Tag: Liberation

Liberated from the Warden

Psalm 42:14-15 Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why are you so disquieted within me? Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to God, who is the help of my countenance, and my Αββα ὁ πατήρ!

Introduction

Whenever I let our puppy, Floyd, out of his room or crate, it’s like unleashing a floofy, fluffy, squiggly, wriggly, land-based leviathan (but a 30 pound one). Granted, Floyd isn’t yet one; a lot of that energy is just evidence of his being a “coot-baby-puppy.” But, to some degree, that energy comes from a sense of being liberated from whatever confinement he was experiencing—even if the confinement meant food! 99% of the time, when I open that door to release him, I’m met with a creature who is sooper-dooper happy to be reunited with the rest of his family…even his (at times) warden-like “Big Sissy” (no one delivers a major correction like Big Sissy can…)

I wish we responded to liberation from captivity like Floyd does. Too often, though, when given liberation, we prefer our confinement. We greet that flung open door with fear and anxiety rather than with puppy-like wiggle-squiggle vigor. If given a wide-open arena, we’d sit in the corner, with at least two walls hemming us in. If given unlimited choice, we’d freeze and retreat to the same old thing we always get. If given the autobahn, we’d go 65 because that’s sensible and reasonable. If told to just go love and live, we’d ask, “Who and How?” We are so afraid of being wrong and making a mistake, that we’d truncate our own liberty and the liberty of others to keep safe, secure, and right.

However, as Christians, we are exhorted (by liturgy and scripture) to live our justified/ing and sanctified/ing lives in the liberation that we receive from our faith in Christ, in our union with God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re exhorted by the gospels and the epistles, not to return again to a spirit of fear because we are indwelled with the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of the Living God, who has given us a new heart and a new spirit to live as Christ in the world to the glory of God and the wellbeing of our neighbor. As Paul explains in Galatians,

Galatians 3:23-29

Now before faith came, we were being kept in custody by means of imprisonment under the Law until the intending faith was revealed (v23). While Protestant history, specifically, and Christian history, generally, have disparaged the role of the Law, Paul is not drawing a binary of bad and good[1]—the law does restrain evil and create order and for this it is good (civic use).[2] Rather, Paul is highlighting the human relationship to the law as well as the role of “immediacy.” There are “eras” or “times”[3] of God’s immediacy to the people: the Law and the Christ.[4] According to Paul, people are caught under the confines of the era of the power of the Law. [5] The Law hemmed the people in to guide them toward God and God’s will in the world; but itself was not God.[6] While good, even considering how Paul is speaking of the Law and its power here in Galatians, it isn’t a direct encounter with God because both the Law and the mediator of the Law stand between the follower of God and God. The law points the way to and exhorts toward God; Christ is God bringing God to you.[7] Thus, there are two “times” or “eras” of power the one of the Law and its mediator and of the Christ who is Emmanuel, God with us.

That’s why Paul then says, Therefore the Law has become our pedagogue until Christ, for the purpose that we may be shown to be righteous by means of faith (v24). While some scholars argue that this pedagogue was a kind “guide”, a “slave who accompanied” a privileged son of a wealthy family to school (and back),[8] Paul’s language here is more severe and provokes an image of harshness, even if we can find ways that this pedagogue was important in the life of a schoolboy.[9] Paul refers to the Law’s presence as “imprisonment” (v23), and the word pedagogue gives us the idea of a “warden,”[10],[11] someone who has the power to keep the inmates in-line and under control, whether they like it or not.[12] Luther refers to this as the power of the Law over the people as a “true hell”[13] because from this severe power and oversight (threat of punishment and condemnation) no one can run and hide, there is no safety or assurance.[14] But the power of the Law, though constrictive and restrictive, is limited, for Paul.[15] In v24 we see the purpose of the Law; even under the era and power of the Law, there was a divine point for us: to be shown to be righteous by faith. Christ not only eclipsed the power and captivity of the Law, Christ removed the Law from the role of “warden” as the pedagogue. In other words, Christ shoved the Law out of the divine seat of power and installed himself in that divine seat, which is more appropriate considering the Law =/= God but Christ = God.[16] Thus why Paul can say in v25, But while faith has come we are no longer under the pedagogue. Because of Christ, all humanity[17]—considering Paul believes all are under the power of the Law[18]—can receive liberation from the wardenship of the pedagogue, sprung free from imprisonment under the Law because Christ is God (and not merely one who points to God).[19] In very Protestant terms, we are justified by faith and not by works to satisfy the law.[20]

Then, in v26, Paul extends the imagery that faith not only liberates humanity from the confines of the Law, but it creates a family, For you are—all of you!—sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Paul addressed both men and women in this moment, and gave to all of them  who have faith the legal right to be heirs as first born sons being siblings with Christ; there is no hierarchy here among the family defined by faith because the old way, the way inspired and influenced by imprisonment and the warden, is no longer the way of those who believe.[21] In fact, Paul goes one step further in his logic here, For how many [of you] were baptized into Christ, you [have] clothed yourselves [in] Christ (v27). Not only is Christ the sibling of those who believe, those who believe are clothed in him through the act of baptism. Those who have been baptized with Christ have died with him, and if they have died then they are raised into new life[22] with Christ.[23] Thus the believer in identifying with Christ in his death by baptism is stripped of their old identity as defined by the kingdom of humanity and given a new identity that’s defined by the reign of God,[24] (they “put on” Christ). [25] The Law had nothing to do with this event, it was all by faith and by God’s interventive, unmediated act. [26] For Paul, the Spirit now is in charge of these who are sons of God by the promise[27] fulfilled in Christ and by Christ[28] and not merely sons of Abraham by the Law (of circumcision);[29],[30] the warden (the Law) is now the one held hostage by the power and law faith and the Spirit.[31]

Now, we come to the v28, where Paul dares to say, There is neither Children of Israel nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female. For you, you—all of you!—are one in Christ Jesus. The erasure happening here is not an erasure of distinction and difference but the erasure of the structures of power keeping one group over the other by means of domination and subjection.[32],[33] For those who are not only in Christ by faith but also dressed in Christ, there are no approved hierarchies of persons;[34] domination and subjection are dead.[35] To put it bluntly, there is no room for bigotry, hatred, and malice toward those who are different than you; there is no justification for prejudice, discrimination, and oppression because of any variance from the status quo; there is neither theological nor biblical validation of systems, constructs, and ideologies that perpetuate any such biased orientations promoted by the kingdom of humanity.[36] All persons, because of the advent of Christ and faith, are equal and not interchangeable, they are representable and irreplaceable.[37] Thus why Paul closes chapter three with, But if you, you are of Christ, therefore you, you are of the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise (v29) and not the law.

Conclusion

For Paul, we are FREE, LIBERATED from the confines and imprisonment of the Law, released from the supervision of the Law as warden. Not just yesterday, but today, and tomorrow![38] According to Paul, without the advent of Christ, we have a tendency to dethrone God with God’s Law; we find comfort in the Law because it shows us what to do and what not to do. Or so we think. But this comfort becomes our Lord, and we will choose it over discomfort every time. We need/ed liberation from this toxic and maladapted relationship with the Law. We need/ed the Law to be torn from our hands so that it could be put back in its right and proper place in our lives: as a tool we use to love God and (more to the point) to love our neighbor to the Glory of God! According to Paul here in Galatians the Law has been debarked or, rather, put in its own sound-proof confinement. The Law is not bad, but we make it such when we force it into the role of God; the Law has a place and is good but as long as it isn’t being forced to be God. Praise God that Christ has taken that seat forever!

So, today, maybe, we rejoice. Like Floyd being released from his room, may we wiggle and squiggle our way back into the world, released from the condemnation and threat[39] of our dysfunctional relationship with the Law. May we lunge into the world from our captivity, eager to live fully into our new life in Christ by faith as those who both represent and imitate Christ,[40] clothed in Christ.[41] May we be sooper-dooper happy to greet the world, our neighbors, all the flora and fauna knowing that our identities are sealed in Christ by faith and that we are guided by the loving, life-giving, liberating Spirit of God so we can participate in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world.

[1] LW 26:335. “For the Law is a Word that shows life and drives us toward it. Therefore it was not given only for the sake of death. But this is its chief use and end: to reveal death, in order that the nature and enormity of sin might thus become apparent. It does not reveal death in a way that takes delight in it or that seeks to nothing but kill us. No, it reveals death in order that men may be terrified and humbled and thus fear God.”

[2] LW 26:336-337. “Meanwhile however, the Lw has this benefit: Even though men’s hearts may remain as wicked as possible, it restrains thieves, murderers, and public criminals to some extent, at least outwardly and politically.”

[3] LW 26:336. “This means that before the time of the Gospel and of grace came, it was the function of the Law to keep us confined under it as though we were in a prison.”

[4] J. Louis Martyn, “Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary,” The Anchor Bible, gen. eds. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 361-362. “Paul continues to speak of the era of the Law, saying three things about it: (a) It was the period in which ‘we’ existed under the Law’s power; (b) it had a definite terminus, the arrival of faith…; (c) even in the era of the Law’s dominion, God was on the verge of executing his ultimate purpose, thinking ahead (mellô) to the faith by which he would terminate it.”

[5] Martyn, “Galatians,” 362. “All human beings were caught under the Law’s power.”

[6] Bedford, “Galatians,” 87. “For Paul the law cannot be expected to do what only God can do: the law is penultimate by nature, and not ultimate, and yet it is a good and holy thing, given by God, even if it is not in itself God.”

[7] Bedford, “Galatians,” 88. “If the law is not in itself God, but rather points the way to God, it cannot have a role other than an intermediate one.”

[8] Bedford, “Galatians,” 88. “To try to make his point he uses the analogy of the law as a guide (paidagōgos), able to steer humans in the right direction (v. 24). In that cultural context the ‘pedagogue’ was not a teacher but rather a man, usually a slave, who accompanied a young male of privileged social status to school and back, watching over his conduct as a custodian or supervisor …”

[9] LW 26:346. Law as “schoolmaster” whom no student really loves (also, medieval schoolmasters were tough), “Nevertheless, a schoolmaster is extremely necessary for a boy, to instruct and chastise him; for otherwise, without this instruction, good training, and discipline, the boy would become to ruin.”

[10] Martyn, “Galatians,” 362. “Like Sin, the Law was the universal prison warden.”

[11] Martyn, “Galatians,” 363. “The Law of v. 23, that is to say, is not a pedagogical guide, but rather an imprisoning warden. To be sure, one might consider the possibility that the explication in v 24 exceeds its foundation in v 23, were one not confronted with a second factor. (b) …in six of the ten times Paul refers to humans being ‘under the power of,’ he identifies that enslaving power as the Law.”

[12] Martyn, “Galatians,” 363. “When he says in v 25, therefore, that since the coming of faith we are no longer ‘under the power of’ the paidagôgos, he shows clearly that in that verse, as in 24, he is using the term paidagôgos in the sense of a distinctly unfriendly and confining custodian, different in no significant way from an imprisoning jailer.”

[13] LW 26:337. “That is, the Law is also a spiritual prison and a true hell; for when it discloses sin and threatens death and the eternal wrath of God, man can neither run away nor find any comfort.”

[14] LW 26:338. “The custody or prison signifies the true and spiritual terrors by which the conscience is so confined that it cannot find a place in the hole wide world where it can be safe.”

[15] LW 26:337. “Thus the law is a prison both politically and theologically. In the first place, it restrains and confines the wicked politically, so that they are not carried headlong by their passions into all sorts of crim. Secondly, it shows us our sin spiritually, terrifying and humbling us, so that when we have been frightened this way, we acknowledge our misery and our damnation. And this latter is the true and proper use of the Law, even though it is not permanent…”

[16] Martyn, “Galatians,” 362. “On the whole, however, his apocalyptic language refers not to an unveiling of some thing, but rather to an invasion carried out by someonewho has moved into the world from outside it….”

[17] Martyn, “Galatians,” 363. “Just as Abraham’s faith in God was kindled by God’s promise….so the Christians faith is now awakened by the gospel of Christ …Between these two occurrences of the faith-inciting gospel there was only the world characterize by the Law’s curse. Paul envisions, then, a world that has been changed from without by God’s incursion into it, and he perceives that incursion to be the event that has brought faith into existence.”

