Tag: Martin Luther

Fracturing the Stagnant

Psalm 105:1-3 Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make known God’s deeds among the peoples. Sing to God, sing praises to God, and speak of all God’s marvelous works. Glory in God’s holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek God rejoice.

Introduction

So far in chapter 8 of Romans, we’ve covered a few things:

8:1-11: We started the chapter learning “So then at this very time [there is] not one punishment following condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,”[1] (v.1). This is the controlling thought for the chapter. Those who love God because they have been loved by God need not fear the law and its ability to condemn because they trust God by faith and love God. The law is exposed as weak by our inability to do it because it only tells us “do this” and “don’t do that”, but it cannot cause us to do it. Also, we found out—during Good Friday—we broke the law by not listening and loving Christ—God incarnate—and by forcing the law to condemn an innocent man. Here, Paul told us, when we’re dead set on living according to the flesh then we will judge according to the flesh. Then Paul is quick to usher us out of our tombs into Easter life by reminding us that Pentecost happened, and God’s Spirit is in us and thus we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit desiring the things of the Spirit which is the heart and mind of God. Effectually, Paul reminds that even though we sentenced Jesus because we were stuck in the flesh, God’s love knows no limits and cannot be hindered not even by death and in Christ’s resurrection God demonstrates that God’s love is always and forever and we’re exposed, but the twist is that we’re not pushed away and rejected. Rather, we’re exposed and ushered into God’s presence and accepted; this is true love, mercy, and grace. Then…

8:12-25: Paul builds up the mercy, grace, and love of God for us and exhorted us to live into our adoption by faith in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we live (in the world) as God’s own beloved children. Paul drew the line in the sand, “For if you are living according to the flesh, you intend to die; but if [you are living according to] the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This is not about now reverting to the law and living according to condemnation, fear, threat, and self-induced purity and piety—this is returning to the “the spirit of slavery brought again into fear”. Rather, “you received a spirit of adoption by which we cry aloud: ‘Abba, Elder!’” Returning to a life where you’re in service to the law will enslave you to fear and condemnation, deny liberation, which is the product of God’s love and life in you given by God’s grace and mercy. So, Paul is not exhorting you to turn in and focus on your sins, rather you are to focus on things of life, love, liberation and bringing God close to those who think God can’t be close to them. Plus, Paul explains, if we return to law and fear, we will not run to God but away from God. Rather, we’re to run to God, cry out for Abba!, and have hope because hope is a byproduct of love.

So, Paul says further,

Romans 8:26-39

Now, in like manner the Spirit takes hold with us in our weakness; for we do not perceive what we should pray according to what is necessary but the same Spirit intercedes for inexpressible groaning…Now, we perceive that all things work together toward good for the ones who love God who are being called according to [God’s] purpose…Therefore what will we speak to these things? If God [is] on our behalf, who [is] against us? God who spared not God’s own son but committed him on our behalf, how [is it] absolutely out of the question that also with him God will give freely all things to us? …  in all these things we prevail mightily through the one who loved us. (Rom 8:26, 28, 31-32, 37)

Building from the discussion on God’s love for us and our love for God provoking hope that motivates us now, Paul speaks to the Spirit helping us to pray in our weakness—not perceiving how to pray rightly. In other words, we pray and the Spirit takes those sounds and words—the inexpressible groaning—and molds them into prayers coinciding with the Spirit of God—the same one who searches the heart and mind of the beloved. To pray, according to Paul, is to speak to God in alignment with the Spirit of God. This means an exposure and realignment to God and God’s Spirit—when we pray, we dare to allow God to shape our words and our hearts to reflect God’s love, life, and liberation—no matter what we pray for.[2] In this way as we pray, we find ourselves in the realm of the proclamation of Christ, are exposed and accepted, and brought further into God’s mercy and grace. Thus, we begin to pray aligned to Christ’s self-witness. This is not about bombarding the door to the divine thrown room with incessant heartless repetition of words; [3] rather, it’s about finding yourself before God praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven—advocating for the neighbor. When we’re aligned to Christ, the Spirit takes hold of our desires and wishes and forms them in accordance with the will of God: divinely twisted prayers seeking and searching for life, love, and liberation for the entire cosmos.

Next, Paul dares to say, all things work together for good for those who love God. Now, this isn’t about having your entire life go well and comfortably. It’s also not about winning or always finding yourself on victory’s side. It’s not even about liking things that happen as if this good was for you (privatized salvation (God’s acceptance and presence); privatized blessing). Rather, this’s about God’s word of life, love, and liberation as the absolute last word, the absolute good (deprivatized salvation; deprivatized blessing). Conjoined to what came before—the Spirit taking hold with us in our weakness and forming our prayers because we lack perception—we gain the perception that every little action reaching toward life, love, and liberation even when things are a massive dumpster fire threatening cosmic existence, will work toward good, toward love, life and liberation. Here we have hope to see all things are possible with God.[4]

Then, Paul moves on to say affirming all things working together for those who love God, “If God is on our behalf, who is against us?” If God is the author of love, life, and liberation in general and specifically even when God committed God’s son on our behalf and we responded with judgment according to the flesh which led to the death of God’s son, then who or what can be against us? Who is bigger than God? What is more powerful than love? Hate? No, because hate gives way to love because it’s made of the same stuff in the negative. Indifference? It has no power but rather consumes power and love wins over indifference every time. What is bigger than life? Death? No, God demonstrated that not even death can conquer life. What is more profound than liberation? Nothing, because not even a bit of captivity will ever let you be you. And if God is the source of life, love, and liberation and God is on our behalf and we’re on God’s behalf, then should we return to a spirit of fear? Should we then return to the law to find our justification with God? Should we then intentionally miss the mark just because? Should we perpetuate death and destruction as if we’re saved from hell and that is all that matters? Should we roll over and declare everything is impossible? Μὴ γένοιτο! Anything is possible with God; herein does the good find its way, cutting through the muck and mire of humans dead set on the flesh and death.

Conclusion

Beloved, we’re exhorted by Paul in chapter 8 to press into the divine life that is with us, among us, and in us. We’re exhorted to live as those who trust God, as those who are inspired by the divine Spirit, as those who have been forgiven and who forgive, as those who can carry God’s mercy and grace forward into the world. We’re to pray as we’re led to pray—asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven—and knowing that when we pray the Spirit intercedes for us, molding and shaping our hearts, minds, and bodies in accordance with that will. We do not need to pray perfectly or repetitively; only simply. In this way, as we move about the world, we become those who can bring God close to those who are pushed far off, rejected, declared unlovable, those still held hostage and captive by unjust systems and structures. We get to be the ones who declare by word and deed God’s life, love, and liberation, to represent Christ into the world today, to participate in the fracturing the stagnant “this is all there is” and resisting lethargy, declaring confidently and defiantly to a world set on death and fear, “No, there is more here than meets the eye, for all things are possible for God who works all things together for the good of all, the Beloved, whom God loves!!”

