Tag: Loving Your Neighbor

Even From Dust

Ash Wednesday (Sermon)

I have a confession: I don’t like Ash Wednesday. Now, some of you may be shocked to hear this. Some of you may not be shocked. And some of you may even (secretly) agree with me. But, nonetheless, I don’t like Ash Wednesday. So, when I was told I was preaching Ash Wednesday, I smiled and said “yayyy.” But on the inside, I cried just a little bit.

You see, Ash Wednesday puts a hard stop to the festivities that culminated in yesterday and last night (the final night of) Mardi Gras. Ash Wednesday throws open the door to a season of some sort of self-denial and fasting that is the season of Lent. None of us really like days that end our celebration and start us about our task of taking life seriously. Ash Wednesday, in some respect, is the Monday of all Mondays in the liturgical calendar. And who really likes a Monday?

But it’s not only the Monday-esque vibe that Ash Wednesday brings to our liturgical life and calendar that I don’t like. It’s not the inauguration into season of self-denial and fasting of Lent that I don’t like. It’s the part that constitutes and substantiates the inauguration of Lent that I don’t like. And it’s that very part that we love to forget to talk about as we transition from celebration to fasting. Dialogue surrounding Ash Wednesday moves swiftly and deftly from what I did last night and all the fun I had to, “Yes, I’m giving up _____” for Lent. But something else needs to happen before I so smoothly move from Mardi Gras to Lent and that is the form and substance of Ash Wednesday; I must be forced to reckon with myself as I am and not as I portray myself to be.

Ash Wednesday is less like an average Monday and more like that one Monday where it was already bad and then you got pulled over and instead of the Police Officer handing you a ticket, she handed you a stack, a ticket for every infraction you’ve ever committed known and unknown to you.

Ash Wednesday is not a day of celebration; Ash Wednesday is the 4th step of the 12 Step Program for Sinners.[1] It is a day for us to take a fearless and ruthless moral inventory of ourselves that results in our throwing ourselves prostrate on the ground crying out, “Lord, Have Mercy! Have Mercy on us!” And knowing that our lives, our very lives are fully and completely dependent on that divine word of “Mercy.” It’s a day to wake up to the dire reality that apart from God’s mercy, we are only dust.

I don’t like Ash Wednesday because I’m the one that has to bring you to that place with my words. Rather than using my priestly office to bring you hope and comfort and to bless you and bring you life, I have to use it in a way that reminds you of the curse of sin, and that the wage therein is death. I have to anoint you not with oil, but with ash. I have to remind you that you are dust and that, as it stands now, to dust you will return.

We are dust because we have failed. And this failure is nothing to gloss-over as we are wont to do. This failure surely pulverizes us to dust because this failure encompasses our activities and the orientations of our heart and mind. We are fully incriminated: body, mind, and soul. We have not acted the way we ought to act, we have not spoken the way we ought to have spoken, we have not thought the way we ought to have thought, and we have not loved as we ought to have loved. We have failed to uphold God’s good and righteous law. What I mean by failure to uphold God’s law is our failure to live according to this:

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

And, failure to uphold this:

“…you shall love your neighbor as yourself…” (Leviticus 19:18b)

There’s no escaping what feels like (and is) the crushing weight of condemnation of Ash Wednesday and it’s demand to self-reflection and fearless and ruthless moral inventory. You can’t side-step this event. Today you will be bombarded by the words of the liturgy and of the prayers. Today the voices of the prophets of Israel ring in our ears anew:

“The faithful have disappeared from the land,
and there is no one left who is upright;
they all lie in wait for blood,
and they hunt each other with nets.
3 Their hands are skilled to do evil;
the official and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the powerful dictate what they desire;
thus they pervert justice.” (Micah 7:2-3)

“Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—
2 a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.” (Joel 2:1-2)

“Gather together, gather,
O shameless nation,
2 before you are driven away
like the drifting chaff,
before there comes upon you
the fierce anger of the Lord,
before there comes upon you
the day of the Lord’s wrath.
3 Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
who do his commands;
seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you may be hidden
on the day of the Lord’s wrath.” (Zephaniah 2:1-3)

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6-7)

You have failed. You have failed God and you have failed your neighbor; you have failed God because you have failed your neighbor. The homeless go unsheltered. The hungry go unfed. The marginalized and oppressed continue in their bondage and slavery. Let this active word of God spoken through the prophets present itself to you not as mere historical fiction spoken to others of long ago, but as a very present reality in its veracity. Let this word of God touch you: let it break your heart, let it trouble your conscience, let it be the encounter with the divine that strips you of “…all agreeable self-deceptions…” and causes you to face the truth of your failure: you are people of unclean lips in the midst of people of unclean lips (Is. 6ff).[2]

And not only are you incriminated in this verdict of guilty, but I, too, am convicted and condemned. I’ve remained silent when a voice was needed; I’ve intentionally stepped back and hidden from the call to step up and act. I have professed love of God and then turned a blind eye to the turmoil, oppression, and suffering of my neighbor. I have not fed the hungry, housed the homeless, or clothed the naked. For this I am guilty and judgment comes; judgment comes from God and I am guilty. The encounter with God in the words of the prophets burns and I am rent to dust.

From dust we were taken and to dust we shall return.

“The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
14 For he knows how we were made;
he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:8-14).

There is hope yet still and this I must proclaim alongside judgment lest our hearts grow too weary to beat and our mind too burdened to conceive of hope and our bodies too feeble to make it to our feet. “For he knows how we were made,” writes the Psalmist. “[H]e remembers that we are dust.” Our God is a God “whose property is always have mercy,”[3] to have mercy especially when and where all hope seems lost.

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18).

Paul exhorts us in the place of Christ and with an urgent entreaty in the 2nd Letter to the Corinthians, “…on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God!” [4] God’s justice is not retributive; it is merciful and reconciliatory and thus restorative. Being rent to dust by the heat of judgment of the divine words of the oracles of the prophets and the law may seem like the final nail in the coffin, but with our God it’s just the beginning.

In the beginning God created out of nothing, and out of nothing God will create a new beginning. There is hope in the creative and long-suffering mercy of God.

We throw ourselves in our manifold convictions and guilt and failure at the feet of a God who is merciful—not “maybe will be,” “might be,” or “could be,” but is merciful. We throw ourselves down at the feet of a God who has reconciled and restored us to himself in his mercy through the sending of his son out of self-sacrificial love for us.[5] This is the God we come into contact with in Christ, the God by whom we are touched in the words of proclamation of Christ and yet we live because of God’s mercy and reconciling us to himself.[6] This is the God we encounter in Ash Wednesday.

We live in this encounter because there’s an exchange[7] occurring between Christ, and us as Paul writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We live because Christ willingly and voluntarily and lovingly resolves to head to Jerusalem to die and to be raised up (Mark 8:31).[8] We live because God is so merciful that God will bear in God’s own self (freely intervening by his own being from both sides)[9] on the cross our sin and become so indistinguishable from that sin.[10] We live because the sin bearing sinless Christ—who knew no sin in any way, shape, or form–dies and in his death so to goes the death of our death, so to goes the dust of our dust. And from the dust of death: life.[11] Our lives are given back to us because God is merciful to take our affairs in this world so personally that he makes himself responsible and burdens himself with our failure and guilt and evil ways;[12] That is the extent and power of God’s love for us; that is mercy and this is our merciful God: the God who in “[Christ] is the [one] who entered that evil way, with the result that we are forced from it; it can be ours no longer.” [13]

Speaking about Isaiah’s encounter with the divine in Isaiah chapter 6, which applies here to our situation in Ash Wednesday, Helmut Gollwitzer writes,

“A miracle happens, the miracle of all miracles, that this impure being, impure in the midst of the pure creation, that this intolerable being is permitted to live. The annihilating encounter with God becomes for him a life-giving encounter. Without his co-operation, entirely on the initiative of this other power that ought to have meant his death, that which must be death for him is turned into new life; the miracle of forgiveness. He who can no longer purify himself is purified…Death is taken away, the death which I bear in myself because of my contradiction, my impurity is covered by the encircling life-giving love to him who was the prey of death.”[14]

From dust we were taken and to dust we should return; but our God is a merciful God and there is life even out of dust and ash.