[18] Martyn, “Galatians,” 363. “…the Law was compelled to serve God’s intention simply by holding all human beings in a bondage that precluded every route of deliverance except that of Christ.”

[19] Bedford, “Galatians,” 89. “Paul fears (and it is tempting to imagine that this fear is a reflection of his own past zeal) that the law can take on an ultimate character that properly belongs only to God. To his must be added his belief in the divine character of Christ. If Jesus Christ is indeed both human and divine, as Paul believes, not just a guide who points the way to God, then his life and work take on a centrality for Paul that take priority over all other possible ways.”

[20] LW 26:347. “The Law is a custodian, not until some other lawgiver comes who demands good works, but until Christ comes, the Justifier and Savior, so that we may be justified through faith in Him not through works.”

[21] Bedford, “Galatians,” 91. “Paul assures the Galatians in verse 26 that through the faith of Jesus Christ they are all children of God, or quite literally that they (both men and women) are all ‘sons’ of God, inasmuch as all have the full rights that only male heirs received in that context. From this male-centered filial metaphor Paul then switches to a more inclusive image: inasmuch as we are baptized in Christ, we put on Christ as a garment and are propelled in the right direction y virtue of Christ’s work of justification in us. In putting on Christ, we are in Christ and Christ in us, in a mutual indwelling that echoes the perichoretic dynamic of the Triune God.”

[22] Martyn, “Galatians,” 377. “One senses in the formula itself, then, an implied reference to new creation…”

[23] LW 26:352. “But to put on Christ according to eh Gospel is a matter, not of imitation but of a new birth and a new creation, namely, that I put on Christ Himself, that is, Hi s innocence, righteousness, wisdom, power, salvation life, and Spirit.”

[24] LW 26:351. “The Law cannot beget men into a new nature or a new birth; it brings to view the old birth, by which we were born into the kingdom of the devil. Thus it prepares us for the new birth, which takes place through faith in Christ Jesus, not through the Law, as Paul clearly testifies…”

[25] Martyn, “Galatians,” 374. “Paul … reminds the Galatians that in their baptism the Law played no role at all, either positive or negative … Standing in the water of death…and stripped of their old identity, they become God’s own sons, putting on Christ, God’s Son…as though he were their clothing, thus acquiring a new identity that lies beyond ethnic, social and sexual distinctions.”

[26] Martyn, “Galatians,” 374. “When they were baptized, being incorporated into Abraham’s seed (v. 16) they became true descendants of Abraham quite apart from the Law, thus inheriting the Abrahamic promises, the Spirit.”

[27] LW 26:341. “The time of grace is when the heart is encouraged again by the promise of the free mercy of God…”

[28] Martyn, “Galatians,” 375. “They became sons of God by being incorporated into God’s Son…..He reminds the Galatians, therefore, that in their baptism they were taken into the realm of the Christ whose faith had elicited their own faith.”

[29] Martyn, “Galatians,” 374 “Perceiving that development to be based on an ethnic interpretation of Abraham, Paul takes all of the Galatians back to their origin as children not of Abraham, but of God.”

[30] Martyn, “Galatians,” 374-375. “Thus shifting the ground abruptly and fundamentally by speaking of descent from God through Christ, Paul lays the foundation for putting descent from Abraham into second place…indeed for eventually eclipsing it in favor of descent from God (4:5-7).”

[31] Bedford, “Galatians,” 92. “…to be a child of God means to receive the Holy Spirit, and to have the Holy Spirit is to be set with Christ in the transition from death to life. One final pneumatological dimension of putting on Christ as the justified children of God that emerges from this text is its relation to Wisdom….Augustine suggests that to put on Christ is in this passage means to put on Wisdom: to be clothed with Wisdom, to participate in Wisdom, and to perform Wisdom. This is an intriguing possibility, especially from a Liberationist and feminist perspective: putting on Christ is not dependent on social status or gender, and as a garment it bring with it new performative possibilities opened up by the Spirit of Life…”

[32] Bedford, “Galatians,” 97-98. “Each of the contrasting pairs offers a glimpse into a web of complex power relations. Different people with diverse ethnicities, social status, and genders are invited to relate in new ways in Christ. They are not forced into sameness: to be equal does not mean to be identical. In other words, equality in Christ as envisioned by Paul does not negate cultural, sexual, social, or religious differences.”

[33] Bedford, “Galatians,” 98. “….we need to realize that the three pairs point respectively to very different dimensions affecting relationships within the church and in society. …Each of the pairs need to be examined in turn, without the presupposition that they overlap precisely with the categories of ‘race, class, and gender’ familiar form recent anthropology and sociology.”

[34] LW 26:356. “In Christ, on the other hand, where there is no Law, there is no distinction among person s at all. There is neither Jew nor Greek, but all are one; for there is one body, one Spirit, one hope of the calling of al all, one and the same Gospel, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, one Christ, the Lord of all….”

[35] Bedford, “Galatians,” 101. “Whatever the origins of sin and white racism, Galatians 3:28 subverts any distortion of ethnocentrism or sense of innate superiority based on social class, income, or any other characteristic that might be prestigious in a given culture and time: in Christ such hierarchies are to have no traction.”

[36] Bedford, “Galatians,” 102. “The doctrine of the incarnation of the eternal Second Person of the Trinity in the specific (fully) human being Jesus of Nazareth suggests that God is profoundly committed to particularity, to the point of becoming (a particular) one of us, in order that we might 9nin all our particularities) become as God is. To suggest that some humans with specific characteristics (such as a particular skin color or gender or sexuality) should lord it over all the others deeply opposes the liberating message of the gospel, as does the attempt to use violence to enforce domination and hierarchy.”

[37] Martyn, “Galatians,” 377. “Religious, social, and sexual pairs of opposites are not replaced by equality but rather by a newly created unity….Members of the church are not one thing; they are one person, having been taken into the corpus of the One New Man.”

[38] LW 26:340. “But you should apply it not only to the time but also the feelings; for what happened historically and temporally when Christ came—namely, that He abrogated the Law and brought liberty and eternal life to light—this happens personally and spiritually every day in any Christian, in whom there are found the time of Law and time of Grace in constant alteration.”

[39] LW 26:336. “Such is the power of the Law and such is righteousness on the basis of the Law that it forces us to be outwardly good so long as it threatens transgressors with penalties and punishment.”

[40] LW 26:353. “Therefore Paul teaches that Baptism is not a sign but the garment of Christ, in fact, that Christ Himself is our garment. Hence Baptism is a very powerful and effective thing. For when we have put on Christ, the garment of our righteousness and salvation then we also put on Christ, the garment of imitation.”

[41] LW 26:343. “By faith in the Word of grace, therefore, the Christian should conquer fear, turn his eyes away from the time of Law, and gaze at Christ Himself and at the faith to come.”

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Faith’s Descent into Truth

Psalm 8:1,4-5a. Abba God our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is humanity that you should be mindful of them?

Introduction

Human beings love things that are familiar and known, predictable. At the root of this love is our nervous systems: they crave comfort and nothing brings it more comfort than what is known and familiar, safe. Knowing (roughly) what the day will bring, allows us to breathe that sigh of relief even if that daily routine is a bit banal. Getting up, coffee, eating breakfast, getting ready, going to work, coming home, making dinner, watching TV, and then going to bed with a good book, is comforting even if it’s also the reason for midlife crises.

Humans love the familiar, the predictable, the known, so much that we will persist in doing things that hinder our thriving, surviving, and living; and we’ll vehemently reject anything new that threatens our security. There’s a quote about this, “The nervous system prefers a familiar hell to an unknown heaven.” We love the familiar so much, we’ll risk relationships to maintain it, we’ll stake our livelihood on it; we’d even choose death to keep safe.

There’s a problem for Christians here. We don’t worship a God who’s “safe,” “easy to figure out”, and completely “knowable and known.” We don’t worship a God who is static and still (characteristics of death); we worship a God who is dynamic and, on the move—a God who is living! In Genesis 1, we encounter God who is actively pulling things apart to reveal God’s dynamic, life-giving, liberating love: the heavens from themselves, the waters from themselves, the land from the waters, and human beings from one to two. In the gospels we see God willing to become human so God can identify with the human plight, to live and die as one of us and then render death to its own death in Jesus. And in Pentecost, we see God, set out to pursue every last beloved in the coming and sealing divine Holy Spirit. To quote Mr. Beaver from CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, “‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.’”

So, to follow this God through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit is to go into the unknown, the “unsafe,” the unfamiliar; it is to be sent forward, the path backward forever sealed off. As John records in his gospel,

John 16:12-15

I still have man things to say to you, said Jesus to his disciples, but you all are not able to endure/to carry [them] right now. But as soon as the Spirit of Truth comes, [the Spirit of Truth] will guide/teach you all into all truth… (vv 12-13b). Our gospel passage is part of the “Farewell Discourses” in the gospel of John. Chapter 16 participates in two different aspects of these “Farewell Discourses”: 1. The disciples’ future in relation to the world; and 2. The disciples’ future in relation to God.[1] Our portion of scripture is in the later of the two aspects mentioned: the disciples’ future in the relation to the world. Jesus is, in 16:12-15, preparing his disciples for the future in respect/relation to God.[2] Jesus tells his disciples know that he is not telling them everything; there is more truth to endure and carry. The knee jerk reaction is to think that Jesus is not disclosing all the pain and suffering these disciples of his will have; that’s not it. He’s already addressed what they will face as they proceed into the world with out him. Here he’s talking about the divine self-disclosure of the truth of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The disciples are not ready to hear what this truth of God is that Jesus knows and the Holy Spirit will proclaim to them. It’s not a psychological unreadiness; it’s an earthly unreadiness; because of where they are, who they are, when they are, how they are, these disciples are not ready to endure any more of the truth than that which they have at that moment.[3] The dynamic truth—the gospel of love, life, and liberation—must not be given before they are ready, otherwise it will fall flat or it will flatten those too weak to bear it. In other words, the disciples need to grow (more!) and as they do grow, by the presence of the Spirit and by faith in Christ, the same Spirit will be the vehicle of more divine self-disclosure.[4]

John’s Jesus continues, for [the Spirit of Truth] will not speak from themself, but [the Spirit of Truth] will speak what they will hear, and that which comes [the Spirit of Truth] will announce/bring back to you (v. 13c-e). Jesus puts some qualifiers on this further divine disclosure the disciples are being prepared for. Whatever truth is to be revealed by the Spirit of Truth will not diverge from God’s mission in the world or depart from the essence of Jesus Christ’s witness to God and his participation in the divine mission. There is something to encounter in the darkness of the future sitting just outside of the material bodies of the disciples, something they cannot prepare for now physically, but can mature toward by faith (trust in God). It is the Spirit of Truth who will illuminate the truth cloaked in the darkness of the future once the disciples are there, and it will also be the voice that summons the disciples into that darkness.[5] Faith will step into the darkness knowing the warm, comforting voice of God, trusting that divine voice, and following the call into more divine disclosure.[6]

And, according to John, That one [the Spirit of Truth] will render me glorious, because [the Spirit of Truth] will receive from me and will announce/bring back word to you all. All things whatever the father has, it is mine; on account of this I spoke that what [the Spirit of Truth] receives from me they will bring back word/announce to you (v 14-15). Whatever truth there is to be revealed in the future, it’s source will be God the Creator and God the Reconciler and announced by God the Sustainer. (Here’s why this is our gospel for Trinity Sunday!). The Spirit of Truth is not going to deliver some brand-new revelation or reveal some new mystery that contradicts God’s self-disclosure in Christ.[7] Concurrently, this truth that is to come that they cannot bear now will not be fabricated by the kingdom of humanity; it will be of and from and conform to the core and essence of the reign of God.[8] The Spirit of Truth will make God’s self-disclosure in Christ real for all those who are to believe; the Spirit of Truth will reveal God’s truth to the community of disciples, and this truth will adhere to the essence of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world…wherever and whenever they are.[9] It will not be an old word, or a word that has ceased to illuminate the future or will it be a summons backward. The word of truth that the Spirit of Truth will hear and bring back to the disciples will be lamp unto their feet, a map forward, a guide through unchartered territory, it will be an otherworldly voice summoning them forward into the new.[10] And this word of truth will be at the center of the community’s proclamation and praxis: the community, ushered into this divine truth will bring Jesus, thus God,[11] close to the oppressed and disenfranchised, those who are forced to live at the boarders and in the badlands of society, hidden away, fearing for their lives, just as Christ did all those many years before them.[12]

Conclusion

While there is a historical and concrete audience for John’s gospel, there is, also, not one. This is my favorite thing about the John’s Gospel: as soon as we take up the text, Jesus’s prayers for and exhortations to the disciples become ours. Thus, as the disciples were summoned into the darkness of the future to behold what the Spirit of Truth will receive and bring back to them, so, too, are we. By the power, love, strength of our Triune God, we are summoned into that which we cannot predict, do not know, and cannot understand (at first). It is our faith in Christ, our union with God, and our empowerment by the Holy Spirit that will be our firm foundation as we proceed into that darkness of the future, it will be our comfort, it will be our warmth, it will be our light. We need not fear what comes, because Jesus has told us that by the Spirit of Truth God and Jesus himself will be there to receive us.

