Tag: Judgment

“Prone to Wander”: Human Judgment, Judged

Psalm 116: 1,10 I love Abba God, because Abba God has heard the voice of my supplication, because Abba God has inclined Abba God’s ear to me whenever I called upon Abba God. How shall I repay Abba God for all the good things Abba God has done for me?

Introduction

Our journey through Lent to Holy Week has brought us to the reality of our situation. We have seen that we’re prone to forsake and give up following the way of the reign of God; we have seen that we’re prone to tromp and tread on the land, on our neighbor, on God, and on ourselves; we have seen that we’re eager to estrange ourselves and become strangers to God, thus to our neighbor, thus to ourselves. While we would love for the exposure of Lent to be over, our exposure is, only now, getting personal.

Maundy Thursday isn’t really about “foot washing” or about finding ways to make yourselves smaller and more servant-like to your neighbor—even though such acts are exposing and can bring a certain (healthy) amount of humility. Rather, Maundy Thursday is about Peter being exposed for what he doesn’t understand about who Jesus is and what his mission on earth is all about. And, thus—if it’s about Peter being exposed—it’s about us being exposed for not really getting what Jesus is truly up to. While we claim all year to know what God’s mission is in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we don’t really know and we often forget what it is once we’re told, and we conflate it and force it to conform with our own desires, and (then) walk away from it completely. Maundy Thursday is designed to drive some of those final and big nails into our coffin of exposure. As we gaze upon Christ in the gospel story, watch him remove his clothes and don only a wrap around his waist and begin to wash the feet of his disciples, we should feel the urge building up to blurt out, with Peter, “‘You will never wash my feet!’” A simple statement meant for respect yet exposing how much we really don’t understand what is happening or why Christ is here. On Maundy Thursday, our judgment is called to account for itself, and it will be found lacking.

We are prone to bad judgment because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Exodus 12:1-14

Here in our First Testament passage from the book of Exodus, Moses and Aaron receive the instructions for the Passover event. The Passover marks the beginning of a new era for Israel. While the exodus event through the Sea of Reeds is the tangible component of Israel’s promised liberation, it is the meal that marks the beginning of the new era defined by redemption. [1] It is this Passover event that is, for Israel, the break in time and space between what was and what will be. Their liberation begins in believing God, trusting God’s word—faith manifesting in action; this is why the Passover event of liberation becomes the mark of a new year for Israel and will always be a mark of a new year: each new year will solicit a new faith to enter the dusk setting on yesterday and dawn rising on tomorrow.[2]

The response of Israel built on faith in God’s trustworthiness and truthfulness is to prepare, eat, and perform a meal in a specific way. God informs Moses and Aaron that on the tenth day of the month all of Israel is to take an unblemished, one year-old, male lamb (one per household or one per a couple of small households), and on the fourteenth day they must slaughter their lambs at twilight. The blood from this sacrifice is to be painted onto the doorposts and lintels of the households where the Passover lamb must be eaten. God then gives very specific instructions regarding the eating of the lamb and the Passover meal:

“They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” (Ex. 12:8-11)

This isn’t any other meal; it’s a meal that’s refusing enjoyment, merriment, and lingering. Every part of this meal must take place with intention and presence; it’s to be done in haste as if the threat of death looms on the boundary of the meal—because it does loom.[3] “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt,” (v.13). They will eat this meal, putting all their faith in God and that God is faithful to God’s promises that those who follow what has been told to Aaron and Moses will be exempted from this final curse of the passing over of God and the execution of divine judgment on all the firstborns of the land.[4]

The Israelites must suspend their own judgment. They must step into the void from where God beckons them and faith lures them. They must not pause and consider what is common sense or what aligns with what they know to be good and right. In this moment, human judgment comes under attack by the unstated, whom do you love? The Israelites, individually and as a community had to give their answer. That night, as the angel of death swept over Egypt striking down all the firstborn of the land, divine judgment was executed; that night as families woke up human judgment received its verdict.

Conclusion

Would you? Put yourselves in Israel’s shoes. Would you kill the lamb, paint its blood on your door frames, and eat that meal in haste? Would you risk the life of your child, the life of your sibling, the your own life to appease what made the most sense to you? While we read this as a myth, it’s still a myth with a purpose to expose us. The question comes to us through these Ancient Israelites stuck in captivity and oppression. Would each of us, would we as a community, be able to see the depth at which God is doing a new thing in our lives to liberate us from captivity? Would we be able to trust that God is doing this thing and that God is truthful and trustworthy and will make good on God’s promises? Would we be able to suspend our judgment long enough to let God be God?

I’m neither advocating for “blind” and “uninformed” faith no affirming that voice in your head you think may God’s Spirit telling you to do something a bit uncharacteristic (always have those ideas checked by scripture and teaching!). What I am advocating for is this: are we able to suspend our human informed judgment long enough to see when God is doing something new in the world even when it contradicts our conception of what should be done in the world? Are we able to suspend what we think is right and good long enough to see when God is working a new thing for the wellbeing of our neighbor, which ends up being (ultimately) for our own wellbeing? Are we able to unplug our eyes and ears from what we have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing long enough to see and hear when God is calling us into liberation, into love, and into life and away from captivity, away from indifference, and away from death? Would we be able to learn something new about God’s divine mission in the world so to echo Peter’s eager and desperate response to Jesus, Wash not only my feet but my whole body, inside and out!? Would you be able to suspend your judgment long enough to let God be God?

The bad news is that we, as fleshy meat creatures prone to wander, will deliver our answer; the good news is that God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 125. “Preparations for the exodus” “Israel is to prepare for the coming redemption with a sacrificial banquet while the final plague is occurring and is to commemorate the event in the future on its anniversary by eating unleavened bread for a week and reenacting the banquet. This banquet became the prototype of the postbiblical Seder, the festive meal at which the exodus story is retold and expounded each year to this day on the holiday of Pesah (Passover), as explained below.”

[2] Tigay, “Exodus,” 125. “Since the exodus will be commemorated on its anniversary every year…the preparatory instructions begin with the calendar. Henceforth the year will commence with the month of the exodus, and months will be referred to by ordinal numbers rather than names….Since the number will mean essentially ‘in the Xth month since we gained freedom,’ every reference to a month will commemorate the redemption.”

[3] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “The Israelites are to eat while prepared to leave on a moment’s notice.”

[4] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “In most European languages, it is also the name of Easter (as in French ‘Paques’). The translation ‘passover’ (and hence the English name of the holiday) is probably incorrect. The alternativity translation ‘protective offering’ is more likely…”

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Water and Fire

Psalm 29:1-2, 11 Ascribe to Abba God, you gods, ascribe to Abba God glory and strength. Ascribe to God the glory due God’s Name; worship Abba God in the beauty of holiness. God shall give strength to God’s people; God shall give God’s people the blessing of peace.

Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had moments in my life where I have felt the heavy blankets of shame, disgrace, and regret. The dastardly thing about these emotions and feelings is that they never tend to stay on the surface, pinned to the exterior of the epidermis. They sink in deep, infecting the heart, mind, soul, the very being of a person. There isn’t enough soap and water hot enough to get at the dirt. There are times when I want to crawl into the shower and stay there, under the hot streams, until I feel clean, hoping beyond hope that the water cascading down, pouring over me would–somehow—penetrate through my flesh and cleanse my heart and mind, my soul and self, washing away these children of malfeasance. In the end, though, it’s just water, it can’t and won’t do the very thing I needed it to do. These are times I need something more than just water, I need divine fire. Under that falling water, I need to remember my confession: please forgive me Lord, a sinner. But I can’t stop there, I must press through that confession and remember this: In the name of Christ, I am Baptized. With Martin Luther, it’s here, in remembering my baptism where I am exposed by my confession and brought through that death into new life, placed deep in the presence of God through the purifying fires of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

John answered and said to the people, “Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me for whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire.” (Lk. 3:16)

In chapter 3, Luke brings us face to face with John. According to the first part of chapter three, John, the son of Zechariah, is going about the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance (vv. 2-3). In v. 7, people are coming to John in the Jordan to be baptized, and he is verbally exposing them and exhorting them to better life lived in the world (vv.7-14). Due to this interaction, the people begin to wonder with excitement that John might be the Messiah (v. 15).

Luke tells us John senses this building excitement and wonder about his role in God’s activity in the world, and quickly nips all speculation in the bud, Indeed, I, I baptize you [with] water; but one comes who is stronger than me whom I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He, he will baptize you with [the] Holy Spirit and fire (v. 16). John makes a clear distinction here between the baptism he offers in the coming reign of God and the one Jesus will offer. His cleanses the outside, Jesus’s will cleanse not only the outside but also the inside. Luke has a couple of objectives in mind by placing these words on John’s tongue. First, at the time of writing, there were factions remaining of those who followed John and those who followed Jesus; for Luke, not even John wants anyone following him because he is one who points to Jesus (his is more prophet[1] than Christ).[2] Here, Luke, through John, places articulated emphasis on the baptism that Jesus will offer as the superior baptism to his water baptism. While both water and fire clean, only fire will purify.[3]

Luke’s second objective: to expose the significant difference between John’s baptism and Jesus’s (it’s not only that one is more powerful). The bigger difference is that one baptism includes receiving something. Where John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance and being washed clean with water (full stop), John does not claim to give anyone anything to fill the now vacant spot washed. But, according to Luke’s John, Jesus does. What is this gift? The Holy Spirit. The believer, the one who is baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, receives the Holy Spirit in Jesus name via baptism. In other words, John’s baptizands aren’t empowered with anything, they’re just washed clean; Jesus’s are.[4] Those who receive the baptism of Jesus with fire and the Holy Spirit also receive the Holy Spirit and it is this “paraclete” (according to the gospel of John) who exposes and who empowers Jesus’s followers (i.e. through exposure and exhortation, or the growth discussed in the book of Ephesians) into the way of wisdom, love, and truth[5] and will continue to do so long after Jesus ascends.[6]

John then retreats to some rather intimidating imagery of judgment. Who has his winnowing shovel in hand to thoroughly purify his threshing floor and collect the grain into his grainery, but the chaff he will consume entirely [by] unquenchable fire (v. 17). Again, there are two important things being articulated here. The first is the comparison of Jesus and his baptism with fire and the Holy Spirit as an act of judgment,[7] or, what I would call “exposure”. The winnowing shovel is judgment; to winnow is to separate the chaff from the grain. For Luke’s John, Jesus comes with a winnowing shovel to judge by exposing everything to fire (judgment). This winnow shovel language echoes back to what John said at the beginning of the chapter about the axe being laid at the base of the tree to chop down those trees that are fruitless.[8] Thus judgment is clearly and explicitly intended here and no one is escaping divine fire! But, (and second) how Luke relays this winnowing is important: it’s in the past tense; as in: it’s already happened. Return to the imagery with me, one will come with a winnowing shovel and the grain will be collected together while the chaff is burned in the unquenchable fire. Thus, the winnowing has already been done by the time the collecting together of the grain and the burning of the chaff. In other words, for Luke, John has winnowed and Jesus will collect and the left over unusable parts will be burned up. Those who respond positively to John’s call for baptism by water will be the grain that is gathered up by Christ and baptized by him. [9] According to Luke, John is the fork in the road; if you are open to repentance baptism, then you are open to what comes when the Christ shows up. [10]

Then our passage closes with the well told story of Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan with John. Here Luke solidifies Jesus’s dual identification with God and with humanity;[11] demonstrating that Jesus is, without need of repentance, in solidarity with humanity’s plight (needing repentance) [12] as well as in solidarity with God’s mission in the world to bring absolution (the purification with fire and the Holy Spirit) to the beloved. As one of the many people in the Jordan, Jesus, too, is baptized; yet, as the one who is God’s son, he is recognized by God as God’s own by the opening of the heavens (v.21), and the Holy Spirit like a dove[13] came down bodily upon him, and a voice out of heaven came about, “You, You are my son; with you I am well-pleased” (v. 22). According to Luke, Jesus is the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, the one through whom God’s redemption comes[14] and through whom humanity will be both restored and represented in the heavenly realms.