[1] “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

[2] Helmut Gollwitzer The Way to Life: Sermons in a Time of World Crisis Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981. “The bible in fact believes that things would be just the same with everyone one of us, as it was with this man Isaiah, confronted with the final truth, with the divine life which fills the creation, everyone of us is stripped of and must acknowledge himself as the dark blot in the creation, that must be removed in order for the creation to join with clear and pure voice in the great joyful hymn of praise of the angles. That is for us the intolerable truth, which we try to disguise from ourselves with all kinds of inventions, a truth which we face when the word of God touches us.” 41. (cf Is. 6)

[3] BCP Prayer of Humble Access

[4] Murray J. Harris The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005. 447. “But here neither verb denotes a dispassionate and detached request but rather an impassioned and urgent entreaty. The second us of υπερ Χριστου links the δεησις with the ambassadorship: whether performing the general role of envoys (πρεσβευομεν) or issuing a specific entreaty (δεομεθα), Paul and his colleagues were acting υπερ Χριστου, “for Christ,” on his behalf and in his stead. Moreover, this repeated prepositional phrase suggest that the principal role of Christ’s ambassadors is issuing the evangelistic treaty to be reconciled to God.”

[5] Ibid, 447. “The aorist imperative passive form καταλλαγητε is unlikely to be a reflexive passive, ‘reconcile yourselves (to God),’ whatever allowance be made for synergism (Cf. 6:1-2), because whenever this verb is applied to the atonement, God, and only God is the reconciler (see above v. 18). While it is possible that this passive is permissive, ‘let yourselves be reconciled (to God),’ it is more probably a true passive, ‘be reconciled,’ or, to bring out the ingressive sense of this aorist, ‘get reconciled,’ with God as the implied agent.”

[6] Ibid, 449. “In the divine economy, the declaration of ‘the message of reconciliation’ (v.19), or, in other words, the preaching of the cross of Christ (1 Cor. 1:18, 23) with the attendant entreaty to be reconciled to God, is the link between the objective work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ and the subjective appropriation of its benefits by the sinner. Paul saw himself and everyone who proclaimed reconciliation in Christ as trustees of a message (v. 19), ambassadors for Christ, and mouthpieces for God (v.20).”

[7] Karl Barth CD I.2.156. “…in the likeness of flesh (unholy flesh, marked by sin), there happens the unlike, the new and helpful thing, that sin is condemned by not being committed, by being omitted, by full obedience now being found in the very place where otherwise sin necessarily and irresistibly takes place. The meaning of the incarnation is that now in the flesh that is not done which all flesh does…[(5.21)]…does not mean that He made Him a man who also sins again—what could that signify ‘for us’?—but that He put Him in the position of a sinner by way of exchange (καταλλασσων, in the sense of the Old Testament sin-offering).”

[8] Harris, 2 Corinthians, 451. “Although ποιειν can mean ‘make something into something (else),’ the meaning here is not ‘God made the sinless one into sin’ … but ‘God caused the sinless one to be sin,’ where ποιειν denotes causation or appointment and points to the divien intiiative. But we should not forget that matching the Father’s set purpose to deliver Christ up to deal with sin (Acts 2:23; Rom. 8:32) was Christ’s own firm reolsition to go to Jerusualem to suffer (Mark 8:31; Luke 9:51). Jesus was not an unwillling or surprised participant in God’s action.»

[9] Karl Barth CD II.1.397. “This sending means a self-offering grounded in the free will of the Father and the Son in fulfillment of the divine love turned towards the cosmos and the world of man. But it is the case that God in this offering or sending of His Son, and the Son Himself in accepting this mission and allowing Himself to be sacrificed, has exposed Himself to an imposition. In His love God has been hard upon Himself, exacting a supreme and final demand…in a self-emptying, in a complete resignation not of the essence but of the form of His Godhead, He took upon Himself our own human form—the form of a servant, in complete likeness to other men…allowing himself to be found in fashion as a man…Like all men He was born of a woman (Gal. 4:4). But what does it mean to take the place of man, to be Himself a man, to be born of a woman? It means from Him, too, God’s Son, God Himself, that He came under the Law…that He stepped into the heart of the inevitable conflict between the faithfulness of God and the unfaithfulness of man. He took this conflict into is own being. He bore it in Himself to the bitter end. He took part in it from both sides. He endured it from both sides. He was not only the God who is offended by man. He was also the man whom God threatens with death, who falls a victim to death in face of God’s judgment. If he really entered into solidarity with us—and that is just what He did do!—it meant necessarily that He took upon Himself, in likeness to us…the ‘flesh of sin’ (Rom. 8:3). He shared in the status, constitution and situation of man in which man resists God and cannot stand before Him but must die.”

[10] Harris, Second Corinthians, 454. “We conclude that in v.21a Paul is not saying that at the crucifixion the sinless Christ became in some sense a sinner, yet he is affirming more than that Christ became a sin offering or even a sin bearer. In a sense beyond human comprehension, God treated Christ as ‘sin,’ aligning him so totally with sin and its dire consequences that from God’s viewpoint he became indistinguishable from sin itself.”

[11] Ibid, 455. “So γινομαι may be given its most common meaning (‘become,’ ‘be’) and points to the change of status that accrues to believers who are ‘in Christ’ and that is the ground of the ‘new creation’ (v.17). ‘To become the righteousness of God’ is to gain a right standing before God that God himself bestows (cf. Rom. 5:17; Phil. 3:9). It is to be ‘constituted righteous’ in the divine court…As a result of God’s imputing to Christ something that was extrinsic to him, namely sin, believers have something imputed to them that was extrinsic to them, namely righteousness.”

[12] Karl Barth CD IV.1.236. “But the great and inconceivable thing is that He acts as Judge in our place by taking upon Himself, by accepting responsibility for that which we do in this place. He ‘who knew no sin’ (2 or. 5:21)…gives Himself…to the fellowship of those who are guilty of all these things, and not only that, but He makes their evil case His own. He is above this fellowship and confronts it and judges it and condemns it in that He takes it upon Himself to be the bearer and Representative, to be responsible for this case, to expose Himself to the accusation and sentence which must inevitably come upon us in this case. He as One can represent all and make Himself responsible for the sis of all because He is very man in our midst, one of us, but as one of us He is also very God and therefore He exercises and reveals amongst us the almighty righteousness of God. He can conduct the case of God against us in such a way that He takes from us our own evil case, taking our place and compromising and burdening Himself with it.”

[13] Karl Barth CD IV.1.236. “It is no longer our affair to prosecute and represent this case. The right and possibility of doing so has been denied and taken away from us. What He in divine omnipotence did amongst us as one of us prevents us from being our own judges, from even wanting to be, from making that senseless attempt on the divine prerogative, from sinning in that way and making ourselves guilty. TIN that He was and is for us that end is closed, and so is the evil way to that end. He is the man who entered that evil way, with the result that we are forced from it; it can be ours no longer.”

[14] Gollwitzer Way to Life 41.

Posted on by laurenlarkin 2

“Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done”: Sermon on Mark 1:1-8

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

There is nothing better than good news. Wouldn’t you agree with me? Is there anyone here that would dare say: “eh, no…give me that good ol’ bad news…nothing like a good dose of bad news to make someone feel alive!” I doubt it. Good news invigorates us. Good news spreads a smile across our face and brightens our eyes. Good news results in various forms of physical celebratory habits like embracing, grasping, jumping up and down, and and a hearty #squee.