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] LW 25, 365. “Hence it results that when we pray to God for something, whatever these things may be, and He hears our prayers and begins to give us what we wish, He gives in such a way that He contravenes all of our conceptions, that is our ideas, so that He may seem to us to be more offended after our prayers and to do less after we have asked than he did before. And He does all this because it is the nature of God first to destroy and tear down whatever is in us before He gives us His good things…”

[3] LW 25, 366. “These people [those who do not have this understanding of God and God’s will] trust in their own pious intention and presume that they are seeking, willing, and praying rightly and worthily for all things. Therefore when what they have thought of does not immediately come to them, they go to pieces and fall into despair, thinking that God either does not hear them or does not wish to grant their requests, when they should have hoped all the more confidently…”

[4] LW 25, 365. “And we’re capable of receiving His works and His counsels only when our own counsels have ceased and our works have stopped and we’re made purely passive before God, both with regard to our inner as well as our outward activity…Therefore when everything is hopeless for us and all things begin to go against our prayers and desires, then those unutterable groans begin…For unless the Spirit were helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for.”

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We Hope Because We Are Loved

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

Introduction

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

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

So, for this reason, Paul boldly says,

Romans 8:12-25

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

Rom. 8: 12-15

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

[3] Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation, 193.

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

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

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

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

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

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According to the Spirit

Psalm 119: 105, 111-112 Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path. Your decrees are my inheritance for ever; truly, they are the joy of my heart. I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes for ever and to the end.

Introduction

Paul is faithfully walking us through the depths of divinely gifted grace, mercy, and faith—the material expression of divine love. Faith surges forth from God’s love, plumbs the depths of human existence and returns to God’s love, carrying with it God’s beloved, you. There’s nothing you can do to fracture that love because it’s not yours to fracture and you didn’t cause it; you are the beloved because God declares you to be the beloved, because God loves you without a why or wherefore. When you believe this love is for you, this is faith: faith accepts God’s promise as true, bringing glory and honor to God, proving God truthful—worthy to be trusted. This is loving God for God’s self. Just love… pure, unrestricted, uncalculated, unconditional love. This is the type of love noted by the popular Mumford and Sons song, “Sigh No More”,

Love, it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be
There is a design, an alignment
A cry of my heart to see
The beauty of love as it was made to be[1]

Love is the great alignment; love aligns us to itself because love liberates. Love aligns us to God because God is love and the source of love; and in this alignment we are aligned to our neighbor and ourselves. We love others and we love ourselves. Blemishes and all; meager attempts to change and all; hot beginnings and tepid endings (or the reverse) … love, God’s love, bears all things. This is why Paul can say in Romans 8,

Romans 8:1-11

So then at this very time [there is] not one punishment following condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life liberated you in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. [2]

(Rom. 8:1-2)

There is, in other words, no condemnation for those who trust God, who consider God trustworthy. This means that the person and being of the human being who misses the mark, isn’t categorically worse than one who has not missed the mark. It is not that those who trust God by faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit are now without sin as if they do not sin. Rather, it’s about being exempted from condemnation for sinning; because the believer is justified by faith apart from works, even bad ones…even good ones! While there still maybe be “horizontal consequences” for missing the mark, with God, with Love, it is not determinate of being God’s beloved. Thus, Paul continues,

For the powerlessness of the law by which it was weak according to the flesh, God sent God’s own son in the form of sinful flesh and on behalf of sin condemned sin in the flesh so that the commands of the law might be fulfilled in us, not for those who walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Rom. 8:3-4)

The law, according to Paul, is not able to grant the necessary strength to fulfill it (to do the law); the law is powerless to make one obey its commands. In this way the law is made weak, exposed as weak according to flesh—our inability to do it. The law can only declare what’s to be done and what’s not to be done, but the law cannot cause the law to be fulfilled and upheld. Only love can do that.[3] Even if the law is fulfilled in deed while the heart and mind grumble—lacking love—this is not fulfilling the law because there is no love and it’s dry, heartless service to the law. We are in the thick of serving ourselves, and only ourselves.[4]

So, if the law is placed as a door granting access to God only if it is completed or fulfilled, then there’s no access because not only can we not do it rightly and fully, but the law cannot grant the power to do so. Thus, it can only deny entrance. However, God’s love exceeds the law, herein is mercy, grace, and freedom from the demand to do anything else but just love in response. Mercy and Grace eclipse the law because God’s love can move around the law to the one being commanded and usher that one into God’s love as the beloved. This is what Christ did: God sent God’s Son, Jesus, to be the representation of God and God’s love in the world, to be the door (the way, truth, and life) to God and God’s love, to show those who walked according to the flesh how to walk according to the Spirit.

How did Jesus’s life and death demonstrate this? By his resurrection. Here’s the key: Paul writes,

For those who exist/live according to the flesh, they judge/observe the things of the flesh, but the ones who [exist/live] according to the Spirit, [judge/observe] the things of the Spirit. For the aspiration of the flesh [is] death, but the aspiration of the Spirit [is] life and peace. On the very account that the aspiration of the flesh [is] hostility toward God, for it is not submitted to the law of God, indeed it cannot; now those who exist/live in the flesh are not able to please God.

(Rom. 8:5-8)

First, what is God’s law? To love God and to love the neighbor (these two are one; the ten break into these two). Working all the way back to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, what happens? Jesus’s baptism. Who speaks? God. What does God say? “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (or some rendition). Fast-forward to Jesus’s trial: whom do we release and whom do sentence? Barabbas and Jesus, respectively. Thus, in this moment it is highlighted that the law is not kept in two ways: we sentenced God’s son to the cross—the one who spoke to us about love—and we clearly did not listen to him. We chose our own wisdom over God’s and determined who was in and who was out, who was to live and who was to die—this is judging according to the flesh, and the aspiration of the flesh is death.[5] Judging according to the flesh, we forced the law to do the very thing it was not supposed to do: condemn to death an innocent man who was our neighbor and condemn God. In this, Christ bore our sinfulness (fully) took it into himself, took on the guilt that was not his[6]—the Sinless one became the sinful one, identifying fully with all those oppressed and marginalized by the judgment of the flesh and the worshipping of law at the expense of God and neighbor—to the point of blatant hostility toward both.[7]

But God! Exclaims Paul:

But you, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so then the Spirit of God dwells in you…Now, if Christ [is] in you, then the body is dead concerning sin, and the Spirit is alive concerning righteousness. Now if the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ form the dead will make [you] alive…

(Rom. 8:9, 10-11a)

What happens after Jesus died? God resurrects Jesus. This is the vindication of the righteous life of Christ that becomes (mercifully and graciously) ours by faith alone. It is in this crazy story of Christ being resurrected where we see the ultimate act of divine love, mercy, and grace: we are exposed, yet we are summoned forward into God’s love and not into God’s condemnation. Not only did we not get what we deserved (mercy) we received something we did not deserve (grace); this *is* the epitome of the actuality of divine love for you, for us. By divine mercy and grace calling us forward out death and into (new) life, how do we do anything but run to the very arms of God, and throw ourselves against Abba, loving God for God’s sake because we were first loved? [8] And here, in the lap of God, embraced by and embracing God, the law is done.[9] It is silenced; it has no stake here because love is bigger than the law and love is the point. Here, the law returns to its rightful spot: a means by which we serve our neighbor in love, mercy, and grace (sometimes by obeying it and sometimes by breaking it).