Conclusion

To be baptized of water, to be cleaned by water is great; to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and God’s divine fire in the name of Christ is the call of anyone who follows Jesus out of that Jordan on that day and every day after that. Something I find interesting here is that this passage speaks not of two different fires but of one. Just like it is one light that illuminates the darkness, sending the darkness to its demise while illuminating that which is in the room; so does the divine fire that comes with the Christ send that existential and spiritual dirt to its demise while rendering the beloved object of that fire new and pure. The very thing that sends me into the hot shower to cleanse from head to toe is obliterated life chaff sent to the unquenchable fire in my confession and my recollection that I am baptized in Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Yet, I, in my flesh and in my soul do not escape that fire, but suffer through it like pottery in a kiln or gold in the refinery; what is left of the fire that surges over and through me is what is collected and stored in the grainery to serve and participate in God’s mission in the world, following after Jesus and walking within the same sand impressions left behind by my savior as he left the water. In my confession and in my need for Christ, I am summoned out of and away from death (chaff) and placed in the heart of God’s love, given new life, and sent forward in liberation renewed by faith and empowered by the Holy Spirit. That which is sentenced to death (my guilt, shame, regret, anything that hinders me from new life) is burned up forever, and that which is sentenced to life abundant (me, myself, and I) are refined and collected up into the grainery to be used by God in the world to God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor, God’s beloved.

We, as God’s beloved, are called to walk through the one fire and to let God take what is chaff and burn it up completely and purify and refine by the baptism of Christ that is with God’s Holy Spirit and fire that which is to be collected as grain. In the event of faith, we, as God’s beloved, are brought into death and through it, finding ourselves resurrected on the other side, purified and made clean, inside and out, to be as Christ in the world, to represent God by word and deed, and to identify with the suffering and plight of our neighbors.

[1] Gonzalez, Luke, 50. “Thus what John is saying is that he is not even worthy to be counted among the lowest servants of the one whose coming he announces…In brief, Luke presents John as perhaps the greatest among the prophets and as the heir to the long line of leaders of Israel who significance was announced in that they were born of barren women; but even so, John cannot even be compared with Jesus.”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 50. Luke is emphasizing Jesus over John “This is an important point for Luke, who apparently was writing at time when there were still those who claimed to be followers of John but not of Jesus and such views had spread beyond the confines of Judea to Diaspora Judaism…”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “John baptizes with water; but Jesus will baptize ‘with the Hoy Spirit and with fire.’ Both water and fire are purifying agents; but fire is much more potent than water. Water may wash away whatever is unclean; but fire burns it away.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Thus in Lukan theology there is a difference between a baptism of repentance, which is what John performed, and baptism in the name of Jesus, which is connected with receiving the Holy Spirit. John calls people to repent, and when they do this he baptizes them as a sign that they are cleaned of their former impurity. But Christian baptism, while still employing water, is ‘with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’ It is a cleansing (fire) and empowering (Holy Spirit).”

[5] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 54. “Octavio: ‘The Holy Spirit is Wisdom.’
Julio: ‘It’s love for others.’
Gloria: ‘And the fire is love too.’
Eduardo: ‘Because it gives light and warmth.’
Tere: ‘And also because it purifies.’”

[6] Joel B. Green, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids): Eerdmans, 1997), 180. “The conjunction of the Holy Spirit and fire in this baptism is puzzling within the context of Luke-Acts. The Holy Spirit has been present repeatedly in 1:5-2:52, where such roles as empowering and guiding were paramount; for Luke thus far the Holy Spirit has been a manifestation of eschatological blessing and an empowering presence critical to God’s redemptive mission. Baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit,’ then, must surely be related to these themes even if other connections of the Spirit with cleansing and purging are also in view. Fire, too, can have this meaning, and it may be that the figure John anticipates will administer s single baptism of refinement and empowerment.”

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 51. “Furthermore, fire is a sign of impending judgment. John had declared that the axe was now at the root of the tree, so that a fruitless tree would be cut down and burned. Now something similar is said about the coming of Jesus: he comes with a winnowing fork in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving the former and burning the latter.”

[9] Green, Luke, 182. “…the language John uses actually presumes that the process of winnowing has already been completed. Consequently, all that remains is to clear the threshing floor, and this is what John pictures. This means that John’s ministry of preparation is itself the winnowing, for his call to repentance set within his message of eschatological judgment required of people that they align themselves with or over against God’s justice. As a consequence, the role of Messiah is portrayed as pronouncing or enacting judgment on the people on the basis of their response to John.”

[10] Green, Luke, 182. “…it is important to realize that John presents his baptismal activity as an anticipation of the Messiah’s; his baptism forces a decision for or against repentance, and this prepare for the Messiah’s work…”

[11] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “One of the women said: ‘to give us an example. He didn’t need baptism but we did, and he did it so we would do it when we saw that even he did it.’” And, “Somebody else said: ‘And he could also have done it out of humility. He was with his people, with his group, and he wasn’t going to say: “I don’t need this, you do it, I don’t have any sin.” The others, the Pharisees, might say that, the ones who didn’t follow John. Not Jesus, he goes along with the others.”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 56. “Alejandro: ‘You could also say out of solidarity. So he wouldn’t be separated form the group.’”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 57. “‘It wasn’t that a dove descended, because it doesn’t say that a dove descended but “like a dove.” A dove is a soft and loving little animal. And the Holy Spirit is loving. It was the love of God that descended upon him.’”

[14] Green, Luke, 187. “The purpose of the divine voice in 3:22 is above all that of providing an unimpeachable sanction of Jesus with regard to his identity and mission. Working in concert with the endowment of the Holy Spirit, this divine affirmation presents in its most acute form Jesus’ role as God’s agent of redemption. This accentuates Jesus’ role as God’s representative, the one through whom God’s aim will be further presented and worked out in the story, but it also demonstrates at least in a provisional way the nature of Jesus’ mission by calling attention to the boundaries of his exercise of power.”

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We’re Our Own Problem

1 Samuel 2:8a-b Abba God raises up the poor from the dust; Abba God lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.

Introduction

Our relationship with our ideologies will be the end of us.

I know that’s not the greatest way to begin a sermon in a place that should bring comfort, but it is the truthiest way I know how to begin. (This place is as much about comfort as it is about truth.) While I think there are good ideologies and worse ones, the reality is—and to quote last week’s sermon—we do this. There are ideas we have and ideals we strive for; then there is the calcification of those ideas and ideals that we turn into ideologies; we do this. They aren’t inherently embedded in the universe, waiting for our exploration and discovery. Let’s go on a thought journey: imagine earth making its way about the sun without humanity anywhere. In this image, what is happening on the face of the earth? Flora is flora-ing, fauna is fauna-ing, Things get warm, things get cold; things enter night while things enter day. Things are just going. Are animals fighting, sure. Are trees dying because of beetles, sure. But it’s all just going, organically, day in and day out.

At no point in that image is there a discussion about “good” and “evil”, of “progress” and “conserving”, of “individual” and “communal”, of “this” and “not that”. Why? Because we bring that stuff into the mix. To be clear, I’m not arguing for a human-less world; I very much enjoy my time here as a human, doing all my humany things. I’m also not arguing that those discussions, dialogues, and dialectics aren’t important; don’t forget, I’m a theologian and political ethicist, my academic career depends on such things be engaged with and vigorously. But what I want you to see is that part of being human is making and creating systems and structures  that reflect ourselves into the world, materializing what we hold most dear. Did you catch that emphasis? What WE hold most dear, how WE see the world, what WE think is best. Every philosophy, theology, ethical program, religious expression carries a certain amount of personal bias that then resonates with others experiencing the world. Every. One.

The problem is that we don’t see these ideologies as things we make, like tables and chairs. We see them as parts of us worth defending as if our lives depended on it. Here, three things happen, a). (individually) we lose ourselves to them (as in, they become a part of our personhood, being, and identity); b). (corporately) we lose the number one thing that makes us most human: relationships with others, with our kin and with our neighbor (as in, we will cling to ideologies harder than we will cling to each other because we have allowed them to define us more than our relationships); and c). because we have invested so much in these ideologies, we can’t let them be wrong because then we become bad (as in, we’ve succumbed to the false binary that right=good and wrong=bad). In other words, too close an identification with what we believe to be the way will mean that we lose others and in losing others we lose ourselves. In other, other words, we lose our humanity and let the very things we created have domination over us, and we are thrust back into captivity; our ideologies are none other than immaterial golden calves causing us to curve in on ourselves more and more, forsaking our neighbor, thus forsaking God. We will become so turned in on ourselves that we won’t even know God’s left the building.

Mark 13:1-8

And then, while they were leaving out of the temple, one of [Jesus’s] disciples says to Jesus, “Teacher, behold(!), how magnificent the enormous blocks of stone and how magnificent the sanctuary!!” And Jesus said to him, “See these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left stone upon stone, not one at all(!); all will be overthrown.”

Mark opens chapter thirteen with Jesus leaving the temple—the one he’s been in for a while teaching. This leaving functions in two ways: 1. it provides a conclusion to the teaching of the disciples that has been ongoing for chapters now; and 2. Jesus physically severs his connection with the temple (he’s not thrown out; he leaves as the “unquestioned winner in the contest”).[1] In other words, Mark sets up an important visual for his audience: God is leaving the building (recall Mk. 1:1).

As Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple, one of them (who goes unnamed) marvels, to Jesus, about how magnificent the building is and the stones! “Teacher, behold(!), how magnificent the enormous blocks of stone and how magnificent the sanctuary!!” These structures were fantastically remarkable, the place you’d go if you’re touristing about Jerusalem. One scholar explains, the temple “occupied a platform of over 900 by 1, 500 feet, and the front of the temple building itself stood 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide, made of white stone, much of it covered with silver and gold”; don’t forget, his disciples aren’t city mice, they’re country mice[2]—what they witnessed firsthand as the sun played with the precious metals, stones, and cuts was truly marvelous and awe inspiring.[3] But even though a building is remarkable and speaks to the beautiful ingenuity of human minds and hands (and conjures horrifying images of the many oppressed bodies that were used to build it…), and even if it is dedicated to the most upright purposes, it doesn’t mean that somehow God is trapped therein, obligated to reside (forever) among the stone and precious metals.

So, Jesus says, “See these great buildings/sanctuaries? Not one stone here will be left stone upon stone, not one at all(!); all will be overthrown.” What the unnamed disciple saw as magnificent, Jesus sees as the cite of God’s revolution of love, life and liberation in the world. For Mark’s Jesus, there’s nothing of the temple that is glorifying to God;[4] rather, it’s a testament to human glory, and the leadership therein is dead set on their one way to do things, the one way that brings them the most power and the most glory (remember Mk. 12:38-44). Like the pharisees in other instances and the scribes just before this, this is nothing but a well decorated tomb of human made ideologies[5] destroying God’s beloved, oppressing them, tearing them apart, rendering them grist for the mill of the corrupted authority. As Jesus leaves the temple and promises its destruction, he emphasizes that the temple is going to be replaced with something new.[6]

Jesus then, according to Mark, goes to the Mount of Olives and sits down. It’s assumed he leaves the temple by the east gate. The imagery here would not have been lost on the original audience, but it might be lost on us. Mark is harkening back to the book of Ezekial and God’s abandonment of the temple through the east gate and resting on the mountain to the east of the city.[7] Thus, Mark positions Jesus going out of the east gate to the Mount of Olives and sitting down opposite the temple (a position of judgment).[8] According to Jesus, Jerusalem and the temple are no longer the primary focus of the divine government.[9] God has (definitely) left the building.

And the next part of our passage is Jesus’s cryptic reply to Peter’s question (on behalf of James, John, and Andrew) that speaks to “‘the end of the old order’.”[10] Peter asks, “Answer for us when these things will be, and what the sign [will be] whenever all these things will intend to be accomplished.” Jesus’s response is a (prophetic[11]) litany of various wars and skirmishes, lies and deceits, none of which are literal signs that are predictions; Jesus knows that his disciples will be prone to being misled by wars, rivalries between nations and kingdoms, and even by false messiahs.[12] Rather, these things will happen not because they are signaling something divine (the collapse of the temple) but because they are the fruit of humans being human; we cause wars, we intentionally deceive others, we allow our anthropocentric megalomania to dare to believe we can save ourselves (politically and spiritually). WE DO THIS! The collapse of the temple is because of human intoxication with itself; the temple will collapse under the weight of human made ideologies and God’s refusal to be held captive by them. As we said last week,Unless Abba God builds the house, their labor is in vain who build it. Unless Abba God  watches over the city, in vain the watcher keeps their vigil.