Good news can bring relief, especially if there was a possibility of bad news. Good news alleviates our fears: what could have been bad isn’t and won’t be. This type of good news is that which drops us—fast and hard—to our knees in gratitude with tears of joy, with a sincere, “Oh, thank God!” that whispers past our lips. Same, too, for the good news that springs itself upon us and breaks the long, dry season of silence and disappointment. The kind of good news that will radically recalibrate our world; good news can drag us out of the valley of despair and place us on the mountain top of joy, long suffering hope materialized.

And isn’t this what Advent is all about? Isn’t Advent about our waiting, longing, desiring, and hoping for good news? Our liturgical calendar thrusts us back into the story of the Israelites; we are caused to sit and listen and imagine and to bear that history as part of our own. We are asked to recall and remember the longing of the people of God. We are asked to recall and remember the hungry and the thirsty people of God who are waiting for their God to intervene on their behalf, who are longing for their God to hear their cries and liberate them from oppression, who are desiring to be resident with their God as his people in God’s Kingdom come, and who are hoping for alleviation of the toil, suffering, sorrow, and brokenness in the fulfillment of the one who is to come, the Messiah.

We are asked to feel the heavy weight of Isaiah’s words,

“A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken’” (Is. 40:3-5)

We are asked to let our desperate hearts, our burdened minds, and our exhausted bodies cry out, “so be it!” and let our voices join in the great chorus belonging to the people of God.

We are asked to hear (again) the proclamation of the advent of God in our world in the word incarnate, the savior, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and to be encountered (again) in the event of faith.

Thus, let us hear and turn our heads to the proclamation of Mark,

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1).

The gospel of Matthew begins with the who’s who of Christ’s genealogy; characters ranging from the very good to the very “colorful.” The author of Matthew begins the gospel in this way to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is of the line of David and is the long awaited messiah, Emmanuel, “God with us” (Mt 1:22ff).

The gospel of Luke begins with an account of the conception of both John the Baptist and Jesus as a pronouncement that the long awaited liberty and rescue for the captives has come, the long awaited son of God, the “savior for us” (Lk 1:69a), the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to his people, is here.

The gospel of John, being the most abstract and theologically dense of all four gospels of Christ, begins with the connection that the God who hovered over all of creation in the beginning is one and the same with the incarnate Word; the Word went forth and created as it went and the Word goes forth (now) creating as it goes, forcing away the darkness and illuminating the world (Jn 1:1-18).

Mark’s gospel starts off with the clear proclamation that there’s good news: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and with the advent of Christ in our time line so to the inauguration of the time of the reign of God with him. (The whole of the written book that is Mark’s gospel is a proclamation about Jesus Christ and his kingdom in the fullest sense of the word proclamation.)[1] Mark steps out into the streets ringing his bell and shouts: Hear, Ye! Hear, Ye! Hear ye the good news: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is come!

And be not mistaken, Mark is very much concerned with the advent of Christ and with the concurrent coming and inauguration of the kingdom of God.[2] Our author is being politically polemical in his introductory language. The Hellenistic religious use of the word ευαγγελιον («good news») had the «connection with the cult of the emperor, whose birthday, accession to power, and the like, even a forthcoming ‘royal visit’, were hailed as ευαγγελιον.»[3] The author of Mark isn’t pulling any punches. He coopts and uses intentionally political language to grab the attention of his audience. The audience being not only Christian disciples, but also roman authority.[4]

Again, place Mark and his announcement in the streets. The one who thinks he’s divine (the human emperor) isn’t; Jesus Christ is. Mark points at the human ruler and says, essentially, «Not my emperor.» And he invites his audience—the people suffering under the harsh rule and demoralized under the oppression of the powers that be—to see the distinction between the human emperor and the Christ, the true emperor. He invites them to locate themselves in the coming of the kingdom of God and to see that this new location[5] demands a confrontation with the way the regime and reign of the human emperor operate because the hearer of the good news of Jesus Christ can see them for what it is: the current regime is sham, the human emperor is naked.

For Mark (and for anyone willing to listen) there’s a new emporer in town and this emporer is the emporer who is going to tear down the current regime and reign and usher in a completely new one. The new reign and regime that comes in with Christ’s advent will not be marked by oppressive systems and structures designed to keep the low low while granting unfettered power to the powerful. It wont bear the traits of despotic rule. It won’t use the coercion and subjugation and enslavement of human beings to reduce them to mere cogs in a machine or objects to be used, abused, and left for dead. In fact the kingdom of God cannot be marked by these things because these things are antithetical to the character of God and thus to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

With the immediate reference to the announcement of John the Baptist, Mark intentionally draws the audience into the realization that Jesus Christ is truly divine, thus ousting the human emperor from his self-proclaimed divine status,

«[John] proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit’” (Mk 1:7-8).[6]

This new emporer is truly divine (the true son of the true God) and thus the new reign and regime, the Kingdom of God, that Christ ushers in will have the characteristics fitting of a divine kingdom: divine restorative and transcending justice, peace that surpasses all understanding, reconciliatory mercy.[7]

With the Son of God on the throne, the kingdom of God is very much at hand and the Christian disciples are baptized into this new reign and regime, into this new emperor and his good kingdom. Thus, not only the kingdom bears these divine traits of justice, peace, and mercy, but so, too, the citizens of this new kingdom. The Disciples of Christ bear these traits by their baptism both of water and of the Holy Spirit and in their life in the world.

And if this is all true for those initial hearers of Mark’s gospel, so it is true for us who listen today. By our baptism with water and Spirit, we have been grafted into the history of Jesus Christ and thus if into His history then our present and our future is located therein where the promises of God are yes and amen and this is our present tense reality. We are reminded that the promises spoken by God that are fulfilled in and by Christ are ours by faith.[8] We are born anew by the spirit (all that was and is, is washed from us),[9] and we have been given the ears to hear the loving summons of our Savior that calls us to an encounter with God in the event of faith.

Also, if Mark’s proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is for us, thus, so too is his political polemic. In hearing this proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have been given not only ears to hear the proclamation but also eyes to see that we are—in the event encounter—located squarely in the kingdom of God. And if located therein, then citizens: active, participatory citizens. Citizens who are not removed from society, but live a radical and different (and maybe even dangerous?)[10] existence in society. We are a voice for the voiceless and resist oppression; we create space for the alien and the refugee; we fight for freedom for all because if our neighbor isn’t free, then we aren’t free. Our neighbor’s pain is our pain, our neighbor’s plight our plight, our neighbor’s suffering our suffering. We are marked by the characteristics of our God: mercy, justice, and peace, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

We profess our faith in Christ, the Son of God and push forward the good rule of Christ into the entire world, this is the mission of the church, and this is church as event rejecting the status quo and defending and advocating for the defenseless.[11] We preach Christ crucified and risen. Jürgen Moltmann writes,

“Wherever Jesus is acknowledged as the Christ of God, Christian faith is to be found. Wherever this is doubted, obscured or denied, there is no longer Christian faith, and the riches of historic Christianity disappear with it. Christianity is alive as long as there are people who, as the disciples once did, profess their faith in him and, following him, spread his liberating rule in words, deeds and new fellowship.”[12]

We, today, are asked to remember the advent of the long awaited messiah of Israel, the fulfillment of all the promises of God. We are asked to hear (again) the proclamation of the advent of God in our world in the word incarnate, the savior, Emmanuel, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and to be encountered (again) in the event of faith. And we, along with Mark’s audience, are asked to participate in the kingdom of God and to be a force in the world that must be reckoned with.[13] We are asked to step out into the streets with our verbal and physical proclamation of the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come, forgiveness and reconciliation are here, and so too God’s kingdom and “liberating rule.”

