes from a childless old man to the parent of many; here Abram becomes a new person, a new being by the Word of God summoning him to God’s self and thus into new life.[6] And not a new self for his own sake, but in this hearing of the divine summons, Abram is ushered into a new life for others. This other-orientated characteristic of his new life will become part of his new identity in God and with God as he becomes a conduit for God to bless other nations.[7] And in our context, the overflow of blessing and promise has already started: as Abram responds to God and finds his new life in God, Lot goes with him into this new thing.[8]

Conclusion

We look in many places to anchor and secure our identity. We long for something permanent that’s always there to tell us who and what we are. Some of us spend our lives reaching for accolades to define ourselves, some of us invest all we have in our relationships striving to be good by our deeds, some of us spend all our time toiling away at some job, some of us are dead set that our “passions” or our “hobbies” are our identity. These things aren’t inherently bad; it’s good to have things to do and enjoy, it is wonderful to walk through life with other people, serving and sharing with them. But, when they’re forced to bear the burden of the weight of ourselves, our personhood, and our identity, they are found to be phantoms and illusions. They are merely a papier mache covering over fear and anxiety that, at the end of it all, we’re truly replaceable, unnecessary, forgettable.

We tell ourselves lies that we must be x or y or even z to be valued, forgetting all the while that we’re valuable because we are. full stop. These things that we reach for and demand they give us something on which to hang our identity will leave us still afraid and unstable because they can never give us what we so deeply desire: irreplaceability. These things are too fleeting and fickle to give us our uniqueness and irreplaceability—here one day and gone the next. We cannot attain our identity and irreplaceability by ourselves leaning on our deeds.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we navigate all this insecurity of identity, this threat of the loss of self? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for irreplaceable identity.

The irreplaceable individual is the one in whom another takes interest. Would you believe me if I told you that I take an interest in you? that you are—to me—irreplaceable? But there is also something bigger, securing for us that long desired irreplaceability, anchoring the thing that makes us unique, and to whom our existence matters day in and day out. God. Specifically, God brought close to us in Christ. This is why we come here every Sunday, to hear the age-old story of God calling Abram, to hear our own names in the place of Abrams, to hear our own summons, our own promises, our own being seen, known, and loved. We come here week after week to encounter divine love for us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We come here together and individually, to hear once again that God takes an interest in humanity and thus in us because in Christ, God shrugged off royalty to be as us, to identify as us, even unto death.

Beloved, God so loves you therefore you are irreplaceable, you are unique, you are of interest. You are loved and remembered by God; in you God takes hope. [9] In our hunger for irreplaceable identity, we hunger for God; in our hunger for God our identities are held, anchored to dependable substance because this story of God’s love for you never changes, it holds from one moment to the next, from one era to the next, not always in the same form but always with the same substance: divine love for the beloved.

In hearing the summons of God’s voice in the proclamation of divine love in Christ, God taking an interest in you and remembering you, calling you unto God’s self by the Spirit, you are called to walk with others. For this summons of God’s voice of love will always overflow through us to our neighbors, with whom we share blessings and promises of God’s love, interest, and remembrance. It’s here where we’re brought further out of ourselves and our desperate attempts to secure our own identities by our deeds by ourselves. It is here, in the midst of the divine summons and love where I find identity with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Dorothee Sölle, Christ the Representative, 26. “In the course of the expanding process of secularization, the metaphysical irreplaceability of the human soul was itself transposed into secular achievements or expressions of life by which the individual made himself irreplaceable. Man discovered himself as essentially one who accomplishes things, and this prospect of self-realization, self-accomplishment, self-expression in work, blotted out the earlier metaphysical horizon. Now for the first time, in the context of the modern discovery of the individual, it was a man’s work-labour performed, his perfected achievement-which merited the dignity and status given to the relation between producer and player in the earlier conception. Man no longer acquired his identity simply from his relationship to God, which had once in itself provided an adequate explanation of the irreplaceability of the individual as a soul. He now achieves his own identity; he makes himself irreplaceable.”

[2] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation. Eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 30.    “The universalism that marked Gen. chs 1-11 having now failed, the Lord begins anew, singling out one Mesopotamian—in no way distinguished from his peers as yet—and promising to make of him a great nation, not numbered in the seventy nations of ch. 10.”

[3] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 30. “What the Lord promises Abram (his name is changed to ‘Abraham’ only in ch 17)—land, numerous offspring, and blessing—constitutes to an extent a reversal of some of the curses on Adam and Eve—exile, pain in childbirth, and uncooperative soil…”

[4] Levenson, “Genesis” The Jewish Study Bible, 30. “The twin themes of land and progeny inform the rest of the Torah. In Gen. ch 12, these extraordinary promises come like a bolt from the blue, an act of God’s grace alone; no indication has been given as to why or even whether Abram merits them.”

[5] LW 2 (Luther’s Works Vol 2 “Lectures on Genesis Chapters 6-14” Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1960.) 246. “…Moses reminds his people that they were chosen by the Lord, not because they had deserved this but because the Lord had loved them and was keeping the oath that had been given to their fathers? In this passage we see that the beginnings are in agreement with the end. For what is Abraham except a man who nears God when He calls him, that is, a merely passive person and merely the material on which divine mercy acts?”

[6] LW 2 247. “Thus, as I said above, Abraham is merely the material that the Divine Majesty seizes through the Word and forms into a new human being and into a patriarch, And so this rule is universally true, that of himself man is nothing, is capable of nothing, and has nothing except sin, death, and damnation; but through His mercy Almighty God brings it about that he is something and is freed from sin, death…”

[7] LW 2 258-259. “Here is presented the amazing promise that this people will not only be increased among itself and be blessed materially and spiritually, but that the blessing will also overflow to the neighboring nations and peoples. This happened to the Pharaoh in Egypt.”

[8] LW 2 275. “Behold God’s marvelous counsel! The promise pertained to Abraham only, not to Lot. Nevertheless, God attaches Lot, like a proselyte, to Abraham as his companion and moves his heart so that he wants to go into exile with his uncle rather than remain in his native country among the idolaters. This is because the promise given to Abraham be blessed with his descendants, it him others would become partakers of the blessing, even though the promise did not properly pertain to them.”

[9] Sölle, Representative, 46. “Whenever man’s horizon is bounded by his contribution, substitution also comes into play. A different basis must be found for man’s irreplaceability. I am irreplaceable only for those who love me. Only for them does a surplus remain, over and above whatever I perform at any given time: something not expressed in my action. This margin, this surplus of the person over and above all he performs, alone gives life to human relationships. To love means, in this sense, to count on this surplus, on what has not yet been expressed, not yet appeared. The invisible and unexpressed surplus is a reminder that I have not yet reached my full stature. Identity continues to be preserved in the experience of difference; in the consciousness of non-identity. But this consciousness knows that it cannot expunge itself. I do not become an irreplaceable person by my own effort, but only as I continue to be dependent on others.

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Stability

(for part 1 click here)

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[7] LW 1 161.

[8] Sölle On Earth 93

[9] Sölle On Earth ix-x.

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