We love going backwards because going backwards is safe, and known, and predictable. We love our routines because they, too, are safe, known, and predictable. We like things to stay the same no matter how much that fixed state means our death. But, as mentioned in the beginning, we worship a Triune God of life—manifold, rich, robust, incredible, indelible, irreplaceable life. And in worshiping this God we get no choice but to embrace the darkness of the unknown, the unsafe, and the unpredictable and fall into the warm lap of Abba God, embraced by our brother Jesus, and enfolded in the heavy blanket of the Holy Spirit.

So today, hear the summons to go forward—as scared as you may be, as angry as you may be, as stubborn as you probably are—and embrace the divine truth being disclosed to you and that participates in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world on behalf of all God’s beloved.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), TOC. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966).

[2] Bultmann, John, 573. “The discourse starts again and the first words show that the subject is not, as it was before, the content of the future—the task and destiny of the disciples—but the future as such. The intention behind the prophecy of the continuance of the revelation, contained in vv. 13-15, is to bring about a state of readiness for the future, and v. 12 prepares the way for this.”

[3] Bultmann, John, 573. “Jesus still has much to say, but the disciples are not yet able to bear it. The words should not be understood psychologically; rather they indicate the essential nature of the case. Readiness for the future is not only demanded by that particular hour, but it describes the very existence of the disciple. The believer has not been taken away from the world…he has a future in it, and must withstand whatever it brings and demands.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 573. “What [the believer] has to go through, however, cannot be anticipated in words, which he could not even put together; the believer can only measure the significance and claims of what he has to undergo when he actually meets it. He anticipates the future in faith, not in foreknowledge. And thus the apparent contradiction between v. 12 and 15.15 is comprehensible: Jesus cannot state all that the future will bring, and yet he has said it all, everything, that is, that makes the believer free and ready for it.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word.”

[6] Bultmann, John, 574. “Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word. The promise is no different from that in 8.31f.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 575. “It is irrelevant from whom the Spirit hears the word, whether from Jesus or from God; for as v. 15a reminds us, they are one and the same. This means that the Spirit’s word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 575. “The statement affirms that the word that is at work in the community really is the word of revelation and not human discourse; i.e. it is like the word that Jesus spoke, which did not come from himself.” And, “The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 575. “Rather the meaning of this: the future will not be unveiled in a knowledge imparted before it happens, but it will be illuminated again and again by the word that is at work in the community.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 576. “The word of Jesus is not a collection of doctrines that is in need of supplementation, nor is it a developing principle that will only be unfolded in the history of ideas; as the Spirit’s proclamation it always remains the word spoken into the world from beyond.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 576. “…that the Spirit continues the proclamation of the word of Jesus means that it is the word of God, i.e. revelation.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 576. v. 14 “This is an express statement that the Spirit’s word does not displace or surpass the word of Jesus, as if it were something new. Rather it is the word of Jesus that will be alive in the community’s proclamation; the Spirit will ‘call it to mind’ (14.26). and herein is to be found the completion of Jesus’ glorification.”

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The Unity of Blood and Water

Psalm 97:11-12 Light has sprung up for the righteous, and joyful gladness for those who are truehearted. Rejoice in Abba God, you righteous, and give thanks to Abba God’s holy Name.

Introduction

Unity. This is a word that’s thrown around a lot, but we never quite grasp it. We’re definitionally caught between polarized ideas like total and complete acceptance and the bare minimum of tolerance, caught in a torturous, cosmic game of monkey in the middle. The issues here are two-fold, respectively: 1. if unity is about total and complete agreement in all things, then when there is disagreement or friction of some sort, the other person/place/entity becomes “toxic”, and 2. If it’s about the bare minimum of putting up with someone, then this will breed animosity rather than unity because tolerance never demands tangible understanding or the need to change oneself (not to mention that the demand for tolerance often creates a situation by which the victim is yoked to her victimizer, the hated with their enemy). If this is all we have to define unity… well, aren’t we up a creek without a paddle.

Yet, Jesus expects the community of believers, his disciples, to live in unity not only with God and Jesus (by the power of the coming Spirit) but also with each other (here and also by the power of the coming Spirit). And the goal of this unity (real, tangible, material unity) will be the means by which the world (out there) will not only know the disciples are followers of Christ by their love, but that Christ is God’s child, sent into the world to love the world and make it thoroughly human.[1] This level of unity is oneness and is more than niceness and politeness and tolerating or agreeing all the time on all things. It’s something otherworldly; it’s the very heart of our triune God.

John 17:20-26

John writes, Now, not on behalf of these only [here with me right now] I pray, but also on behalf of the ones who believe in me through their word, (v. 20). The subject of this prayer by Jesus is “the unity of the community.”[2] The community is both the community of believers existing immediately in that history and all the ones to come who believe through the proclamation of the gospel from these disciples into the world.[3] We—you and me—are addressed in Jesus’s prayer because it extends through time.[4] What’s really fascinating to me is that we are being directly addressed and are now the ones being immediately prayed for so that future people may hear the word of God in the proclamation of Christ and believe. In other words, we are—right now—the gathered community to whom Jesus is currently speaking and is yoking to an unknown group of Christians who will believe because of our witness (in word and deed and by our unity).[5]

Knowing about whom Jesus is praying, we come to the content of the prayer: the “essential unity” of the community, their “oneness.”[6] John’s Jesus says, … so that all [who believe from here on out] may be one just as you, Abba, are in me and I in you (v.21a). According to John, the oneness Jesus is expecting among the community of believers is of the same essence that is the oneness between God the Creator and God the Reconciler (between Abba God and Jesus the child). By doing theological math, if the Creator and the reconciler are one through the mutuality of Love, then the community, too, will be one through love (ἀγάπη). Concurrently, this love between Jesus and Abba God didn’t remain between Jesus and God but contained in it and extended from it the love of the cosmos, according to John (3:16). Thus, the community—formed and informed by the love of God made known in Christ—will be about and participate in this containing and extending the love of God for the cosmos because Jesus’s love of Abba God was also his love for those whom God loves.[7] This love and mutuality is the foundation of the community’s oneness and unity.

Here we get to the essence of the unity: the mutuality of responsibility and dependence. The community’s mutual responsibility and dependence reflects the mutual responsibility and dependence existing between Jesus and God. Jesus does not do Jesus’s own will but what Jesus sees Abba God do, thus to encounter to Jesus is to encounter God which then verifies that God sent Jesus (Jesus is dependent on God and is responsible for representing God to humanity through his words and deeds). This type of mutuality of dependence and responsibility is to be reflected in the community’s representative role in the world so that their unity—which is of the same essence of God and Jesus’s unity[8]—is manifested in such a way that others are brought into an encounter with God through their witness, which witnesses to Christ in their unity, as John writes, so that also they may be in us so that the cosmos may believe that you, you sent me (v.21b). It is through the community’s mutual dependence on and responsibility for the other (in the community and, we could argue, those outside of the community) that will be the thing that emphasizes the divine origin of Jesus.[9]

In other words, the unity of the community will be based on faith, love, and solidarity and not on things like doctrine, dogma, ritual, and traditionalism. The unity of the community is built on and from the unity of God and Jesus and thus is not something that is built with wood and stone, but through blood and water[10]. The community’s unity is a reality of the reign of God[11] and supersedes, transcends, and challenges the unity that is of the kingdom of humanity built on principals reflecting adherence to a specific ideology and a status quo. The unity of the community that is of the reign of God always and forever moves forward and defies and denies the ability to solidify it in a code or a static algorithm. It can happen again and again and again[12] and in new and different ways that always keeps God and God’s beloved in view. This is why the unity of the community becomes the task of the community, so that it can remain participant in the way Christ is proclaimed into the world[13] and brings others into an encounter with God by the event of faith.[14] As John writes, And the glory which you have given me I, I have given to them, so that they may be one just as we [are] one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to an end as one, so that the cosmos may know that you, you sent me and loved them just as you loved me (vv. 22-23).

Thus, the goal and completion of the community is its unity which is its representation of Christ in the world. The glory that is communicated from Abba God to Jesus (and vice-versa) is the same glory communicated from Jesus to the community (and vice-versa) that finds it’s unity in its Christocentric mutual dependence on and responsibility for the other. Glory is brought to God when the community –united by faith in and founded on the love of Christ—gives the world reasons to glorify God through their word (Christ) and their deeds (unity and love).[15] The unity of the community is a result of Christ’s presence with the community; as Christ is present with the community—united by faith and works and speaks in love and deeds—those outside the community not only see but experience the love of God in Christ via the community.[16] This isn’t a social club or a lunch bunch; these are things of the kingdom of humanity mimicking what the disciples of Christ should be. Rather, this community is built on deep identification with each other, an acknowledgement and celebration of difference, and a solidarity that unites stronger than genetic material; this is an “otherworldly” level of community, a divine yoke transcending all human made lines that divide.[17]

Conclusion

Unity isn’t something we manufacture; it’s something that happens through us when we take another person seriously. Our unity as this church isn’t because we all think the same, act the same, or speak the same. Our unity as this community is built on the invisibility of the unconditional, never stopping, always and forever love of God made known to us in the proclamation of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our unity as this community is built on our faith in Christ and our mutual assertion that because of Christ, God is truthful and trustworthy. And it doesn’t stop there. Because of our faith in Christ and our union with God through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are caused to see our neighbor as ourselves and to build deep and mutual dependence on and responsibility for our neighbor, especially those sitting here in the pews alongside us. But this faith and love that is the foundation and essence of this community is not to be contained only within the walls of this community because Jesus’s mission—which is now ours by the power of the Spirit in and among us—was to go into the world bringing God’s mission of the divine revolution of love life and liberation to the beloved. Our love for each other, our union and solidarity together, is the foundation of our task in the world; from this unity and oneness, God’s name will be hallowed and God’s will done on earth as in heaven.

[1] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context, “keeping human life human”

[2] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) 512. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966).

[3] Bultmann, John, 512. “And at this point (v. 20) we are told explicitly that Jesus’ intercession does not just relate to the historical situation, in which the Evangelist makes him speak it, but is made for all believers, now and in the future.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 512. “…the prayer for the community’s unity consciously embraces its extension through time.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 512.

[6] Bultmann, John, 512.