Conclusion

We are called to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the Flesh. This is not about “not sinning” this about showing mercy and grace and love to those who are held far off, those who cannot do right by society, those who are condemned already, and those who are oppressed and ostracized. The law is not bad, but when we use it defend our desires or mold the world or other people according to our judgment according to the flesh, it becomes bad and a means to exacerbate our sickness of othering, casting out, eliminating, condemning, determining the livelihoods of bodies not ours.

Walking according to the Spirit is not about elevating this or that commandment or decree; it’s about love, it’s about mercy, grace, forgiveness and absolution. It’s about loving God and loving our neighbor just because.[10] It’s about seeing the other person standing—vulnerably and humbly—before you, and giving them space to just be. Love will always liberate. Mercy will grant life. Grace will provoke love. And there we go around again.

Beloved, you are loved. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Loved. And when you forget look to the cross, because Christ died and rose again to bring you the fullness of new life. And then go love as you’ve been loved.

[1] Mumford and Sons “Sigh No More” Sigh No More 2010.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted; “Sin” is also “missing the mark”

[3] LW 25, 345. “Therefore, unless faith gives the light and love makes us free, no man can either have or do anything good, but only evil, even when he performs the good.”

[4] LW 25, 346. “But nature set for itself no object but itself toward which it is borne and toward which it is directed; it sees, seeks, and works only toward itself in all matters, and it passes by all other things and even God Himself in the midst, as if it did not see them and is directed only toward itself.”

[5] LW 25, 345. Human nature “…in particular cases human nature knows and wills what is good but in general neither knows nor wills it. The reason is that it knows nothing but its own good, or what is good and honorable and useful for itself, but not what is good for God and other people. Therefore it knows and wills more what is particular, yes, only what is an individual good.” And, “This curvedness is now natural for us, a natural wickedness and a natural sinfulness. Thus man has no help from this natural powers, but he needs the aid of some power outside of himself. This is love, without which he always sins against the Law ‘You shall not covet,’ that is, turn nothing on yourself fand seek nothing for yourself but live, do, and think all things for God alone. For then a man will know the good in every way along with all particular good things, and he will judge all things. Thus the law is impossible for us.”

[6] LW 25, 349. “For the sin by reason of which sin in the flesh is condemned is itself the penalty of sin which Christ took into His own flesh which was without sin, yet for the sake of the penalties of sin He took on the likeness of sinful flesh. Therefore sin which is in the flesh of all other people is condemned because of the sin of Him in whose flesh there was no sin.”

[7] LW 25, 344. “It is certainly true that the law of nature is known to all men and that our reason does speak for the best things, but what best things? It speaks for the best not according to God but according to us, that is, for things that are good in an evil way. For it seeks itself and its own in all things, but not God. This only faith does in love.”

[8] LW 25, 346. “For grace has set before itself no other object than God toward which it is carried and toward which it is moving; it sees only Him, it seeks only Him, and it always. Moves toward Him, and all other things which it sees between itself and God is passes by as if it had not seen them and directs itself only toward God.”

[9] LW 25, 348. “Thus the law is fulfilled because God alone is loved. For he who does not fear death because of God, likewise does not love this life more than God, and therefore he inwardly hates himself but loves God above all things. For he who loves God more than himself, surely loves God above all thing, since a person loves nothing as much as himself. But this is impossible for the flesh; for the wisdom of the flesh makes a person love himself above all things, even more than God.”

[10] LW 25, 350. “To be sure, the Law in itself is very good. It is as with a sick man who wants to drink some wine because he foolishly things that his health will return if he does so. No if the doctor, without any criticism of the wine, should say to him: ‘It is impossible for the wine to cure you, it will only make you sicker,’ the doctor is not condemning the wine but only the foolish trust of the sick man in it. For he needs other medicine to get well, so that the then can drink his wine. Thus also our corrupt nature needs another kind of medicine than the Law, by which it can arrive at good health so that it can fulfill the Law.”

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Free to Love

Psalm 13:5-6 5 But I put my trust in your mercy; my heart is joyful because of your saving help.  I will sing to God, for God has dealt with me richly; I will praise the Name of God Most High.

Introduction

Let’s review what’s transpired thus far in our journey through Romans:

In Romans 4 we learned that justification, according to Paul, is by faith alone apart from (any) work. Faith anchors into the promise of God (which was given before the law). According to Paul, Abraham trusted the promise of God, and this is what justifies Abraham. Faith in the promises of God justifies because believing God’s promises ascribes to God the honor due God: trustworthiness and worthy to be believed. From faith comes the doing of the law—remember, the law was given as means to assist God’s people in the world toward their neighbor, it was never meant to be worshipped. However, eventually the law eclipsed love in that it ceased to serve the people and the people began to serve the law—love was held in captivity to law. Thus, according to Paul, the law’s impact is known in its wrath, because we only feel the law when we break it—because the reward won’t come until the law is completed/fulfilled (thus, why we cannot be justified by our works because we need to do them all the time). However, Paul says, “[Jesus] was handed over on account of our trespasses and was raised up for the sake of our justification” (v.25). Thus, it is all by faith and trust; and in this way Abraham becomes (truly) the elder of many nations and through him they are blessed (no matter their culture and context, time and tense).

In Romans 5 we saw that, for Paul, being justified by faith yokes the believer to God’s peace. This peace comes with faith and is eternal because it is assured and secured by God and not by our actions and works. Thus, we can come close to God, be one with God, love God for God’s sake and not love God or use God as a means to an end. Also, God’s peace brings us peace with our neighbor whom we can love without a why or wherefore (without using them). And, finally, by faith and God’s peace we are given peace with ourselves because we are loved by a God who has demonstrated God’s deep solidarity with us in our worst plight: condemnation and death. When we should’ve received what we deserved because of our inability to judge rightly—the reason Jesus went to the cross—God loved us and demonstrated it through Jesus’s resurrection which secured for us the knowledge that God loves us no matter what and will not forsake us even when we do the worst! (I.e., try to kill God).

Now last week we looked at the first part of Romans 6, and we discussed our liberation from the condemnation of sin.[1] If Jesus was handed over on account of our trespasses, then for us to return to sin’s domination (whether by means of obeying to achieve something or by means of breaking it just because we can or by ignoring sin) is to deny Christ his work on the cross, it is to side-step the event of the cross and to tell God that God isn’t needed (this is the opposite of bringing God honor and glory, the antithesis of declaring God to be trustworthy). Also, in focusing on our sins, we forsake our justification by faith because we do not trust God that God has dealt with it. Thus, according to Paul, we are to be “dead” to sin… not that we do not sin—Christians sin until the end of time, says Luther—but that it does not exert control over us. And as we discussed last Sunday, there are two ways sin can re-exert control over us: by focusing on it by means of strict obedience (as if it is the only word) and by breaking it just ‘cuz. So, instead, Paul exhorts, just live, live as those liberated from sin and are imperfect, because otherwise we will return to being closed in on ourselves.

