Experience tells of lessons learned and lived—
choices made, words spoken, actions done—
all done once and unable to be undone once.
Choices hem off certain options in the moment—
though new opportunities come again activating
choice’s functioning sword of swift severance.
Words leave no trace over lips as they leave
but they hit like sticks and stones where ever
they land; leaving welts and bruises, even scars.
Actions flow from bodies as if summoned by a
divine wizard; like embodied incantations they
altar space—for better or worse—in a single blow.
And it’s all once: one choice, one word, one action;
that’s all it takes to forever change anything in a
specific way that can and will never be undone.
One
Moment
One
Choice
One
Word
One
Action
Changes
Everything
So maybe we should slow down when we are
faced with seemingly innocuous choices,
tempted to say that seemingly little thing,
provoked into that seemingly small gesture;
take that second, take that pause, slow down
and breathe—think twice, see well, listen more.
These choices, words, and actions do not fall
idly to the ground and flip-flap about like fish
pulled from waters and left to wither in the sun.
They are always given to others to carry away;
we pass on our choices, words, and actions as
if we are mail-carriers delivering both wanted
and unwanted packages to suspecting and un-
suspecting individuals traversing our journeys.
One
Moment
One
Choice
One
Word
One
Action
Changes
Everything
Tag: Love
Our Stories This Story: The Parents
I recommend reading/listening to the sermon from Ash Wednesday, which functions as an introduction to this Lenten series. You can access it here. For the previous sermon in this series, click here.
Psalm 27:5-7 One thing have I asked of [God]; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of [God] all the days of my life; To behold the fair beauty of [God] and to seek [God] in [God’s] temple. For in the day of trouble [God] shall keep me safe in [God’s] shelter; [God] shall hide me in the secrecy of [God’s] dwelling and set me high upon a rock. (73)
Introduction
“I like to think I know what I’m doing. I mean at least the kids…. Yes, honey, your shoes are over there by the front door…the kids need me to look like I know what I’m doing. Especially now. There are so many reasons…Hey! Put the cat down…she’s not a ball! There’s so much to consider and contemplate, and if I dare to really let it sink in *sips wine* about how bad our world is right now I may just never come … Well, if you take the 2 and then add it to the 6, what’s the answer then? …These kids, they’re young and need a future, a world, free from visible and invisible enemies and…Oh no, you did fall down! Here, let me get some ice…Sometimes I fear that I’ll crack under all this pressure *sips wine… I don’t feel that old but I’m bone deep exhausted; nearly burnt out.”[1]
From the Ash Wednesday 2022 Sermon
We’ve become a people who passes on isolation and alienation rather than story.
Our culture tells us we cannot be weak. It sings to us of the virtue of being strong and capable, rising to the top by virtue of our own inner drive and determination. We are “self-made”; we “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps”; we forge our own paths and strike out on our own; and we certainly don’t want any help we didn’t previously earn by our industrious autonomy.
While I wish I could say with confidence the church is a place where anyone can come to find solidarity in weakness, it’s not. Often, it’s the church’s malignant understanding of faith as a vibranium shield of protection perpetuating the lie: I’m too blessed to be stressed! Ironically, it’s among Christians—following Jesus who not only submitted to human weakness manifest in death and who elevated the weak and downtrodden to the status of blessed—where the weak are ostracized and shamed.
We’ve become trapped in the myth of self-sufficiency and strength leading to isolation and alienation. We no longer value communal and mutual thriving and survival. It’s now: one for one. Neighbors are strangers—especially if everyone is a threat. Kids move away from parents; grandparents live in different states; and everyone is forced into their own bubble isolated and alienated. In this scheme, marriages buckle under the pressure to be all in all; partners bear the burden of being the one and only and forever for the other.
Parents, caregivers, and guardians—anyone connected to the life of a child—carry the stress of balancing the demands and the mythology of autonomy and self-sufficiency. And as stress increases, as fears grow because of global pandemic, ecological crises, social tumult, and war, tensions rise driving thick, thick wedges between us, forcing us more and more unable to ask for help, confess need, and express weakness; afraid that if we do, it’ll fall apart, crumble to the ground, and trapping those under our care and charge under the rubble. We put on brave faces, smile when we don’t want to, tell them everything is fine and teach them that weakness is bad, fear isn’t real, and opening up isn’t what adults do. And the myth goes on; so, too, does isolation and alienation.
Luke 13:31-35
At that same hour, some Pharisees approached [Jesus] saying to him, “Get out! and travel from here!; Herod desires to put you to death!” And he said to them, “You travel to that fox and tell him this: behold, I cast out demons and accomplish healings today and tomorrow and I am finished on the third [day] … “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and the one who stones the ones who have been sent to them, how often I desired to gather your children together in the same manner a hen [gathers together] her brood of young birds under [her] wings, and you did not desire it.” (Lk 13:31-32, 34)[2]
Luke 13:31-32, 34
In this rather cryptic[3] message from Jesus, he associates his presence with the work of God by correlating it to the great line of prophets and “the ones sent to them” who were once present with God’s people, too. So, it’s no surprise that he suffers the same plight as those before him (trying to be killed and stoned).[4] Those who are sent by God to proclaim God’s message of liberation to the captives (God’s judgment on the kingdoms of humanity) are met with hostility and disdain by those who rule over the people with authority and power intimately tied to subjection and oppression.[5] One doesn’t casually walk in and start dismantling human-made power structures, awaken people from myths of false strength, isolation, and alienation, and exhort them into their own story with God and think they’ll leave town unscathed. Herod has every reason to hate Jesus and seek his life.[6]
Jesus then calls out, in tones that I can only imagine mirror his very loving verbal embrace of Martha uttered previously in chapter 10: Jerusalem, Jerusalem…. The double use of the name indicates a deep sense of love. I know this tone; I’ve used this tone. The tone of deep love for this person who is straying or making choices in opposition to life and thriving; the same tone of yearning and hope and summoning and beckoning back. The tone used to get your child’s attention in the most kind and loving and compassionate way. Not the short and curt hollered version; the slow, lyrical, warm song-like version. The one that makes the tumult and chaos settle as this one just called turns and looks at the one calling their name. This is God grabbing the wayward chin of Jerusalem and gently pulling their gaze to God’s longing and eager and loving face. This is God in maternal love with God’s beloved.
And like a mother, Jesus is eager to gather up and protect the beloved from the threat of reckless and senseless destruction.[7] And if you know chickens—as Christie explained to me on Wednesday—then you know that a broody hen will aggress anything threatening to harm order to protect her brood of young birds. As Jesus compares himself to this broody hen, he shows his concern for their spiritual well-being and their physical well-being; he will deal with those who peddle a mythology of lordship over God’s people rendering them oppressed and enslaved to human-lordship and in themselves. God will contend with those who exploit and abuse God’s people, trapping them in lies of isolation and alienation.[8]
Conclusion
The sad part is that Jerusalem, according to Jesus, doesn’t want protection or deliverance.[9] They’re deep in their myth, they don’t need the help, they’ve got this taken care of, everything is fine. They are forehead deep in their own story, handed to them by those who are exploiting and oppressing them; they’ve forgotten another story[10]…the one God gave them declaring them to be God’s people loved by God, empowered by God’s glory and spirit, created for life and not death, for mutuality and not isolation and alienation.
I sit back and I watch it,
NF “Paralyzed”
hands in my pockets
Waves come crashing over me
but I just watch ‘em
I just watch ‘em
I’m under water but I feel like I’m on top of it
I’m at the bottom and I don’t know what the problem is
I’m in a box
But I’m the one who locked me in
Suffocating and I’m running out of oxygen[11]
The longer we believe the lie that we are fine on our own, the longer we will be stuck in a box we’ve locked ourselves in. The longer we tell ourselves this lie of “strongest is best,” the longer alienation and isolation will continue to be passed on like genetic traits from parent to child. Our children are really amazing humans; that we treat them as less is astounding. When we don’t speak up, put words to our fears and concerns with them, we tell them they aren’t trustworthy, and that they must be like this, too—dismiss their feelings and concerns. Your kids, the children in our community, the young ones in our society understand way more than we give them credit. When we put on our façade of strength, it’s no wonder they grow distrustful and wary of adults…we’re lying to them, and they know it.
When we have the audacity to buck the trend of alienation and isolation by intentionally including our young ones into our hearts and minds, we give them the freedom to confess their own fears, to validate what they are feeling, and, as a consequence they acquire their own liberation from fear. By bringing them into our narrative we not only eliminate our alienation and isolation but also theirs. In doing this, we teach them a better way, a better narrative of solidarity and love.[12] We step out of our box, clinging to the divine story of love and solidarity, and—breathing in deep—confess: I might be scared, but I’m the beloved child of God and not alone; I’m concerned, but anything is possible with God; I’m helpless to solve this, but God is with us in this suffering and I’m present with you in yours.
Beloved, we are not alone; we are with God thus with each other and with each other thus with God.