But Jesus doesn’t leave them without hope. For Jesus, part of the economy of the kingdom of God is that death precedes life, just as incredible trial and pain precede the birthing of new life.[13] The promised destruction of the temple is but one of those things that will liberate the people into something new [14] and the disciples need not get caught up in conspiracy theories and false messiahs[15]. They are to stay the course,[16] they will need to keep their head about them and refuse the temptation to be driven and controlled by cultic conspiracies. They must fix their eyes on something else, someone else who came to liberate them—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.[17] And it is this fixed focus on Jesus, the source of love, life, and liberation that the disciples will participate in liberating all of God’s beloved from captivity (to the temple, to religion, to philosophy, to theology, to dogma, to doctrine, to law, to themselves, to their power, privilege, and prestige) into real liberation that brings with it robust love (for God and for the neighbor), vibrant new life focused on pulling together and not apart, uplifting and not tearing down, listening and not dismissing. Here in, in this pulling together, in this community, in this solidarity within humanity is the temple to be found.

Conclusion

If you’re tempted to think this is a first century Palestinian problem, please think again.[18] The Church, the Christian Church, the American Christian Church is not the new temple; we are as at risk of turning this building into an empty tomb as our ancient siblings. The new temple will always be in Christ and where Christ goes; and it will be those who follow Christ (by faith and in action) who live within the new temple of the reign of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Sirit. It is these who will be with Christ who bring Christ to others and participate in God’s diving mission of the righteous revolution of love, life, and liberation.

So, for us here today, Beloved, we need liberation, we need interruption, we need to get our heads on straight. We must heed the words of Christ to his disciples and think clear and smart and always choose that which brings much love, that which produces the most life, and that which causes the greatest amount of liberation—about these we must also be adamant, these are our guiding ideas and ideals, these are our dives and motivations. If our ideologies cannot do that or have stopped, we must—must—choose love, life, and liberation over our ideologies…we don’t have a choice; God’s about to leave the building, if God hasn’t already left.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 494. “…already in 12:1-12 and increasingly since 12:34…Jesus has taken the initiative, posing the next question himself (without receiving a reply) and going on to denounce the representatives of religious power and to overturn conventional values of importance an status. It is thus appropriate that the whole episode ends not with the authorities taking action against Jesus…but with Jesus now the unquestioned winner in the contest, himself severing the connection by leaving the temple and pronouncing its down fall.”

[2] France, Mark, 496. “The unnamed disciple’s admiration of the temple buildings would be typical of a Galilean visitor to Jerusalem.”

[3] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 184-185. “It is understandable that Jesus’ disciples, mostly from the countryside, would have been impressed by the temple Herod had built. It occupied a platform of over 900 by 1,500 feet, and the front of the temple building itself stood 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide, made of white stone, much of it covered with silver and gold, by far the most impressive building any of them had seen, glowing int eh sunlight. Little wonder they were amazed by it all—and then little wonder at Jesus’ frustration that they had not yet understood his teaching that God was not present in him and not in the temple.”

[4] France, Mark, 496. “Splendid as the structure may be, its time is over.”

[5] France, Mark, 494. “The unnamed disciple’s superficial admiration for the magnificence of the buildings, contrasted with Jesus’ declaration of their ultimate bankruptcy, furnishes yet another example of the reorientation to the new perspective of the kingdom of God to which the disciples are committed but which they remain slow to grasp, and which Mark expects his readers to embrace.”

[6] France, Mark, 494. “The old structure of authority in which God’s relationship with his people has hitherto been focused, is due for replacement…As Mt. 12:6 has it, ‘Something greater than the temple is here’. The discourse which will follow in vv. 5-37 will fill out the nature of that ‘something greater’.”

[7] France, Mark, 494.

[8] France, Mark, 495. “Moreover, he goes from the temple onto the Mount of Olives (v. 3), presumably leaving by the east gate. it does not take a very profound knowledge of the Book of Ezekiel to recall the dramatic description of God’s abandonment of his temple as the chariot throe of God’s glory rises up from inside the temple, pauses at the east gate, and comes to rest on ‘the mountain east of the city’ (Ezk. 10:18-19; 11:22-23). So now again the divine presence is withdrawn from the temple, and it is left to its destruction.”

[9] France, Mark, 497-498. “The mutual hostility between Jesus and the Jerusalem establishment has now reached it culmination in Jesus’ open prediction of the destruction of the temple, with its powerful symbolism of the end of the existing order and the implication that something new is to take its place. This is to be a time of unprecedented upheaval in the life and leadership of the people of God. Jerusalem, and the temple which is the focus of its authority, is about to lose its central role in God’s economy. “the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, is to find a new focus.”

[10] France, Mark, 498.

[11] France, Mark, 508. “What we know from Josephus of the forty years or so between Jesus’ ministry and the destruction of the temple amply illustrates these warnings.”

[12] France, Mark, 508. “The disciples, and those who following them will read these words, are called to discernment and warned against the sort of superficial impressions of ‘fulfillment’ which have been the bane of students of apocalyptic and eschatological literature ever since. Sometimes false impressions are self-inflicted, as people naively read off from world events the ‘signs of the end’ (vv.7-8). Sometimes, however, they are deliberately fostered by those who have something to gain by working on the credulity of the faithful (vv. 5-6). Jesus’ disciples will be liable to both kinds of misinformation as they look for the fulfilment of his words about the destruction of the temple. They must be on their guard.”

[13] France, Mark,509. “There is a birth to be looked forward to, but the wars, earthquakes, and famines of vv. 7-8 show only that it is coming, not when it will come. Even to speak of a birth at all is perhaps to press the metaphor too far, in that such an expression as ὠδῖνες τοῦ θανάτου does not seem to envisage a birth, only pain; but as the discourses proceeds, we shall see that the coming destruction of the temple will bring with it a new beginning.”

[14] France, Mark, 509. “The answer given to the disciples’ questions in the first four verses of the discourse is thus a negative one, clearing away the natural tendency to look for signs of the temple’s destruction in the stirring and ominous events of the coming years, in the areas both of politics and of natural disaster. The disciples must not allow themselves to be misled. They will have enough to do to maintain their own witness to the truth through these difficult days…”

[15] France, Mark, 510. Those claiming to act in Jesus’s name, “So we must assume some meagre contextual guidance is that they were not so much claiming to act on Jesus’ authority as in fact aiming to usurp his place, not by claiming to be Jesus redivivus (surely too far-fetched a concept in this context) but by arrogating to themselves the role which was rightly his, that of Messiah…”

[16] France, Mark, 511. “The disciples are to be calm and not to jump to hasty conclusions.”

[17] Placher, Mark, 185. “They want to know what is going to happen, and Jesus says that many terrible things will happen (a safe bet in first-century Palestine), but that they should not jump to the conclusion that bad times announce the immediate end of the present age.”

[18] Placher, Mark, 185. “Christians in any period who see the end at hand need to remember that such predications came within a generation of Jesus’ death and have been coming, on and off, ever since.”

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“Buried in the Past, Captive to What Was”: Ash Wednesday

Psalm 103:20-22 Bless God, you angels, you mighty ones who do God’s bidding, and hearken to the voice of God’s word. Bless Abba God, all you his hosts, you ministers of God who do God’s will. Bless God, all you works of God, in all places of God’s dominion; bless Abba God, O my soul.

Introduction

We are about a month away from hitting the fourth anniversary of Covid_19 shutting down the world and turning it completely upside down. I can simultaneously believe and not believe that it’s been that long and only that long. It feels like yesterday and so long ago. Time feels thin right now, caught in a paradox of fast and slow, so close and yet so far away, here and not here.

But it’s not only time that feels caught in such a paradox. The atmosphere surrounding our bodies feels caught in its own paradox of familiar and strange. I don’t think I feel all that different than I did on March 12, 2020, but then I feel completely different, like maybe I don’t share one genetic similarity with that woman. But I do! She and I are one, and we did go through and are still going through that massive event that plunged the world into chaos.

And it’s more than just a personal sensation, something unique and private to me. It’s impacting all of us. And not only those of us here in this room, but in our community, in our state, in our nation, and in our world. This entire ball of matter orbiting its sun feels submerged in tumult. One global event after another arises, reminding us viscerally that our lives are short and our bodies fragile and vulnerable. We are not in control, are we? War and violence, genocide and extermination, hate and rage are the fuel motivating bloated egos consumed with power toward global extinction. Our own country grows continually divided over who has liberty and who doesn’t, xenophobia is (re)peaking (if you are not just like us then you are against us), our neighbors are becoming our supposed enemies to our own private freedom and liberty blinding us to the fact that we might be the enemy to ourselves; in short, everything and everyone is a threat. Our many places of worship, those once deemed sacred and safe places, are now battle-ground-zeros for so many people who are sure they know exactly what God thinks and wants, drawing lines thick and dark in the sand, meanwhile fighting terribly to keep their institutional heads above the waters of financial ruin and destitution, afraid to let death come and claim its victims and houses.

Almost four years ago we were thrown into a rupture in time and space, and—I don’t know about you—but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been rescued from it just yet. In fact, I’ll say it boldly, we have not been rescued; we’re still in the rupture. We are further in and further down, but not up and not out.

So, what do we do? Well, the tendency for human nature is to go backward, return to the shore of familiarity and comfortable, swim back to what was, and to ignore that our memory of the past silences malicious secrets and covers over terrible deeds. Humans are convinced that what we know is easier to battle than what we don’t know. We love to look backward with rose colored glasses and reminisce with fondness about things that, frankly, never truly existed as remembered. Our minds lie to us, lure us backward toward images of yesterday that are (actually) images of never-where and never-when. We are easily seduced by thoughts that somehow the past was better, more vibrant, simpler, without difficulty; wasn’t it easier back then…

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

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

It seems Joel’s ancient, prophetic words ring true today. There is trembling among the people, darkness and gloom feel real while clouds and thick darkness taunt us from above. The day of God comes, and we’re yet to be saved from it. There is fear here, in Joel’s words. The people should be afraid of God, says Joel, but not of humanity.[1] But this fear is not because God’s principle characteristic is anger or wrath because God’s character is foremost longsuffering and patient, forgiving and merciful. [2],[3]

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

The people should fear this day of God’s arrival because God will come and expose that what the people have created as a sham: mere phantoms of good; things built in the image of humanity and not by the divine inspiration of God’s loving and gracious Spirit. Joel’s pronouncement of God’s coming judgment and anger summons the people out of themselves—their egos, their power, their pleasure, their comfort—and redirects them to a proper relationship to God (one of dependence and trust, one of reverence and forgiveness). Joel makes it clear, the people have gone astray, they must return to God because in this return God’s displeasure is (potentially) fleeting; it is a moment in time that happens, it will not last forever. [4]

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

God loves God’s people; however, according to all the prophets of Israel and including Joel, God does not love it when the people forfeit their relationship with God for a relationship with power and privilege thus obstructing the wellbeing and livelihood of their neighbors. God does not deal kindly with such mischief. Thus, with their society on ethe edge of judgment and being engulfed by the divine pathos for the Beloved, according to Joel, God’s people can do something to mitigate this coming moment of wrath: they can turn to God because God is merciful and gracious[5] and this turning to God will turn away God’s displeasure,[6] especially if they return in time before God’s day of judgment arrives.[7]

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'”

The Spiritual Leaders of God’s people, according to Joel, are to weep and pray. This is the beginning of a restored orientation toward God. The Spiritual Leaders petition God for God to spare the people and to honor God’s “heritage” thus establishing God’s people among the nations from this time forward. Therein God’s presence among the people will be sustained, letting the world know that God has not abandoned God’s people. Thus, Joel’s question posed by the mouths of priests, “Where is their God?” is moot because God is with them. However, if there is no return to God, then the bitter question remains on the mouths of Israel’s adversaries: where is the Lord your God?[8]

Conclusion

What direction should God’s people turn to return to a right relationship and orientation toward God? Not backward. Israel must not turn backwards to seek God because God is not located in the past, like a relic, stuck in the time and place of yesterday. By going backward, Israel would be betray just how deep is their alliance with their own image. To return to what is known and familiar is always to return to what is human, comprehended with the eyes and ears, to that which is known. To return to what is familiar to deprive God of faith and honor, trust and glory. Thus, it is the way of stagnancy and the status-quo, the way of fearing humans and not God. Going backward, for Israel, will seal their death sentence, hammer in the last nail in their coffin.