Now, this week…staying in Romans 6, Paul writes,

Romans 6:12-23

Therefore, let not sin reign over your mortal body (σώματι) in order to obey its inordinate desire, and do not present your limbs as weapons of injustice for sin, but present yourself to God as the living out of the dead and present your limbs as weapons of righteousness for God. For sin will not have authority over you; for you are not under the law but under grace. What therefore? May we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it not come to be! [2]

Rom. 6:12-15

As Paul moves through chapter 6 of Romans, he brings the discussion of the law and sin down to a personal level: our own bodies. So, if you’re feeling a bit attacked, don’t worry… you’re being attacked. Once again, we are confronted with the problem of intention, but this time it’s bodily intention. Last week we were looking at the inner intention, and now we are looking at outer intention. What we do with our bodies matters, says Paul. Just as we are to be dead to sin—not letting it have control and condemnation over us—we are also not to actively let sin reign over our bodies causing us to obey sin’s inordinate desires. We are not to spend our intellectual/emotional/spiritual time consumed with sin—by being consumed with not sinning, intentionally sinning, or ignoring it completely as if one does not sin. And we’re not to submit our bodies to sin, either. So Paul exhorts us to allow our bodies to become not only a site of liberation (for ourselves) but also the site in which faith manifests itself in love in service to the neighbor which is glory to God.

The juxtaposition of “under law” and “under grace” is important. Harkening back to what was discussed in chapter 4 of Romans, the believer is no longer under the law but under grace because the believer is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Thus, as we serve our neighbor it is done out of faith manifesting in love for the neighbor as the neighbor rather than as a means to fulfill the law—this would be putting primacy of place to the law.[3] So, Paul exhorts us to bring our body (the outer nature, corporate and personal) in line with our souls (inner nature, corporate and personal) in service to the neighbor for the neighbor’s sake which does, in fact, bring glory to God. As we know from Jesus, to love the neighbor is to love God and to love God is to love the neighbor, and not merely abstractly or confessionally but in practical reality, materially (orthopraxy born of orthodoxy). Thus we love as we have first been loved.

Once again, though, Paul reminds us about our intention: do we allow our limbs to be used as weapons of injustice just because we can? Should we use our limbs as weapons of injustice by focusing on ourselves and our adherence to the law at the expense of the neighbor? Should we just ignore our limbs, pretending they are useless considering we’re justified by faith? (This is another way to serve injustice through our inactivity toward justice.) Μὴ γένοιτο! For Paul, this intention leads to death; to serve the law for the law’s sake keeps one in the grip of sin, which is (bluntly) being turned in on the self. If you are trying to make yourself right or justified or good through obedience to the law, you are of no use to your neighbor because you cannot see them through the demand of the law and desire to make yourself right by your actions. Being concerned with only yourself is not freedom because you cannot be free when you are trying to serve the law for the law’s sake because you are held captive by the law and thus also by condemnation of sin; you are stuck (dead) in your trespasses. You might as well be dead man walking.[4]

However, says Paul, we were recreated in the event of justification by faith in God (trusting in God and believing God’s promises) through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, where we were once slaves to the law, sin, and (thus) death, we are now slaves to promise, righteousness, and life (Rom 6:17-18). However, this does not mean we are without the law (lawless, τὴν ἀνομίαν), rather the law is in our service, in service to love and not the other way around. We must use the law to guide our bodies, to bring them in alignment to our inner nature, and to spread God’s love, life and liberation to our neighbor,[5] especially those who are still held captive in unjust and death dealing structures, systems, institutions (visible and invisible), and ideologies. This is Christian sanctification: to love God and to love the neighbor in freedom and responsibility to the benefit of the cosmos.[6]

Conclusion

I will close with a quote from Gustavo Gutierrez’s text A Theology of Liberation,

…St. Paul asserts not only that Christ liberated us; he also tells us that he did it in order that we might be free. Free for what? Free to love. ‘In the language of the Bible,’ writes Bonhoeffer, ‘freedom is not something [one] has for [themself] but something [they have] for others….It is not a possession, a presence, an object,…but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means ‘being free for the other,’ because the other has bound me to [them]. Only in relationship with the other am I free.’ The freedom to which we are called presupposes the going out of oneself, the breaking down of our selfishness and of all the structures that support our selfishness; the foundation of this freedom is openness to others. The fullness of liberation—a free gift from Christ—is communion with God and with other [people].[7]

Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation

[1] Remember that the word translated as “sin” can also mean “missing the mark”.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] LW 25, 316. “For those people understand the expression ‘to be under the Law’ as being the same as having a law according to which one must live. But the apostle understands the words ‘to be under the Law’ as equivalent to not fulfilling the Law, as being guilty of disobeying the Law, as being a debtor and a transgressor, in that the Law has the power of accusing and damning a person and lording it over him, but it does not have the power to enable him to satisfy the Law or overcome it. And thus as long as the Law rules, sin also has dominion and holds man captive.”

[4] LW 25, 317. “Sin is the sting or power of death, through which death is powerful and holds dominion, as above in chapter 5:12 ff.: ‘death through sin’ etc. But the Law is the power or strength of sin, through which sin remains and holds dominion. And from this dominion of the Law and sin no one can be liberated except through Christ…”

[5] LW 25, 317. “For the wisdom of the flesh is opposed to the Word of God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore God, but the Word of God is immutable and insuperable. Therefore it is necessary that the wisdom of the flesh be changed and that it give up its form and take on the form of the Word. This takes place when through faith it takes itself captive and strips off its own crown, conforms itself to the word, and believes the word to be true and itself to be false.”

[6] LW 25, 321. “For through the terms ‘sanctification’ and ‘cleanness’ he is trying to convey the same concept, namely, that the body should be pure, but not with jut any find of purity, but with that which comes from within, form the spirit of sanctifying faith.”

[7] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. Trans Sister Caridad Inda and john Eagleson. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973. Ed 5th. Original: Teologia de la liberacion, Perspectivas Lima: CEP, 1971. (p. 36

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Go and Live!

Psalm 86:10, 16-17 For you are great; you do wondrous things; and you alone are God. Turn to me and have mercy upon me; give your strength to your servant… Show me a sign of your favor … you, God, have helped me and comforted me.