[7] Bultmann, John, 513. “The unity of his own is to be of the same kind as that between the Father and Son; i.e., therefore, just as the Son’s being is a being of the Father, and vice-versa, so the being of the individual believers must be a being for each other—in the bond of ἀγάπη…”

[8] Bultmann, John, 513. “Such unity has the Father and Son as its basis. Jesus is the Revealer by reason of this unity of Father and Son; and the oneness of the community is to be based on this fact. That means it is not founded on natural or purely historical data, nor can it be manufactured by organization, institutions or dogma; these can at best only bear witness to eh real unity, as on the other they can also give a false impression of unity.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 513. “And just as the Father is encountered in the Son, because the Son is nothing by himself individually, so within the community no one ought to see, or cherish, or criticize the individual character of his fellow believer, but ought to look on him only as a member of the community. It is not personal sympathies, or common aims that constitute the unity, but the word that is alive in them all and that gives the community its foundation; and each member represents the demand and gift of the word over against his fellow believer, in that he is for him.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 514. “…the community is united, in that it no longer belongs to the world but is totally orientated on the revelation event that takes place in Jesus and is an eschatological phenomenon.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 513-514. “Because the authenticity of the proclamation cannot be controlled by institutions or dogmas, and because the faith that answers the word is invisible, it is also true that the authentic unity of the community is invisible—even if it should testify to itself …in the ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾶν. It is invisible because it is not a worldly phenomenon at all; this the meaning of the second ἵνα-clause, which picks up the first…”

[12] Bultmann, John, 514. “Christendom is not a dimension withing world-history…Rather, this unity takes place again and again in the proclamation of faith.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 514-515. “Vv.22f provide fresh motivation for the prayer for the unity of the community; once again on the part of the world is stated to be its ultimate goal (v.23b), but in addition to that the unity is described as the purpose and fulfilment of Jesus’ work of revelation.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 514. “If there is such an eschatological community in the cosmos, in history, then there is always the possibility of faith for the world. The community is of course always a cause of irritations for the world, and can inflame its anger…But this means that the possibility of deciding for the Revealer is also always given to it, and this was and always will be the means of overcoming the offence….and that is why the prayer for the community is at the same time an intercession for the world, in which…the community has been set its task.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 516. “In fact one can say: that he has given them his δόξα means that after his departure they are to represent him in the world. It means that the ‘history of Jesus will not become an episode in the past, but will remain continually present in the world as the eschatological event in the eschatological community.”

[16] Bultmann, John, 516. “…that he is present in the community as the Revealer, is to find its crowning glory in the oneness of the community…”

[17] Bultmann, John, 517. “Without doubt…the community’s oneness expresses the fact that it is the eschatological community, in which the world is annulled, and in which the differences of human individuality, that are typical of any human association and in fact help to make it up, are simply excluded. This unity stands for the radical other0worldly orientation of the community, that binds all individual believers and every empirical association of faith into a supra-worldly unity, across and beyond all differences of a natural, human kind.”

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For the Love and Glory of God

Psalm 148:1-2 1 Hallelujah! Praise Abba God from the heavens; praise God in the heights. Praise Abba God, all you angels; praise God, all his host. [May these words praise God!]

Introduction

In 1984, Tina Turner asked, “What’s love got to do with it?” And looking around our local and national environment, I think that’s probably the question we should be asking. But just hollering into that caustic and vitriolic sinkhole, “Just love one another!”, is adding more fuel to the fire because we often don’t know what we mean when we say it. The reason for that? Most people, on either side of the divide, truly think they are acting in loving ways. So, hollering, “We just need to love one another!” is met with blank stares in response because, well “I AM!”

We truly believe that love will solve our problems, sooth our tensions, eliminate our divisions; and I agree with this. But the thing is, we must get real about what it means to love…We must start at the beginning and notice how God loves the cosmos and how God in Jesus Christ loved the neighbor. We must embrace that to love doesn’t always make one comfortable and cozy—either the beloved or the lover. We must be willing to take our love beyond good feeling and allow Love (capital “L”) be the force that guides our actions in the world causing us to prioritize the well-being of the neighbor o according to what they need and not what I think they need. So, I’m glad John is here to walk us (back) through what it means to love…

John 13:31-35

Our passage falls near the end of Jesus teaching his disciples about love in the upper room before his crucifixion. Essentially, we are—for all intents and purposes—back at Maundy Thursday. The chapter opens with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. At the conclusion of this event, Jesus gives a teaching on what it means to be a disciple of Christ: to serve each other and not to be served. Then Jesus tells of his betrayal. Here Judas is just flat called out and dismissed from the table to do what he is going to do. Then we come to our passage for today where Jesus explains what is happening and then gives his disciples a new commandment (to love). Chapter 13 closes with Jesus promising Peter that he will not be able to go where Jesus is going, but that Peter will deny Jesus three times. In this chapter, love has a lot of work to do.

John writes, Therefore when [Judas] went out, Jesus said, “Now the son of humanity was glorified, and God was glorified in him. If God was glorified in him, then God will glorify him in God, and God will glorify him immediately” (vv. 31-32). Jesus isn’t speaking abstractly here; he’s speaking very literally. His death comes as Judas goes out; the present moment is binding together what was with what will be.[1] The “now” there is doing a lot of work and emphasis should be placed on it. In this moment, among the disciples, there is a collision of time: what was is becoming what will be right then (now!). Jesus has glorified God in his active love in the world and this glorifying of God will become Jesus’s future glorification in the resurrection from the death that is coming now (because Judas left and all that is coming by his betrayal is as good as done). In other words, the Cross and the Resurrection are going to be the full culmination of what was colliding with what will be and creates an entirely new now for the disciples of Christ.[2] It is this new now that the disciples are ushered into by faith (and which is only accessible through faith).[3]

Jesus then addresses the disciples personally, Dear little children, I am still with you a little bit [longer]. You will search for me, and just as I said to the Children of Israel, “Where I, I go my way you, you are not able to come,” and to you I say [this] just now. After a pronouncement of God being glorified (both past and future) in and through himself, Jesus informs the disciples that the way he is going is his way alone and they are not able to come. Jesus’ presence with them is coming to an end; the disciples will no longer be able to walk (literally) with him and they will learn that it is necessary for them to be abandoned by Jesus (in his death and also in his future ascension). What he did with them will have to be enough…for now; the disciples will be stripped of their teacher, left to their own devising.[4] Or so they think…

Then Jesus speaks into their burgeoning doubt and threatening despair and promises that even as he leaves, he is with them. How so? Through a new commandment that has to do with the disciples loving each other as Christ loved them. Jesus exhorts, A new command I give to you: you love one another. Just as I loved you, you, you also love one another. In this way, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among you. As Jesus’s time with the disciples wanes, he gives them a commandment that will transcend any epoch and era and any country and continent. In a swift motion, Jesus redirects their attention away from themselves and toward something in the future; to this command they can cling because it is not clinging to a stone tablet but a real person by faith; in it resides the entirety of Jesus with them, and if Jesus then God, too.[5] In loving one another like Christ loved them, they are never abandoned and are always with Christ and also with God. This is not a cold command to love as if it was of one’s own power; this is a command that is founded on and in and by the love of Christ for them, which is the love of God for them. [6] If the disciples love in the way of and like Christ loved them, then their discipleship status will be noticed by all people because in this love Christ will be proclaimed.[7]

The new command doesn’t replace Jesus, this would then make Jesus and faith in Jesus superfluous. Rather, the new command becomes the “essential nature” [8] of the burgeoning new community that follows this new way of Christ in a world that will find this all very strange.[9] (And, according to John, this love does start first among the new community. [10]) This new command of love is not feeling loving emotions toward someone; that is not how Jesus loved the disciples. Jesus loved the disciples (and others!) through acts and deeds of service that brought love, life, and liberation to them in both material and spiritual ways.[11] Thus, the disciples’ activity in accordance with this new command reinforces that the disciples are never far from Christ because this liberative love is the very love of Christ. And it is distinct and new because it is not the love of the kingdom of humanity but of the reign of God bringing life where there is death, Easter where Good Friday refuses to leave.[12]And if the disciples are never far from Christ in this liberative love, then it will be easy for all people to know they are HIS disciples.

In this way God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation continues in the world as Jesus goes his way and the disciples remain behind. The mission doesn’t end with Jesus; it is just the beginning of the advent and incarnation of the reign of God overhauling the kingdom of humanity, bit by bit, moment by moment, in this era and that era. [13] And, as this new community of disciples loving each other as Christ loved them goes into and through the history of the world, God is glorified in them because Christ is the glory of God and where this community is and loves as Jesus loved them, Christ is there and brings God glory.[14]

Conclusion

So, “What’s love got to do with it?” Well, according to John, everything. This command was not just for the disciples there with Jesus at the table but is timeless and knows not a static captivity to the past. The new commandment transcends time and space, it goes and is wherever there are those who gather in the name of Christ and love as Christ loved. This new command is for us today: it guides us, teaches us, corrects us, forms and reforms us, and it is still the way all people will know we are the disciples of Christ. They will know us by our love because our love will be liberative and life giving, it will be more than “thoughts and prayers,” more than some sort of comfortable message, even more than abstract Christian colloquialism that never hit the rock bottom we hit. This love will not bring death, indifference, and captivity; it will not hold up legalism, traditionalism, and dogmatism over the well-being of anyone (those here and out there) [15]. It will cause us to relinquish our excess to meet the needs of others and to abandon our self-imposed isolation to find deep community with others. It will be the source of our unrestrainable hope that will radiate out from here infecting others as it streams through the world to its farthest recesses. It will bind us to God, thus bind us to that and to those whom God loves: creation and our neighbor. Dorothee Sölle writes in her book, To Work and To Love, “The God who created the universe, including our planet, and who delivered us from slavery is the same God who raises the dead to new life, so that we who were dead and without hope might become resisters and lovers of life. ‘Lover of the living’ is an old name for God (Wis. of Sol. 11:26). So shall it be our name for evermore.”[16]

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 523. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “It is that νῦν, in which past and future are bound together, stressed particularly at this point by the paradoxical juxtaposition of ἐδοξάσθη (v. 31) and δοξάσει (v. 32).”

[2] Bultmann, John, 523-524. “The subject is that δόξα which is at the same time the Son’s and the Father’s: καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἐδοξάσθη ἐν αὐτῷ. What has already happened sub specie aeterni unfolds itself in the temporal future; and because this is so, the word δοξάσει (as if this future were at a distance from the νῦν) can be picked up again in καὶ εὐθὺς δοξάσει αὐτόν, which is a reference to the immediately imminent passion. It draws our attention again to that paradox inherent in the concept of δόξα, viz. that the δόξα becomes apparent precisely in the cross; and it also indicates a rejection of the naive primitive Christian eschatology, for there the revelation of Jesus’ δόξα was expected only at his coming Parousia (mk. 8.38).”

[3] Bultmann, John, 524. “The period of his personal presence has come to an end…His own will miss him; they will not realise the full significance of that νῦν immediately. Their faith has to stand the test.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 524. “…to some extent the believers are in the same position as the men of the κόσμος. Of course the situation does not contain for them, as it does for the latter, that element of the ‘too late’; but both look back in the same way on a ‘no longer’, and the beginnings of despair are there for the disciples too. They have to learn that the Revealer has not come to be at their disposal through their faith. What now lies in the past does not guarantee the future, but is called into question by it. Jesus, in whom they believed, disappears from them, and they are left with no security.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 525. “Then how can their relationship with him be retained in the face of this isolation?…The future is subjected to an imperative! Their anxiety was centred on their own actual existence, but now they are directed towards an existence that has the character of an ‘ought.’ The illusion that they possess him in such a way that he is at their disposal is confronted by another kind of possession: one which consists in fulfilling a command. Their despairing gaze into the past that is no more is redirected to the future, which comes and lay sits obligation upon them. An unreal future, which would only be a persistence in the past, is made into the real future which demands faith. And in so far as the content of the ἐντολή is ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους, the care for oneself is changed into a care for one’s neighbour.”