[1] R. T. France The Gospel of Mark TNIGTC. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. “Mark’s book is intended, therefore to pass on the god news about Jesus. This news has been hithero the subject of primarily oral declaration (Mann therefore appropriately translates ευαγγελιον here as ‘Proclamation’), but Mark’s book is an attempt to communicate it in written form (though probably with a view to its being read orally in the congregation. Ευαγγελιον denotes the content rather than the form of the book» 52-3.

[2] Karl Barth CD IV.2.64.197-8, “Again, ‘the kingdom of coming with power’ of Mk. 9:1 could be calmly replaced by ‘the Son of man coming in his kingdom’ of the parallel Mt. 16:28. ‘The Gospel’ in the preaching of Philip in Ac. 8:12 is the kingdom of God, and (the και is surely to be understood epexegetically in all the passages) the name of Jesus Christ. According to the last verse of Acts (28:31), Paul preached ‘the kingdom of God,’ and taught ‘those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.’ According to the great voice from heaven in Rev. 12:10, the βασιλεια of God and εξουσια are given to His Christ. The references to the kingdom and to Christ are obviously to be understood in the light of each other in all these passages.”

[3] Ibid 52.

[4] Lauren Ellis. Final Paper on the Gospel of Mark, “There is a two sided approach to addressing who was reading (or who needed to read) Mark’s Gospel. The first audience to consider is Christians who were enduring suffering—they can read about suffering in context and see a meaning for their suffering. A second audience is the people in Authority in the empire. Christians are not what Tacitus and Nero thought they were; thus, if the Empire takes Christianity seriously, they will not only see the truth but also see that Christianity would help to make the world better. The modern reader can see the two fold apologetic aspect of the Gospel.”

[5] W. Travis McMaken Our God Loves Justice Minneapolis, MN: Fortress 2017. “As Ulrich Dannermann and Matthias Weissinger put it, ‘social analysis and social criticism are a theme of theology work. Theology can only adequately speak to the real world, to real people, when it tries to plot society…on the horizon of the coming kingdom of God’” 92-3.

[6] Karl Barth CD IV.4.56, “The different aspects of the event which according to this preaching is directly imminent are as follows. According to Mt. 3:2 what is at hand and at the doors, can take place any moment, is the βασιλεια των οθρανων, the establishment on earth of the divine dominion already set up in heaven. What breaks in is also God’s penetrating and divisive judgment. (…) Just as distinctively as the kingdom, no less majestically than the threatening judgment, there also comes in and with the judgment something very different, namely, remission, the legally effective taking away and setting aside of the sins of Israel, which are not overlooked or taken lightly, but which are brought under the grace of God (Mk. 1:4; Lk. 1:77; 3:8).”

[7] McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, 89-91.

[8] This particular portion of the sermon is me playing around with the insights and scholarship of W. Travis McMaken as found in “Definitive, Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth’s Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4” IJST vol 17.1 Jan. 2015.

[9] Karl Barth CD IV.2.563 “…in relation to everything that [I] previously was or otherwise [am] it is a new beginning newly posited by God.”

[10] McMaken Our God Loves Justice. 149-151. Specifically, referring to Gollwitzer, “Instead of leaving the church to its comfortable domestication, ‘the one thing that matters for the church is that she should be both a danger and a help to the world.’ Gollwitzer’s ecclesiology calls for a dangers church because a church that is not dangerous I no help at all” 150-1.

[11] McMaken Ibid, 16. “Just as God cannot legitimately be objectified, so also the church cannot legitimately by objectified. The true being of the church occurs as it responds in faithful obedience to its encounter with God’s though-objectivity, which necessarily includes renunciation of its privilege and political advocacy on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed.”

[12] Moltmann The Crucified God New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974. 82.

[13] McMaken Our God Loves Justice “The kingdom of God is the ‘revolutionary, eschatological, and social determination of the present’; it is ‘the revolution of all revolutions, that is, the eschatological revolution’” 118.

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Life as Descent: Homily on John 6:41-51

“‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’” (John 6:51).

I stood cloaked in white alb, wearing a red deacon’s stole. I held the plate of Eucharistic wafers, nervous. I had just been ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church, and this was my first time participating in the distribution of the Eucharistic elements. With some apprehension and a whole bunch of “Just don’t drop the plate, Lauren,” I approached the first person kneeling at the railing. “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” I said as I held up and then handed the wafer to the adult kneeling in front of me. And then I did it again, and again, and again.

By my fourth pass by my half of the rail, I’d grown quite composed and quite confident. I grew comfortable with the eye contact and the pastoral moment that was this brief encounter with the individual congregants at the Cathedral. “Huh…” I thought, kind of surprised. “This isn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.”

The last group of individuals knelt at the rail, and I started the last distribution of the bread. “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…The body of Christ the bread of heaven…” I rounded the corner of the rail and continued, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…The body of Christ, the bread of heaven…”

And then my eyes landed square on the big blues of a small child; his chin just cleared the rail. I stood looking down at him; actually, I was looming over him—I rarely loom over anyone. I paused while I held his eager gaze and watched him grip the railing with his hands, pull himself forward, and open his mouth for me to place the wafer in it, as he had watched me do with his mother a few minutes before him.

I couldn’t reach him from my position looming over him. I took the plate in one hand, grabbed my alb with the other, and brought my self all the way down to eye level with him; my right knee had to rest on the floor. I held up the wafer and made eye contact with him again, his big blues locked on me. “The body of Christ…” I said looking at him, holding his gaze, “…the bread of heaven.” And fed him.

“‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’” (John 6:51).

The Word of God, the word made flesh, the living bread of life, Jesus Christ, descends to us. The manna Jesus refers to in our passage (6:49) is mentioned in Exodus 16. This “manna”—a fine, flaky, white-like-dew substance that appeared on the ground for Israelite consumption—was the bread of heaven that God promised to send in Exodus 16:4[1] to satiate the starving people. They were in the throws of sever hunger pangs and cried out. And God heard; God acted. His word descended and fed the people; in this event, the Israelites were to encounter the power of God and see, hear, and to have faith. Jesus is clearly referring back to that part of Israel’s history with God, pointing the Israelites to recall God’s divine activity for them. Make no mistake about it; in correlating himself to the manna descended from heaven, Jesus intentionally proclaims that that historical event is happening at that very moment, in him, with him, and by him.

In Deuteronomy 30:11-14 it is written,

“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

Christ—who is the bread of heaven—descends to us so that we do not have to ascend to heaven to search for it. It is Christ who comes walking across the sea to us so that we do not have to cross over the sea to get it. Jesus is the word made flesh and is the bread of life, the true bread of heaven that has come down into the world so (the word is near) so that we hear (deeply, inwardly digest the word) and have faith in him. In Christ we see that God has heard and that God acts.

Christ, who is God of very God, not only descended in casting off his own divine royalty, humbling himself in being born in human likeness and form (Phil. 2:6-8),[2] but he descended to us and for us. The divine activity in Christ is the event encounter of God and humanity. The word made flesh descends low to be the lamb of God to redeem the world (John 1:29), descends low to demonstrate his glory in making the mundane (water) grace filled (wine) (John 2:1-12), descends low to be the event of love of God for the whole world to bring life abundant (John 3:16ff), descends low to recline against a well to encounter an ostracized Samaritan woman (John 4), descends low to heal those who are seemingly incurable, defies the existing authority structures, and is the apocalyptic event of God’s power in the world (John 5).