Introduction

In seminary, when I was given the opportunity to assist a professor with their teaching and grading, I was often struck by how many students were focused on eliminating sin. So many conclusions to systematic and pastoral papers ended with exhortations toward living sinless to the glory of God—exhortation directed at both the author and the audience of the paper. I never commented on these exhortational confessions decorating double-spaced, four-page papers, but I remember being very aware of their presence and their frequency. It struck me as odd because weren’t we exhorted by both Jesus and Paul to live, but this focus on the cessation of sin seemed the opposite of life, it felt like—and I wasn’t even that far into reading Luther at this point—a return to incurvatus in se, being curved in on oneself. In other words, it felt like the antithesis of living and life; it felt like stagnation and death.

I’m not without accusation and guilt. I spent my earliest years as a Christian focused on being sinless so I could be, once and for all, holy and righteous, perfect like my heavenly parent is perfect. The result didn’t make me relate to my neighbor more, but less; it didn’t make me love God for God’s sake, but less and worse: it made God a means to my end of being “sinless”. It didn’t make me freer in Christ, but less; it didn’t make me more dependent on the Spirit but less. It made me less loving and more judgmental. With sinlessness as my focus, I was not liberated from but enslaved to sin.

When Paul declares, “In this way also you, you consider yourselves to be dead truly to sin/missing the mark, and [truly] living to God in Christ Jesus” we must put the emphasis on the right syllable. Keeping in mind what we’ve covered so far, we must proceed with these two things in mind: 1. The Christian is justified by faith clinging to the promise of God and not by works of the law because the law cannot be satiated and will not grant the reward unless done perfectly; and 2. Because the Christian is justified by faith (alone) they have peace with God, with their neighbor, and with themselves because they are no longer trying to serve the law as the mediator. This then leads us to what Paul says in in Romans 6…

Romans 6:1b-11

Shall we persist in sin so that grace might abound? May it not come to be! Whoever died to sin, how can we still live in [sin]? Or do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?…For [the death] he died, he died to sin once for all; now [the life] he lives, he lives to God. In this way also you, you consider yourselves to be dead truly to sin/missing the mark, and [truly] living to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 6:1b-3, 10-11)[1]

About this passage, Martin Luther writes, “We are in sin until the end of our life.”[2] Christians will continue to sin and miss the mark their entire lives; you cannot avoid that fact, no matter how much missing the mark brings pain and suffering. So, when Paul exhorts his audience not to persist in sin, it is not with the intention of not having sin, but not intentionally seeking it out with the goal to demonstrate how far being justified by faith and grace will go. Because, for Paul, such a mindset is not liberation from sin, but the very return to being controlled by it, being controlled by your actions, thus ultimately still giving the law too much power and authority over you. It’s less about the deeds of sin and more about the orientation of the believer in relationship to sin thus to the law. If it’s all about not sinning, about not missing the mark (ever), then we are all back at square one: consumed with our deeds and our actions and, thus, the law. If you focus on your sins—your individual actions and deeds that break the law (either God’s or your own)—you are still being controlled by the law and are not free. Μὴ γένοιτο!

Paul is telling us here in Romans 6 that we are truly! liberated from sin unto life. So, returning to a singular focus on sins, on our deeds and actions, is a return to the tyranny of the law—something the law is not supposed to have. So, what does it mean that we should not persist in sin or that we are dead to sin? It means that we are dead to sin, as in liberated from the controlling accusation and condemnation of sin because it’s been dealt with in Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Because, as Paul has already told us in Romans 4, “[Jesus] was handed over on account of our trespasses and was raised up for the sake of our justification” (v.25). This then is the foundation of our life and liberation from death and from sin/trespasses; if we have been baptized into Christ’s death, then we are resurrected into his life (our justification). Said another way, “the death he died, he died to sin once for all; now [the life] he lives, he lives to God.” To focus our energy on our sin is to deny Christ this once-for-all-ness and to declare his sacrifice as deficient or, even, non-existent because it still depends on the law and on us. If this is so, then even as we live, we are dead because sin’s power and control live on, commanding all our energy and attention. [3] We are dead in our trespasses.

Rather, says Paul, it’s all on Christ, so…Go! Live! Go and live neither by pressing into sin, because that is still sin controlling you and thus is still death, nor by ignoring it and pretending you don’t have sin or you don’t miss the mark, for that is also not a living liberated but living controlled by sin thus death. Rather, go and live knowing you are going to miss the mark; and (good news!) when you do be sure to admit you’re fault and error, seek forgiveness, but just keep moving, keep loving, keep living, keep liberating. Go and live, live like those who are liberated from the oppression of the wrath of the law, of sin, of being curved in on yourself; live like those who are justified by faith and those who have peace with God thus with their neighbor and thus with themselves. Just live. Do you not know that you are alive in Christ and dead to sin?[4]You have died to sin because you have died with Christ; you have been raised unto life because you have been given life in Christ to live; why are you still consumed with death, with sin?[5] Why are you acting like the dead (controlled by sin) when you have been recreated to be the living (controlled by the loving, living, liberating Spirit of God)?[6]  As Paul writes later in Romans, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to again return to fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption, by which we cry, ‘Abba Father’” (8:15).

Conclusion

Two comments by way of closing.

First: You will miss the mark (sin). This knowledge that you are going to miss the mark (sin) is not an excuse to trample about without care for your neighbor. Just because you are justified by faith (fully and truly) does not mean you get to isolate yourself off from your neighbor, treating them as inferior to you and your needs. Too often people have used their faith to prop themselves up and above their neighbor, making themselves more important than their neighbor, and using their neighbor as a means to an end. But this isn’t liberation; this is as much enslavement to sin as is being obsessed with it. Liberation always includes the neighbor; it is never for you alone. For the one who can see and serve the neighbor without losing themselves in that action is the one who truly is free and liberated.

Second (is like the first): You will miss the mark (sin). You are not above it or below it. But if this fact becomes our focus, it will become a big stumbling block hindering both our ability to love God and to love our neighbor. We will never love perfectly because we can’t; plus, what even is perfect love? Isn’t the most perfect love the love that just wants to love for no other reason than just because (without a why or wherefore)? But if we become consumed with loving perfectly, living perfectly, acting perfectly we will slowly close ourselves into our cages, the same ones we’ve been liberated from. So, we live as messy and odd and weird and awkward and clunky as we can; but the goal is to live as loved and liberated human beings in the world, oriented toward bringing God’s love, life, and liberation to all people.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] LW 25, 308.

[3] LW 25, 311. I’m applying the following quote with a bit of demythologizing, “The other kind of death is eternal and very terrible. It is the death of the damned, where sin and the sinner are not the ones to die, while man is saved, but man dies, while sin lives on and continues forever.”

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

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

[6] LW 25, 315. “He has Christ, who dies no more; therefore he himself dies no more, but rather he lives with Christ forever. Hence also we are baptized only once, by which we gain the life of Christ, even though we often fall and rise again.”

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Peace be with You

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Romans 5:1-8

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

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

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

[4] LW 25, 285.

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

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

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

[8] Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry.

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Justified by Faith

Psalm 33:4-6 For the word of God is right, and all God’s works are sure. God loves righteousness and justice; the loving-kindness of God fills the whole earth. By the word of God were the heavens made, by the breath of God’s mouth all the heavenly hosts.