[6] Bultmann, John, 525. “But since it is precisely this becoming free from the past and from oneself that is subjected to the imperative, the future that is grasped as command coincides with the future that is promised for loyalty of faith; for it was freedom from the past and form oneself that was promised to the believer. Thus the imperative is itself a gift, and this it can be because it receives its significance and its possibility of realization from the past, experienced as the love of the Revealer.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 528. “…all loving becomes the proclamation of Jesus—which means that it can always become an offence too, not just in the individual case, but especially because the association formed by this kind of love cuts across the associations of the world in a special way.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 527. “But Jesus’ command of love is ‘new,’ even when it has been long-known, because it is the law of the eschatological community, for which the attribute ‘new’ denotes not an historical characteristic but its essential nature. The command of love, which is grounded in the love of the Revealer received by the disciples, is ‘new’ in so far as it is a phenomenon of the new world which Jesus has brought into being; and indeed 1 John 2.8 describes this newness as that of the eschatological event.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 527. “V. 35 states that the new world becomes reality in the community: reciprocal love within the community is the criterion of the discipleship of Jesus for those outside. The fact that the command of love is fulfilled there demonstrates the strangeness of the community within the world, and results in the world calling those who love the disciples of Jesus. Not just because there is a community in which love is both an injunction and an actual practice. Much rather because love itself there takes on a form that is strange to the world.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 528. “It is no general love of mankind, or love of one’s neighbour or enemy that is demanded, but love within the circle of disciples. Naturally this does not mean that the all-embracing love of one’s neighbour is to be invalidated; but here it is a question of the very existence of the circle of disciples. How does the departing Revealer remain present for his own? By the vitality of the gift of his love in their love of each other, and by their representation within the world of the new world, which became reality through him.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 526. “Jesus’ love is not a personal emotion, but is the service that liberates; and the response to it is not a mystical or pietistic intimacy with Christ, but the ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾶν.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 526. “The significance of the past lies in the fact that the encounter with Jesus was experienced as his service which made the believer free; thus the significance of the future can only be that in it this freedom is brought to fruition. And this take s place int eh fulfillment of the command of love. Because this command and its fulfillment are grounded in the Revealer’s love which has actually been experienced, the believer always remains bound to the Revealer’s service and is never centered on himself.  And to put it the other way round, the faith which has accepted that service can only continue to come to fruition in the attitude of service, i.e. of love.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 529. “But the community itself fulfills its commission to the world…only if the ἀγαπᾶν remains the response to the love of Jesus, and so long as it does note exchange it for an ἔργον of the world, or for efficacy within world-history. It is not the effect it has on world history that legitimates the Christian faith, but its strangeness within the world; and the strangeness is the bearing of those whose love for each other is grounded in the divine love.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 526. “Only if they are themselves loving do they who belong to him remain in the experience of his love; in the same way they can, and do love, only on the basis of this experience. Thus the believers’ past and future are bound to each other like the former and the future δόξα of the Revealer himself: the future receives its meaning form the past, and the past becomes significant in the future. But that means that in the future, despite their separation from him, they remain united to him. In their action, his act is present.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 528. v. 35 disciples “…a definition of their essential nature. The association with Jesus, therefore, is not realized by possessing articles of knowledge or dogmas, nor in institutions or experiences of individual piety, but in pupil-hood,’ in obedience to the command of love.”

[16] Sölle, To Work and Love, 165.

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Like Paul and Peter

Psalm 23:3-4 Abba God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for their Name’s sake. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Introduction

My favorite thing about the book of Acts, is the way the narrative camera focuses on the human beings left behind to participate in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation without Jesus by their side. As human as the Gospels can be, they still feel—to me—just outside of my experience in the world. As far as I know, I’ve not been—literally—summoned by Jesus to come follow him and leave my—literal—net behind. I’ve not witnessed with my own eyes the healing miracles and the awesome casting out of demons. I did not run and hide with fear on Good Friday, nor feel the warmth burn in my heart as Jesus taught me on the way in his resurrected state. I didn’t witness the ascension or suddenly speak in a foreign language (no matter how much my charismatic evangelical background wants to think I have). I am just an audience member from 2025, listening to these ancient stories mixed up with a healthy amount of faith and doubt, skeptical and hungry.

So, this is why I love acts. Watching Paul get knocked off his donkey and onto his donkey through the proclamation of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit—having his misdirection redirected—brings the story home. I too have needed to be knocked down a peg or two, put in my place, reminded of my creaturely status before the Creator. I have thought myself to be so right and on point that I was completely misdirected toward what God was doing and celebrated the tendency of the kingdom of humanity to perform acts of violence and needed to be redirected. Witnessing Peter’s rapid exposure to the new movements and actions of God made known first in Christ and made real in Peter’s heart through the power of the Holy Spirit, is something I can confess to, too. I, too, have been graciously, generously, and patiently reinstructed that all are in and none are out, relearned God’s merciful divine activity that extends beyond skin, sex, and superficial boundaries, (re)experienced (manifold times) the pathos of God for the Beloved, and have stumbled about while desperately trying to walk in this new way, talk with new words, love with a new heart, think with a new mind, and see through new lenses all crafted and created by a God who so loves the cosmos that God won’t spare Gods self to save it.

I read something somewhere that said the best way to explain the book of acts is to see it as the movement and activity of the Holy Spirit rather than of the disciples. Are they central to this story building in the book of Acts? Yes, they are. But they are not the only performers on the stage. The Holy Spirit takes up their role and whisks and moves these human forms, destroying notions of autonomy and free-will, taking them hither and tither, bringing them into contact with those whom they would never ever be in contact with, reducing them through exposure, and building them up through love and liberation into new life defined by the reign of God. Last week we received the story of Saul and his “conversion”; this week, we are exposed to Peter walking in the way of Jesus, doing the initial things that will become some of the hallmarks of what it means not only to be Christian, but also Church.

Acts 9:36-43

We jump quite a bit forward in Acts 9. We move from Paul’s conversion to the beginning of Peter’s radical exposure to the law of God which is the law of love for all God’s beloved, transcending national and religious boundaries rather than creating them. Starting a bit earlier in the chapter than our lectionary suggests, we find Peter in Lydda, having been brought there by the Holy Spirit to the those who are called “living saints”.[1] By using the word “Saints” Luke highlights that the divide between the secular and the sacred is diminishing; every day regular people are indwelled with divine holiness, a holiness that will not fade away and creates a new way of being in the world as God’s vessels bringing divine life, love and liberation to others like themselves.[2] (This is very good news for regular people like you and me!) So, Peter is with these everyday saints, and he is there to heal a man who was paralyzed for 8 years. Through Peter, the Holy Spirit heals this man, and the story of his healing becomes a source for those in Lydda and the surrounding area (Sharon) to praise God and turn to Christ in faith (vv. 32-35).[3] In Lydda, Peter is doing as Jesus did: healing and liberating the oppressed and bringing glory to God.[4]

While Peter is in Lydda, over in Joppa there was a certain disciple by [the] name Tabitha, which [in Greek] is translated as Dorcas, she was full of good works, and she was doing acts of mercy. But it happened in those days she [became] sick and died; when she died, they washed her body, writes Luke, and they placed her body in an upper room (vv. 36-37). The saints of Joppa are grieved over this loss. Rightly so. Tabitha was a woman and a representative of Christ[5] in spaces too often neglected by both human and divine presence (read the prophets!). Not only is Luke elevating the role of women in the work of the gospel and in his narrative about the movement of the Holy Spirit (which should expose us in our own context),[6] he is also highlighting that losing this one who brings well-being to her neighbors and glory to God, leaves a massive gap in bringing God’s presence to those who need God’s presence the most: the widows…whom God cares about very much! So, the disciples having heard that Peter was in Lydda, and Lydda being close to Joppa, they sent two men [to Joppa] beseeching Peter, “Do not hesitate and pass through [and] come to us immediately!” (v. 38).

Peter’s response? Now, after rising Peter went to them (v.39a). Peter doesn’t waste a moment to help these saints over in Joppa who lost a beloved representative of Christ. Luke tells us more, After he arrived, they brought him up into the upper-room, and the widows stood by him weeping and showing [him] tunics and many cloaks Dorcas was making being with them (v.39b-c). These poor and too often neglected widows lose the one who cares for them, the one who made them feel seen and heard and loved; this is what Peter enters when he arrives.[7] But it’s more than comfort Peter is bringing. For Luke (and Peter) in this moment a massive (divinely inspired) statement is occuring: women matter, their works matter, their bodies matter.[8] Luke tells us, Now, after Peter cast everyone out [of the room], he also placed [his] knees [on the ground] and prayed, and turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, rise!” And she does. Now her eyes opened, and after seeing Peter she sat up. Peter acts like Christ and commands the dead woman to rise. Those held captive to death (both Tabitha and the widows) are not held captive anymore; they’re liberated, by this regular person through the power of the Holy Spirit who works in them and through them to overturne the kingdom of humanity and establish the reign of God.[9] Just as the women were the first to hear of the resurrection of Christ from death, so too did a woman first experience the life out of death that is characteristic of the reign of God wrought by the Holy Spirit moving through regions bringing God glory![10] Luke tells us, Now, after giving her his hand he raised her, and after calling out [to] the saints and the widows, he presented her [to them] living. Now it became known throughout all of Joppa, and the many believed in the Lord. And the Holy Spirit is not only moving through acceptable regions but is breaking down false boundaries[11] originally demarcating clean and unclean: the glory of God and God’s divine mission to liberate the captives know no walls and barriers. Luke concludes, Now it happened [Peter] stayed a sufficient number of days in Joppa with a certain Simon the Tanner. Just like Paul, Peter is in the clutches of a God on the move, caught up in the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[12]

Conclusion

Peter and Paul present to us the two best examples of regular, human beings—like you and me—who are caught up in the transcending and unyielding resurrection life that starts with Christ and continues with his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think Peter and Paul are intimidating to us. I think it’s easier to ask WWJD rather than WWPD because their recorded actions bring the divine pathos down to our level. It’s safe when Jesus does something because we can kind of dismiss it: well…he’s like the Son of God…so… But when it’s the former know-it-all and the former fisherman, the flames of those actions burn close to our skin. Because, as it turns out, like Paul and Peter, we have skin in this game and this game participates in the divine passion for the cosmos. Peter, a regular guy, calls Tabitha into (new) life from death and liberates Aeneas from the captivity of being paralyzed; this puts us on the hook as we begin (again) to walk in the way of the ascended Jesus and the Spirit that is to come. Both Peter and Paul ask us to think about what it means to be Christian and to do Church. Beloved, like Peter and Paul, we, too, by and in Christ, get to bring love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death.

[1] Willie James Jennings, Acts, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 99. “He is on the road and comes to Lydda to be among the living saints.”

[2] Jennings, Acts, 99. “Jesus is God drawing the everyday into holiness, into God’s own life. Everyday people are made holy in Christ. Everyday people are made holy by Christ, and this is a holiness that will last, not be episodic, and constitute a new space for living life and knowing ourselves.”

[3] Jennings, Acts, 99-100. “Once again a marvelous act, a touchable miracle, will turn people to the Lord (v. 35). This is repetition that illumines the inexhaustible riches of Gods love for the fragile creature and Gods desire to constantly touch us, hold us, and announce the victory over death. There is yet more for Peter in this journey as he is approached by two disciples form another city (Joppa) for the sake of one disciple who has died.”

[4] Jennings, Acts,99. “Peter returns to center stage and engages in a bit of wayfaring life, echoing again his history of following Jesus and doing as his savior had done.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha’s life even in the fragments we gain in this story, hangs together beautifully as someone devoted to helping people, especially widows.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha, the disciples of Jesus—Luke opens her story inside of Peter’s journey and in so doing makes a point more powerful for us in our time than probably for him in his time. Tabitha, a woman, is a disciple of Jesus. Whether this vignette is evidence of Luke’s positive view of women or not he has certainly gives us a plateau from which to view a new future in which men and women in Christ have a different way of seeing themselves—as disciples.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Widows, that group of people vulnerable in ancient and current time, made vulnerable by death’s sting, have always been a special concern for God and here for Tabitha as well. …So the widows weep. They weep for her and maybe for themselves. We do not know if Tabitha was in fact one of them, but we do know that they claimed her as one of whare for them. Here glory joins strong grief because to lose someone who cares for the weak and vulnerable, whose life is turned toward making a difference in the world and who is making a difference, is a bitter loss. The widows have lost Tabitha and a disciple is gone. This is what Peter steps into in Joppa.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Peter’s presence declares an unmistakable truth: women matter. This woman matters, and the works she does for widows matters to God. It matters so much that God will not allow death the last word. Others had been raised form the dead in the Gospels and in Luke’s Gospel…but this is different. This not a little girl or the brother of a friend of Jesus; this is a disciple raised from the dead. Tabitha is not finished in life or service.”

[9] Jennings, Acts, 100-101. “‘Tabitha, get up.’ Peter repeats Jesus. Tabitha is an activist who lives again in resurrection power. Her body has been quickened by the Spirit, and her eyes are opened again to see a new day. She has work to do and joy to give to the widows: you have not been abandoned, dear widows, God has heard your weeping and returned her to you.”

[10] Jennings, Acts, 101. “It is not accident that the first disciple to have this little tase of the resurrection isa woman, because it was a woman who gave birth to the resurrection. And Peter is there once again to see a miraculous sign point to faith’s direction—many who found out about this believe in the Lord (v. 42).”