[1] Taken from the Ash Wednesday 2022 Sermon
[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted
[3] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 178. “The message is rather cryptic, for he will take much more than three days on his way to Jerusalem- For this reason. Some take it as a reference to the three days in the tomb. There is no doubt that he is connecting his response to his passion, as indicated by the reference at the end of verse 35.”
[4] Gonzalez Luke 178. “The lament over Jerusalem connects the fate of Jesus with that of those who have gone before him. Some take his claim that he has ‘often’ desired to care for the children of Jerusalem as an indication that he is speaking of his own participation in the ongoing work of God—as the Wisdom of God to which reference has already been made in a similar context in 11:49.”
[5] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 534. “Here, though, Jerusalem comes into the limelight not only as Jesus destination but also, more particularly, with reference to its significance for Jesus. As the divine agent of salvation, Jesus must take his message to the center of the Jewish world, Jerusalem. What can he expect by way of response in Jerusalem? The pattern for which Jerusalem is known is that of killing divine messengers….Although it is possible to find in Jesus’ prophetic words over Jerusalem a thread of hope, the motif of judgment is more prominent: As God’s agent, Jesus must carry the divine message to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem kills those whom God sends; on account of this, Jerusalem itself is doomed.”
[6] Green Luke 535. “Given his characterization within the Lukan narrative thus far, we have every reason to imagine that the threat presented by Herod is a real one. As tetrarch of Galilee, Herod first put an end to John’s prophetic ministry by having him imprisoned (3:19-20). Later, we learn, Herod is responsible for beheading John (9:9), and we hear nothing to mitigate Luke’s sweeping characterization of Herod as a doer of evil things (3:20). Nevertheless, the peril represented by Herod’s malevolence is not for Jesus a motivating factor. Instead, he refers to his intention to continue carrying out his ministry as before; although he will be on his way,’ just as the Pharisees had urged, his going is not for the purpose of escaping the hand of Herod. It is, rather, to bring to fruition the divine purpose for his mission.”
[7] A reference to one of the ways to explain the term “Fox” for herod; cf. Green Luke 535-536.
[8] Gonzalez Luke 178. “The image of himself caring for the children of Jerusalem as a mother hen takes care of her brood gives particular significance to his calling Herod a fox. A hen guards her chicks against foxes. Jesus wants to protect the children of Jerusalem not only from what we would consider spiritual or religious ills, but also from the exploitation of those who lord it over them.” And, “There is no doubt that in this passage Jesus bemoans the disobedience of Jerusalem. But Christians should draw the conclusion that Jesus bemoans also the disobedience of his church and its numbers. Us too Jesus wishes to protect like a mother hen—and to protect against all evil, spiritual as well as political.”
[9] Green Luke 539. “Jesus so identifies with God’s care for Jerusalem that he is able to affirm his longstanding yearning to gather together his people for shelter and in restoration. Alas, this desire is not shared by the Jerusalemites.”
[10] Green Luke 538
[11] “Paralyzed” by NF; written by Feuerstein Nate, Profitt Thomas James
[12] I am balancing the idea that it is one thing to unload on your kids everything that is better suited for a friend, mentor, or therapist and acknowledging with your kids that you too have these emotions and concerns.
Be Merciful as God is Merciful
Psalm 37:41-42 But the deliverance of the righteous comes from [God]; [God] is their stronghold in time of trouble. [God] will help them and rescue them; [God] will rescue them from the wicked and deliver them, because they seek refuge in [God].
Introduction
Being told to “love your enemies” is easier said than done. The command is muddled by how we define “enemy” in a way that leans toward those *we* don’t like. It’s definitely hard to override disdain with feelings of love; when we don’t like someone, we just don’t like someone. Enemies also aren’t the people who we can’t forgive because they hurt us once in some way. That’s a real feeling and one I understand very well. Yet, it has its own category. Still, that person is not an enemy, no matter how angry you (still) are.
Who is the enemy?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer defines “enemy” in his text, The Cost of Discipleship, writing on Matthew 5:43-48:
“By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love, who forgive us nothing when we forgive them all, who requite our love with hatred and our service with derision…”[1]
Cost of Discipleship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in 1937, was already a target of Hitler’s personal aggression. Two days after Hitler took office on January 30, 1933, Bonhoeffer aired a public radio broadcast in which he offered criticism of the Führer (without naming him directly); this broadcast was cut off before it was finished.[2] The text quoted above came to Bonhoeffer in response to his contemplation of the Sermon on the Mount and how it impacted the believer in terms of Christian-life formation related to “what it means to follow Jesus Christ.”[3] As the church struggled to find it’s voice under the tyranny of Hitler, Bonhoeffer sought to articulate something into the void. For Bonhoeffer he himself in specific and Christians in general were at a “fork in the road.”[4] He and other pastors were under great pressure to capitulate to the oppressive demands and threats of the NSDAP[5] who was strangling and starving all resistance.
All that to say: Bonhoeffer, even with his privilege, wasn’t writing about enemy-love from a secluded and safe distance. He wasn’t instructing people who were fighting for their lives while he grew fat from luxury and comfort. He was in the thick of it, guiding others into it, and teaching those younger about this radical conception of love even for those who are threatening your life and survival.
“Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love? Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy? Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies.”[6]
Cost of Discipleship
Who loves the one who bullies them? Who loves the ones who are bent on violence and destruction and death? Who loves those enlisted in this service of a fascist dictator in the Sturmabteilung (SA)[7] and the Schutzstaffel (SS)?[8] But yet—in the face of fear, terror, threat, and very real death—this is what Bonhoeffer was asking from all who would listen to the exhortation of Christ.
Luke 6:27-38
“But to you all I say to those who are listening: Love your enemies, in the same way act toward those who hate you, bless those who are cursing you, offer prayer concerning those who are reviling you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, present also the other; and from the one who removes your cloak, do not hinder the tunic also. Give to all who are asking you, and from the one who removes things form you do not demand [them] back. And according to the manner you wish people do to you, you do to them likewise. [9]
Luke 6:27-31
When Jesus exhorts “those who are listening” to do what seems like the impossible, he is elevating the call to righteousness.[10] While you might have believed x, or thought y, I say…ↈ.[11] (Something utterly new.) Whatever was assumed, is no longer. Jesus begins by calling attention to an alteration, specifically about “enemies.”
For Jesus, and especially for those who follow him, Love—divine love—is more than a feeling; it’s an action.[12] And not a passive action, but a proactive one; love empowers us to love in radical ways, even to love those who hate us.[13] Love, for Jesus, is done toward others (those least deserving and most in need) in such a way that it reflects what you would want done to your own body and person. In the love-economy of the reign of God: love loves, no matter the status of the other person. [14] In the love-economy of the reign of God not even enemies are the categorical other; for this new community of Christ—the ones who follow after Jesus in person (flesh and bone)[15] and then later by the power of the Holy Spirit—there are only porous boundaries. It is this very community who refuses to declare definitively that another or an other is an “enemy”, undeserving of love, kindness, mercy.[16] Jesus exhorts all those who are listening to love especially the “enemy.” [17]
The reason for the exhortation is embedded in the second half of the text, “And your wages will be many, and you will be children of the highest, because God is gentle on behalf of the ungrateful and wicked people,” (6:35). In other words, love is about mercy, and God is merciful—abundantly merciful. So, as God is merciful and kind,[18] so too are those who follow Jesus, God of very God.[19] The basis of the ethical posture of this new community: do as God does because God’s nature made manifest in God’s Christ is the starting point for any and all discussions of “Christian” ethics.[20] And this Jesus will allow love to cover over and define every space and distance between him and the other so that he can declare that other as beloved even when we’d say otherwise.
Conclusion
In the encounter with God in the event of faith the believer is tossed about and placed in the world in a way that is right-side-up even if it feels completely up-side-down. It is in this new life in God, fueled by the receipt of divine love, and from the magnitude of mercy we proceed (like being (re)born) into the world bearing the image of God in our features and new genetic code marked by love.[21] Because we have been recreated through faith, through our encounter with God in the event of faith, this puts a pause (even if momentary) on our desire to judge others by their actions. We are asked to think of what we would want from someone when we were acting in such a way; thus, we cannot determine who is and who is not to receive our mercy and grace if God does not withhold either from us.[22] If we so desire grace and mercy; are we also able to grant such things to others?
Loving the enemy feels impossible if it means I must hug and kiss and “love-on” the one who is hurting me, wounding me, being violent toward me. It’s just another violent Christian doctrine if it means I must lose myself to become a vacuous vehicle for abuse—this actually isn’t love because love is not vacuous existence lacking self, but active participation in the activity of love.
But maybe I’m radical enough to think it’s possible: because with God all things are possible. If we walk in love because we’re born of Love, then where we are there that space is filled with love. If God is with us, so too is God’s love. It does not mean I now think this enemy is just great, but it may mean I see them with God’s eyes. Maybe, I see a human, stuck in a misconception of the world detrimental to others and to themselves. I might see one who was a mere baby, held tightly by loving arms of a mother; I might even cry for sadness of the pain that caused this one to be as they are right now.