To return to God is to move forward into the unknown, to jump into the void, to dive into the rupture. It is all about facing the chaos and discomfort of that which is unseen and yet held by faith and hope. To hear the summons of God from the void, to sense the prophetic summons of God beckoning from the rupture, is to trust and to account to God that which is God’s: worthy of trust and faith; it is to proclaim that God is the truth and the way, thus God is the life. To move forward by faith and trust is to declare to the people and the world that God has not abandoned God’s people; to dive into the void is to affirm that even in this chaos God is present and able to bring order; to jump into the rupture is to render trustworthy God’s promises that all things are possible with God and that God can and will create out of nothing, once again.

So, today we stand at the edge of the void, on the precipice of the rupture, daring to hear the divine summons to enter this darkest of dark nights, and to hold on, by faith, to the presence of God as we tumble into what appears as death and nothingness. All the while we are beckoned to keep looking forward, holding God’s hand as God brings us to God and God’s new thing in the world—not an old thing, not a familiar thing, but a new thing. Tonight, we are brought deep into the divine womb to be born again of God by faith (trust) with thanksgiving into the divine light, life, and liberation. Born again as God’s people resurrected from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[2] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “It is impossible to understand the meaning of divine anger without pondering the meaning of divine patience or forbearance. Explicitly and implicitly, the prophets stress that God is patient, long-suffering, or slow to anger…”

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “Patience is one of the thirteen attributes of God,’ yet never in the sense of apathy, of being indifferent. Contrary to their thinking was the idea of a God who submits to the caprice of man, smiling at the hideousness of evil The patience of God means his restraint of justifiable anger.”

[4] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Anger is always described as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides. The feeling expressed by the rabbis that even divine anger must not last beyond a minute seems to be implied in the words of the prophets.”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Merciful and gracious, rahum ve-hannun…are qualities which are never separable in the Bible from the thought of God.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “As the text leads the readers to sense that human society and culture in Judah are at the brink of obliteration, it asks them to identify with a prophetic voice that calls on them to return to the Lord, to fast and lament. Then the book moves to Judah’s salvation and the rangement of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” 1170. 2.12-17, “On the need to turn back to the Lord, and for a communal lamentation. This must be done before the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which is near or close…otherwise Israel too will be the victim of God’s power.”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 292fn17. “Anguished by the blows of enemies, Israel was the butt of stinging sneer: ‘Where is the Lord your God?’”

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Making the Journey a Good One

Psalm 107:1-2 Give thanks to the Lord, for Abba God is good, and God’s mercy endures for ever. Let all those whom the Lord has redeemed proclaim that God redeemed them from the hand of the foe.

Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I think life can be hard. None of us have recourse to the last time we did life, so all of it’s new and carries the mysterious paradox of being helpful and hindering. None of us asked to be born; all of us were born. Now, we’re here. All of us together. In this when, in this where, in this what, in this why, in this how; together for better and for worse.

I don’t know about you but I trip every so often (as in: often); I say the wrong thing, I do the wrong thing, I think the self-condemning thoughts, I hurt someone else, I hurt myself, and trip over which put I’m putting forward. So, even though living can be banal, life itself carries a fantastic amount of pain and personal suffering. (And I’ve not even commented on the real-life struggles that many people have that I don’t have, making this journey even harder.)

We’re all, each of us, trying to get from morning to night, from Sunday to Saturday, from one month to another, from one year to another, from point A to point B as well as we can. Anyone here absolutely killing it on this journey? I’m not, and I have it pretty good. How about you? Aren’t you just trying your best to go from point A to point B to the best of your ability, as a vulnerable and fleshy human, prone to having a troubled and agitated conscience? And if you’re doing that, then maybe your neighbor is, too? So, then, why do we heap up judgment and burdens on others, weighing them down on this already hard-enough journey?

Matthew 23:1-12

Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying, “The Scribes and the Pharisees are seated on the seat of Moses. Therefore, you do and observe all things as much as they say to you, but do not act according to their works; for they are speaking and not acting. And they bind up heavy and oppressive burdens and add [them] upon the shoulders of the people, but they, they will not wish [to lift] their finger to move these burdens.

Mt. 23:1-4

Matthew tells us Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples. At once, Matthew minimizes the distance between the disciples and the crowd. Why? Because what Jesus is about to say is for everyone; there’s no room for hierarchy in the economy of divine love for the whole world. Therefore, those who follow Christ—disciple or crowd—are all the same.

Then Jesus tells the collective, The Scribes and the Pharisees are seated on the seat of Moses. This means they’ve inherited Moses’s role of authority among the people (to teach and lead).[1] However, even though “Jesus shared in many of the concerns of the Pharisees,” Jesus sees things a bit differently.[2] So, Jesus then says, listen to them for they know what they are teaching, but do not follow their lead because they do not do as they command (vv. 3b-4). Here, Jesus illuminates the problem: it’s not enough to sit in the seat of Moses to be a true heir of Moses. If you do not hold yourself to the same standard you preach and teach and load up more oppressive and heavy burdens on the people, you’ve forfeited the role and the seat; Moses brought liberty to the Israelites, not more bondage and captivity.[3] In other words, “Torah should not be burdensome.”[4] So, without asking it, Jesus asks all those who have ears, “Who then is the ‘”true heir” of Moses?’”[5], [6]

The answer to the question is teased out in Jesus’s criticism of some of the Pharisees and Scribes who flaunt not only their actions (v. 5a) but also their garments among the people for the sole purpose of pomp and circumstance—they’re showing off their power and privilege by going about cloaked in robes with long tassels and adorned with broad phylacteries[7] attempting to manufacture respect and honor from the people (v. 5b). And it doesn’t stop there. Jesus goes on to talk about honorific titles. Not only do these certain Scribes and Pharisees take the chief place at dinners and the chief seat in the synagogue, they also expect to be called “Teacher” by the people (vv. 6-7). But Jesus tells the crowd and the disciples, But you, you are not to be called teacher for there is one teacher among you, and you are all siblings… (v. 8). In less words: everyone here is equal, limping together on the path of the same journey from point A to point B.[8]

And then Jesus wraps up the exhortations toward a shared and communal equality among the siblings who follow him, with this last promise, Now the great of you will be the servant of you; and whoever will exalt their own self will be made low and whoever will make their own self low will be exalted. So, what does it mean that those who are listening are to listen to the Pharisees and Scribes but not do what they do? Well, it looks a lot like mutual humility and humbling oneself to serve the neighbor, the one just like you, even if it means avoiding using burdensome titles;[9] this is the opposite of what certain Pharisees and Scribes were doing[10] being more concerned with their own status than with the well-being of the people.[11]

Conclusion

There is no hierarchy among the followers of Christ. In baptism, we all come out of the waters following Jesus on the same level no matter what accolades and earnings we have. This means, as we’re all equal in Christ we’re beckoned to humble ourselves and serve each other. Why? Because we are all busted up and limping along in life, trying desperately to get from point A to point B.

There’s a song by Sia, “Breathe Me,” that speaks to this very thing, it’s worth quoting some of the lyrics here:

Ouch, I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Yeah, I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe
Be my friend, hold me
Wrap me up, unfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up and breathe me

I believe this song speaks to the inner world of any human trying desperately to get from point A to point B relatively unscathed and to the best of their ability. So, I wonder, why do we try to make this journey from point A to point B so hard for others and for ourselves? Why do we throw the rocks of judgment and condemnation at fellow travelers? Why do we make life, love, and liberation accessible to an elite few? Why do we dare to ban God—the very God who came low, born of a woman, servant of the poor, died forsaken—from those who need God, allowing God only to be for those who have the right title, robe, and station?

Every one of us here and out there is struggling to make it day to day, none of us has it all together no matter the ease and comfort of material objects. We are all vulnerable, fleshy creatures hanging on from one day to another, with very minimal safety nets that are truly safety nets. All we have, to be honest, is each other; we are only as secure as our community around us, this is why striking out alone doesn’t work in the end.

Beloved, God is with you because I am with you, because those sitting next to you (literally and virtually) are with you. Let us make this journey from point A to point B a good one, a fun one, a celebratory one. Let us walk, run, crawl, hobble, roll all the way there; let us carry and be carried; let us carry along the divine gifts of life, love, and liberation sharing these gifts with our siblings. Beloved, let us pull together and not apart; let us include and not alienate; let us bring God’s mercy and grace to all.

[1] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, “Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible,” Edited by Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher, (Louisville: WJK, 2015) 265. “‘Moses’ seat’ is a symbol of authority for interpretation of the law as received from God and delivered to the people by Moses. In later synagogue architecture there was a literal ‘seat of Moses,’ and the rabbi would sit on it to give instruction.”

[2] Case-Winters, Matthew, 262. “Jesus shared the concerns of the Pharisees. He was closer to their thinking than to that of the Sadducees or the Essenes. However, he differed from Pharisees in his understanding of the relative importance of such things as ritual purity, tithing, Sabbath, and what he considered to be the ‘weightier matters of the law’ (23:23).” And later Case-Winters writes, “In early rabbinic writings, in fact, Pharisees themselves engage in pointed criticism of those who manifest the flaws that Jesus notes here,” (262-263.).

[3] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010) 446. “I: ‘But it can be good for us if, as Christ says, we put into practice its freedom message that they didn’t put into practice. Moses brought the people out of Egyptian slavery and took them to another land to found a kingdom of freedom, and the chair of Moses means the temple of freedom. Now just like then there are people in that temple preaching the Gospel and defending oppression. What they preach is false, but only because they don’t practice it.”

[4] Case-Winters, Matthew, 263. “Jesus condemnation is directed at religious leaders who, charged the role of leadership, fail miserably. The most frequent charge is that they are hypocrites because ‘they do not practice what they teach’ (23:3). In their teaching they might be termed rigorists. They go further than what the law requires. For example, for them it is ‘not enough to keep the Sabbath ‘in a general way.’ it was necessary to define carefully which weekday activities constituted work and were therefore prohibited on the Sabbath.’ Jesus observes here that they tie up. Heavy burdens, hard to bear. (11:28-30).”

[5] Case-Winters, Matthew, 265. “A question of consequence arises in Jesus’s exhortation to do as the scribes and Pharisees say and not as they do. Are the Scribe’s and Pharisees really the ‘true heirs’ of Moses?”

[6] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Edited by Joel B. Green. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 860. “Their behavior in effect annuls their ‘Mosaic; authority.”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 447. “I: ‘Christ is talking about some adornments called phylacteries short bits of Scripture attached to the sleeves and the forehead, because in one of the books of the Bible it says that the Scripture should always be kept ‘close to the hand and in front of the eyes,’ and they believed that by doing this they were complying.’”

[8] Cardenal, Solentiname, 448. “I: ‘And he’s saying that we’re all equal and that we shouldn’t have any teachers except the one that brings those teachings about revolution.’”

[9] Case-Winters, Matthew, 264-265. “In a dramatic reversal of ordinary expectations, Jesus says, ‘The greatest among you will be your servant’ (v. 11). Members of the new community should not seek heightened status reflected in titles but rather humble themselves and seek to serve—aiming low instead of aiming high (23:11). The use of titles is not conducive to the well-being of the new community. Titles—whether ‘rabbi,’ or ‘father,’ or ‘instructor’ (or ‘Reverend’)—have their dangers, both for those who hold them and for those who call others by these titles.”