[11] Jennings, Acts, 101. “The story, however, does not end there with Tabitha, because Peter stays in Joppa, and who he stays with points to an earth-shattering future.”

[12] Jennings, Acts, 101. “He stays with Simon, a tanner. Tanners worked with death flesh—the skin of animals and tanners were, theologically speaking, unclean. Few if any pious Jews would normally or easily stay with a tanner, but here was Peter with Somin the tanner. Peter is indeed moving from saints to saints, and soon he will find out just how far the generosity and mercy of a holy God reaches. Soon he will see just how far God will extend holy place and holy people. Peter is with a man who touches the unclean, and soon he will see God do the same.”

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Summoned out of Death and into Life

Psalm 30:1a-b,2-3 I will exalt you, God, because you have lifted me up… O Abba God, I cried out to you, and you restored me to health. You brought me up…from the dead; you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.

Introduction

Have you ever been dead set that you were absolutely, positively, without any doubt, completely and totally, 100% right? Like, nothing was going to drag you from that throne of being right. Like, you knew you were right and then your knowing knew and then that knowing knew you were 100%, beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt right? Like, the level of right that makes you wager bets when you don’t like to wager bets ever. Like, that confidence bordering on smug arrogance type of knowing you’re right…

I’m sure you’ve never been there, but I’ve been there. Whether as a mom, a wife, a scholar, a priest there have been times where I’m certain I’ve got all those little knowing ducks in a row. I know this: this thing, this person, this concept, this best method, this ritual. But the reality is that everything I do know changes. Human beings don’t stay the same, they grow and change; concepts are always subject to change with new information and research; best methods change, it’s why parenting looks so different today than it did yesterday—same goes for any industry moving along with rapidly changing technology; even sacred rituals change, anyone here looking to head back into the catacombs to do church? In short, things change (animate and inanimate). When we are absolutely, positively convinced that we know we are right, everyone else will become wrong, and we will absolutely, positively promote death rather than life, indifference rather than love, captivity rather than liberation.

Acts 9:1-6

According to Luke, Saul enters the scene at the very beginning of chapter 8, right after the death of Stephen. Stephen the first deacon of the church and the first martyr of those who follow the way. He was condemned to death for preaching the gospel and exposing the Sanhedrin for what and who they were. Luke tells us in 8:1, And Saul was pleased with the destruction of [Stephen].  Saul then disappears from the narrative for the rest of chapter 8 only to resurface at the beginning of chapter 9.

At the beginning of chapter 9, Luke tells us, Now Saul, still breathing threats and killing the disciples of the Lord, approached the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus so that he might find certain people being of the way, men and also women, and after binding them he might lead them into Jerusalem (vv. 1-2). Not only did Saul approve of the death of a deacon proclaiming the liberative gospel to a people stuck in captivity, he also continued in hot pursuit of the people who, because of proclamations like Stephen’s, began following the way (the way of faith in Jesus the Christ, God’s son). These who followed the way, for Saul, were those who were no straying from God and God’s law, they were heretics and blasphemers, and this deserved nothing less than imprisonment and death. What Luke is painting for his audience is a picture of a devoted zealot of the law of God; Saul’s mission was to make sure no Israelite strayed from the right way, the one he knew, the one upheld by decades and centuries of tradition. Saul isn’t a deviant or miscreant; he is a killer as one who kills in the name of the law and has authority to do so. Saul is absolutely sold out that this one way, the way he knew, the way he had been trained in, the way he had been raised in and schooled in was the one and only way that God could and would work. According to Luke, Saul was willing do whatever it took to ensure that what is remains as is even if it means imprisoning and executing anyone who lives, believes, says, and does otherwise.[1]

According to Luke, Saul is closed in on himself and what he knows and believes to be true and right; he is, as Martin Luther would say, curved in on himself and violence thrives among people curved in on themselves, convinced of their own rightness and goodness, and devoted to their ideologies reinforcing their status quo which encourages their curved-in-ness.[2] Against this type of person, this one that Saul is, the disciples and followers of the way have absolutely no chance; their way of seeing the world and understand justice will collapse under the weight of Saul’s because there is no one stronger and more resistance to listening and seeing than the one who is curved in on himself.[3]

Saul, in being dead-set, absolutely and positively right is on a collision course with the reality of God—a God who is all about the interruption and disruption of the status-quo holding God’s beloved captive unto death.[4] Saul, the pursuer, is about to realize that he is the one being pursued.[5] Luke tells us, But while he was going near to Damascus, it happened that a light from heaven suddenly flashed around him like lightening, (v. 3). Saul collides—full steam—into God by way of his errant misconception of the world and of God’s activity of the world. Notice that the text does not tell us that Saul was eagerly searching for God because God was hidden and Saul couldn’t find God. Notice that the text tells us very plainly that God found Saul when Saul wasn’t looking for him. Saul was interrupted and disrupted on his way—stopped in his tracks by being tossed to the ground—and divinely readjusted and corrected and set on God’s way and on God’s track.[6]

Because of Saul’s encounter with God, he gains deep insight into who this God is. This is not the God of the cold tablets demanding blood sacrifice for disobedience or imprisonment for fracture. Rather, the God Saul encounters is a God who intimately knows the pain of those whom this God loves. And, Saul is not only disrupted and interrupted, but altogether unmade under the weight of a very intimate question:[7] and after he fell to the earth he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (v.4) Saul can’t answer the question because of the exposure: Saul isn’t absenting God from the pain and suffering he is causing; he’s directly hurting God, the one whom he thought he was protecting from offense and pain.[8] The only thing Saul can do is ask his own question in response to God’s question posed to him: And [Saul] said, “Who are you, Lord?” And [Jesus said], “I, I am Jesus whom you, you are persecuting…” (v.5). Saul is crushed under this divine revelation, in this divine encounter[9] with a God who resides in the flesh of Israel and not an abstract God hiding behind tablets.[10] Saul’s entire person and being, soul and body, mind and heart will be beckoned forth from that death and into the new life God has planned for him: being guided by the justice and rightness of God revealed through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and not according to his own conception of justice and rightness.[11]

Conclusion

Just as God felt the pain of the Israelites suffering under the oppression and violence and death of the government of Egypt, so too did God feel the pain of God’s beloved as Saul sought out and imprisoned and executed the followers of the way; just like in Easter, if you mess with God’ beloved you mess with God because nothing stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death and those who believe they have the power and authority to deal in it.[12]

When the women who entered the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning, they were asked, why do you look for the living among the dead?I believe this morning, when Jesus asks Saul, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”, it is the exact same question. While the women were looking for the living among the dead, Saul was dealing out death where there was life. Both are stuck in an old way and order of understanding God in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can become stuck in death in one of two ways: passively by assuming God can’t do something new and actively by being convinced God would never do something beyond what you absolutely positively know to be right.

So, we are put on notice today by Luke’s words. It’s not about us being right and assuming we know what God is up to because of the way it’s been done for years and years. When we become dead set on being right, we will bring violence and death to others as we force them to comply and obey by dragging them into the prison of “our way or the highway”; this always will lead to sanctioning death. As we proceed through this Easter season, we are continually beckoned into that new life, new love, new liberation we received through the empty, unsealed tomb. Beloveds, we are of light, love, liberation, and life; let us live like we believe it.

[1] Jennings, Acts, 90. “Saul is a killer. We must never forget this act. He kills in the name of righteousness, and now he wants legal permission to do so. This is the person who travels the road to Damascus, one who has the authority to take life either through imprisonment or execution. No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life and who already has mind and sight set on those who are a threat to a safe future.”

[2] Jennings, Acts, 91. “Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their logic. Their authority confirms their argument and their argument justifies heir actions and their actions reinforce the appropriateness of their authority. Violence, in order to be smooth, elegant, and seemingly natural, needs people who are closed circles.”

[3] Jennings, Acts, 90-91. “The disciples of the Lord, the women and men of the Way, have no chance against Saul. They have no argument and certainly no authority to thwart his zeal. They are diaspora betrayers of the faith who are a clear and present danger to Israel. This is how Sauls sees them his rationality demands his vision of justice.”

[4] Willie James Jennings, Ephesians, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 90. “God disrupts the old order by interrupting lives. Luke has removed every temporal wall that might separate in our thinking the God who moved in ancient Israel from the God present in the world in Jesus from this God of untamable love. This is that same Holy One, and Saul too will fall into the hands of this desiring God.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 91. “But what Saul doe not yet know is that the road to Damascus has changed. It is space now inhabited by the wayfaring Spirit of the Lord. Saul pursues, but he is being pursued.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 91. “The long history of the church has turned the Damascus road into shorthand for a life-changing experience, and rightly so, because Saul, the closed circle, is broken open by God. Yes, a killer was confronted and stopped in his tracks, but equally powerful, the rationality for his murderous actions was shattered.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 91. “There is no rationale for killing that remains intact in the presence of God. The power of this event almost overwhelms its textual witness. Luke is handling holy fire now. The question comes directly to Saul. This is a question too massive for him to handle because it is an intimate one.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 91. “The question casts light on the currencies of death that we incessantly traffic in, and it has no good answer. The only good answer is to stop. But now this is God’s question. It belongs to God. It belongs with God. Hurt and pain and suffering have reached their final destination, the body of Jesus. Now the divine presence will be revealed to Saul, not simply divine revelation, but a new revelation.”

[9] Jennings, Acts, 92. “Saul turns form defending the name of the Lord to serving Jesus, and for this we will soon suffer. He has crossed that line that separates this faith from all others. He has heard the voice of a crucified God. There is a stark truth here in this conversation to poignant that we sometimes ignore its abiding effect on us. Saul experienced the Lord Jesus. He encountered him, and this made Saul vulnerable. Experiencing the Lord Jesus makes us vulnerable.”

[10] Jennings, Acts, 91-92. “The Lord has a name…This is the bridge that has been crossed in Israel. The Lord and Jesus are one. This is the revelation that now penetrates Saul’s being and will transform his identity. He turns from the abstract Lord to the concrete Jesus. A future beckons in the pivot from holy faith to holy flesh. …Saul moves from an abstract obedience to a concrete one, from the Lord he aims to please to the One who will direct him according to divine pleasure.”

[11] Jennings, Acts, 91-92. “Discipleship is principled direction taken flight by the Holy Spirit. It is the ‘you have hard it said, but I say to you’—the continued speaking of God bound up in disruption and redirections.”

[12] Jennings, Acts, 92-93. “Jesus is one with the bodies of those who have called on his name and followed in his way by the Spirit. Their pain and suffering is his very own. This too is scandal. This too is a crossed line. They mystery of God is found in human flesh, moving in and with the disciples who are a communion of suffering and witness to life Saul is meeting a God in Jesus who is no alien to time, but one who lives the everyday with us….Yet just as he confronted Saul, this God is no passive participant in the suffering of the faithful, but one who has reconciled the world and will bring all of us to the day of Jesus Christ. Saul has entered that new day.”

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“Prone to Wander”: Into the Tomb

Psalm 114:7-8 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of Abba God, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.

Introduction

A day of silence. A day of eyes dampened with doubt, confusion, fear, anger, and even despair. It’s not just the women who cry; the men cry, too; no one is exempt from the overwhelming barrage of emotions that comes when hopes are dashed, expectations go up in flames, and faith feels shattered. The one whom they loved, the one whom they followed, the one whom they would die for—so they claimed—had been killed, and his body lay in a sealed tomb, guards flanking the massive stone. They didn’t even have time to prepare his body properly before the Sabbath moon rose gently in the sky reminding them that what was was no longer …

In the silence of that Sabbath, thoughts of what happened, how could this be, what was it all for, is this really it paraded about the minds of the disciples as they forced themselves to rest, no recourse to business of banal tasks to keep their minds occupied. They were stuck in this moment of death, like Jesus in that tomb. The extra layer for some (all?) is that they didn’t stick around, defend, follow Jesus all the way… They ran, denied, hid, betrayed. Their consciences were plagued with loss and confusion and burdened with the uncomforting, weighted-blanket of failure and guilt—heavier for some, lighter for others. These precious souls (no matter their guilt and failure, their denial and betrayal) had to endure the sun-down to sun-down plus a few more hours to receive the actual ending of the story. On this night, all those years ago, the disciples of Christ sighed, wiped away tears, and wondered what it was all about… Death, and all its children, held them hostage like Christ sealed in the tomb.