I know by standing in love and stepping forward in love, love goes with me. I do know that—like tiles being flipped over from the side of “not-love” to the side of “love”—the space and distance between me and my enemy is overhauled from not-love to love. (I do not even need to be physically close to my enemy to alter the space between us.) I know that by dropping the term “enemy”, I’ve already lost one; I know that by declaring “beloved” this one is now not my enemy. There is power in words. So, what happens when we use our words to alter the space and distance between us and our enemies? Would we not want that for ourselves? Would we not want someone else to see us as “beloved” and not as “enemy”? When we allow love to redefine our space and distance and location, then anything is really possible because love will always crack open what is to make room for possibility to blossom.
Beloved, you’re loved by God; mercy is new every morning. This divine love and mercy, forever altering the space between God and humanity bent on their own determinations and judgments and gains, is the very love that is glorified among those very children of God at their worst and best. God’s love is most exalted when it does what it loves to do: bringing God’s life and light to the farthest corners of the cosmos, overhauling death to make room for life, declaring beloved those whom were once called “enemy.”
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship New York, NY: Macmillan, 1959. 164. Emphasis, mine
[2] Christiane Tietz Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Tran s Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016. 36.
[3] Tietz, Resistance, 60.
[4] Tietz, Resistance, 63.
[5] Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; The National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
[6] Bonhoeffer Discipleship 164. Emphasis, mine.
[7] Trans: Storm Division; the original para-military force of the Nazi’s.
[8] Trans: Armed Military/”Protection Squad”
[9] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.
[10] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 94 “The Sermon on the Plain now turns to those who are ready to accept Jesus’ call to a greater righteousness, and is therefore introduced with the words, “But I say to you that listen.” This may also be read as a further explanation of the last beatitude and its parallel woe, which have to do with the hatred of others toward the disciples.” See also: Joel Green (bibliographic material below): “A new beginning in Jesus’ sermon is marked by his words, ‘But I say to you that listen. …’ This should not blind us to the intimate relationship of this section of the address to what has preceded…” 269.
[11] Green Luke 272. “…he is asking people to accept an inversion of the world order, to agree with him that the world order has been inverted, and to act accordingly.”
[12] Gonzalez Luke 94. “Significantly, when one compares this section in Luke to its parallel in Matthew, it is clear that Luke emphasizes the use of possessions, and that he wants to make clear that Christian love is not just a sentiment or a feeling, but also an attitude leading to concrete action: “do good to those who hate you.’”
[13] Green Luke 272. “Love is expressed in doing good – that is, not by passivity in the face of opposition but in proactivity: doing good blessing, praying, and offering the second cheek and the shirt along with the coat.”
[14] Green Luke 272. “The category of “enemies” may include others, however, and not only those who deliberately oppose Jesus’ followers. Because the beggar is habitually defined as outside the circles of companionship of all but other beggars, they would not be classed as “friends” but as “enemies,” outsiders. Love is due them as well, as though they were comrades and kin, and in their case love is expressed in giving.”
[15] Green Luke 271-272. “Jesus’ sermon, then, serves an interpretive function for the narrative as it has developed thus far, casting in positive and constructive terms the worldview and concomitant practices Jesus’ message portends. It is also challenging, summoning its audience(s) to adopt this alterative view of the world and so to measure its practices by its canons.”
[16] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 270. “One corollary of Jesus’ message, then, is the construction of a boundary, the delineation of behavior characteristic of those within the community. This is an important observation, since one of the distinguishing marks of his ethic is a worldview that advocates love of enemies. But as a practice, it would appear that love of enemies is designed to mitigate social tensions that, if habitual, would jeopardize the identity of any group. How can this community be distinguished by a practice that dissolves any such distinctions? …in essence, Jesus calls on his followers. To form а community the boundaries of which are porous and whose primary emblematic behavior is its refusal to treat others (even, or especially, those who hate, exclude, revile, and defame you) as though they were enemies.”
[17] Green Luke 272. “Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies,” lack any commonly held ethical base and can only be understood as an admonition to conduct inspired by God’s own graciousness (W 350-36). This is not love for all humanity in general, but more specifically for those who stand in opposition to Jesus’ followers – those whom Luke has already noted in narration (5:27-6:11) and about whom Jesus has already spoken (vv 22-23).”
[18] Green Luke 271. “…in redefining the world for his followers, potential and actual, Jesus posits as its foundation his image of God as merciful Father (6:36) – a base on which he can draft the character of his followers, character that will manifest itself in the demeanor and practices here described.”
[19] Gonzalez Luke 94. This is parallel to Matthew’s ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. S:48). While Matthew’s words have often been taken out of context as the basis for a theological claim about God’s ontological perfection, Luke’s leave no room for such an interpretation. The divine perfection that the disciples are to imitate is the perfection of an all-embracing mercy
[20][20] Gonzalez Luke 94. “Furthermore, even though we often tend to think that the basis for the Christian ethics of love is the Golden Rule, in the final analysis the basis for Christian ethics is the very nature and action of God.”
[21] Green Luke 273. “…he incorporates into one utterance the character of this new people and the practices it engenders; theirs will be a countercultural existence indeed for their lives are based on an inverted understanding of their social world.”
[22] Green Luke 275. “Just as the merciful God does not predetermine who will or will not be the recipients of his kindness, so Jesus’ followers must refuse to “judge” – that is, to prejudge, to predetermine who might be the recipients of their graciousness. This is nothing but the command to love one’s enemies restated negatively. In an important sense, Jesus’ instructions are to refuse to act as those scribes and Pharisees had done in 5:27-32, as they calculated beforehand the status of those toll collectors and sinners and thereby excluded them from their circles of social interaction. …Jesus’ followers give freely, without dragging others and especially those in need into the quagmire of never-ending cycles of repayment and liability. And God will lavishly repay them.”
Unpitiable Hope
Psalm 1:1-3a Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful! Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on [God’s] law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water.
Introduction
I fear hope has gone the way of bathwater when a bath is over: swirling down the drain. The phrase, “I hope so” seems to carry the same force as “thoughts and prayers.” I think we’ve lost some of our willingness to be creative. Creativity takes on a forward-action of momentum; in creating, I move into the space where there is nothing with my hands, feet, head, heart, words, thoughts, actions and put something there. I believe the concept of hope carries this same action-oriented ability (hope and creativity seem to run on the same fuel of imagination); as of late, hope seems stripped of any forward action. When we use the word, it falls from our lips with a downtrodden lilting tone flirting with despair and heavy with doubt; our hands appear tied behind our back as we whisper the phrase to some unknown force and wait for intervention, like waiting on a superhero who will (hopefully) arrive just in time.
I don’t think it’s only an issue of creativity. I think we’ve emphasized too much intellectualism, rationalism, reasonability, and sensibility defined as “common sense.” We’ve allowed what is to triumph over what could be or might be or would be; we’ve stolen away with possibility and shoved it in the attic cranny or the basement closet of the house of actuality: what “is” is best and what isn’t “is” is worst. But if this is our axiom, then isn’t this axiom a death sentence? We’re stuck, if this is our paradigm. Doubly stuck if our hands are tied behind our back. What point is there in having hope if all there is is what we see; we know we don’t hope in things seen especially if all our world and society present is tumult and chaos…
The ultimate problem is a confusion of hope and expectation. When we consider hope we think about something we expect to happen in the future. In this way, hope is that thing that has (as of late) disappointed rather than pleased. I’m quite familiar with theologians, both alive and dead, who have no room for hope in their theologies. I’ve always marveled at such a stance but haven’t judged it because I get it. When hope fails to produce material or spiritual alterations to our life—extricating it from the burden of bludgeoning demoralization or the monotony of the mundane—it makes sense to ditch it. If my hope keeps presenting as dreaming of phantoms of good and better, rather than material bodily presence, then it’s nothing but that which perpetually disappoints me. It’s the mythological carrot of sadistic King Future luring on the peasants of the present eager to steal their labor and love.[1]
Sadly, we’ve conflated future expectation and present hope. When I’ve read through the First Testament and the recorded stories of Israel’s journey and walk with God, Israel’s hope in God is a ripe present hope based on historical stories hallmarking the past: we hope now because God has done… Today we can press on because yesterday God saw us through it.
Hope keeps an eye on history for the present; future expectation uses history as certainty for the future. Future expectation sidesteps the present and anchors what was into what will be, and flags are mounted on that moon with vigor and certainty. But the problem here is that we are not in a position to substantiate the future with…anything—neither with certain cynicism nor opportunistic optimism. We do not have the ability to throw anything far enough and hard enough into the future to populate it. I can only populate the present and in doing so participate in populating the past. I can’t penetrate the future; it always remains right outside of my grasp.