This proclamation of the gospel in the gospel of John (John 6:41-51) is the recounting and retelling of the descent Christ—the bread from heaven and the word made flesh—who is the divine once-and-for-all, established-forever divine activity of God for God’s people and the world. And in this recounting and retelling of Christ’s descent from heaven and the corresponding event encounter between God and the world, we—we—are pulled into the story and become the object in the encounter of that event—just as we are the objects of the gift of Grace by faith in Christ apart from works by the power of the holy spirit, so, too, are we the object of the divine revelation of God in Christ.[3] We, by hearing the proclamation of Christ, are pointed to Christ, to God, and, thus, we are encountered by God who has descended to us.[4] Jesus is the bread of life descended from heaven not only for his immediate disciples or his historic community. But in that he is such for them and that the proclamation of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension has moved from generation to generation for the past 2000 + years means he is also for us, for all, for the world. [5]

Christ came to you to give you life abundant. And this life that is given to you is life that is marked not by ascent upward out of the earthly realm or fleeing the brokenness of the world by crossing the sea, but by descent. As we have seen Christ do and as we’ve experienced in event encounter with God in Christ by faith, our lives are marked by the same deep descent by transcending society’s boundaries[6] to those who are oppressed, to those who are burdened, to those who are seeking refuge, to the voiceless. As we have been nourished, so we nourish. As we have been provided for, we provide. As we have been clothed, we clothe. As we have been encountered, we encounter. We are commissioned by Christ to be the preachers sent into the world to descend low, bringing our knees to the ground to give the bread of life to the least of us scattered all through out our society and the world (Matt 25:31ff). [7]

[1] “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.’”

[2] “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

[3] Dr. W. Travis McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017): “Dialectical theology’s enduring contribution, then, is affirming that Protestant theological epistemology must be decisively shaped by protestant soteriology so that just as Christians can in no way merit saving grace, theologians can in no way merit revelation by finding it already embedded in the structures of human intellect or creation as a whole…Just as saving grace is an alien grace that comes to sinners from outside of themselves, knowledge of God is likewise an alien knowledge that comes to sinners from outside of themselves. Salvation and revelation thereby become two sides of the same event of God’s gracious activity” 55. To purchase this book, which I highly recommend you do, click here. To follow Dr. McMaken on Twitter: @WTravisMcMaken.

[4] Ibid, 72n61: McMaken quoting Helmut Gollwitzer, “‘there is no way to the event, to the act of God which is called Jesus, that circumvents the word of proclamation with its corresponding answer of faith.’ The kerygma ‘points beyond itself to the living God who encounters us in the proclamation but is more than a title for the word-event itself’…”

[5] Karl Barth, “What Jesus is ‘for us’ or ‘for you’ in the narrower circle of the disciples and the community He is obviously, through the ministry of this narrower circle, ‘for all’ or ‘for the world’ in the wider or widest circle. And in the majority of the relevant passages this action of Jesus for others (His disciples, His community, the many, all, the world) is His death and passion.” CD III.2.45.213-15.

[6] McMaken, Our God Loves Justice, 77: Explaining how Gollwitzer develops the concepts of “Brotherhood” (and “Sonship) found in the New Testament, McMaken writes, “Brotherhood designates a new Spirit-empowered sociality that ‘transcend[s] race and class.’ And this transcending cannot be limited to the realm of personal feeling, for that only serves to insulate the powers that be from the transformative power of the gospel Rather, ‘brotherhood transcending race and class in the New Testament means: actual life together in actual equality, that is, in a new classless society. A system of injustice legitimated as a system of justice is being abolished.’”

[7] “‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”

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The Parable as the World Right-Side-Out: Sermon on Matthew 20:1-16

“‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’“ (Mt 20:12)

Do you know what this verse is the equivalent of in our vernacular?

“It’s not fair!” “Hey! That’s not fair!” These workers essentially whined and complained in an ancient language (now very dead) that is equivalent to my 3-year-old’s tantrum about nothing (absolutely nothing!) being “fair!” As a parent of three kids, I know all about the deep-seated human desire for fairness. Any parent here knows exactly what I’m talking about on a very visceral level. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the cry, “It’s not fair!!”, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be on a beach…that I owned. I’d be a wealthy, wealthy woman.

In the world of children, everything must be fair. But according to whom? “To me.” Each of my children is the arbiter of their own fairness. If they themselves are lacking, things aren’t fair. If Jack had the toy that Quinn wanted, and I took that toy from Jack and gave it to Quinn, you’d not here Quinn clamoring that things aren’t fair. He’d be just fine and content because he has what he wants and deemed to be rightfully his. The cry that things aren’t fair bursts forth from self-oriented hearts.

Good thing this is something we all outgrow, right?

If that were true, we’d not have this very passage in the gospel of Matthew (20:1-16). If the demand for retributive fairness weren’t a deep-seated human problem, this parable wouldn’t exist. But God knows humanity better than humanity knows its self. Even as mature, rational, intellectual adults we want what’s fair for us; we want to keep what we’ve rightly earned. We want what’s ours. And everything about that natural human disposition should be disturbed and rattled to the very core by this parable.

So let’s take a few minutes to look at it.

“‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.” (Mt 20:1-4)

Any time Jesus begins a story with, “The kingdom of heaven is like….” Sit down. Sit down because everything you know to be true is about to be radically and completely altered. Everything you hold in your heart and mind as true is about to be turned on its head. Following these introductory words by Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like, you can guarantee that whatever you knew to be true, that everything that you think should be, isn’t. In Matthew, when Jesus utters these words, everything is about to get real; and that realness isn’t what you, the hearer, are expecting or wanting.

In the utterance, is an intentional confrontation. The utterance, the parable itself (which it is), is an intentional confrontation with you because it’s a “speech event.” And as an event, it does not happen in a vacuum, but occurs in time and space and incorporates people. And unlike the event of a command that demands an answer, the parable is plea.[1]

A plea, in the form of this parable, is released into the air by the one who spoke the world into existence, the one who is the incarnated Word of God. The plea goes forth creating exactly what it intends to create: hearers seized by the word itself and brought to its right conclusion, those who have heard and have now believed, and those who have responded; the faithful.

In the parable as plea, as speech event, God’s word, Jesus’s word, renders to dust that which belongs to the dust—the things we’ve made, the things we hold true, the things we believe apart from an external reorienting event. And in the midst of the dust, the word recreates from nothing that which is pleasing to it: a new creation, a new people, a new way to life. The parable, and including this parable that we’re looking at, is the penetrative word that pierces our existence and our timeline (parting space and time) and brings forth by lexical labor and delivery the kingdom of God that it is speaking of.

The parable isn’t merely a story about a better place and a better time; it is that better place and time now. And we, who have ears to hear, are the recreated participants in this new place and new time, that better place and that better time.

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ 9 When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10 Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11 And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ 13 But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14 Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Mt 20:8-16).

As we go about our life thinking that we are living a life and living in a world that is right-side-out, the word event, the parable spoken by Jesus, grabs our lives and our life and our world and exposes it as actually wrong-side-out. In this parable, in this Word event there is an exposure; the parable exposes. And not only does it expose, but it alters, changes, and corrects; it is in the word event, in the parable, that the world is now right-side-out, now we are right-side-out.

And what’s this parable in Matthew 20 exposing and righting? Inequality. In the kingdom of God there is no hierarchy of persons. There is no claim on our own to our rights, to what’s ours. Just as we do not incur any punishments for our misdeeds and we are all equalized, so, too, in the reception of grace without merit or the promise of reward. According to Jesus, no person is better than another no matter what the earning potential.[2]

This parable offends us and utterly and completely reduces us to dust—we cannot comprehend it. The Judge, whom we encounter in this parable and whom is Jesus Christ[3] the vineyard owner, exposes our retributive default and posture toward fairness and “according to me” equality. When we come up against the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, we have no recourse to our rewards and merits. The Word of God levels us all. We bring nothing to the table. “We are [all],” to quote Martin Luther, “beggars.”