Introduction

When the law becomes all encompassing, human beings suffer. When the law is Lord, no one is safe. When the law is king, his ministers become executioners. If living life is all about obedience to the law, then we have no choice but to enter into an agreement with an oppressive state wielding threat and punishment. Ironically, in this situation, living life is the last thing you do because when the law becomes too heavy and controlling it suffocates human living and falsifies true, loving obedience. In this locality relationships fall apart because I begin to resent the one I am being forced to serve by appeasing the law rather than loving the person—and in all actuality, the person falls secondary in that equation, right? What is primary: the law or the person? The law. This is why controlling relationships—if you’ve ever been in one—are so tremendously destructive: human beings are lost for the sake of an inanimate thing that is being given the status and honor of a living, breathing entity, served as if it is God.

Law conceived in this way brings animosity, it creates division between people: those who uphold the law and those who do not, those who enforce the law and those who do not. Herein is the crux of Paul’s claim, in Romans 4, for the law is brought about by wrath/anger (v. 15a).So far I’ve only been speaking about a heavy handed civic use of the law, but Paul is speaking about what happens when law becomes the lord of people in relation to God. Paul says further,

Romans 4:13-25

By this [reason it is] from faith so that in order to secure the promise according to grace for all the offspring, not only to those of the law but also to those of faith of Abraham–who is the father of us all, just as it has been written that ‘I have established you as the father of many nations’—before God in whom he believed, the one who makes alive the dead and calls that which is not being as being…Therefore it was reckoned to him to righteousness. Now it was not written for him only that ‘it was reckoned to him,’ but also to us… (Rom. 4:16-17, 22-24a)

Access to God is bigger than law-obedience. Thus, Paul tells the Romans that it is not by the law they are saved and brought into union with God. The promise of God is not a command it’s a calling; Abraham, explains Paul, is summoned unto God, to follow God, to believe in the grand promise that Abraham—at his ripe old age and yet without heirs—will become the father of many nations. That Abraham follows God (obedience to the summons) is a result of Abraham believing God, having faith in the promise of God to bless Abraham not only personally (receiving an heir) but also that this blessing will be a for the whole world. It is Abraham’s trust and faith in God that brings God glory because God is trust-worthy and worthy of the honor of faith. The reality of Abraham’s faith as that which credits to him the righteousness of God extends to Abraham’s heirs who also believe in and trust God’s promises to be true.[1] For Paul, righteousness either comes by faith or it is null and void if by the law. It’s not by a little bit faith and a little bit law; to bring God glory is to first declare God to be truthful, by believing God’s promise, by faith, and then from here obeying God.

Why? Is the law bad? No. But the law cannot be satisfied, ever. It can never be a point of surety, it cannot give you the fullness of righteousness because it must be done every day, all the time, every minute, forever. Being righteous according to the law means that it only lasts as long as you obey the law, and all of it. This is why, for Paul (and Luther) the law works wrath because when broken it condemns—it does not praise you for a job well done, that praise comes in the medium of silence. In this way wrath comes because not only is the law giver forced to punish the lawbreaker, but the lawbreaker is forced to endure punishment for breaking the law. Wrath, here, is not just a tyrant God stomping about, here that the law brings wrath is more about that fractured law is fractured relationship, herein is wrath on both sides. Thus when the relationship with God is founded strictly on law, the law becomes threat: do this or else, don’t do this or else. But Paul is saying that the relationship with God is founded not on law but on promise believed, taken to be true, and this demands not obedience of law abidance but of faith and trust, obedience (or following) comes after the faith and trust. Otherwise, if the promise is first met with obedience to the law, as if the promise is only yours if you do x, y, or z then it isn’t a promise, it is a threat because it becomes law, stripped of its ability to bring anything beneficial, it will bring punishment and fracture, and if the promise is fulfilled by obedience before faith, the faith is superfluous and rendered false.[2]

And if faith is false, according to Paul, then the heirs of Abraham are only those who perform the works of the law or those who are born of Abraham which means that you and I (most likely) are condemned where we sit because we have no hope of being righteous before God by the law or by physical genetic similarities.[3] But yet Paul makes it clear that Abraham is and will be the father of many nations, thus this demands faith because Abraham could not bear many nations from his own body and the obedience to the law would demand not many nations but one. In this way faith renders those who are not related to Abraham literally—those who exist in different eras and times, those who are of different cultures and contexts—to be a part of the grandness of God by faith in God’s promises.[4] Those who trust God, believe that God will do what God has promised, are those who participate in God’s righteousness and become the children of Abraham, rendering the promises of God true and right, confirming that God is the God of the living and not of the dead!

Conclusion

A major theme in Protestant Christianity is the concept of justification, specifically that the righteousness of God comes to the those who are justified through faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit apart from works of the law. But we forget this, and we reach for the law to verify our relationship with God, to secure it. But this then renders the law more powerful than it should be, and we become consumed with obedience to the law for fear of letting the law down—forgetting God and ourselves. We will do whatever it takes to obey the law even if it means stripping ourselves and our neighbors of dignity, sacrificing everyone on the altar of the law. The law cannot ever be the sole means by which order and structure are maintained; when this happens we have a dire situation: the law is an idol we’ve allowed to dethrone God.

Without love, the law will become a ruthless tyrant set on death and destruction; the irony of law run amok without love. For it is in love where mercy can find ground and the law can become, once again, a means through which human beings serve each other, putting each other first, remembering that we live in communities that need order and structure. The law is to serve human beings; human beings are not meant to serve the law. There is more to life than obedience to the law because with only obedience to the law as the guide there is only fear and terror of threat and punishment and these hinder life and do not stimulate it.

You do not need to do anything to get God on your side, make God love you, demonstrate your love to God; you just need to dare to believe that God is on your side, that God does love you, that God knows you love God. And then, from here, let God in you, the Holy Spirit, cultivate that love so big that it spills over into the lives of other human beings lost in the shadow of the law.

[1] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 278-279. “For not through the Law. Again he proves that righteousness does not come from the Law but from faith, according to the fruit and merit of both. For the Law and faith deserve opposite things. That is, the Law merits wrath and the loss of the promise, but faith deserves grace and the fulfillment of the promise, as if to say, if you do not believe the Scripture and its example, at least believe your own experience. For through the Law you have deserved wrath and desolation, but through faith grace and the possession or the whole world, as is clear in the case of the apostles, who reign with Christ in all the world. Thus also the promise was not given to Abraham through the Law but through faith, and the same will be the case with you who are his seed.”

[2] LW 25, 279. “Thus the Law works wrath, that is, when it is not fulfilled, it shows the wrath of God to those who have failed to provide for its fulfilment. Thus the Law is not evil, but they are evil to whom it was given and to whom it works wrath, but to the others (that is, the believers) it works salvation; actually it is not the Law that works this but grace. Therefore, it the promise were through the Law, since it works wrath, it would follow that the promise is not a promise, but rather a threat. And thus the promise would be abolished and through this also faith.”