So, hope must accompany me today oriented toward possibility and built on the story of what has happened.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Now if it is proclaimed that Christ has been raised from the dead, how are some of you saying there is no resurrection of the dead? … If then Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain and you are still in your sins. Also, therefore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If with reference to this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable of all people
But now, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.[2]
1 Corinthians 15:12, 17-20, translation mine
Notice that in this part of the letter to the Corinthians, Paul challenges the refutation circulating among the Corinthians that resurrection isn’t real[3] by turning to story to validate the proclamation that Christ is the first fruits of hope of resurrection, hope that the death that threatened does not carry the final word. Using logic[4] to explain the consequences of such a denial, Paul calls the Corinthians back into the story, their story. Remember … remember what God has done[5]…This is all God’s work; as it was then, is now, and will be forever.
The point at stake, for Paul, is the vanity of faith and the emptiness of the story of God’s activity in the world if even this part is a lie.[6] Thus, Paul (eagerly but gently) reminds the Corinthians to consider the work of God, to consider the possibility that remains existent around them independent of what makes sense and what they can see. He explains the fruitlessness of a claim that resurrection from the dead isn’t real or couldn’t be because it’s beyond anything we’ve ever witnessed or demonstrated in our seeking of knowledge through the pursuit of science. In doing so, he allows the Corinthians to linger in a moment of hopelessness. If Christ isn’t raised from the dead by God and the power of the Holy Spirit…then what are you doing? The story is pointless: your faith counts for nothing; the dead are not asleep[7] but are dead; you are stuck where you are; death reigns and new life is a myth. For Paul, to completely reject Christ’s resurrection because you can’t prove it or it doesn’t make sense is the most hopeless posture to be in. It is a posture to be pitied because it is without hope and life.[8]
Why?
Because such a statement puts human limitations on God. For all intents and purposes, we could read this passage in 1 Corinthians as a litany of questions addressed to the Corinthians: Where’s the possibility? Where’s the creativity? Where’s the daringness to imagine something other than just what we have here and now? Where is the audacity to question and to ask, “What is it?” (Manna) Without the interrogatives, without the subjunctive mood and future possible conditional clauses, without the question mark, where would we be but stuck in the indicative and the imperative with the full-stop and exclamation mark forever prohibiting us from the forward-action of creativity and hope. We’d be without story, without room to grow, to experience, and to dare. Isn’t that just stasis? Isn’t stasis death? Isn’t that state the most to be pitied?
Conclusion
But yet we were made to live and not just exist but live: boldly and daringly, marinated in divine love and clothed in hope.
If we allow God to be God (the Creator) and humans to be humans (the created, the creature) then what the future is, is God’s alone because that “not-yet” resides yet in God—all time is in God. We can’t declare that x is impossible because that’s a substantiation of the future, so too is: x will be. The only thing we are given as terminology to speak of tomorrow is the language of possibility and the space of paradox. What is isn’t ever all there is, thus we live in the collision of possible and paradox performing revolutionary resistance to the powers that threaten to take our lives (material, spiritual, social, sexual, financial, political, etc.).[9]
Here in is hope’s realm.
Beloved, come into this story today, take my hand around this table and hear the wonderful proclamation of God’s love for you that echoes through all the halls of time seeking your ears to hear and your eyes to see and your heart to dare to hope. There is more here than we know, for we proclaim Christ raised from the dead and our hope is not in vain.
[1] This and the following two paragraphs taken from the introduction to this episode of my old podcast: Sancta Colloquia. https://laurenrelarkin.com/2021/06/18/hope-in-the-mess/
[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.
[3] Anthony C. Thiselton The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text TNIGTC Eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1214. “The first refutation now addresses what in the language of deliberative rhetoric would be called the “disadvantages” (or, for Paul, dire, unacceptable consequences) of any attempt to deny the possibility or applicability of resurrection as a reality or concept in principle. Such a denial would entail the unimaginable claim that Jesus Christ himself had not been raised from the dead. If the universal principle has no currency, by deductive logic a particular instance of it has no currency either. Any possible sense of confusion for the modern reader arises because the resurrection of Christ is also regarded … as the paradigm case of resurrection in reality.”
[4] Thiselton 1 Corinthians 1217. “An a priori denial of the possibility of resurrection thereby logically excludes the resurrection of Christ. These verses underline Paul’s expectation that believing Christians will respect logical coherence and rational thought. He does not hesitate to appeal to it.”
[5] Intentionally using the perfect passive here to highlight this is God’s work (passive) and that it happened in a previous moment but has ramifications for us now in that Christ is still raised.
[6] Thiselton 1 Corinthians 1216. “The fundamental kerygma has as its content the raised Christ (the force of the perfect passive ἐγήγερται is that Christ was raised and continues to live: present state on the basis of past event). Hence, to deny the possibility of resurrection as such is to knock the bottom out of what constitutes a central article of Christian faith (ἐν πρώτοις, 15:3)…”
[7] Thiselton 1 Corinthians 1221. “However, sleep regularly denotes the experience of death for Christians as pregnant with hope and becomes a standard term…”
[8] Thiselton 1 Corinthians 1221. “Paul carefully portrays someone who has placed hope in Christ with nothing beyond, i.e., only so. ἐλεεινότεροι denotes more pitiable, more to be pitied, followed by the genitive of comparison πάντων ἀνθρώπων, than all human beings…”
[9] This and the remaining paragraphs taken from the introduction to this episode of my old podcast: Sancta Colloquia. https://laurenrelarkin.com/2021/06/18/hope-in-the-mess/
Exposed and Loved
Psalm 138:1-2 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I will sing your praise. I will bow down toward your holy temple and praise your Name, because of your love and faithfulness…
Introduction
Have you ever been exposed?
I’m sure we all have stories from our childhood where a parent or an older sibling found us mid infraction. A story that always comes to mind for me was the time in first grade. I took it upon myself to defend my friend who was disciplined by the driver of the bus during the ride home from school. As I stepped down from the bus, I turned, and then gave the bus driver a selection of choice words. Then I sprinted home—as fast as possible—through waist deep Minnesota snow while wearing moonboots. What I didn’t know was that my big brother had been right there when I let those words rip. And, for a kid who was regularly messing up, he now had his moment of glory: the baby of the family had done something wrong… he was ready to expose me. And he did. Let’s just say, I didn’t use some of those words for a very long time.
While this was a rather comical moment from my history, there are other moments I keep locked in my heart, moments when I was exposed but not unto punishment, judgment, and condemnation but unto mercy, grace, and life. Those moments when I did not receive what I rightfully deserved to receive, I hold as treasures of my history. These moments are rich and profound; they weave together that which is bad with that which is good, that which was ugly with that which is beautiful, that which was submerged in lightlessness with that which is exposed in lightfulness.
One such moment was an extensive moment of existence where I felt my life falling from my body as I lost myself into my pain and anguish, into my greed and vanity, into my self-inflicted violence and abuse. I was a sham. There was not life in me even though I went about from day to day. I hated me. I hated who I was. I could barely look in the mirror because I couldn’t handle the deep sadness of disappointment and failure. But then God. God spoke through the humble proclamation of God’s love for the world in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I heard something I couldn’t believe to be true: me? Loved? Good? Welcomed? A holy and righteous God and “Lauren” in the same sentence?
My life was changed. Forever. I’d never be the same. Love changes us.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Then he was seen by James, then to all the apostles. Now, last of all as if one untimely born, he was seen also by me. For I, I am the least of the apostles of whom I am not fit to be called apostle on the very account that I persecuted the church of God. Now by the grace of God, I am what I am, and the grace of God with reference to me has not been empty…[1]
1 Corinthians 15:7-10
So, when I read Paul’s words in 1 Cor 15:7-10, it’s this moment of confession—of his own encounter with God in the event of faith exposing him—that becomes the operative force surging through this passage. Yes, the proto-credal statements[2] present in the earlier part of chapter 15 are important; yet, the thrust of the chapter hinges on the rampant divine love in the world seeking and saving the lost, of whom Paul is a member. This confessional outburst of qualifying (or disqualifying) content highlights the magnitude of divine love, it’s remarkably unconditional character, and its power to expose one unto life…no matter how bad they are. For all intents and purposes, as Paul considers the proclamation of the gospel which he received and which he shares with the Corinthians,[3] he is caught up in the emotional profundity of God’s love for him; God’s transformative love saved him from his death filled ways and view of the world unto and into God’s love and life.[4]
Before Paul does launch into his own desperate history and the work of God in the midst of that history, Paul anchors the contents of the gospel proclamation (the life, death, and resurrection) of Christ in the scriptures (“according to the writings”[5]). In doing this, Paul highlights for the Corinthians that this divine activity of love in Christ is the same divine activity of love that has been proclaimed in the midst of God’s people throughout the first testament in the words of Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim (the revelation of the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom writings).[6] Subsequently, the divine activity of love that is the foundation and the source of the creation of the cosmos is also the very source of the recreative event of encounter with God in the event of faith; God is the God of creation and new creation, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.[7]
Thus, as Paul poetically describes his situation in the midst of speaking of divine activity of love in the world, he emphasizes the power of God’s love surging through the world wrapping up into God and into Love all who get caught up. To be caught up into God through the act of divine love seeking the beloved is the salvation event. To be loved by God, to be given God’s grace for you no matter what is being saved: saved from a sham existence into a true one, one that has substance, presence, and is filled with the fullness of emotional and physical actuality with and for others and not merely for oneself. And Paul’s point is ultimately this profound reality: as he was going about persecuting the Church, God loved him into new creation—God caught him up, he did not catch God.[8] This grace of God and love from God is all God; and if all God then it is secured because it’s God’s work and God secures God’s work in God’s self (God’s promises do not return void or are they uttered in vain or are they fruitless). In other words, if this is God’s work of love toward us and it is not our work, then we cannot lose this grace and love because it’s not ours to lose. You can’t lose God’s love because God loves you and not because you do this or don’t do that; God just loves you, dearly and deeply loves you.