[10] Cardenal, Solentiname, 450. “Teresita: ‘Humbling yourself is serving, and the opposite of serving others is to control others.’”

[11] France, Matthew, 862-862. “In contrast with the scribes’ love of human approbation, Jesus calls on those who follow him to avoid honorific titles…They highlight a concern for status which, while taken for granted in secular society …ought not to characterize those who follow Jesus.”

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The One of Peace

Sermon on Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 1:46b, 53-54 My soul proclaims the greatness of God… God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich God has sent away empty. God has come to the help of God’s servant Israel, for God has remembered God’s promise of mercy… 

Introduction 

It’s nice to be in charge, right? It’s an ego boost to be the boss, the one where the buck stops. It’s fun to be the leader, the one who decides this and that, and here and there, the one who tells this and that person what to do and what to say. The more power the better, right? For isn’t it in the acquisition of power and dominance—the incessant climbing of the occupational ladder—where I achieve my true human liberty and freedom? As I climb up, I’m freed from the constraints of the lower echelons of human existence, and I finally have that long awaited liberty where none can tread on me. The higher up I move along this ladder, the more I acquire the rewards and accolades of this system, and the more I’m lifted out of the muck and mire of obligation to anyone else. (There’s something wrong with someone who is content with the middle or, God forbid, the lowest rung of the ladder; who wants to stay there?) Here, at the top or near the top, I’m my own law. Here, I am respected. Here, I’m freed from the tyranny of others. Here I’m that which I have strived for: powerful. I get to holler at subordinates and underlings, echoing Eric Cartman from the cartoon series, South Park, “Respect my ah-thor-ah-tah!” It’s nice to be in charge, right?  

Or is it… 

Once I start seeing my leadership in the schema of the personal acquisition of power—and the continual pursuit there in—I will ignore that the ladder I am hoisting myself upon is always made up of the human bodies I was charged to guide and lead in the first place. The bodies will be used to an end to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of a bloated and an autonomous self, untethered from the mores of being human: the humility of existence made tangible in the willing and sometimes not-so-willing self-surrender of the self to other humans in the activity of love. To climb that ladder as far as I can, I must turn off the “human” part of my humanity, which—if you are doing the math—renders to near zero “humanity.” And the farther-up I go pursuing the acquisition of power and privilege, the deeper-in I’m pushed into what can only be described as a solitary confinement with walls built of competition and fear– it only takes one slip (slide?) to fall from that glory. It’s nice to be in charge, right? 

Or is it…. 

Micah 5:2-5a 

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, 
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. 

And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great 
to the ends of the earth; 

and he shall be the one of peace.  

Micah 5:4-5

The bulk of Micah’s message (from the beginning of the book to the end) is embedded in Micah’s mission to expose the sins of Jacob and Israel, being the first prophet to declare the destruction of Jerusalem.[1] What sins does Micah expose? In short: moral corruption. The long of it is that there is violence (from the wealthy and powerful) and the proliferation of lies.[2] And the even longer of it is: the heads of the houses of Jacob and the rulers of Israel “abhor justice and pervert equity” and the brick and mortar of their cities are the wrong-doing of the leaders and the spilled blood of the people.[3] And, according to Micah who is emboldened by the passionate Spirit of God in the face of such violence,[4] God will not tolerate this depraved leadership, profiting off of the bodies and souls of God’s beloved.[5]

In the prophesy, Micah, so moved by God’s Spirit, transitions from exposing sins and naming the trespasses of Israel’s and Jacob’s leaders to speaking of one who will be raised up from the small clan of Bethlehem of Ephrathah. This one will be of old and of the ancient of days. This humble one from a humble tribe will be called out to lead God’s beloved in the name of God and in the Spirit of God: delighting in unconditional and unceasing love, forgiveness, mercy, and humility.[6] Specifically in our portion of the text, Micah’s prophesy moves toward a God who rejects the idea of letting iniquity run amok[7] even if the city itself is complacent.[8] so, God comes, and in that God comes, there will be forgiveness and peace because when God comes, so to comes the true leadership of Israel defined not by humanity but by God, the one of peace.[9]

Conclusion

Micah’s words haunt me. Israel’s leadership has run away with Israel for its own power and privilege. And God is coming to rescue God’s beloved. Woe to that leadership so bent on self-aggrandizement and power and authority and privilege; violent leadership that uses the beloved as a means to their own end will be exposed in God’s light of truth. Leadership so bent in this way is in direct opposition to God and God’s conception of leading and can meet no other end in God but death. God has a very specific interpretation of what it means to lead, especially leading God’s beloved: it is done through mercy, kindness, humility, love, and forgiveness. To be completely frank, God doesn’t like it when human leaders forget themselves and become drunk with power and abusive and violent, resulting in the oppression and marginalization of God’s beloved. God will come and rescue the beloved from such domination. Thus, the judgment of this prophecy is targeted at me, the leader of God’s beloved—and others like me holding power and authority. God will come for the beloved and in that the beloved is sought and liberated from oppressive and violent leadership, so too will the violent and oppressive leaders be liberated. It’s nice to be in charge, right? Or is it?

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

Micah 6:7-8

It’s into the presence of God I am called. I am pulled off my ladder of power and am dragged onto the carpet; I am beckoned into the light; I am exposed by the Spirit’s prophetic utterance still fresh on Micah’s lips. I am asked to come close and to hear and to see what means to be a good leader. And, it’s not defined in the way that I think it should be: through the acquisition of more and more power and lording it over those under my charge. It won’t look like making people feel small so I can feel big. It won’t even look elite, special, or privileged. Rather, this good leader will look remarkably like a humble and vulnerable infant wrapped in meager rags, laid in a manger, dwelling among the creation in its earthy glory, surrounded by dirty shepherds and an exhausted woman of color. I am asked here: can you lead like this? For here lies the true leader, the one from the ancient of days who knows no end of time but is now a tiny baby in swaddling clothes: humble and accessible to anyone; can you lead like this…of the people for the people? Can you love them like I do?

That this prophetic utterance of Micah is for me it is for you, too. Because divine love does not remain dormant when the beloved is in need: hope exists. We can, right now during this season of Advent in 2021, hope. We can hope because we dwell in and are invited into a story of God acting on behalf of the beloved by coming in the judgment of God’s love to give life to all the beloved trapped and held captive in violent systems—when the captive is set free, so too will the captor be set free through death into new life. We are all beckoned—leaders and the lead alike—to walk humble with God and like God, in love and mercy and forgiveness and humility. And we are called to walk this way not just here in this place, but out in the world, furthering the elastic reach of divine love in the world and for the beloved out there.

O come, Desire of nations,

bind in one the hearts of all [hu]mankind;

bid thou our sad divisions cease

and be thy self our King of Peace.

O come, O come Emmanuel,

and ransom captive Israel,

that mourns in lonely exile here

until the Son of God appear.

[1] 1 Abraham J. Heschel The Prophets “Micah” New York: JPS, 1962. 98 “Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, apparently regarded the purpose of his mission to be ‘to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin’ (3:8). He was the first prophet to predict the destruction of Jerusalem.” 

[2] Heschel Prophets 98. “In his eyes the fatal sin is the sin of moral corruption. The rich men are full of violence, and the inhabitants speak lies: ‘Their tongue is deceitful in their mouth’ (6:12).”

[3] Heschel Prophets 98 “The prophet directs his rebuke particularly against the ‘heads of the house of Jacob and the rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity.’ It is because ‘they build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong’ (3:9-10) that Zion and Jerusalem will be destroyed.”

[4] Heschel Prophets 99. “To the soul of Micah, the taste of God’s word is bitter. In his love for Zion and his people, he is tormented by the vision of the things to come…” 

[5] Heschel Prophets 99. “Here, amidst a people who walk haughtily (2:3), stands a prophet who relentlessly predicts disaster and disgrace for the leaders as well as for the nation, maintaining that ‘her wound is incurable’ (1:9), that the Lord is ‘devising evil’ against the people: ‘It will be an evil time’ (2:3).” 

[6] Heschel Prophets 99. “Micah does not question the justice of the severe punishment which he predicts for his people. Yet it is not in the name of justice that he speaks but in the name of a God who ‘delights in steadfast love,’ ‘pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression’ (7:18).” 

[7] Heschel Prophets 100 “Yet, there is reluctance and sorrow in that anger. It is as if God were apologizing for His severity, for His refusal to be complacent to iniquity. This is God’s apology to Israel. He cannot forget ‘the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked’ or ‘acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights’ (6:10, 11).”

[8] Heschel Prophets 100 “‘Answer Me!’ calls the voice of God. But who hears the call? ‘The voice of the Lord cries to the city’ (6:9), but the city is complacent.”

[9] Heschel Prophets 101 “Together with the word of doom, Micah proclaims the vision of redemption. God will forgive ‘the remnant of His inheritance,’ and will cast all their sins ‘into the depths of the sea’ (7:18 f.), and every man shall sit under his vine and ‘under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid’ (4:4).”

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Who Can Stand?

Sermon on Malachi 3:1-4

The Song of Zechariah Luke 1:78-79 In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Introduction

Judgment. We love to hate it, and we love to do it. When we are judged or when we judge other people, we are experiencing a moment where either we are being evaluated by someone else or we are doing the evaluating. In being judged and judging, we are failing to measure up or someone else is. In positioning oneself as judge or being caught in that eye of judgment creates an imbalance of power: someone in the equation is holding more of the power. It makes sense why Christians are exhorted—by Jesus!—not to judge other people by the externals, because there’s more to a person than what meets our eye. This is why we don’t like being judged because, hey, maybe I’m just having a bad day, don’t judge! Like being an exhausted parent with two toddlers and a screaming infant in a store and expressing frustration; I’m not a bad mom, don’t look at me like that because I was snappy with them…and no, I’m not going to miss this phase…stop.

We judge others (and others judge us) to self-validate, and this desire for self-validation exposes that our judgmentalism is less about the other person and more about us: we are found lacking when we find lack in others. And the way we judge others reveals our hypocrisy. Our judgment of others, our eagerness to remove the speck from their eye while ignoring the log in our own, is the action that exposes the fundamental problem of a hardened heart caught in a desperate fight to be worthy, to be loved, to be thought good. And we will do whatever it takes to be worthy, to be loved, to be thought good, so we thrust ourselves on that hamster wheel of performance and find anything to self-validate even if it is by the failures of others… at least I’m not like her…

But I am; I am very much her. I’ve been in the shoes of so many people I’ve judged in my feeble attempts to make myself feel better about myself. I’ve been that “bad” driver, that “bad” mom, that “bad” teacher, that biased and stuck thinker, that arrogant and pedantic scholar…the one who was too angry to forgive, to hurt to admit it, too comfortable to fight for peace and justice… And if we can feel safe here and are willing to be honest, I bet I’m not alone. We all have similar confessions.

I know, it’s not Lent. And yet, I know I’m heading down a lent-like train of thought but stay with me. What if part of this stark realization is part of the good news of Advent? What if coming to terms with who and what I am in all my robust humany glory, makes the expectation of Advent more spectacular?

Malachi 3:1-4

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight– indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

Malachi 3:1-2b

The message of Malachi is as follows: God knows those who fear him and those who do not, and He desires his people to repent and turn to Him and Torah (3:7). Malachi, in prophetic tones, asks the people to consider themselves, to take a deep look at who they are in their daily life and as worshippers of God—are they helping or hindering the relationship between God and God’s people? [1] The warning that Malachi ends with in his short prophetic disputation[2] is a word of judgment: utter destruction hangs in the balance if the people do not realign with God and with neighbor. For all intents and purposes, Malachi cries out: Pay attention! He pleads with his audience, Take heed; this is serious! Judgment comes! And this minor prophet closes with a question: on whom will judgment fall?

The God of Israel is the God who heard the cries of Israel from the bowls of suffering in Egypt and is the same God who then came and rescued Israel from that captivity and ushered them into freedom. If this is the same God of whom both the major and minor prophets speak of and speak for, then we can be certain this is the same God who will also deal with people who abuse God’s people, who hinder them from God, who steal their livelihood, who judge them as inferior, failures, maybe even inhuman. In being unloving toward their neighbor, they do not love God and “profane the covenant.”[3] God will come, and God may be angry when God does.