[3] LW 25, 280. “The promise to Abraham and to his seed that they should be the heirs of the world was not through the Law nor through his seed but through the righteousness of faith. For if they are heirs through the Law and because of their physical relationship, then faith is done away and the promise annulled. ‘For the Law works wrath’ (4:15).”

[4] LW 25, 282. “Now ł ask, was he their father according to the flesh or according to the spirit? He cannot be so according to the flesh, because there were then and there were going to be many nations always who were in no way descended from him. And yet he was given the promise that he would be their father. But if you say that all the nations at going to be destroyed so that only the sons who are descended from him will reign throughout the world, then he will be the father of only one and not many nations. On the other hand, if all the nations will be reduced to slavery and live in servitude, then he will no longer be their father nor these nations his sons, for they will be slaves and he the lord of the nations; in this case fatherhood is eliminated, and oppression and violence are indicated.”

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: God in Our Hunger

Psalm 118:22-24 I will give thanks to you, God, for you answered me and have become my salvation. The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day God has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Introduction

What Death tried to seal in a tomb, God liberated with one proclamation: “Let there be life!” And life burst forth, sentencing Death to its own tomb. Nothing gets between God and God’s beloved!

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!

What a day. It’s the singular time in the Christian liturgical calendar where the resurrection of Christ is told in the present tense and not as some distant future mythology for a special few who get their faith just right. Today, resurrection is for everyone. Today, God is for everyone. We declare today that God shook heaven and earth and liberated God’s beloved from death as the first born of all creation, the enduring symbol that death is not the final word for anyone. (Full stop.) Today we proclaim that life wins, love wins, liberation wins. Hallelujah!

Today in our encounter with this story of God’s radical activity in the world through the resurrection of Christ, I get to remind you that not only does life, love, and liberation win, but these become the foundation under our feet, the thread holding together the fabric of our existence, the substance of our individual and corporate life together, and the motivation for our activity in the world. It’s this message that makes the church the Church—visible and invisible. Without it, the church doesn’t exist. This awkward, weird, scientifically baffling, nonsensical, proclamation—Christ is Risen!—is meant to be the very characteristic establishing the church—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

What’s haunting me is how quickly we prefer to move on from Easter Sunday into this makes more sense Monday, and let’s be rational Tuesday, and that’s just mythology Wednesday, and so on. We are too quick to truncate the possibility of this announcement, relegating it to the simplicity of premodern people, some single historical event, a “picture painted on a wall.”[1] I think I’d be fine with this if we, as “enlightened” and “scientific” people, didn’t have so many of our own beliefs that don’t make sense, that are “irrational”, and that qualify as “mythology”. We have our own versions of the very things we criticize previous eras of human existence for. So, I’m wondering, what if… What if this ancient, whacky story of divine activity in the world, the overruling of death, the radical reordering of actuality and possibility has meaning for me, for you, for us today?

What if it can actually recenter and stabilize? What if it can create space and hold time to find identity? What if it can shatter alienation and encourage relationality? What if it can break through false expectations and give us ground to build community? What if it means—no matter what—we have solidarity? What if it’s true?

Matthew 28:1-10

Now, the angel answered and said to the women, “You, you do not fear! For I know that you are seeking Jesus the one who has been crucified. He is not here; for he is raised just as he said. Come (!) and see (!) the place where he was laid. And quickly go and say (!) to his disciples that he is raised from the dead; and behold! He is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him. Behold! I bid you!” [2]

Mt 28:5-7

Matthew seems to have a flair for the divinely dramatic side of story telling that seems, to me, absent in the other three gospel accounts of the resurrection. Mark, Luke, and John have the women (of some number) showing up and the stone already rolled away. But Matthew? Nah. That’s not his style. Let’s go big, or let’s go home!

Matthew tells us that the women, the two Marys (Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”[3]) came to look at the tomb.[4] Now, while our text makes it sound as if Mary and (the other) Mary were merely there to express their silent condolences, there was a purpose for this “looking”: to confirm Christ’s death.[5] These two women came assuming they’d affirm the actuality of death; they weren’t expecting to leave declaring  the possibility of life. Then, out of the blue…

[B]ehold!, a great earthquake happened; for an angel of the Lord descended out of heaven and drew near and rolled back the stone and then was sitting upon it…and from fear of [the angel] the guards shook and they became as dead.

A massive shaking of the ground, an angel in dazzling brightness descending and rolling back a massive stone, and big guards falling over, stiff as boards because they are terrified. Matthew skips no beats here in adding scientific perplexity to vibrant narrative pizzazz; he’s got a point and it’s not just for entertainment. What’s his point? This: Jesus didn’t need the stone removed to leave the tomb.[6] The Angel does it for pure divine dramatic effect. So, this is Matthew hollering at the top of his lungs: JESUS IS RISEN! And God had everything to do with it! this isn’t a “resurrection” story, it’s a “he is not here!” story.[7] It’s a “No one gets between God and the Beloved!” story.

The angel beckons the two Marys to come and see, because the angel knows they are seeking Jesus, the one who has been crucified.[8] Then the angel charges the women to go and proclaim to the disciples that Jesus is not dead, that he has gone on before them into Galilee, and that they’ll see him there. These humble women, dismissed by much of society, are charged by the angelic visitor, a representative of the celestial estate, to be the first to proclaim[9] good news to the sorrowful, to the regretful, to the ones who ran off, to the one who denied three times. It’s these very ones Jesus declares as “my brothers”;[10] they in the midst of their alienation, isolation, loneliness, shame and regret are summoned unto God, affirmed as the beloved because nothing…not-one-thing can separate them from the love of God.

Conclusion

Today, we celebrate, let our voices ring out with the splendor of heart felt Hallelujahs!, throw our hands up in the air, dance with delight like children, and rejoice that death doesn’t triumph over life. When everything looked as it if was dead and gone, God stepped in and breathed life into dry bones.[11] When our hostility toward God felt like an eternal fracture, God bent low and mended it.[12] When our tongues grew parched from reciting unfulfilled promises, God brought us the water of heaven.[13] When our bodies grew exhausted under the constant threat of the thunder of doom creeping about our lives and relationships, God cleared out the clouds and let the light of God’s countenance shine over us.[14] Today, in the resurrection of Christ, God comes near to you, to me, to all of us and is for us.[15]

Today God is in our hunger for stability; we are stabilized.
Today God is in our hunger for identity; we are irreplaceable.
Today God is in our hunger for relationality; we are with others.
Today God is in our hunger for community; we are seen, known, and loved here.
Today God is in our hunger for solidarity; we are not nor ever will be forsaken.