Conclusion
Our encounters with God in the event of faith can be big or small, they can rival Paul’s in sudden dramatic fashion, or they can be a subtle slow reveal. Yet, no matter what, they are never insignificant because they expose us unto new life. For me, for my story, my encounter with God felt big like being swept up in a wave of everything too good to be true: to be completely seen and loved for no reason than just because. I’m certain I’m here because of I was so swept up. And I’m not only here in this church and in these robes, but actually here…present in body, mind, and soul. The cry of my heart met in God’s exposing love unto life.
Save me, I’m lost
Show Me What I’m Looking For
Oh, Lord, I’ve been waiting for you
I’ll pay any cost
Save me from being confused
Show me what I’m looking for[9]
But, I am also here, in this building and in these robes to walk in the same footsteps of Paul. I now get to tell you that if God caught me up in God’s exposing love, you, too, Beloved, are caught up. Every priest called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ—the articulation of God’s divine activity of love in the world—must share the good news of God’s love with the people they are called to love. And I love that word “share”. Not only do I share with you the story of God’s love for the world and for you, I share in it with you. I too am here to hear the story even as I am charged to tell it. I share in the gracious and unconditional gift of God’s self revealed in God’s grace and love for me, for you, for us, for the world.
When we tell the story of God’s love for the world in Christ to others, let us remember that our stories are now woven into in this one—no matter how bad or how ugly you think your story is or has been, it is now embedded and transformed in this good and beautiful story, radically transformed in the light of the glory of God for the glory of God. We are, truly, loved into new creations by the author of our salvation and foundation of our lives, by the one who threw the stars into place and the spun the planets into orbit; we are, truly, and forever, no longer lost, no longer confused, because we are the beloved.
[1] Translation mine.
[2] Anthony C. Thiselton The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text TNIGTC Eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1188. “Since the death and resurrection of Christ are both states of affairs or events extra nos and transforming events which shape faith, both aspects are fundamental for 15:3-5…Hence foundational confessions in the pre-Pauline and Pauline churches serve both as declarative acts of truth claims in the context of proclamation and teaching and as an oath of loyalty in baptism, the Eucharist, or times of persecution.”
[3] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 1185. “τίνι λόγω is probably instrumental and is used here as if it were a relative, as it occurs frequently in the papyri. Any difficulty dissolves…as soon as we recall that λόγος often denotes not simply word, message, or act of speaking but also the content or substance of a declaration, assertion, proposition, or other communicative act. The verb εὐαγγελίζομαι already means to proclaim the gospel; hence Paul refers to the substance of the gospel that I proclaimed to you.”
[4] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 1184-1185. “We must understand the gospel in 15:1, therefore, to denote more than the message of the resurrection, but not less. It denotes the message of salvation; in vv. 3-4 Paul endorses the shared pre-Pauline tradition which both proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ and interprets it in terms of the saving and transforming power of God as this receives explanation and intelligibility within the frame of reference provided by the [Old Testament] scripture.”
[5] …κατὰ τὰς γραφὰς… (found in vv. 3 and 4).
[6] Thiselton, 1 Corinthians, 1195. This paves the way for our understanding the particular nuance of the phrase according to the scriptures when it is applied as a context for understanding the resurrection of Jesus Christ, (a) First, it does indeed relate this divine act of vindication and sovereign action to the theme of promise. Its occurrence rests not only on divine power and divine grace, but also on divine faithfulness to vindicate his obedient messianic agent,
[7] Thiselton 1195. “Third, it bears witness to the character of God whom the scriptures portray as a giving and gracious as well as a sovereign, faithful creator. If creation itself is God’s gift, the new creation which begins with Christ’s resurrection and promises the resurrection of believers is no less so.”
[8] Thiselton 1210. “Given Paul’s association of his encounter with the resurrected life as one of new creation (2 Cor 4:6; cf. Gen 1:3-5), it seems most probable that Paul perceives himself as one who was unable to contribute anything to an encounter in which God’s sovereign grace was all, even to the extent of giving life to one who was humanly beyond all hope. This precisely reflects the theme of resurrection as God’s sovereign gift of life to the dead (not to those who already possess capacities of self-perpetuating survival) throughout this chapter.”
[9] Carolina Liar Show Me What I’m Looking For writers: Karlsson Tobias Erik, Wolfinbarger Chad Douglas 2008
The Greatest of These…
Psalm 71:1-2 In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be ashamed. In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; incline your ear to me and save me.
Introduction
I never cease to marvel at the mystery that is love. How is it that we can come to love another person or animal or thing? No one can command love. I can clamor until I’m blue in the face that Christians should love one another, that you should love each other, but it would be in vain. I cannot command you to love one another or other people as much as I cannot tell the very humans that came from body to—for the love of God—love each other. Love really is mysterious. Love exceeds my control.
To be honest, I’m not sold that I choose love. I hear it a lot, especially in regards to marriage: every day I choose to love this person. Ehhh….maybe. *shrugs* I think you choose to follow through on the vows, or choose loyalty, faithfulness, steadfastness, commitment, and maybe even choose to act lovingly. But I’m not sure I choose love. In the same breadth I’ll add: love is more than a feeling. You can feel in love and you can feel not in love. However, I’m not sure that means you don’t love in that moment or that you aren’t loved in that moment—it just means you don’t feel it. Love exceeds my reason and rationality.
I think a hick-up in our conception of love is that we try to define love from our limited human perspective. When we do this, we render love as something we can squish between two small pieces of glass and slide under our microscope, or something we can slice open and dissect with our scalpel. In this scenario we are the determining subject, and love becomes the determined object, the other, the thing to be examined, dissected, and defined. This top-down evaluative approach is why we end up with ideas and definitions of love that are bitter on the tongue and less permanent than cotton candy. Love exceeds my examining gaze.
Love is truly mysterious.
What if all we need to get a better understanding of love is to change our perspective? What if I just reverse the direction between us and love? What if Love is the subject and we are the object? What if love is the subject and the verb, and we are the direct and indirect objects? Maybe love defines, examines, reveals, determines me? Maybe we can’t choose it because it chooses us? Maybe we can’t command it because it commands us? And if you have ever been wrapped up in intense feelings of love, that’s exactly what it feels like: a force presenting itself in our world and our hearts and minds that drives us toward each other and the world.
Love loves the beloved toward the beloved.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Love perseveres, love acts gentle, love does not burn with envy, love does not vaunt itself, it is not inflated with its own interest, it does not act improperly, it does not demand things for its own interest, it is not exasperated into wounded vanity, it is not reckoning evil (in the wildest sense), it does not rejoice over the unrighteous but rejoices over the truth; there is nothing love cannot face, there is no limit to its faith, hope, and endurance.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
The first thing I noticed when I was translating this passage was this: I am not the subject of these independent clauses. Love is the subject. While I know this may appear like a very rudimentary grammatical and intellectual moment, stay here with me. In English it sounds like a noun being modified by adjectives. For instance, I could say: The tree is tall. This is a descriptive construction about an object. *I* am doing the describing of the tree. So, as we read the English translation of the text, it sounds like Paul is describing this object “love” with these other adjectives. But here’s the thing: those aren’t adjectives. They’re verbs whose subject is love. The “is” comes from the fact that the verbal form is present tense.
ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ, χρηστεύεται.
1 Corinthians 13:4
The word for love is in the subject position (it’s the feminine, nominative, singular) and the verbs are present tense and in the 3rd person singular. Thus, in accordance with the subject of the sentence doing the action of the verbs: love perseveres, [love] acts gentle. When we shift the tone of the words away from adjectival into verbal, we move from love as one more objective emotion, to love being a principal actor in our narrative. Love does this and not that.