But here’s the complex thing about God, the God worshipped in Judah and Israel is not bound to our mythic conceptions of the small and petty angry god who never stops being angry.[4] Our strict either/or interpretation of emotionality is exceptionally problematic. Emotional states are not ontological definitions. Even here in Malachi, as he leaves his people with a question about the coming judgment of God, God’s love is eternal; God’s anger isn’t.[5] God’s anger is momentary and happens, but it doesn’t abide forever; God’s love does.[6] It abides, because love is an ontological definition: divine love—the love that has been since the very beginning of the cosmos—isn’t a fleeting emotion or feeling but a permanent presence, an eternal reality forever moving into infinity, always in pursuit of the beloved. It’s this love that exposes the beloved not unto death for death’s sake but unto life.

Conclusion

Malachi closes his proclamation and disputation with the twin questions “On whom will judgment fall?” and “Who can stand?” And when our eyes meet with these words, our heart races and things get warm under the collar, looking around—with panic and fear—we are speechless. We fear the answer. We fear this divine judgment, this divine anger, will fall on us and crush us. We know who we are deep down; we know we are guilty: guilty of infractions, disobedience, not-love, of desperately trying to make our selves better than others, of unfaithfulness, ignoring, pretending, and judging.

But, what if in this profound and visceral exposure is our life? What if in our bold grasp of what is and who we are we find actual life? This isn’t to say you are rotten or horrible or an object made for destruction; none of that. Rather, it’s to turn that inner judge on oneself in the light of truth, and it’s in this light of truth where we find life.

God’s judgment does come, and it will fall on us, and under it we will not be able to stand. God will come to earth, born to an unwed woman of color. And this baby whom this woman will nurse, we will curse; the one whom Mary will birth, we will sentence to death. In that wrong judgment of an innocent other, we will be encountered by the right judgment of God. We will be exposed, fully. Face to face with God, we will be illuminated—from head to toe, from the core of our being to edge of our skin—by the essence of divine presence: Love.

Don’t get me wrong: you do not escape the rendering unto death of divine judgment; in being fully exposed in the light of love made known to us in the Word of Christ—the proclamation of God’s love in the world—you will collapse under the weight of what you see. But, in that collapse you fall into God, and that means falling farther into the source of love and life. It’s this love and life you receive back because God does not leave the beloved in the depth of the abyss of death but calls her out and onto the solid ground of life.

Where we expect destruction and death (death unto death), there is new creation and new life (death unto life). We expect that in God’s coming judgment we will be destroyed by wrath, but we are met with the consuming love of God who renders the beloved new by bringing her through death into new life in God, fueled by the Spirit of God.

Divine Love comes, born vulnerable and placed in a manger wrapped in meager swaddling rags. This one, Jesus the Christ, the son of Mary, will bear the burden of the full weight of God’s Love. It’s this babe who will bear the burden of bringing God’s love to everyone even if it means going outside the city limits. It’s this child of parents fleeing oppression who will bear the burden of standing in love and solidarity with human beings suffering in pain and sorrow, in toil and strain, stuck in captivity even if it means his life for theirs.

Beloved, in the expectation of Advent, Love comes… on whom will it fall? Who can stand?

[1] Ehud Ben Zvi “Malachi” The Jewish Study Bible JPS (Oxford: OUP, 2004). 1268. “The readers of the book of Malachi are asked to look at some pitfalls in everyday life and in the cult at the Temple, and particular at how they affect the relationship between the Lord and Israel, resulting in a lack of prosperity. Issues concerning proper offerings, marriage practices, and tithes are especially prominent in the book.”

[2] Zvi “Malachi” 1269, “The use of a disputation format … allows the readers some limited form of self-identification with the actions of the evildoers, and as such serves as a call for them to examine themselves and repent.”

[3] Abraham J. Heschel The Prophets “Jeremiah” New York: JPS, 1962. 170. “In the words of a later prophet [after Jeremiah], ‘Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?’ (Mal. 2:10).”

[4] Heschel, Prophets, 289. “The ancient conception that the gods are spiteful seems to linger on in the mind of modern man, and inevitably the words of the Hebrew Bible are seen in the image of this conception. In gods who are spiteful, anger is a habit or a disposition. The prophets never speak of an angry God as if anger were His disposition. Even those who dwell more on His anger than on His mercy explicitly or implicitly accentuate the contrast”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 289. “Again and again we are told that God’s love or kindness (hesed) goes on forever…we are never told that His anger goes on forever.”

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Anger is always described as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides. The feeling expressed by the rabbis that even divine anger must not last beyond a minute seems to be implied in the words of the prophets…”

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God Comes, Emmanuel

Sermon on Jeremiah 33:14-16

Psalm 25:3-5  Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long. Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. (48)

Introduction

Exceptional grief and sorrow don’t last forever. I remember a couple of years ago, around this time, that I entered into a period of marrow-deep sadness. At the end of 2019, a few negative external events collided with an already present sorrow blended with grief abiding in my soul, and then I was swept into the deep waters of sadness. While I was functional—the gift of being a detached observer—I felt the pain when I was alone. Then, as 2019 turned 2020 and 2020 let down it’s mask revealing itself for the virus laden threat to human existence that it was, I was further pushed into the depths of those deep waters, feeling as if I was just barely keeping above the threatening abyss opened below me.

One chilly afternoon in the middle of a deep south Louisianan winter, I sat on a couch in my therapist’s office expressing my pain through tears, she told me, this intensity of emotional pain only lasts for 45 minutes; if you can make it through 45 minutes, it will alleviate. Your body and mind and soul know they can only handle so much. I trusted her. So, the next time I felt the suction into darkness and pain, instead of trying to numb or run from it, I just sat there in and with it like a blanket draped over me—the intensity of sorrow and grief washing over me, and then, like she said, it would lift. It would not lift completely, but it lifted just enough for me to catch a breath, stretch, fall asleep, care for my kids, and sometimes even laugh and see beauty in what was before me and with me.

Nothing excruciating lasts forever. It can feel like excruciatingly painful moments and events last forever, but they don’t. Even in the deepest and most profound sorrow, things will lighten up emotionally. Even in the scariest moments, that fear will lighten up. Rage will dissipate. Even extreme bliss and happiness will mellow. (This is why there’s caution against chasing the dragon of “happiness”; you cannot sustain such an eternal and infinite sensation; it’s why it’s okay to be “okay.”) While it’s probably easier for most of us to climb down from extreme happiness than climb out of extreme sorrow, it’s nice to know extreme sorrow and grief do not linger forever.

Jeremiah 33:14-16

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Our First Testament reading is from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah is the weeping and suffering prophet. The words of Jeremiah’s prophecies tell of a soul who felt incredible pain, felt the threat of doom, the urgency of repentance because he felt the tremors and the footfalls of divine presence drawing nigh and with it, divine judgment; but nothing he did or said could cause the people to respond. So, he lived with an immense feeling of failure.[1] “He screamed, wept, moaned—and was left with a terror in his soul.”[2]

Through these feelings, the divine word sought God’s people, the beloved. Jeremiah exhorted—through prediction—pestilence, slaughter, famine and captivity (ref. Jer. 15.2).[3] God’s judgment was coming: turn and repent! Jeremiah cried. But when that judgment came to Israel and Judah, Jeremiah switched gears; the prophet of sorrow became the herald of good tidings offering hope and comfort to those who were heavy burdened.[4]  Jeremiah, in our passage, is in this role, and he tells the people of God, the God who fulfills promises who is fulfilling God’s good word.[5] The wailing and weeping, the long suffering and existential dread, the fear of threat and weight of burden will not last forever, says Jeremiah. God will rescue! God will redeem! God will save! God will comfort and bring rest! God will act! Do not lose hope Jerusalem; shema! Do not lose hope, Judah; shema!

This God on whose behalf Jeremiah speaks is the God of the covenant—the covenant made with all of Israel—the covenant through which God yoked God’s self to Israel, forever being their God and they forever God’s people. This covenant will be fulfilled not through the obedience of Judah and Jerusalem, but by God and God’s self; it is this that gives the covenant that eternal and divine actuality. It will never and can never be violated; God will keep it.[6] Weeping, writes Jeremiah in chapter 50, the people shall come and seek God who has come near, who is near in comfort and love, in rest from burden and weariness.[7] The true shoot of Jesse, the scion, the heir will come;[8] the Messianic King comes to make manifest God’s divine presence and eternal love to God’s people and to bring in all who suffer and weep, those who grieve, those who are in pain, those who are wearied.[9] Extreme sorrow and grief do not and will not last forever.

Conclusion

Everything that we’ve been through in the past (near) 20 months has not been taken in as single unit. Walking through a global pandemic and social upheaval, barely keeping our hearts and minds and bodies and souls intact isn’t something we do all at once. Rather, we do it 45 minutes at a time. I know that the demand to keep walking, to keep getting up, to keep breathing one breathe at a time can feel daunting in times like this. I know you may feel like you just can’t keep going at times; but I know you can.

I know you can because you’re not alone; and you’ve not been alone—even if it felt like you’ve been alone and isolated. The truth is, you’ve been embraced by God and by the eternal cloud of saints who move ahead, alongside, behind, and with you. And I know this because I’ve had the honor and privilege to be called to walk with you these past twelve months. Through ups and downs, masked and unmasked, in moments of chaos and calm, in change and consistency, I’ve watched you walk, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, through this time—this very historical and very difficult time. And you’ve done it every day with God and with each other, bonded together through the divinity of profound and real love. And the only thing I’ve needed to do, because God’s love for you presses upon me, is remind you that you are the beloved.

And as we enter this new season of liturgy and worship of Advent, let us be consumed with that deep abiding knowledge and peace that comes with the ever-present love of God. Let us come into expectation, let us be brought (together) to the brink of curiosity as we await—with breathless anticipation—the humble arrival of the divine Christ, God’s love born in flesh into the world to reconcile the world to God, to eliminate any and all thought that there’s any such great distance to be crossed to God by God’s people.  

Beloved, extreme sorrow and grief will not last forever, behold, Immanuel, God with us.

[1] Abraham J. Heschel The Prophets “Jeremiah” New York: JPS, 1962. 105. “Jeremiah’s was a soul in pain, stern with gloom. To his wistful eye the city’s walls seemed to reel. The days that were to come would be dreadful. He called, he urged his people to repent—and he failed.”

[2] Heschel Prophets 105

[3] Heschel Prophets 129. “For many years Jeremiah had predicted pestilence, slaughter, famine, and captivity (15:2).

[4] Heschel Prophets 129. “However, when calamity arrived, in the hour of panic and terror, when every face was turned pale with dark despair, the prophet came to instill hope, to comfort, to console …”

[5] John Bright Jeremiah: A new Translation with Introduction and Commentary The Anchor Bible. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman gen eds. 2nd Ed. 1986 Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965. 296. v. 14 “fulfill the promise. Literally ‘…the good word.’”

[6] Heschel Prophets 129-130. “The climax of Jeremiah’s prophecy is the promise of a covenant which will mean not only complete forgiveness of sin (50:20), but also a complete transformation of Israel. In time to come God will give Israel ‘one heart and one way’ and make with them “an everlasting covenant” (32:39-40), which will never be violated (50:40).”

[7] Heschel Prophets 129. “The rule of Babylon shall pass, but God’s covenant with Israel shall last forever. The day will come when ‘the people of Israel and the people of Judah shall come together, weeping as they come, and they shall seek the Lord their God They shall ask the way to Zion, with faces turned toward it, saying, Come, let us join ourselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant which will never be forgotten’ (50:4-5). Jerusalem will dwell secure under the watchword, ‘The Lord is our vindication’ (33:16).”

[8] Bright Jeremiah 296. v. 15 “a true ‘Shoot.’ Or ‘Branch (so many EVV), i.e., a scion…But Note (vs. 17) that here the promise is broadened to include not merely a single king, but the continuing dynasty.”