On this night, all those years ago, the disciples died with Christ. What they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t as over …

Romans 6:3-11[1]

In Romans 6, Paul anchors the silence of Saturday into the death of Good Friday and the life of Easter Sunday. For Paul, those who follow Christ follow him in the ways they speak and act and through deep identification with Christ even if it means going into the tomb with Christ on Good Friday. For Paul, this identification with Christ in Christ’s death is the key to the identification with Christ in his resurrected life. For Paul, this is how believers participate in the entirety of the Easter event, from beginning to end, from death into new life. In other words, our Romans passage is a clear distillation of what is happening as we transition from death to life through the silence of Saturday.

Paul begins with a question (v. 1) that he then (passionately) answers in v. 2: What therefore will we say? Should we persist in sin so that grace might superabound? Hell no! How can we who died to sin still live in it? In this portion, Paul addresses the new life believers have in Christ: this is absolutely not a continuation of what has gone before and is something completely new! There is a clean break between what was sealed up in the tomb with Christ on Good Friday, and the new life the believers step into on Easter Sunday Morning.

Because there is no continuation between what was by deeds of the flesh and what is now by faith in Christ, Paul feels compelled to ask the Romans, Or, do you not know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (v.3)Meaning, there’s a lie floating about that those who believe in Christ don’t suffer Christ’s fate, that we are exempted from that death. For Paul, while we weren’t nailed to the cross in literal terms, we do suffer a death like Christ’s, and this is actualized in our participation in the waters of baptism. (Being submerged under the water is to buried with Christ, to come up out of the water is to be raised with Christ.) For Paul, it is imperative that we take seriously the reality that we die like Christ; for Paul (and thus for us), THIS IS GOOD NEWS! Paul writes, Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of Abba God, in this way we, we might also walk in the newness of life (v.4). Through what God did in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, death that leads to life is the only path for believers. What is ruled out? Death that leads to death. Why? Because those who journey through a death like Christ’s receive resurrection into new life that cannot die like Christ cannot die (and this new life is both internal and external, spiritual and temporal!).[2] Thus why Paul can then write, For if we have become united together with him in a death like his death, we will also [be united with him in his] resurrection (v. 5). We live unafraid of another death because we live eternally in and with Christ.

Paul continues to elaborate about this identification between the believer and Christ, Knowing that our old person was crucified together [with Christ] with the result that the body of sin is abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who has died [with Christ] has been declared righteous from sin (vv. 6-7). Paul anchors the believer in the death of Christ so that their body of sin—not their existence as fleshy creatures, but their defective orientation resulting in sin thus death[3]—is put to death and this is liberation because it cannot weigh the believer down anymore. Another way to say this is that by virtue of identification with Christ in Christ’s death, sin and its consequence, death, are put to death.[4] What was ushered in by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, has been put asunder by the death of death that is brought in and through Christ’s death and resurrection. And if this is the case, then with Paul we can say, And if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with him (v.8). Captivity itself is now held captive and the captives—the ones formerly held in captivity to sin and death—are liberated.[5]

Paul then writes, Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead no longer dies, death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God [always]. Thus you, you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin and only living to God in Christ Jesus. For those who follow Christ, to live is to live unbound by death, released from captivity, no longer controlled and threatened by sin. According to Paul, it’s not that believers now no longer sin; they do. Believers will miss the mark, they will shoot and not score, they will mean one thing and do another, they will harm, they will mar, they will wound. What Paul is getting at is that the believer—while still a sinner—is liberated from the effects of sin which is death. The believer—now declared righteous although a sinner still (simul iustus et peccator)—has died once and for all (like Christ) and never needs to die again to sin (though sin is going to happen).[6] In other words, the believer does not need to intentionally sin so that they can die again to sin and again be declared righteous. Doing so is unnecessary and declares the grace of God unnecessary (Hell no!), as if being made righteous can come by any other means apart from grace and faith in Christ.

Because Jesus died once for all, believers in union with Christ by faith will never really die (they will “fall asleep in Christ”) because death has met its own death, captivity its own captivity. [7],[8] Rather, like Christ, they will live by the grace of God and for the grace of God.[9] This is an eternal living because the believer—by faith and God’s grace—lives in Christ and Christ who is now the Lord of life is no longer subject to death and its lordship—thus, those who live in Christ have life eternal because Christ is now eternal even in his raised and ascended body.[10] Even when sin shows up in the believer’s life—and it will—this eternal living is not hindered or hampered. Rather—through easy access to forgiveness and absolution—the believer can get up, wipe the dust off, and try again to live the life that reflects their eternal life in Christ.[11] Here the spiritual can manifest in the temporal, the outer aligns with the inner, God’s will can be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deathly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, waiting for the dawn of second full day after Christ’s death, they died, each one of them died with Christ—in grief, loss, shock, doubt, hopelessness, helplessness. They despaired of themselves, they released all that they thought was, and they came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to the divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound or word, God was about to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are all stuck in our sin, set on a path toward death eternal, forever held captive by its threat and presence, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against death and its fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. As those who are prone to wander, God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to be our new life marked by remembering and not forgetting, walking and not tromping, gathered and not estranged, accepting and not judging, peaceful and lifegiving and not violent and death-dealing. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

[1] All translations from Romans are mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25:309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[3] LW 25:313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[4] LW 25:310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good. It is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated form sin and the body is separated rom corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life. For to this kind of death alone belong in an absolute and perfect way the conditions of death, and in this death alone whatever dies perishes totally and into eternal nothingness, and nothing will ever return from this death because it truly dies an eternal death. This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity…”

[5] LW 25:310. “This is the principle theme in scripture. For God has arranged to remove through Christ whatever the devil brought in through Adam. And it as the devil who brought in sin and death. Therefore God brought about the death of death and the sin of sin, the poison of poison, the captivity of captivity.”

[6] LW 25:314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[7] LW 25:311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive’ means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[8] LW 25:311. “For the entering into life can, and necessarily must, become a departure from life, but the ‘escape form death’ means to enter into a life which is without death.”

[9] LW 25:313. “Nor can he be freed of his perversity except by the grace of God…This is said not only because of the stubbornness of perverse people but particularly because of the extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God himself because of his love of concupiscence.”

[10] LW 25:315. “For just as the ray of the sun is eternal because the sun is eternal, so the spiritual life is eternal because Christ is eternal; for He is our life, and through faith He flows into us and remains in us by the rays of His grace. Therefore, just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace which flows out of Him is from His eternal nature. Furthermore, just because a man sins again his spiritual life does not die, but he turns his back on this life and dies, while this life remains eternal in Christ.”

[11] LW 25:315. “He has Christ, who dies no more; therefore he himself dies no more, but rather he lives with Christ forever. Hence also we are baptized only once, by which we gain the life of Christ, even though we often fall and rise again. For the life of Christ can be recovered again and again, but a person can enter upon it only once, just as a man who has never been rich can begin to get rich only once, although he can again and again lose and regain his wealth.”

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“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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“Prone to Wander”: Estranged

Psalm 126:6-7 Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Introduction

In continuing our Lenten theme, “Prone to wander,” let’s look at verse two of the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,”

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood. [1]

In this season of long, sober, and honest self-reflection, we must come to terms with what verse two is suggesting: our voluntary estrangement from God, from our neighbor, and from ourselves. This isn’t a simple and innocent wandering away because we’re just absent minded or aloof. There’s no space here for that “oopsies, my bad” as we lift our head and realize, we have no idea where we are. There’s no way we can claim, “not guilty.” We are guilty. We’ve estranged ourselves from God, from our neighbor, from the created world because we’ve prioritized me and mine (my comfortableness, my pleasure, my rights, my power, my privilege, my whatever) over and against what might be better for bringing God glory, health to the earth, well-being to my neighbor, and (ultimately) wholeness to myself.

To estrange ourselves is to put on a “stranger” status. In being a stranger toward God, toward our neighbor, toward the earth, and toward ourselves we act as if we are not a part of God, as if we are not a part of a society filled with other human beings, as if we’re not a part of a created realm of flora and fauna that has an equably respectable existence of its own right, as if we’re not a part of ourselves but souls stuck in flesh suits. What verse two is saying is that we elect, we choose, we opt for this “stranger” status even as we point fingers and declare other people to be strangers worthy of expulsion. In other words, and to be blunt about it, we aren’t seeking God and God’s love, life, and liberation. Rather, we’re actively seeking our demise: building up silos of the indifference, death, and captivity of the kingdom of humanity that will only lead to our destruction. We need intervention, we need help; we’re not as capable as we like to think we are.

We are prone to become strangers and to estrange ourselves because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Isaiah 43:16-21

Zooming out a bit, chapter 43 is a great litany of personal statements about God and God’s activity in the world on behalf of Israel. Israel is exhorted, at the beginning, not to fear because God is with them, “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made,’ (vv. 5-7). Also, Israel is to come to terms with the reality that they have wandered away, forgotten this God whom they are not to fear who is with them. Their love has grown cool, and they’ve estranged themselves from this God, “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel! You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings or honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings or wearied you with frankincense. You have not bought me sweet cane with money or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. Rather, you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities,” (vv. 22-24). By the hand of a talented seamstress, a subtle thread is sown throughout the chapter holding it all in place: the image of a courtroom. If Israel so desires, they can bring God to court, if they so wish. But, Israel should be warned, it won’t go very well: both the nations will affirm (vv. 8-10) and Israel will be found guilty (vv. 25-28) in light of God’s faithfulness to God’s beloved and (not shoved off or pushed away but) restored perfectly.[2]

If we were to break chapter 43 into quarters, our portion is the third quarter and the second time the prophet exhorts Israel to remember who this God is with whom they are in relationship.[3] Isaiah says, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down; they cannot rise; they are extinguished, quenched like a wick…” (vv. 16-17). For Isaiah, this “the Lord” of “Thus says the Lord” is none other than the Great Liberator of the people[4] and, therefore, must be listened to and heeded. By recalling the liberation of Israel from Egypt, Isaiah wants Israel to remember what is known as the greatest event of liberation in their history. But then God, through Isaiah, says this, “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” (vv. 18-19). In other words, according to the flow of thought offered here, Isaiah brings to Israel’s mind the greatest event of liberation in their history and then tells them that the liberation from Babylon that is to come will be something even bigger and better.[5] Israel, while having an eye to the past, must turn their heads forward and dare to believe through an unknown future that not only will God act again as God did but that God will do so in a new way.[6]

This “new way” will be so great that it is compared to a “way” in the wilderness and a “river” in the desert, making passage easy through challenging, strenuous, and deadly environments. So, the new thing will be big and grand, it’ll be easy (an established path in the wilderness) and refreshing (accessible water in the desert), but it will also solicit praise from creation. God promises through Isaiah, “The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people…” (v. 20). As God prepares a way and provides for Israel, the “wild animals” will honor God because of God’s deeds. And all this is oriented toward inciting Israel to praise God, “…the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise,” (v. 21). What is to come will eliminate Israel’s self-induced and self-destructive estrangement; the children of Israel, God’s beloved, will no longer be strangers to God but brought through chaos, tumult, and the threat of death into order, peace, and a very real and thriving life in and with God. All that Israel has known and does know will be shattered and rendered void in what God is going to do.[7] God will come to God’s estranged beloved and reorient them to God’s self and they will have love, life, and liberation to the fullest.