Without love, Paul declares, he is nothing but a clanging symbol even if he can speak in tongues of humanity and angels (v. 1); without love, Paul exclaims, even with all the knowledge and all the faith, he is nothing (v.2). Yet, with love, with love acting through him the tongues turn from clanging symbols into gentle words; with love moving into and through him, he is something.[1] For Paul—holding close to Christ crucified and raised as God’s divine act of love in the world—love alters everything because love as the divine operative in the world is always oriented toward the other, toward the beloved.[2]
What Paul is describing here is not his conception of love but the activity of God in the world as the word incarnate—the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Love made manifest by God in Christ acts for the livelihood, welfare, and concern for the object of love, the beloved.[3] For Paul, who is wrapped up in the overwhelming reality of God’s love for the world and for him, launches into a poetic string of statements about what this Love present in the world looks like. He is not speaking of the way he loves or indicating that by doing such things he or the Corinthians obtains love; rather, he is proclaiming God’s love in the world for him and for the Corinthians.
Conclusion
If love is the subject performing the actions of persevering, being gentle, not burning with envy, not centering the self over and against the other person, and standing firm capable to face anything, without limit of faith, hope, and endurance, then what is the object?
You are.
The divine substance that is love seeks you and loves you to no end. From this edge of the earth to the other, in the worst and the best moments, in highs and the lows, you are loved by this divine love, by God. *You* are the beloved. And in being loved in such a way (unconditionally and completely) there is nothing you can do to lose that love; it’s not yours to lose because you are not the subject here, but the beautiful and wonderful object of love’s action in and for the world. Receive this truth; rejoice in this truth.
And if you are the beloved—the object of God’s love—then you are wrapped up in this force of love surging through the world and ushered into this realm of divine love for the world. In being so wrapped up and ushered in, you find yourself in the love of God erupting into the here and now as we are moved to love one another.[4] Love catches us up in its momentum into the world in search of more beautiful and wonderful beloveds.
We do not acquire the object of love by acting in this way or that way or avoiding this or that action; we do all of that for our own gain. Rather where there is perseverance, there is Love for the beloved; where there are gentle acts, there is love for the other; where burning envy is absent, there is love for the neighbor; where self-boasting is lacking there is love for the friend; where arrogance is missing, there is love for your brother; where there isn’t an exasperation unto wounded vanity, there is Love for your sister; where there is endurance, hope, faith, willingness to stand up and face anything no matter how scary, there is Love for God and the beloved.[5]
I’ll conclude with recourse to The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The greatest of all virtues is love. Here we find the true meaning of the Christian faith and of the cross. Calvary is a telescope through which we look into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking into time. Out of the hugeness of his [sic] generosity God allowed his only-begotten Son to die that we may live. By uniting yourselves with Christ and your brothers [sic] through love you will be able to matriculate in the university of eternal life. In a world depending on force, coercive tyranny, and bloody violence, you are challenged to follow the way of love. You will then discover that unarmed love is the most powerful force in all the world.[6]
“Paul’s Letter to the Americans”
Beloved where you have hope, where you have faith, where you see the humanity of your neighbor be assured—even in our chaotic, tumultuous, and violent world—there Love is and there God is. For where you are, there, too, is God. For you who are in Christ by fait,h where you are there Love is.
[1] Thiselton Corinthians 1045. “The first person subject is now merely implicit, but the reference is clear enough from the context. The logical (as against grammatical) subject is the series of acts which build up from the familiar to a projected climax: all this counts for nothing. Petzer’s analysis of defamiliarization applies. What seemed ordinary and obvious now appears in a new, unfamiliar light, which produces shock. These wondrous gifts and triumphant victories all amount to nothing, unless love directs them, with its Christlike concern and regard for ‘the other.’”
[2] Thiselton Corinthians 1049. “Paul hammers home the incompatibility of love as respect and concern for the welfare of the other and obsessions about the status and attention accorded to the self. How much behavior among believers and even ministers is actually ‘attention seeking’ designed to impress others with one’s own supposed importance? Some ‘spiritual songs’ may appear to encourage, rather than discourage, this preoccupation with the self rather than with others and with God. Here is Luther’s antithesis between theologia crucis and theologia gloriae…”
[3] Anthony C. Thiselton The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text TNIGTC Eds. I Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. 1035 “Second, as we have noted, love (ἀγάπη) denotes above all a stance or attitude which shows itself in acts of will as regard, respect, and concern for the welfare of the other. It is therefore profoundly Christological, for the cross is the paradigm case of the act of will and stance which places welfare of others above the interests of the self.”
[4] Thiselton Corinthians, 1035. “First, love represents ‘the power of the new age’ breaking into the present, ‘the only vital force which has a future.’ Love is that quality which distinctively stamps the life of heaven, where regard and respect for the other dominates the character of life with God as the communion of saints and heavenly hosts. The theologian may receive his or her redundancy notice; the prophet may have nothing to say which everyone else does not already know; but love abides as the character of heavenly, eschatological existence.”
[5] Thiselton Corinthians 1057. “Paul declares: Love never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, never gives up. The fourfold never with four negative actions provides rhetorical force to Paul’s fourfold all things…”
[6] The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” Strength to Love Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010. 153.
Sweet Divine Liberty
Psalm 19:13-14 …keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Introduction
I spend a lot of time thinking about freedom. Specifically “freedom” as the product of the encounter with God in the event of faith. What does it mean that “in Christ” we are now “free”? Free into what? Free from what?
This freedom as a result of the encounter with God in the event of faith is what Jesus is talking about today in our gospel passage: liberation from captivity, freedom from enslavement, release from bondage.
There’s an aspect of liberation embedded deep within Jesus’s words that any form of enslavement is anti-God. Whether we look at it from the perspective of spiritual, emotional, physical, mental (etc.) enslavement, humans are not created by God to be enslaved to anything or anyone. If we were, then Jesus is a lunatic, and we shouldn’t trust him. But yet we do; it’s why we’re here every Sunday as a result of the faith we have in Christ uniting us into God by the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not come here every Sunday to be enslaved or re-enslaved or enslaved further into our burdens. (This is why church, to continue in being church and good news in the world, must resist the trappings of religious totalitarianism; no one need come here and feel afraid and condemned, for that is not good news, that is not liberation, that is not freedom, that is not Christ.) In coming here and hearing the proclamation of the gospel of the good news of God for the beloved, for you, for the people and the world, we are liberated, we are freed, we are released…
But again, I’m still left curious. Into what am I liberated and freed? And what put me there in the first place?
Luke 4:14-21
And he went into Nazareth—where he had been brought up—and he entered the synagogue—according to his custom on the day of the Sabbath. He stood up to read and the book of the prophet Isaiah was given to him and after unrolling the book he found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for the sake that he has anointed me
to announce good news to the poor,
he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who have been broken down/enfeebled,[1]
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”And then he rolled up the book and gave it back to the servant, and he sat down. And the eyes of all of the people in the synagogue were fixedly gazing at him.[2]
Luke 4:16-20a
Jesus goes home. Upon going home, he enters the synagogue as was his custom to do on the Sabbath. There’s no way to charge Jesus with not being a faithful and good follower of God. But it’s not just Jesus’s piety that is highlighted by Luke here in the phrase “as was his custom” but also that it was normal for Jesus to stand up, read from the scrolls, and to expound the scriptures.[3] So, that Jesus stood up and took the scroll from the servant of the temple and read it, isn’t the thing. It’s the passage that Jesus read that is the thing.[4]
Through the prophet Isaiah, Jesus makes known for whom his ministry is for: the poor.[5] There’s no reason to qualify this “poor” with an adjective to render it one way or another. We don’t need to feel better about this text by applying adjectives; we can let the word hang where it is as it is. We want to let the word lie because if we did apply adjectives here we would miss out on the breadth of this word in its original context. To be “poor” in Jesus’s context and culture had many and varied connotations; the poor are anyone who has “diminished status honor” for whatever combination of reasons.[6] Thus, using the prophet Isaiah, Jesus describes his mission: to proclaim good news to the poor; and highlights that he is the recipient of the anointing and the Spirit of God to proclaim good news, to set free, to release all these varying examples of the “poor”.[7] The poor will be released by God from their various forms of isolation and captivity; thus they will be partakers of what has been withheld from them: life, freedom, and the fullness of divine presence and love.
In delineating a specific direct object of his proclamation and ministry, Jesus created a dividing line between him and the social, political, religious, and economic boundaries erected—by people—to keep some in and others out.[8] According to Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, no one…NO ONE is beyond the long arm of God and the expansive substance of divine Love enveloping the entire cosmos. No one is too far gone, no one is too lost, no one is too fractured, no one is too stuck, no one is too trapped, no one. Not me. Not you. Not anyone existing beyond these four walls. And if this is the implied statement falling from Jesus’s proclamation, then any boundary is anathema to God and God’s love; both the boundary and the boundary builders collide with all-encompassing and inclusive divine Love. Thus, it is through Jesus that these boundaries will not only be challenged but also destroyed. The reign of God has come, let the kingdom of humanity tremble; life and light has come into the world, let death and darkness cower.[9]
Conclusion
So, back to the questions from the introduction: Into what am I liberated? And what put me there in the first place?
First, “Into what”: Better to ask, “Into whom…?” In the encounter with God in the event of faith I am liberated and freed and released into God.