There is no boasting, no room for any boasting of our ourselves in Christ, in the realm of the vertical. And if there’s no room there for boasting in the vertical, then there’s no room for boasting in the kingdom of God, in the horizontal. As we are freed from the tiresome toil of earning, of seeking our merit and reward with God, we gain freedom from the same tiresome toil of earning and seeking our own merit and reward in our actual lives. While he’s writing about Genesis 11, I believe what Helmut Gollwitzer says is very applicable here,

“…we cannot by our own power break our fetters, cannot get rid of our intoxication…we need another great help. The Creator, who made the good beginning, must make a new beginning. He must come with new gifts, in order that the old gifts of our abilities and our work do not continue to be a curse to us. A new spirit must set us free from the errors of our old spirit. The whole Bible is a cry for help of this new Spirit from the creator, and the whole Bible is at the same time the euangelion, the glad news, that God does not only…confront the evil will of [humanity] with his judgment, but that he has opened his heart to us, and made possible a new way of good life, of fellowship, of avoidance of destruction. Into this new way he desires to lead us all by his Spirit.”[4]

The Word of God doesn’t just convict us; it creates (recreates) us. In Christ, by faith alone we are recreated by the Word of God, by the ever-recreating Word of God. Even now, by the word of God, I am brought to death, into the death and judgment of Adam and am brought to life in Christ (1 Cor 15:22). I can, with St. Paul, say, “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Phil 1:21). In this dying that is gain, and living that is Christ, I no longer have to be out to get mine; and, even more than that, I can be about the business of making sure you get what you need. I am now very much able to see to the needs of my brothers and sisters over getting what I’m owed. I am now very much moved not only to merely accept that the last will be first and the first will be last, but I, being of the first group, can actively promote the wellbeing and meet the needs of those fellow humans who are in last group. I am now given a new way to see fairness: not as what is fair to me but to you. I can (and must!) use my language (and my actions) in a new way, to advocate for you, to cry out on your behalf, “This isn’t fair!”

To close I want to creatively quote from the 2nd letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Philippians,

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:16-18)…Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel (Phil 1:27)”

We have been recreated and ushered into the divine kingdom by the creative and apocalyptic word spoken by The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Let us and care for and love each other as we have been cared for and loved by God.

 

[1] Eberhard Jüngel. “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. “A plea makes a command without force. Unlike a command, it gives time. It accords freedom which the one to whom a plea has not been made never has. It leads to the differentiation of actuality by possibility. And so pleading ought to be the constitutive element of proclamation….In a plea, God’s love finds its most appropriate expression; and this love reconciles the world to God having made possible the possible and impossible the impossible, by reducing the latter to nothing and by creating the former anew from nothing.” 120.

[2] Rudolf Bultmann “Theology of the New Testament” vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner, 1951. “[Humanity] must become like a child, who, knowing no such thing as appeal to any rights or merits of his own, is willing simply to be given a gift (Mk. 10:15). (…) Jesus rejects all this counting up of merit and reward: The worker who went to work in the last hour of the day is rewarded just as much as the one who had worked all day long (Mt. 20:1-15). And Jesus also refuses to regard the misfortune that befalls individuals as punishment for the special sins, no man is better than another.” 14.

[3] Karl Barth CD III.1.40. p.37 “This is the right of the Creator with which we have to do when we encounter Jesus. It is by His right as Creator that according to the dominant conception of the New Testament God comes to be the Judge of men. He does not have to become or to make Himself the judge. He is it from the very outset. He is it as God the Creator, who as such can claim that the creature should be responsible to Him; who has the authority to decide whether it justifies its existence, i.e., whether it satisfies the right of the One to whom it owes its existence.”

[4] Helmut Gollwitzer “The Way to Life” p. 4 . He is speaking about Gen 11, but I believe the point holds here.

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Frankenstein’s Requiem: A Sermon on Romans 6:1-11

Introduction

I’d like to open with a quote from one of my favorite theologians, Eberhard Jüngle,

“That Jesus Christ was made sin for us by God means that the destruere et in nihilum redigere [to destroy/demolish/tear down and to reduce/drive back/render into nothing/ness] which is enacted in and with our sin is revealed in Jesus Christ, as he and he alone dies the accursed death which we live. Jesus’ death on the cross is grace, since it reveals that in the midst of life we are in death. He makes manifest the nothingness which the sinner celebrates under the illusory appearance of being. Or at least Jesus’ death on the cross reveals this when we allow it to speak for itself (that is, according to the law).” Eberhard Jüngel[1]

The best way for me to explain what Jüngel is saying is: apart from Christ we are the walking dead. I think Paul in Romans 6:1-11 is saying something similar (and lucky you, that’s the passage we’ll be looking at this morning). St. Paul writes, “Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, in this manner we also might walk in newness of life” (v.4; translation mine). If we are in Christ as the living, walking in the newness of life, then apart from Christ we are the dead, but yet we move and exist in this state, thus, we’re the walking dead. Yes, we’re essentially zombies apart from Christ.

Let me quote Jüngel once more here,

“For part of human actuality is our striving to realize ourselves and thus to determine our own being through our own achievements. Expressed in biblical terms, the whole of our life-context is qualified by the reality of sin, which does not just simply make the human person bad—that would be the moralistic understanding of sin!—but rather which exposes human persons to the illusion that they can make themselves good.”[2]

While I think the image of zombies is a good one, I have to confess: I think our state apart from Christ, apart from the event of justification is actually far worse than merely a zombie existence. It’s a sham existence. Let’s be clear, in no way shape or form are zombies giving any thought about making themselves good, and they are certainly not trying to strive to realize themselves through their own achievements. They are the dead, the barely animated, they just act from a primal, base, neurological response from the bottom of the brain-stem.

We, on the other hand, are worse off because we are actively trying to self-realize (striving to do so), to make ourselves good. A better image maybe be: we’re hack humans, random parts thrown and sewn together, products of the scientist Frankenstein gone mad who is locked in our minds, who is each of us. Apart from Christ and on our own, we stumble about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:1-4)

Paul begins chapter 6 in the book of Romans by asking a question, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” (v.1b). In other words, should we desire to do evil in a way that causes grace to abound? And before anyone gets the chance to reply, Paul answers his own question, “By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (v.2). Very literally, the Greek here means: hell no; absolutely, positively not; in no way shape or form is this a plausible thought; never, ever, ever think this.

Paul has such a strong response to the question, because, as Martin Luther writes, “…this idea [desiring to do evil to make grace abound] is absolutely contrary to the work of grace”.[3] God’s grace given to us by the power of the Holy Spirit by faith (also a gift) doesn’t manifest itself in our lives as that which desires to do evil; rather its presence brings about the opposite. For Paul, that which participates in the realm of death has no business meddling in the realm of life.[4] And if we’re taking the Easter story seriously, which I believe we should, then those of us who are Christ’s own by faith and who have received God’s grace are the resurrected thus the living and the living aren’t dead.

It’s simple logic, but let it sit in.

Not only does Paul give a fixed “Ah, hell no!” to his question, he furthers the intensity of his response with a “how”, a “how” that is a densely packed argument that illuminates that the train of thought—that we should continue in desiring to do evil in order for grace to abound—doesn’t have an engine. Paul’s argument: that thing that you’ve died to and have been resurrected from you can never go back to because your resurrection in Christ has defeated it, returning is an impossibility.

Also, nothing we do makes grace abound; we weren’t the ones who caused it or brought it in the first place. Grace, divine grace, is strictly divine territory. When it comes to making grace abound, He got this.