Conclusion

Unlike previous weeks, this passage from Isaiah is completely about Israel estranging itself from God. In fact, it’s about God making Isarel very aware of how far they have (in fact) strayed from God and voluntarily postured themselves as strangers toward God. Isaiah has proven the point through divine inspiration that Israel is prone to wander and will choose to do so when given the leash to do so. And this is why these words of Isaiah’s are presented to us during Lent. We are brought into the story to witness to the fact that the ones whom God liberated from Egypt have estranged themselves from this same loving, life-giving, and liberating God. I say this not only because Isaiah has said it; I say this because all the other prophets following Isaiah will also say it. They will highlight that Israel—no matter what type of liberation is experienced—will (voluntarily) turn, wander, and estrange themselves from God. And in estranging themselves from God, Israel will estrange themselves from their neighbor, the surrounding nations, and in this they will also forsake the calling they have to be a conduit for divine blessing to the nations—to be estranged from God is to close the door on their divinely given mission to be the ones who correct the wrongs in the world. In becoming estranged from God, their mission, and their neighbor, they will turn in on themselves and becomes estranged from who they are and are intended to be. Israel will forget God is the source of their identity and create their own identity by their own means, completely disconnected from God and their neighbor, and they will propel themselves into manifold danger. Being convinced of their own power, they will credit their liberation to themselves. Isaiah knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this fifth week of lent, let us consider our times of our own voluntary estrangement from God, from our neighbor, from the earth, from our divinely given mission in the world that is to bring glory to God and well-being to the neighbor. In our estrangement from our God, our neighbor, our earth, and our mission, let us consider how we’ve become estranged from ourselves, not knowing who we are, whose we are, or for what we were created. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we are fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 871.  “…God recalls the sins of the Israelites (especially of the exiles’ ancestors), focusing on their failure to conduct proper sacrifices. The passage underscores the justice of their punishment and hence emphasizes that God is neither uncaring toward Israel nor too weak to save it. Once the punishment has been completed, there is no impediment to Israel’s restoration.”

[3] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 336. “The promises of the passage are divided into two parts, both introduced by a messenger formula. In the first, the emphasis falls on the merciful intervention of God for Israel’s sake to shatter Babylon’s power and to free the prisoners…In the second, there is a conscious allusion to the former deliverance from the captivity of Egypt…Of course, this event had become for Israel the example par excellence of God’s great redemptive power, which was continually celebrated in song and worship from its inception.”

[4] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 871. vv. 16-17 “A reference to the parting of the Reed Sea and the defeat of Pharaoh’s army there.”

[5] Sommer, “Isaiah,”871. “Long ago God took Israel out of slavery and defeated the mighty Egyptians. The liberation from Babylonian exile will prove even more impressive than the exodus from Egypt.”

[6] Childs, Isaiah, 337. “The rhetorical point of v. 18 is the contrast between the old and the new things. The coming salvation will completely transcend any experience of the past. The way in the wilderness will climax in the honoring of God not only by the wild beasts, but above all by his chosen people who declare his praise.”

[7] Childs, Isaiah, 337. “In spite of a broken text, the author interpret the Isaianic text as pointing to an eschatological new creation that shatters the old order.”

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“Prone to Wander…”: Desecrating Sacred Ground

Psalm 63:7-8 For you, Abba God, have been my helper, and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice. My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.

Introduction

I mentioned recently that, “Come Thou Fount” is not only one of my favorite hymns but is the inspiration for my messages through out Lent. As our sign out front says: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love.” While the third verse is my absolute favorite, the other two are remarkable. For this week, the first verse aligns well with our First Testament passage.

Come thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace!
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,
mount of God’s unchanging love.[1]

Remember that the season of Lent is about taking a deep, long, hard look in the mirror. The reality is, while we may not think about it often, we are prone to wonder from God. And by “we” I mean *all of us*–you, me, and whoever is sitting next to you. And this verse exposes us in a very subtle yet real way.  The verse weds the concept of teaching through singing and music making with being fixed on God’s mountain. The solicitation of the fount of every blessing—God—is the source of our blessing, of our singing, and the ground of our sure foundation. As in, as our feet are anchored in and on the “mount” of God’s unconditional, never stopping, always and forever love, we find ourselves on terra firma. God’s love for us is the solid ground from which our life, love, and liberation spring eternal; from this place, we should not wander.

But we do. Sometimes we wander because we forget that where we stand and on what we stand matters. Forgetting that we stand in and on the firm foundation of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, leads us to treat the very ground under our feet—the ground from which springs our very sustenance (food, shelter, clothing)—as if it has no essence of its own and is *only* there to be an object in our grand schemes to acquire power, prestige, and privilege, mere product for our grist mills. In forgetting where and on what we stand, we find ourselves tromping about and treading all over other people (our neighbors, the beloved of God), devaluing their alterity, their identity, their irreplaceable presence, demanding that they look and act more like the dominant group. When we forget that the mount on which we are fixed is the mountain of God, we desecrate sacred soil, leaving our shoes on as we step wherever and on whomever we need and want.

We are prone to tromp and tread about because we are prone to wander from our God of love.

Exodus 3:1-15

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When God saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

The First Testament text is from Exodus and highlights God’s calling of Moses. An interesting story in its own right; nothing beats a spontaneously combusting bush from which God’s voice beckons a person minding their own business. In my research, I discovered that this story is not a smooth, cohesive unit. Rather, it’s a merger from two different sources according to the Hebrew words—there’s different names for God and Pharoah, textual redundancies, and a textual intrusion.[2] I know that sounds like mundane, academic chatter; yet, knowing this actually helps the goal of this sermon. This splicing together of the text indicates that there’s an important theme being preserved and emphasized: God’s self-identification to Moses, Moses collision with God, and Moses’s subsequent sending by God.[3] From this moment on, the ground under Moses’s feet is going to be the mount of God’s unchanging love for God’s beloved, the people of God whom Moses represents and to whom Moses will (soon!) represent God. For it is there on Horeb—“the mountain of God”—where Moses comes face to face (flame?) with God on sacred, holy land.[4]

The text tells us that as Moses is on Horeb, he notices a bush that’s burning. This isn’t just any spontaneously combusting flora; it’s God’s presence,[5] and it’s intentionally trying to get Moses’s attention.[6] As the bush burns and doesn’t burn up, Moses is curious and comes closer. Then the text tells us that this is part of the reason for the flame: to get Moses’s attention—not just anyone but this one, the son-in-law of Jethro, the one called Moses. So, the bush calls out to Moses using his name twice. (The double use being an affectionate calling.) After Moses responds to the divine voice coming from the bush, God stops Moses from coming any closer and commands him to take off his shoes. Why? Because there are some places that are holy and sacred where one must walk carefully and tenderly; places where one must come and enter humbly and vulnerably. Everyone walks a bit different with shoes on, faster and with less concern for where they place their feet. But as soon as shoes come off, we walk slowly and with more concern for where we place our feet, being aware of both our ability to damage and be damaged.

In this sacred place and in this vulnerable position, Moses receives God’s self-disclosure. God tells Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” In this self-declaration, God also becomes the God of Moses. Standing on the mountain of God, face to face with the divine flame, shoeless and vulnerable, Moses received not only God’s self-declaration thus God’s self (coming into personal contact and experience with God like his forefathers[7]), but also his calling. After explaining that God has heard (and felt! cf. Ex. 2:25) the painful and tormented cries of Israel dying under oppression and alienation, God is going to deliver God’s people into liberation, and Moses will be the one through whom God will conduct this promised exodus. Here, Moses goes from shepherd to prophet.[8] Everything Moses does and says—from this moment onward—will work toward the liberation of God’s people from the oppression of Pharoah. From this day forward, everywhere Moses walks is sacred ground for God promises to be with Moses[9] for God will be who God will be:[10]that is, the one who will go with Moses and Israel.

Conclusion

None of what is in this passage from Exodus is about Israel forgetting where and bon which they stand. In fact, it’s about Moses being made aware that he’s on holy ground and will be as he walks into Pharoah’s throne room and demands the children of God be released and all in God’s name for God is with him. But here’s the thing, the bulk of Exodus is about exhorting Israel to stay with God, to keep their eyes on God, and walk with God thus walk with their neighbor and correct the wrongs in the world. But why? Why is this story a focal point in Israel’s history? Because, well, Israel has a history of finding themselves tromping about, shoes on, causing violence to the neighbors and to themselves, eager to bring glory to themselves, and forgetting the holy ground on which they stand with God. They will forget that their ground is hallowed and that they should tread tenderly and vulnerably. I say this not only because I’ve read the book; I say this because in a few chapters in this text, Israel will be liberated and will rejoice with singing and dancing and then swear that Moses is trying to kill them by leading them into this wilderness. Whether intentional or unintentional, Israel will begin to forsake God, to forget, and to wander away from their God whom they love and thus to also begin to see their neighbor as a threat, their land as theirs, and live as if they (and the promised land) weren’t intended to be a blessing through whom all the world (including other nations) will be blessed. Israel will get caught up in the lie that power and military might equal peace and safety, tall walls and ethnic purity equal security and blessedness. They will forget God is the source of their identity and create their own identity by their own means, with their shoes on, disconnected from the hallowed ground, the mount of God’s unchanging love. They will stand on their own land and wander from God and thus from their call. Moses knows this, God knows this.

So it is with us. And as we go through this third week of lent, let us consider our times of forgetting the hallowed ground we stand on, the times we forgot that there is tender earth under our feet, the very ground God walks with us as our neighbor. Let us consider how we’ve forgotten our calling to be a blessing of love, life, and liberation to our neighbors especially the least of these. Let us consider how we’ve forgotten the good story, forgotten that our terra firms is, was, and always will be God, and that without the heart of our Christian identity (Christ, God of very God) we cannot bear such an identity. As wonderful and miraculous as we are, we’re fleshy, meat creatures prone to wander. The good news is, God knows this and comes to do something about it.

[1] https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing

[2] Jefrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 110. “The current narrative is the result of an artful combination of the two early sources, J and E. This is intimated by the different names used for God in 3.4a and b, but the clearest indication is the fact that 3.9-15 seem intrusive: vv. 9, 10, and 15a are redundant with, respectively, vv. 7, 18b, and 16a; the people never ask for God’s name as Moses expects in v. 13; and vv. 10 and 18 describe the goal of Moses’ mission to Pharoah differently and use different terms for the Egyptian king. VV. 16-18 in fact read like a direct continuation of v. 8.”

[3] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “The consistent use of the name ‘God’ (‘elohim) in 3.9-15 identifies its source as E; the remainder of this section is mostly from J with a few other passages from E (such as vv. 1, 4b, 6b, and 20b). By incorporating material from both sources the redactor preserved important themes, such as the explanation of God’s name in v. 14 € and the fact that God both ‘appeared’ to Moses (3.2, 16; 4.1, 5 from J) and ‘sent’ him (vv. 10, 12-15, from E).”

[4] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “Horeb, alternate name for Mount Sinai (in E and in Deuteronomy). It is generally thought to be located in the Sinai Peninsula, though some believe it is in northwest Arabia, near Midian. Its designation mountain of God may indicate that it was already considered a sacred place, or it may be anticipatory. The first possibility may gain support from Egyptian inscriptions of the 4th  century BCE that refer to an area, apparently int his region, as ‘land of the nomads, Yahwe’; this might also be understood as ‘land of the nomads who worship Yahwe.’”

[5] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. V.2 “a manifestation of God. Angels (lit. ‘messengers’) usually take human form, but this one takes the form of fire, a substance evocative of the divine because it is insubstantial yet powerful, dangerous, illuminating, and purifying.”

[6] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110. “The burning bush is both a means of attracting Moses’ attention and a manifestation of God’s presence.”

[7] Tigay, “Exodus,” 110-111. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: This phrase later became the way that God is addressed in the ‘Amidah prayer. The repetition of ‘God’ before each patriarch is explained in ‘Etz Yosef a commentary on the Jewish prayerbook, as meaning that, like the patriarchs, each person should believe in God on the basis of personal investigation, not merely tradition.”

[8] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111. “I will send you as a Prophet, Moses’ primary roles is to serve as God’s emissary. Phrases with ‘send’…typify the selection of prophets…”

[9] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111.

[10] Tigay, “Exodus,” 111. “God’s proper name, disclosed in the next verse, is Yhvh (spelled ‘yod-heh-vav-heh’ in Heb; in ancient times the ‘vav’ was pronounced ‘w’). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, probably best translated as ‘I Will Be What I will Be,’ meaning ‘my nature will become evident form my actions.’ (Compare God’s frequent declarations below, that from His future acts Israel and Egypt ‘shall know that I am the Lord [Yhvh]’…Then he answers Moses’ question bout what to say to the people: ‘Tell them: ‘Ehyeh’ (‘I will Be,’ a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.’ This explanation derives God’s name from the ern ‘h-v-h,’ a variant form of ‘h-y-h’, to be.’ Because God is the speaker, He uses the first person form of the verb.”

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