[9] Bright Jeremiah 298. “The name Yahweh–sidqenu, which is there applied to the Messianic king, is here transferred to Judah and Jerusalem, while the promise of the true ‘Shoot’ of David is referred (vs. 17) to the continuing dynasty rather than to a single individual. Moreover, the promise is broadened to include a never-ending succession of Levitical priests who serve beside the king.”

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From One Grain of Earth

Sermon on John 18:33-37

Psalm 132: 8-10  Arise, O Lord, into your resting-place, you and the ark of your strength. Let your priests be clothed with righteousness; let your faithful people sing with joy. For your servant David’s sake, do not turn away the face of your Anointed.

Introduction

The Christian life can feel hard to live out in moderation. We are told that we are not of this world but merely resident in the world. In the letter to the Romans, Paul exhorts the believers in chapter 12 not to be “conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds,” (v.2a-b). In the book of James, we are told that to be friends with the world causes us to be enemies of God (4:4). 1 John 2:15-17 reads:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

With these rather antagonistic words spoken against the world, what is a material girl to do? How do I, a human being—made of very tangible materials of bone and flesh, living in a world that is made up of other various material—navigate this supposed enmity between that which is spiritual and material? That which is of God and that which is of the world? What does it mean to be here but not of here?

Answers tend to range in two binaries: be completely invested in other-worldly, spiritual matters and the non-corporeal or be completely invested in the material and corporeal. The problem with the former is that it makes you too disconnected from the plight of the world and those who are materially sabotaged and held captive by malevolent and prejudicial systems, not to mention the very real tendency to participate in those systems that abuse and consume both the flora and fauna of creation. The latter is problematic because of the tendency to make a religion out of creation, forcing it into a space it’s not supposed to be—forcing the material to be spiritual—thus stealing its mystery and magnificence as it becomes a part of your consumption.

But what if the robustness of our Christian life isn’t in the either/or but in the paradox: in our material existence therein is our spiritual existence, and in our spiritual existence therein is our material existence? What if there is something to the Ruach of God mingling with dirt resulting in human form and existence?[1] In other words, what if the incarnation of Christ our King means something for our life in the present realm and not just the ethereal one? What if the other-cosmicness of Christ’s kingdom is made most manifest in our earthliness when we, filled with the Spirit press into the love of God and find ourselves at the doorstep of our neighbor, in solidarity with them?

John 18:33-37

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this cosmos; if my kingdom was of this cosmos, my servants would be striving so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from this place.” Then Pilate said to him, “So then you, you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You, you say that I am. For this I have been brought forth, and for this I have come into the cosmos, so that I may witness to the truth…”[2]

John 18:36-37b

John tells us that Jesus is brought before Pilate, deep within the residence of the governor.[3] In this scene, Pilate seeks to get answers to questions to retrieve information if Jesus is a king or not. In his questions, Pilate reveals his primary concern: Are you a threat to me and my people and land? [4] Are me and mine threatened by your and yours? Jesus’s answer can be boiled down to a not-so-clear: yesno. In other words: Jesus doesn’t deny being a king, but he does deny being that type of king, a king of this world. It’s this ambiguous yesno that causes Pilate to keep along his line of questioning: If a king, what type of kingdom, then? [5] And Jesus’s answer can be boiled down again to another not-so-clear response: therehere and some herethere.

The radical thing about Jesus’s presence before Pilate is that he sees Jesus as merely a man, just a material and corporeal being. Yet Jesus’s replies indicate an otherworldliness to his presence and being.[6] There’s a collision of the divine and the created, of the infinite and the finite, of the immaterial and the material, of the non-corporeal and the corporeal. If there ever was an intersection of the collision of the otherness and the familiar, it’s here in the incarnation of the Christ the king, a divine ruler of the heavens, before a flesh and bone only human ruler of the earth. Here, Pilate is exposed by Jesus—the ruler of land is exposed by the ruler of notland. Here, the Judge is being judged by the judge who is being judged by the Judge; here, life collides with death, and death with life.[7]

Here truth confronts lie. As Jesus tells Pilate that he is here to reveal the truth into this world, Pilate is now in the position to hear it or not. The great Shema, hear!, entered Pilate’s home and spoke to him. If Jesus is the witness to the truth, then Pilate is positioned as the one who witnesses to the lie. He reveals this by his question, “What is truth?” To ask this question exposes Pilate’s not heard Jesus’s voice, the divine call to truth; Pilate remains outside of it.[8]

Conclusion

Of what is Pilate remaining outside? The reign of God entering the kingdom of humanity to overhaul it: by first taking it down to rubble and then resurrecting God’s new kingdom under the reign of Christ and the law of love, mercy and kindness, love and grace, forgiveness and longsuffering, in solidarity and revolution on behalf of the captives. This reign and kingdom does not hover above, to the left, to the right, or just below the earth; it exists in the world and on the earth, forcing everything out of the comfort of neutrality to side with either truth or lie.[9]

And that goes for us, too. We who follow Jesus out of the Jordan and into Jerusalem must see that we are neither solely of this material world nor solely of a spiritual world, for either extreme renders us as neutral to what is going on. Rather we are to hear the truth that is Christ and feel the claim of Christ the king and his reign.[10] We must see our material life made whole by our spiritual life, and our spiritual life made whole by our material life. Through the presence of the Spirit of God, we must see our profound and deep connection to the very soil beneath our feet. As we do, we will see that the breadth of the heavens, the entire cosmos, this world, this creation, this humanity is united in a profound connection of a material-spiritual existence. For from the soil humanity was created by the divine breath of God; in the essence of our existence, we all share in one grain of earth…

The Beginning of the World {Yokuts}

“Everything was water except a small piece of ground. On this were Eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out. Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated. After a time the eagle sent Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: ‘They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.’ Then eagle said: ‘That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.’ The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.”[11]

[1] Ref. Gen 2

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Part of the definition of τὸ πραιτώριον, the Praetorium.

[4] Rudolf Bultmann The Gospel of John: A Commentary Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1971. 653. “The significance of the question is determined by the fact that Pilate, i.e, the state, understands the concept of king only in the political sense. Pilate therefore proceeds now in an objective manner in so far as he, despite the mistrust of the accuser voiced in v. 31, investigates conscientiously whether there was occasion for proceedings by the state. Does Jesus claim a political status which the representative of the public authority could not recognize?”

[5] Bultmann John 654-655. “Pilate questions further, because Jesus indeed has indirectly affirmed that he is a king; and now Jesus affirms it directly: Yes, he is a king! But of what sort is his kingdom? Some kind of claim to sovereignty must be his, otherwise his statement would have lost all meaning!”

[6] Bultmann John 654. “That this concerns a claim which goes forth to the world from beyond it is signified by γεγέννημαι και… ελήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον, whereby γεγέννημαι to a certain extent is orientated to the viewpoint of Pilate, for whom Jesus is first and foremost a man and nothing more: he, this man, has come for this reason… But because in this man one is confronted with a claim other than human, the mythological ελήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον is paradoxically bound up with γεγ.: the origin—and therefore the being of this man is not from this world, but he has ‘come’ into this world.”

[7] Bultman John 655. “And in truth he has come in order to ‘bear witness’ for the ‘truth,’ i.e. in order to make God’s reality effective over against the world in the great trial between God and the world. He indeed has come into the world for judgment (9.39; 3.19), and his witness is at the same time an accusation against the world (7.7). It is in this ‘witness’ that he lays his claim to sovereignty; he himself is the ἀλήθεια to which he bears testimony (14.6), and he testifies on behalf of himself (8.14, 18). He is the judge, who decides over life and death (5.19ff.). So he stands now also before Pilate, who according to the world’s standard is his judge.”

[8] Bultman John 656. “…‘What is truth?’ i.e. he takes the point of view that the state is not interested in the question about the ἀλήθεια—about the reality of God, or as perhaps it ought to be expressed in Pilate’s way of thinking—about reality in the radical sense. He remains on the outside. For the person who represents this standpoint that means that he shuts the door on the claim of the revelation, and in so doing he shows that he is not of the truth—he is of the lie.”

[9] Bultman John 657. “For the βασιλεία is not an isolated sphere of pure inwardness over against the world, it is not a private area for the cultivation of religious needs, which could not come into conflict with the world. The word of Jesus unmasks the world as a world of sin, and it challenges it. In order to defend itself against the word it flees to the state, and demands that the latter put itself at its disposal. But then the state is torn out of its neutrality precisely in so far as its firm hold on to neutrality signifies a decision against the world.”

[10] Bultmann John 654. “The reader knows that if the βασιλεία of Jesus is not ‘of this world,’ and is not ‘from here,’ as it is ἂνωθεν, and therefore superior to all worldly dominion (cp. 3.31). He knows also the peculiar claim which this βασιλεία makes on man.”

[11] https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/The-Beginning-Of-The-World-Wukchamni-Yokut.html

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The New Order Begins!

Psalm 20:5-6 We will shout for joy at your victory and triumph in the Name of our God; may the Lord grant all your requests. Now I know that the Lord gives victory to his anointed; he will answer him out of his holy heaven, with the victorious strength of his right hand.

Introduction

If I were to ask you what you do for a living, you’d use the verb “to be” to answer. At any social event, when asked what I do, I say, “I’m a priest.” (The responses to this statement are amusing!) The “am” in my statement is telling. I identify myself with my occupation in the world. “I’m a doctor.” “I’m a lawyer.” “I’m a teacher.” Etc. While, yes, people understand you are describing your occupation or vocation in the world, there’s also a lot of assuming and judging going on about who you are. If a doctor, then you must be smart. If a teacher, you’re kind. A lawyer…depends, who’s side are you on? A person’s activity in the world tells us who someone is; or we think it should. When we call someone a liar, it’s because they lie. A thief is one who steals. A murderer, one who kills.

We assume we can pinpoint who and what someone is based on their activity and presence in the world. If you are smart you will act smart, not acting smart must mean the opposite: dumb. We then create a binary of actions resulting in good or bad, right or wrong. A good person does good things; a bad person does bad things. A good person does the right thing and a bad person does the wrong thing. And then we create a system by which we treat people according to our judgments about them based on their actions and presence in the world. Good people who do good things are good and deserve good treatment; bad people who do bad things are bad and deserve bad treatment. We determine the worth of a person based on their good actions or their bad actions—life is expendable when you’re bad (or have any history of bad) verses when you’re good. We assume we know who someone is as a person by what they do in the world and how they conform to our binaric paradigm of good and bad/right and wrong.

A question haunts me here. What about me? Am I good? If I define myself through my actions and my adherence to the cultural standards of good or bad, right or wrong, then I can determine I’m good or bad. If I do good and right, I am good and right. But what happens when I do bad and wrong? Am I now bad and wrong? Is there any hope for me even if all my actions conflict with what we determine is good and right?

According to Paul, there is.

2 Corinthians 5:14-17

For the love of Christ is holding us together, because we are convinced of this that one died on behalf of all people, therefore all people died. And he died on behalf of all, so that the ones who are alive live no longer for themselves but to/for the one who died and was raised on their behalf.[1]

2 Corinthians 5:14-15

In our 2 Corinthians passage for today, Paul continues with the theme of bodies and perception that he began in 4:13-5:1. In chapter 5:6-8 Paul mentions that while we are at home here in this mortal body, we’re absent/exiled from the Lord. This isn’t dualistic thinking; but a distinction between that which can be perceived and that which cannot be perceived. Even though we are, right now, in Christ through faith by the power of the Holy Spirit, our hearts long to be in our eternal and glorified bodies like Christ and with Christ.[2] For Paul, this desire motivates his actions. Paul works in his mortal body to please the Lord[3] through his words and deeds in proclaiming Christ crucified and raised as the divine act of Love seeking the Beloved in the world. Yet, Paul—walking with Christ by faith[4]—longs for the consummation of the union with Christ in a real and bodily way that will come with death when he shows up at the throne of Christ.[5] At this throne, Paul explains, those of us who walked by faith in the body receive that which belongs to us and that which was lost, whether we did or endured good or bad[6]—not status or destiny is determined, but a sober assessment of what we did as those who claimed Christ and walked in the law of Love of God and Neighbor.[7]

In vv. 14-15, Paul proclaims that Christ’s love[8] for the world and in our hearts sustains and holds us together on this journey in the world walking by faith in mortal bodies—this love is the animation of our work in word and deed in the world. Christ’s death on the cross exemplifies how much Christ loved all of humanity. Paul explains that Christ died for all, and in that Christ died for all, all have died. The words are simple, but the thought isn’t. In our feeble human judgment of who is good and who is bad, we determined Jesus was worthy of being crucified and Barabbas was to be set free. What Christ’s crucifixion indicates is that we are, flat out, poor judges of people based on externals. We had God in our midst—the very source of life—and we sentenced God to death releasing instead one of our own who was very much prone to breaking the law and taking life. In the crucifixion of Christ, we are exposed…exposed unto death. This is the real death of which Paul speaks:[9] We are rent unto dust, the very dust from which we are taken. Our wrath at the good, our sin, put Christ on the cross and Christ suffers our sinful judgment; what we didn’t realize is that we died, too, by our own judgment in that event of exposure.