But before I move on, I want to add that Paul isn’t arguing that now as Christians we are never sinning or are without sin, that would be a lie (1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”). “We,” according to St. Augustine, “…are in sin until the end of our life…‘Until our body is raised to life and death is swallowed up in victory, our evil desires will afflict us’.”[5] There is always the war that wages between that which we desire to do (the good) and that which we do do (the evil). The brilliant aspect of the divine deposit of faith and the Holy Spirit lies in the shift in our desires; in Christ, we now desire to do the good although we still do evil. Paul will drive this point home (in a number of places) but specifically in the very next chapter in the book of Romans, chapter 7, when he writes,

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. retched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vv.15, 21-24).

Jesus himself says, “‘…the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’” (Mt 26:41b; also, Mk 14:38b). The desire to do good should not be brushed off, counted as nothing, for here in this desire of the spirit to do good by the Spirit is where good works are born.

And we can have assurance of this spiritual deposit because, as Paul says vv.3-4, returning to our text in Romans 6,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Luther writes, “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death, that is through the merit and power of his death”.[6] This is why baptism is tantamount for Luther, this is why throughout his life he returns to his baptism (recalls it) in times of trial because in this simple act, what seems like a simple act, is the outward sign of an inward reality: we have died with Christ and in dying with Christ we are raised with Him; as He dies we die, and as he lives we live. In baptism, in this death,

“is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated form corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God.…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, as the apostle says here, ‘Christ will never die again’”[7]

This is Luther’s way of explaining the “destruere et in nihilum redigere” mentioned by Jüngle at the beginning of the sermon. What occurs in our baptism, what occurs by faith, what occurs by Christ’s advent and death and resurrection is the destruction, the demolishing, the tearing down and the reducing and driving back and rendering to nothing/nothingness all that belongs to the realm of death. All of our suffering, grief, sorrow, pain, fear, sin, condemnation, and death itself receives the divine verdict: no, no more. And over that verdict, in a louder voice do we receive our divine verdict: yes. In this yes to us and no to death we lose our (old) lives and thus receive our (new) lives, we find our lives in Christ by faith “‘…and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38-39).

So, Paul Continues…

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (Romans 6:5-8)

Through what Christ has done for us, by his advent and death and resurrection (and ascension) and our encounter with the living God, by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we escape death, and, to quote Luther again, this “…means to enter into a life which is without death.”[8] Though our body dies, for now, we live as those who walk in the newness of life because that which has been sentenced to death–not us–is dead (for good) because it has not been raised–like we are. We have been “spiritually” planted “with Him who was planted bodily” by a death like his which is signified by baptism.[9]

We’ve not been sentenced to death in Christ, but to life: we’ve been given life, and life abundant not only in the future, but, more importantly, in the here and now.[10] Because, our old selves have been “crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (v. 6); thus, we are no longer slaves to sin in that our old selves and the sinful nature no longer have dominion over us.

By the grace of God, we are free, in the truest sense of the word: free, liberated, loosed from that which has bound us, healed (albeit imperfectly now) of the “extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God Himself.”[11] By the grace of God, we are united together with Christ in his death and thus in his resurrection and life, and we are free from sin and its accompanying threats and condemnation. (vv.7-8).

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:9-11).

Now that death has no dominion over Christ (he will never die again), death ought not and does not have dominion over us.[12] According to Luther, “[Christ] 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.”[13] And this is what it means to be justified by faith apart from works: our eternal reception of God’s eternal grace.[14] The event of justification, that word of absolution heard (perpetually) by the hearer, parts space (like God did through Moses parting the sea) and stills time (like Jesus did the tumultuous stormy waves with one word) and the hearer is reborn (created out of nothing) into the present by the word of promise and sustained therein by the words of promise.

The past can no longer condemn you and your future is secured, rooted in the one that defeated future’s condemnation which is death. And this gift of the present, new life, and the word of promise by faith in Christ is given to you every day; this is what is actually given to you daily and, once for all (v.10); it will never be taken away from you (cf. Lk 10:38-42). “Answer me, O Lord, for your love is kind; in your great compassion, turn to me” writes the Psalmist (Psalm 69:18). And God has answered us; God in Christ has answered us once and for all.

Having the entirety of what Christ offers to us by his life, death, and resurrection by faith alone, we walk in the newness of life. And this newness of life is not particularly simply and merely for us ourselves alone. Justification unifies with others, with our neighbor—my justification doesn’t occur in a vacuum, isolated from other people. This unifying event of justification with our neighbor means that not only are we united to Christ but we are also no longer on our own, stumbling about, alone, turned inward, bent on our own justification. Justification is a social event, the tie that binds me and you to each other in an intimate way. Make no mistake, this is the vital and manifested aspect of walking in the newness of life.

Correspondingly, just as Jesus suffered as His people were being persecuted by Saul (Acts 9), so to do we suffer when our neighbor suffers. In that we are bound to our neighbor in the event of justification, their pain is our pain, their oppression our oppression, their injustice our injustice. “From now on…regard no one according to the flesh…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:16-17).  Not only is our relationship with God under a new heading, reconciled, so is our relationship with others. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not merely just for me, but for you and thus for me and for us and between us.

Being a new creation—remade by the work of God alone by faith alone—and walking in the newness of life means not only that which is of death has been sentenced to death and that which is of life shall live, but also that we have been given new eyes, new ears, a new heart, and new words to speak. In other words, to be a new creation walking in this gift of the newness of life is to have a radical and altered perspective that is rooted in the spirit and not in the flesh. There is (now) a radical discontinuity between who we were outside of Christ and who we are in Christ. When we used to see/think of only ourselves, we now see/think of/act and fight on behalf of others.

We are now no longer monstrous creations of the scientist Frankenstein. We are not thrown and sewn together, brought to life by the happenstance of nature’s electrical current. We are beautifully and wondrously remade by the intentional and consistent and life-giving word of God in Christ Jesus. We are, in every sense of the words, new creatures. Because, in light of being reconciled to God and our neighbor through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in light of the things of death (our old selves) being sentenced to death we have received our lives, our very new selves marked not by condemnation and slavery to sin but by divine grace and freedom and union with Christ and our neighbor.

And with this reality our voices can join with Jeremiah’s, “Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of the evildoers” (20:13).

[1] “The World as Possibility and Actuality: The Ontology of the Doctrine of Justification” Theological Essays. Translated by J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. (108)

[2] “On Becoming Truly Human: The Significance of the Reformation Distinction Between Person and Works for the Self-Understanding of Modern Humanity.” Theological Essays II. Translated by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast and J. B. Webster. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. (231)

[3] Luther’s Works: Lectures on Romans, vol 25 Hilton C. Oswald ed. St. Louis: Concordia, 1972. 50.

[4] Ibid, 50.

[5] Ibid, Augustine qtd in Luther 308-9.

[6] Ibid 50.

[7] Ibid 310

[8] Ibid 311

[9] Ibid 51

[10] Luther “…that is, in resemblance of His death, because we have been buried into a mystical death” thus, “we shall certainly be raised, to a spiritual resemblance with Him, in a resurrection like His, that is, we shall become like it” (51)

[11] Ibid 313

[12] Ibid 52

[13] Ibid 315

[14] Ibid “…this expression ‘once for all’ (semel) does not determine the number of acts of repentance, but rather it is a commendation of the eternal nature of grace, and it denies the possibility of some other kind of righteousness, so that the meaning is that whoever has been baptized o has repented has already so escaped sin and acquired righteousness that never again for eternity is it necessary to escape sin or to acquire another righteousness. But this single and only righteousness is sufficient forever” (315-6).

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The Free Gift

Every semester in seminary there would be this one moment in the middle of the semester where all of my classes would collide on one theological or biblical concept; different teachers teaching different classes, yet the trajectory of the lectures landed each professor and each class here at this specific point. Divine. I loved it when it happened, pure joy all the way down. While I’m no longer in seminary and moving along a sizeable course load, I still get that sense of joy when books I’m reading overlap, when the fiction book I’m reading provides the picture for the theological concept I’m reading about in my theology book. Today, such a wonderful event happened: reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment just a bit ago, I was given a wonderful little scene that put images to words that I had read in Luther’s Commentary on Galatians yesterday evening.