Now he began to say to them, “the writing has been fulfilled/completed in your hearing.” (Lk 4:21)
That Jesus the Christ, God of very God, is the one who is the fulfillment of this divine promise spoken by the prophet Isaiah, and if we are brought into this fulfillment of the promise by faith (as in: we do not fulfill this promise ourselves) then we are brought into Christ. This is what it means to be liberated by Christ: not liberated into myself for myself, but unto God thus for those with whom God stands in solidarity with: the poor (as big and expansive as that word can be). As the proclamation of the good news of Christ goes out, liberty and freedom and release of the captives, the oppressed, and the blind bursts forth. As the cages burst open, as chains drop, as jail cells slide open, the liberation of the oppressed and poor is a liberation into God and for others. The imprisoned, the chained, the shackled, the caged, the enslaved step out and into God. While I might be freed, and you too, it cannot mean that it is done in an isolated and autonomous way as if it is just for me and me alone. Rather, we are liberated into God and into community of those brothers and sisters who have been so liberated, too. We then bear a divine burden as those liberated by Christ and into Christ…to bring this same liberation to those who are burdened with various forms of poorness and thus captivity. In other words, we undo what we’ve done and have been complicit in doing…
Thus, second, “what put me there…”: Better to ask “Who put me there…?” There’s a tendency to blame everything on the abstract concept of “Sin” and then to point further away to the myth of Genesis 3, which then makes us point more fingers at each other and at snakes and serpents…But none of that is helpful. I prefer to say that we put ourselves in those prisons, cells, cages, and chains by putting others there. I know enough philosophy, enough ethics, enough history to know that God didn’t enslave us in the fall, we enslaved ourselves. Our inability to see and hear God and our neighbor as they are is our fundamental problem. Stated in the positive: we have a catastrophic hearing and seeing problem. We love hearing what we want to hear, we love seeing what we want to see. So, we create systems and schemes that reflect what we see and hear to benefit ourselves. In various ways, we erect barbed and electrified fences keeping out those deemed different, “other”, not “us”, “them” and then these people lose their humanity. The sad fact is that as we build these walls, these fences, these rules of membership of the ingroup, we, too, lose our humanity. Everyone loses in this system of walls and fences and cages and chains.
Beloved of God, we are guilty of being complicit in dehumanizing systems and schemes even if we, too, were held captive by them. But, by the grace of God, we are sought and liberated so that we can hear and see rightly both God and our neighbor; and in hearing and seeing rightly, we can act and speak with divine inspiration and participate in the great divine mission of love in the world to stand in solidarity with the poor and to liberate the captives.
Beloveds, we were blind and now we see; we were captive and now we are free; let us live and love and bring to all who cry out that sweet divine liberty, long granted to the world through God on a tree and resurrected for thee.
[1] I’m using the translation of θράυω from the Greek dictionary: “to break down, enfeeble”
[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.
[3] [3] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 209, “Luke’s presentation indicates not only that Jesus regularly demonstrated his piety by attendance of the synagogue on the Sabbath, but also that it was his habit to take the role of the one who read and expounded the Scriptures (cf. Acts 17:2). This phrase, ‘as was his custom,’ underscores the paradigmatic quality of this episode, both with regard to his Sabbath practices, and with regard to the content of his proclamation.”
[4] Green Luke 209 “The primary point of focus, then, is the citation from Isaiah, which is itself a mix-text.”
[5] Green Luke 204. “These scenes are also taken up with the consequences of Jesus’ status, the ministry activity that grows out of his obedience to and empowerment from God. Taken together, they highlight four features of Jesus’ ministry. First, his is a ministry empowered by the Spirit. Second, Luke’s central interest in Jesus’ message, and the inseparability of teaching/preaching (4:15, 16-21, 43-44) and the miraculous (4:16-21, 33-36, 38-41), is foregrounded here. Indeed, 4: 18-19 establishes a narrative need for Jesus ‘to bring good news to the poor,’ and so these verses characterize the form and primary recipients of Jesus’ ministry”
[6] Green Luke 211. “In that culture, one’s status in a community was not so much a function of economic realities, but depended on a number of elements, including education, gender, family heritage, religious purity, vocation, economics and so on. Thus, lack of subsistence might account for one’s designation as ‘poor,’ but so might other disadvantaged conditions, and ‘poor’ would serve as a cipher for those of low status, for those excluded according to normal canons of status honor in Mediterranean world. Hence, although ‘poor’ is hardly devoid of economic significance, for Luke this wider meaning of diminished status honor is paramount.”
[7] Green Luke 210. “Consequently, three structural features are emphasized. First, the first three lines each end with ‘me,’ repeating the pronoun in the emphatic position. This underscores in the clearest possible way the inexorable relation of the Spirit’s anointing and the statement of primary mission, ‘to proclaim good news to the poor.’ Second, and as a consequence, the three subsequent infinitive phrases appear in parallel and in a position subordinate to Jesus statement of primary mission. Third, as we have observed, the notion of ‘release’ is twice repeated.”
[8] Green Luke 211. “By directing his good news to these people, Jesus indicates his refusal to recognize those socially determined boundaries, asserting instead that even these “outsiders” are the objects of divine grace. Others may regard such people as beyond the pale of salvation, but God has opened a way for them to belong to God’s family.”
[9] Green Luke 214
Dear Charlotte…
The exchanges of words built by a love so sublime
of two people placed and locked in quondam time;
love seemingly capturing you both by such surprise,
caught by shock …Suddenly!… I can only surmise.
In any other time and place, under another circumstance…
If things were even a bit different…what a splendid dance!
Yet had that been the case,
would you now be in my space?
Would you then be speaking to me of this difficulty?
Unknowingly provoking profound emotional faculty!
Had it just been so run of the mill—
falling in love and having your fill—
would you catch so many gazing eyes,
asking their human hearts to recognize
the difficulty of the complexity of being
human, one to one, supple hearts beating?
This story that I read, of you two,
renders the concept of Love anew.
Love is not bound by signed contract and written pledge,
or bound tightly by the unyielding thread of its selvedge.
Love refuses cessation in its fervent active liquidity,
flowing where it will and can with liquid rapidity—
never stopping, never ceasing,
always growing, always increasing.
(Like a mother bearing into life not one child but two
her love did not split and halve but doubled and grew.)
Love is more than a choice, and seizes us sudden,
ignoring our blind-eyes and claims of “forbidden!”
There is no way that Love as a force can be hemmed in,
not even by vows uttered within marriage’s fencing-in.
Through you two I see that love renders us utterly human,
unable to control and choose where love anchors in union.
There’s so little that I get to know
of the depth of the dialogue, the low
of frustration of burgeoning isolation
in the small distance of separation
existing between two bodies of flesh,
never to mingle, never to mesh.
The ache of desire streaming out from your heart,
taking what you had—could get—but still, the smart
of the pain of that ever very small distance
erecting profound walls enforcing resistance…
But again, there’s so little I can know about
what happened in the times not written out…
did the ethic of love you two crafted and wrote down
keep in place—holding—when you were out of town?
Please forgive my audacity of this intrusive interrogation;
it’s not mine to voyeuristically solve the remnant equation.
I know more the emotional trials and tribulations he went through,
but little I’m given of the extent of what his decisions did to you.
The idea, his mostly, dropped as from divine lip,
and into it assumed you would simply fit and slip.
Dictums masquerading as choices for your consent…
Never minding the environment of potential discontent?
The threat of loss, of heart broken, his presence never again held…
reduced apparent selections to one, options were withheld.
When in love one does what one has to do to stay near
to the one whom one loves and considers so dear.
How often did your heart secretly confess in the middle of the night
that none of this was the way it should be, that you should take flight?
Did you ever script a “Dear Karl” letter only to tear it from piece to piece?
Did you muster courage for “Goodbye” but stumbled over the first griece?
Love’s great venomous bite renders hearts, minds, and bodies paralyzed,
forcing yield to the warm toxin flowing causing action to be unrealized.
Navigating the path you walked—trying again and again to make the best
of a situation that shouldn’t have been but yet it was…the distinctest—
was never going to be without great discomfort for all three hearts involved.
(She Loved him, he loved her and Loved you, you Loved him, nothing solved.)
Not to mention the tension and frustration existing between Nelly and you,
even in times of relative ease and tranquility, the triangle would never do.
My modern eyes gaze upon her situation and swear she should have just
left him, packed up, moved, walked on claiming new ground to readjust
and be with one who could love her in the way she so deserved
rather than sit and watch him keep his love only for you reserved.
But it is unfair of me to cast such an out of context gaze and sling
my hypothetical expectations for a woman of whom I know nothing.
I wonder about those momentary quiet times between you and her,
how often you saw—deep within—the pain she had to quietly endure.
You were the chosen one, the desired, the beloved,
and she the left, the deserted, haunted with unloved.
So many roam the earth swept by the wind of love’s door reclose’
even those wedded and coupled feel that lonely and cold repose.