But God. But God in God’s vindication of good, of Christ, of God’s self, raises Jesus from the dead. And overhauls everything we did, have done, and will do. With Christ, God raises us, giving us life and not death. God’s love of reconciliation and restoration eclipses God’s retribution. We are given life, when our actions begged for a death sentence. Therefore, we live no longer for ourselves in selfish ambition but for “the one who died and was raised on behalf of all people.” And if we live for the one who died and was raised for all people, then we live for those whom Christ died and was raised.[10], [11] And this necessitates, according to Paul, a complete change resulting in refusal to categorically determine someone based on their presence and action in the world.[12] We lost that right—if we ever had it—when we told Pontius Pilate to crucify God.

Conclusion

So then from now on we, we perceive no one according to the flesh. Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we no longer know/do so. Therefore, if anyone [is] in Christ, [there is] a new creation/creature; the old order is rendered void, behold! a new order has come into being.

2 Corinthians 5:16-17

With intentional emphasis, Paul exhorts us: Christians are categorically forbidden from determining someone’s value, worth, dignity, right to life, (etc.) based on their actions. Paul minces no words here as he climactically exclaims: Behold! A new order has come into being! If anything functions to be determinative of Christian praxis and existence in the world it’s that we don’t determine personhood and human dignity based on human activity and presence in the world.[13] We participate in the divine activity of Love seeking the Beloved in our new ordering of our freedom for and toward others and not strictly for ourselves in selfish gain—this is the call of those who follow Jesus out of the Jordan.[14] We dare to proclaim in the face of opposition that in all instances this one is human and worthy of life and dignity and honor…when they’re wrong or even when they’ve done something bad. We’re are the ones who reject categorical determination of someone based on their actions, and especially refuse prejudging people based on their differences from the dominant culture. Those who walk by faith in this mortal body, are ushered into a new order of things. We reject anything having to do with a hierarchy of human being based on anything but that which cannot be perceived.[15] While there are consequences for actions, none of those consequences can equate to a loss of human dignity and worth and life.

This means we mustn’t have anything to do with prejudice of any type: skin color, gender, sex, sexuality, ability, and class. It means that Christians must let others tell them who they are and allow the complexity of human existence manifest rather than cut them off with assumptions and judgments because of what they look like, how they act, or how they are different than what the status-quo determines is good and right, as The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr explains.[16] It means, no matter what, we stand—by the law of Love in our hearts—with those whom society deems unworthy and undignified, this is part of the new order we are reborn into in our encounter with God in the event of faith, as the Rev. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz declares.[17] It means that we—in our Christ born freedom and creative disobedience—reject any created order that is claimed to be the one and only way/life on earth, which categorically forces people to be against who they are in body, mind, and spirit to the point of destruction, refering to what Frau Prof. Dr. Dorothee Sölle teaches.[18] And it means, with The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, that we participate with God in “bearing the memory of Christ in the world…[and] being the change that is God’s heaven.”[19]

[B]ehold! a new order has come into being

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Murray J. Harris The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text NIGTC Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2005. 395-6. Εκ/εν “Paul has in mind the physical body as the locus of human existence on earth, the frail and mortal σωμα ψυχικον. His thought here is neither dualistic…nor derogatory. He is affirming that to be living on earth in a physical body inevitably means distance—indeed exile—from the risen Lord, who lives in heaven in a spiritual body. To be εν Χριστω does not yet mean to be συν Χριστω…Unlike Christ, Paul had his residence on earth, not heaven, but he recognized that this true home, his ultimate residence, was προς τον κυριον (v. 8); in this sense he was an exile, absent form this home with the Lord…And if an exile, also a pilgrim…But as well as regarding his separation from Christ as ‘spatial,’ Paul may have viewed it as ‘somatic.’ It is not simply a case of Christ’s being ‘there’ and the Christians’ being ‘here’; until Christians have doffed their earthly bodies and donned their heavenly, they are separated from their Lord by the difference between tow modes of being, the σωμα ψυχικον and the σωμα πνευματικον.”

[3] Harris 2 Corinthians 405, “Whatever his lot, Paul was always …. Possessed of confidence in God as the fulfiller of his promises (v.6) and always…desirous of pleasing Christ (v.9).”

[4] Harris 2 Corinthians 398, “…to walk in faith…is to keep the eye focused on things not yet visible…and not to have the gaze fixed on things already present to sight…”

[5] Harris 2 Corinthians 397-8, “The separation, Paul answers, is relative not absolute: though absent from sight, the Lord is present to faith, yet it is not until he is present also to sight that Christian existence will reach its true goal of consummated fellowship with him. Residence in the earthly σκηνος implies not the absence or unreality of communion with Christ, but simply its imperfection during the course of the Christian’s earthly life.”

[6] I’m playing with the definition of κομιζω (the first principle part of κομισηται, an aorist middle subjunctive 3rd person singular verb) in v.10.

[7] Harris 2 Corinthians 408-9, “Since, then, the tribunal of Christ is concerned with the assessment of works, not the determination of destiny, it will be apparent that the Pauline concepts of justification on the basis of faith and recompense in accordance with works may be complementary. Not status but reward is determined…for justification as the acquisition of a right standing before God anticipates the verdict of the Last Judgment. But, already delivered from εργα νομου…’ by justifying faith, the Christian is presently committed to το εργον της πιστεως…’action stemming from faith,’ which will be assessed and rewarded at Christ’s tribunal.” And, “…for Paul this φανερωθηναι involved the appearance and examination before Christ’s tribunal of every Christian without exception for the purpose of receiving an exact and impartial recompense (including the receipt or deprivation of commendation) which would be based on deeds, both good an bad, performed through the earthly body. The fear inspired by this expectation … doubtless intensified Paul’s ambition that his life should meet with Christ’s approval both during life and at the βημα…”

[8] Harris 2 Corinthians 419, “No one doubts that believer’s love for Christ motivates their action, but here Paul is concentrating on an earlier stage of motivation, namely the love shown by Christ in dying for humankind.”

[9] Harris 2 Corinthians 422, “When Christ died, all died; what is more, his death involved their death….But if…παντες is universal in scope in vv. 14-15, this death maybe the death deservedly theirs becomes of sin, or an objective ‘ethical’ death that must be appropriate subjectively by individual faith, or a collective participation in the event of Christ’s death by which sin’s power was destroyed. It is certainly more appropriate to see this αποθανειν of the παντες as an actual ‘death’ than as a potential ‘death.’”

[10] Harris 2 Corinthians 422, “Replacing the slavery to self that is the hallmark of the unregenerate state should be an exclusive devotion to the crucified and resurrect Messiah. The intended result of the death of Christ was the Christians’ renunciation of self-seeking and self-pleasing and the pursuit of a Christ-centered life filled with action for the benefit of others, as was Christ’s life…”

[11] Harris 2 Corinthians 430, “A new attitude toward Jesus Christ prompts a new outlook on those for whom Christ died…When we come to share God’s view of Christ…we also gain his view of people in general.”

[12] Harris 2 Corinthians 434, “Christian conversion, that is, coming to be in Christ, produces dramatic change…: Life is not longer lived κατα σαρκα, but κατα πνευμα. Paul implies that a change of attitude toward Christ (v. 16b) brings about a change or attitude toward other people (v.1 6a) and a change of conduct from self-pleasing to Christ-pleasing (vv. 9, 15), from egocentricity to theocentricity.”

[13] Harris 2 Corinthians 429, “First, Paul is rejecting (in v. 16a) any assessment of human beings that is based on the human or worldly preoccupation with externals. It was now his custom to view people, not primarily in terms of nationality but in terms of spiritual status….Paul is repudiating (in v. 16c) as totally erroneous his sincere yet superficial preconversion estimate of Jesus as a misguided messianic pretender, a crucified heretic, whose followers must be extirpated, for he had come to recognize ethe Nazarene as the divinely appointed Messiah whose death under the divine curse…in fact brought life…”

[14] Harris 2 Corinthians 434, “When a person becomes a Christian, he or she experiences a total restructuring of life that alters its whole fabric—thinking, feeling, willing, and acting. Anyone who is ‘in Christ’ is ‘Under New Management’ and has ‘Altered Priorities Ahead,’ to use the working sometimes found in shop windows and …on roads. And the particle ιδου…functions like a such a sign, stimulating attention; but here it conveys also a sense of excitement and triumph.”

[15] Harris 2 Corinthians 427, “Paul is affirming that with the advent of the era of salvation in Christ, and ever since his own conversion to Christ, he has ceased making superficial, mechanical judgments about other people on the basis of outward appearances—such as national origin, social status, intellectual capability, physical attributes, or even charismatic endowment and pneumatic displays….”

[16] Martin Luther King Jr. “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart” A Strength to Love “The toughminded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short, he postjudges. The tenderminded person reaches a conclusion before he has examined the first fact; in short he prejudges and is prejudiced.”

[17] Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz Mujerista Theology Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. 88. “The paradigmatic shift ai am proposing calls for solidarity as the appropriate present-day expression of the gospel mandate that we love our neighbor. This commandment, which encapsulates the gospel message, is the goal of Christianity. I believe salvation depends on love of neighbor , and because love of neighbor today should be expressed through solidarity, solidarity can and should be considered the wine qua non of salvation. This means that we have to be very clear about who ‘our neighbor’ is. Our neighbor, according to Matthew 25, is the least of our sisters and brothers. Neighbors are the poor, the oppressed, for whom we must have a preferential option, This we cannot have apart from being in solidary with them.”

[18] Dorothee Sölle Creative Disobedience Trans. Lawrence W. Denef. Eugen, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1995. (Original: Phantasie und Gehorsam: Überlegungen zu einer künftigen chrstilichen Ethik Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1968). “In traditional usage one speaks rather descriptively of ‘fulfilling’ obedience. The picture is that of a container of form which must be filled. So too with obedience. A previously existing order is postulate that must be maintained, defended, or fulfilled. But Jesus did not conceive of the world according to a model of completed order, which person were merely required to maintain. The world he enters had not yet reached perfection. It was alterable, in fact, it awaited transformation. Schemes of order are in Jesus’ words utterly destroyed–great and small, scholar and child, riches and poverty, knowledge of the Law and ignorance. Jesus did everything in his power to relativize these orders and set free the person caught up in these schemes. This process of liberation is called ‘Gospel.’ Ought obedience then still be thought of as the Christian’s greatest glory?” And, “I detect that we need new words to describe the revolutionary nature of all relationships begun in Christ. At the very least it is problematic whether we can even continue to consider that which Jesus wanted under the term obedience.” pp. 27-28

[19] Kelly Brown Douglas Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2015. 224. And, “The church is compelled as bearer of the memory of Jesus to step into the space of the Trayvons and Jordans who don’t’ know whether to walk slow or walk fast in order to stay alive. To step into their space is what it means for the church to being the past, which is Jesus, into the presence crucifying realities of stand-your-ground culture. Moreover, it is only when one an enter int the space of crucified class, with sympathetic understanding, that one is able to realize what is required for he salvation of God, which is justice, to be made manifest in our world.” 201-2.

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