Luther:

I am not speaking at such great length without reason. It seems to be exceedingly inadequate to say that the Holy Spirit is granted solely through hearing with faith and that nothing at all is demanded of us but that we refrain from all our works and just listen to the Gospel. The human heart neither understands nor believes that such a great prize as the Holy Spirit can be granted solely through hearing with faith; but it thinks this way: ‘The forgiveness of sins, deliverance from sin and death, the granting of the Holy Spirit, of righteousness and of eternal life–this is all something important. Therefore you must do something great to obtain these inestimable gifts.’ The devil approves of this opinion and magnifies it in the heart. Therefore when reason hears: ‘You cannot do anything to obtain the forgiveness of sins except only to listen to the Word of God, it immediately exclaims: ‘Oh no! You are making the forgiveness of sins too meager and contemptible!’ Thus the greatness of the gift is responsible for our not accepting it. Because such a great treasure is being offered freely, it is despised Luther Lectures on Galatians 3:2 (213)

And Dostoevsky:

‘I don’t know how to thank him either,’ Raskolnikov went on, suddenly frowning and looking down. ‘Setting aside the question of payment–forgive me for referring to it’ (he turned to Zossimov) ‘–I really don’t know what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I simply don’t understand it…and…and…it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly’ (Raskolnikov to Zossimov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (195))

I think there’s an assumption that if something is done for someone else freely, in charity, that that free gift will not only be taken advantage of (along with the giver) but that it naturally perpetuates a taking-for-granted cycle. While maybe sometimes the case, I’m not sold that it’s always the case. There’s no part of Raskolnikov (here) where he’s taking the posture of taking for granted medical care that has come to him in a great time of need and freely at that. He’s done absolutely nothing to deserve or to earn such treatment. So Zossimov’s treatment given as a true gift, freely, breaks from Raskolnikov’s reason; it just doesn’t make sense, and that it doesn’t make sense it weighs upon him. “‘I don’t know how to thank him either,’… I simply don’t understand it…and…and…it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it” isn’t the language of someone who is taking something for granted even though it was something freely given.

A gift freely given is a confusing thing. And the larger the free gift the harder it is to understand.

As the free medical care from Zossimov breaks from Raskolnikov’s reason, causing him to be both confused and weighed down, so it is with us and the free gift that is given to us by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are given deliverance from sin, justification, righteousness, life of very life, and God himself. All of this is given to us all by faith in Christ alone and none of it by anything we have to offer or what we bring to the table, and beyond any we attempt we could make to earn it, and this breaks from reason and weighs heavy upon us. To refer to Luther’s words, we want to despise the free gift; it’s offensive to us on so many levels.

But here is one of those moments where the Law and Gospel, death and life, collide at one point: the free gift (the very beautiful free gift) reveals that something is wrong, that we are not well, and that in fact we are near death (or dead in our trespasses). It’s a light in the darkness that exposes the situation for what it is: dire. But then it’s also the free gift that’s freely given that makes well, heals, and brings into existence a new life, a new creation; as it exposes it is given. And as we are exposed by the free gift we also receive this inestimable gift of God himself through faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore if I am little and the thing that is being given to me is great—in fact, the greatest there is—I must think that the One who is giving it to me is also great and that he alone is great. If He is offering it and wants to give it, I do not consider my own sin and unworthiness, No, I consider the fatherly will that He who is giving it has toward me. I accept the greatness of the gift with joy; and I am happy and grateful for such an inestimable gift granted to me in my unworthiness, freely and by hearing and faith. (Luther, Lecture on Galatians 3:2 (214))

And what miraculously flows forth from our hearts is gratitude, which eclipses the reality that our flesh so despises this free gift because it doesn’t make sense. In not knowing how to thank Zossimov and expressing his confusion about the free gift, Raskolnikov articulates a deep and abiding gratitude that is beyond words that trumps the confusion. Gratitude is the furthest point from “taking for granted.” It is gratitude that  is produced by seeing that God so wills it that you have this inestimable gift. It is gratitude that produces the love and worship of this man Christ Jesus who is God who gave himself freely for you. And it is gratitude that drives us towards our neighbor in love to freely give to them as we have freely received. 

 

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Cinderella in My Shopping Cart

Last week I was leaving a store, Liza was happily sitting in the shopping cart as I pushed it through the exit. Minding my own business, then, “Excuse me, Ma’am,” came a gentleman’s voice to my left. As the sliding doors parted, I stopped and looked at him. “I see you have a princess there,” and he motioned with his eyes toward Liza.

I gave a quick smile to him, “Yes..I do,” I barely choked out without revealing my disdain for the princess craze.

He was a Redbox employee. Older. From what I could deduce from the situation, he was switching out the older Redbox movies for the more current ones. He was holding some small, perfectly square movie posters in his left hand. His right hand was extending one to me, “This is for your little princess.” I looked at the poster as it traveled from his space into mine, and as I took possession of it. Cinderella.

“Oh…” I worked really hard to muster up the right response and reaction: gratitude. “Uh…thaaaaaaanks,” was all I could muster as I stared at the poster depicting this damsel in distress. All I could think was how much I hate Disney princess movies. I hate the message these movies convey to our daughters: women are weak, they need to be saved, specifically by a man. My husband and I have done well keeping all said princess paraphernalia out of our house–even to the point of being considered extreme by friends and family. We’re feminists–Daniel and I, he more than me in many regards! When Jack accidentally uttered, “Quinn’s crying like a little girl!” at the dinner table one night, he all but cried uncle under our 10 minute tag-team diatribe about why that phrase is offensive. And here I was, trying to exit the store, holding in my hands a square piece of really nice poster-board containing within it’s four edges everything I disdain about how our society treats girls. I wanted to hand the poster back to him. I wanted to tell him exactly why I wasn’t going to take this poster with me. Let him know that this poster violates many of my inner most gender principles.

But then I looked back at him.

As I held this thing I couldn’t stand, I looked at him. He smiled at me. He was so happy to give this to my daughter. There was this child-like joy in giving a free gift to a child. What girl wouldn’t want this Cinderella movie poster? He was truly doing a nice thing, a giving thing, a gracious thing. A very gracious gift. My heart melted. Principles or not, it was more important at that moment to love him, my neighbor, than my personal dogma and my urge to tell him what’s what.

I smiled at him; returning his genuine smile of joy with my genuine smile of gratitude. “Thank you,” I said again, this time meaning it. Liza grabbed at the poster, proclaiming her possession of it, Mine! “We love it. It’s so generous of you to give this to us.”

He smiled back and nodded. “You two have a great day!” He persisted in his joyous smile and waved us good-bye as we exited the store.

Often when we talk about loving our neighbors as ourselves we tend to speak in terms of works done for them–I’m sure you’ve heard the oft and maybe over quoted saying, “God doesn’t need your works but your neighbor does.” I hold to this philosophy. But another aspect of loving your neighbor as yourself can also manifest when you see them and enter into their moment, whether it be happy, sad, anger, joy, etc. Sometimes, putting yourself and your personal principles and dogmas aside to make room for this other person is very much loving your neighbor as yourself. Sometimes, putting yourself and your desire to correct and set straight aside is very much loving your neighbor as yourself. Seeing that other person as the human being they are, bearing the same image you do, needing the same saviour you do, is very much loving your neighbor as yourself. When we see our neighbors in such cruciform light, we will find ourselves–by the beautiful and unifying power of the Holy Spirit–acting with more grace towards them even when all we want to do is bring the law.

Liza proudly held that Cinderella poster in the shopping cart all the way to the car and then held it in her car-seat it all the way home. We still have our very special gift.

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