But you had that true love, the stuff of wishes and prayers, dream and desire
The kind of love that ignites all the senses, sets the entire body ablaze like fire.
You were never his worst mistake, his regret, and never his shame;
you were his joy, his pleasure and love, in substance and in name.
The two of you stumbled into something of profound transcendence
the divine substance poured out through Love’s supreme eminence.
The ease you moved about each other, the fluidity of words
spilled forth, the vibrant energy between each body towards
the other, and the depth of comfort with each other you both found
is the divine knot of love’s string tying hearts together forever bound.
Even if these meager lines are styled so simplistically,
organized and written to you, Charlotte, anachronistically,
I want to (wish to?) say thank you for your humble witness
to Love’s rupture drawing us in to its radical subversiveness.
Inspired by Christiane Tietz’s biography, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict.
Closing out 2021
Some random musings about what I’m bringing into 2022 from what I learned in 2021…
On That Night
Psalm 96: 11-13 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it; let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before God when God comes, when God comes to judge the earth. God will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth.
The Heavens Were Silent
Mary was a very pregnant woman that night. She probably looked as she felt…exhausted. As far along as she was, everything ached. I imagine her deep and profound desire to lie down and rest. Anyone passing by on the road and receiving her as she and Joseph roamed looking for lodging, would’ve seen just a pregnant woman. How many other pregnant women were seen that night? How many other babies would be born that night? How many children born before this one? There wasn’t anything special emanating from her. No one in Bethlehem felt the urgency to make sure she was well cared for; no one had the time or the space to make room for her. It’s not that they didn’t love her, I’m sure they did. But that night, there just wasn’t anything to be done but to offer up some meager space among dirty animals, trampled hay, and dirt, in the air of a Bethlehem night.
When the contractions started, the whole entire host of heaven hushed. Not a word was spoken, the entirety of the divine residence of angels and archangels watched with bated breath as this woman did a regular thing: bear her first child, a son…But what the host of heaven knew—as well as Mary and Joseph—was this: this regular body and this regular act of birth were bringing for this not-so-regular child…the son of God, the prince of peace, the one of ancient of days, the true leader of Israel, the humble judge, and the embodiment of divine love for the world. For this child, heaven held its breath as his mother brought him forth out of darkness into light so that he would be the light going into the darkness. This was the longed for, hoped for, yearned for child prayed for by many voices of ages gone by, the voices that cried out from bodies stuck in marginalization, trapped in violence, held down by oppression, and threatened by death. Could Mary feel their ancient cries? Could she feel those bowls upon bowls of prayers poured out on her like glory flowing from on high, covering her body and encouraging her spirit as she endured each contraction for minutes and hours?
God chose this body, this moment, this regularity of being born, to enter the world and the cosmos in physical form to identify with the depth of the pain of the human predicament. God could have shown up and skipped this banal and regular step; God could have come in glory and not in such precarious vulnerability. However, God chose not to skip it but to embrace it, to experience it, to identify with God’s beloved, to stand in unity with the beloved from the beginning of life unto the end. It is this divine child born of Mary, this one who is God of very God, who will stand in solidarity with humanity and change everything.
That night, as Mary labored, heaven was silent.
The World was Still
Yet, it wasn’t just Mary who was walking steadily into that night, into that event, one step at a time while moving toward Bethlehem. Joseph was with her. This regular guy was moving along in his regular life before God intervened and shuffled everything. Now he was moving along with Mary, the one who was to bear the son of God into the world and he…trusted. Trusted that all of this was the work of God. So, he walked. With Mary. With this mother of this child that was not his. Still, he walked with God, humbly, trusting, believing that somehow God would show up.
The many closed doors to decent lodging were discouraging. It wasn’t personal; it was just unfortunate. However, he was eager to get this very pregnant Mary to security, to a place where she could rest[1]…she looks so tired. When the option for the humble estate of wood, straw, and animals came to him, it was a stroke of fortune even if not ideal. Provision. We’ll make this work, at least for tonight. When the contractions started, Joseph knew of one thing to do, rush to find a midwife, or so goes another telling of the birth of Jesus.[2]
And then something happened while he sought this Bethlehemite midwife. Everything seemed to slow down, and the world seemed to stop as if time ceased to exist and all that existed was merely matter in stasis. The cosmos seemed to come to a screeching halt, as if God’s self was slowing it all down in order to set the whole thing in a different direction.
“And I, Joseph, was walking, and yet I was not walking. And I looked up to the vault of heaven and saw it standing still, and in the air, I saw the air seized in amazement, and the birds of heaven were at rest. And I looked down to the earth and I saw a bowl laid there and workers lying around it, with their hands in the bowl. But the ones chewing were not chewing; and the ones lifting up something to eat were not lifting it up; and the ones putting food in their mouths were not putting food into their mouths. But all their faces were looking upward. And I saw sheep being driven along, but the sheep stood still. And the shepherd raised his hand to strike them, but his hand was still raised. And I looked down upon the winter-flowing river and I saw some goat-kids with their mouths over the water but they were not drinking. Then all at once everything returned to its course.”[3]
Protoevangelium of James
When God steps into our timeline and into our space things do not just keep moving as if it’s all normal. Everything stops, stops in its tracks. Time is slowed all the way down and space is parted from itself making room for more and bigger and better. God doesn’t break into our realm, God takes our realm into God’s self. The moment Jesus was born into the world marked the beginning of something new and different, a different reign, a different rule, a different leadership, and a different way of living in the world.
That night, as Joseph sought the midwife, the world stopped.
The Barriers Were Destroyed
That dark night was no different than the other nights. Here they were, once again, tending and guarding their flocks of sheep, chatting here and there to stay awake.[4] This life was quiet, even if deprived and rather dangerous…keeping the flock safe took a lot of work and strength and risk.[5] The census going on caused additional anxiety, fear, and made that heavy blanket of oppression draped over these humble shepherds seem a bit heavier.[6] How many more sheep would they lose from their flocks when the census was over?[7] Against this evil empire they were helpless, more helpless than against a vicious and voracious wolf.[8] Spirits were low that dark night.
Then the angle showed up, out of nowhere. The shepherds were rightly terrified. Here they were, in the dark of night, doing their job, minding their own business and then: FLASH! They were enveloped in the heavenly glory of the Lord. In seconds they went from no ones to some ones, illuminated by a great light, and being addressed by one from the host of heaven…who were they to warrant such attention?[9]
And the Angel said to them,
“Do not be terrified! For behold, I herald good tidings to you of great delight for all people! A savior is brought forth for you today in the city of David who is Christ the Lord! And this will be the sign for you, you will find a newborn child having been wrapped in swaddling clothes and being laid in a manger!”[10]
Luke 2
Before the shepherds found their voices, they were greeted by an army of the host of heaven who joined the angel and praised God, saying: Glory in the highest to God and upon earth peace with humanity of good pleasure! And then, like it began, it was over.
The shepherds had been summoned by God to come into this moment, into this event, into this space…and, that night, they went. The unclean were called; the oppressed were summoned; the meek and meager were beckoned to come and see how good God is, how much God was for them, how much God loved them. When they arrived, they found Mary and Joseph, and the divine newborn child was, as the Angel said, lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. And here, these unclean shepherds stood in the direct presence of God without having to change, become pure, clean, or right. There was no shame, no condemnation, no guilt, no offerings had to be made, no rituals performed; they just came, looked, and touched the very small and vulnerable foot of God.
That night, when the shepherds arrived, the barriers between clean and unclean were destroyed.
Conclusion
All that had been was now coming undone; the savior, the son of God, was born, surrounded by wood, straw, dirt, animals, an exhausted woman of color, a humbled man, and dirty shepherds. That night God called to God’s self all those who thought they were too far off to hear the call, too far gone to be seen, to unloved to be desired, too nothing to be something…It’s here where we enter the story. As we listen in and look on, we step into that menagerie of humans and animals gazing upon the newborn child. We become a part of those also called to witness this divine event in the world and to encounter God on this night. We are summoned to experience the divine heavenly hush break into the most magnificent chorus of the cosmos. We are provoked to feel God taking the cosmos into God’s self and sending it on the trajectory of love. We are asked to see the rubble of the barriers that once tried to steal from us our belovedness.
That night, while Mary labored, heaven was silent. That night, while Joseph searched for a midwife, the world stopped. That night, when the shepherds arrived, the barriers were destroyed. Because—on that night—God showed up and changed everything forever.
[1] The Protoevangelium of James 17:3-18:1
[2] The Protoevangelium of James 18:1
[3] The Protoevangelium of James 18: 2-11 Trans Lily C Vuong (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1532656173/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_uk52Fb7QPGNMN)
[4] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher, eds. (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010). 34
[5] Gonzalez Luke 33.
[6] Gonazalez Luke 33, 34
[7] Gonzalez Luke 33
[8] Gonzalez Luke 33
[9] Gonzalez Luke 34
[10] Translation mine
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