Today, in the resurrection of Christ, sola suspicio, reaches its limit; it has nothing to say to a people who are aware of their hunger, no longer satisfied with consuming themselves to death. Today, in being confronted with this radical story of divine love, life, and liberation we are awakened in our spirits. Today our hearts quicken with possibility, with what if and why not. Today our imaginations are reinvigorated, daring to dream of a world filled with justice, peace, mercy, love, and life. Today, wrapped up in the story of He is not here! we have the audacity to defy nothing with something, what-is with what-could-be, captivity with liberation. Today we come face to face with our hunger, with the reality that resurrection is not of the past but is right now, that we desire more than what we have grown accustomed to accepting and receiving. Today, we realize that our hunger is God’s hungering divine passion for the beloved; thus, today, we see that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is a summons to us to rise from the dead and join the living and God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for all people.

“The word of love lives, it happens, it is spoken and it is heard. As this word, Jesus is raised from the dead. The story of love does not end on Calvary but begins there.”[16]

Today we taunt death with the fullness of life and dare to follow Jesus out of our tombs; today we are bold to say beyond the limits of reason and suspicion:

“I believe in the crucified Lord who is alive, the failure which didn’t fail, the defenceless man whom God did not forsake, the man who loved, with whose cause God identified God’s self. God says yes to what we usually, with good reason, deny. God makes him the lifebringer, whom we thought of as lost in unreality. … God did not arm the defenceless man, God did not let him come to grief, as reason would suppose, but God approved of his defencelessness, accepted and loved him and raised him up. To believe in [Christ] means to follow his way. He who seeks him among the living, seeks him with God and therefore on this our earth.”[17]

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

[1] Luther qtd in Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, Trans. Dinah Livingstone. New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1969. 58.

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] ἠ ἄλλη Μαρία

[4] Θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον

[5] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2015. 336. “The effect of these visits was to confirm death. The women who come to perform this sad task of confirming death instead find themselves running tor Joy, announcing life. Waiting and watching in sadness, they have become the first witnesses to the resurrection. Once again the last are first. They are also first to worship the risen Lord.”

R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007. 1097. “The action of the angel in removing the stone from the entrance to the tomb draws attention even more clearly than in the other gospels to the fact that Jesus has already left the tomb, while the stone was still in place.”

[7] France, Matthew, 1098. “This is not an account of the resurrection of Jesus (as some editors still unaccountably describe it in their section headings), but a demonstration that Jesus has risen. We are not told at what point between the burial on Friday evening and the opening of the tomb on Sunday morning Jesus actually left the tomb, though the repeated ‘third day/three days’ language (and even more the ‘three days and three nights’ of 12:40) presupposes that he was in the tomb for most of that period. What matters to the narrators is not when or how he left, but the simple fact that now, early on Sunday morning, ‘he is not here’ (v.6).”

[8] Ἰησοῦν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον

[9] France, Matthew, 1101. “The women are not only themselves the witnesses of the empty tomb, but also the chosen messengers to convey the amazing news to Jesus’ male disciples.”

[10] France, Matthew, 1103. “my brothers” “This time, however, it follows the abject failure of the Twelve to stand with Jesus when the pressure was on, a failure which was hardly less shameful because Jesus had predicted it in 26:31. But now it is time for the second half of that prediction to be fulfilled ( 26:32), and that Galilean meeting will eventually restore the family relationship which they must surely have thought had come to an end in Gethsemane.”

[11] Reference to Lent 5 Sermon, Ezekiel 37:1-14.

[12] Reference to Lent 3 Sermon, Romans 5:1-11.

[13] Reference to Lent 2 Sermon, Genesis12:1-4a.

[14] Reference to Lent 1 Sermon, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7.

[15][15] Reference to Good Friday Sermon Isaiah 53

[16] Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, 80-81.

[17] Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, 59-60. The masculine pronouns for God rewritten as God/God’s

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Relationality

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

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before God our Creator. For God is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of God’s hand. Oh, that today you would hearken to God’s voice!

Introduction

Have you gotten out of the habit of communing with other people? I think I have. Well, to be honest, being social is very low on my list of things I regularly think about. When we first lived in Grand Junction in 2014, it took about ten months before I realized that the looming feeling I had was something called “loneliness.” Have you heard of it? I don’t get lonely; I can go for a very long time without any social interaction. A. Very. Long. Time. So, when I had this weird sensation and finally realized that there’s a term for it and that it there’s no drug to take to eliminate it, I struck out to make a friend. Just one. And I did! Lyuda and I have been friends since late 2015.

But this story feels like a distant memory of eras long gone. I’m reminded it’s been awhile since I’ve done something like that: gone out and made a new friend. I think it’s something to do with what we’ve suffered over the past few years. Now, as I said, it takes me a long to get “lonely”, but three years in? It feels especially tangible right now, right on the surface. Do you feel lonely? If you do, you are not alone. We’re all lonely. We’re just now starting to pull together and peek heads out of our shells…three years later. For three years, we’ve been bombarded with the fear of a virus that is very contagious, making it impossible to share place and space with others. Not to mention the caustic socio-political environment, tearing friendships apart, families asunder, and drawing thick lines in the sand. So, we’ve became pros at shutting down and closing off because our lives depended on it; we’ve become experts at speaking vapidly to stave off emotional outbursts, or worse? So, the coming back is hard… at times, too hard; isn’t it just easier to stay in, stay closed, stay distant, stay safe? I’m fine on my own, …right?

I fear we’re losing our relationality and nothing seems to satisfy.

Romans 5:1-11

For if while being hostile to God we were reconciled to God by means of the death of God’s son, much more since being reconciled we will be saved by his life. But not only [that] but even boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we now received reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10-11)[1]

At the core of what Paul is saying here in Romans, is that by virtue of the believer’s relationship with God through Christ, they are given space and time with God and with each other. Paul begins by explaining that in being justified we have peace with God and not only with God but with the world even in the midst of not having peace with other people.[2] During Advent I mentioned, “Peace exists because God is and God is within us.”[3] Herein is the foundation of that peace, according to Paul: God reconciles us to God through God’s son, Jesus. If this peace is done by works, we do not have a guarantee that peace with God exists. However, if it is by God’s doing, it’s secured and constant because it’s promised and God fulfills God’s promises. Every day we are justified and made right with God, every day we have union with God by faith because it’s by God’s mercy and not our own actions and even in spite of them.

By faith in Christ we have peace with God because by clinging to the promises of God we declare God to be truthful and true, rendering to God the things belonging to God: honor, delight, and trustworthiness (this is what it means that we “boast on the basis of hope of the glory of God”). In this way our relationship with God is aligned by our union with God; and if the relationship with God is aligned so, too, is our relationship with the world. In this new alignment with the world born from being children of God by faith,[4] we have peace with the world, because reconciliation with God allows us to interact with the world and with other people in a liberated way unencumbered from the burden of using the world and other people as means to an end (i.e. to secure a good relationship with God).

Paul anchors suffering and endurance in this union with God that we have by faith in Christ. Because we stand (“we are established”) in the grace of God, we have hope because we receive the love of God having been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit having been given to us. According to Paul, our union with God is the means by which we endure tribulations, for where we are God is, so, too is God’s love for us and the world. Therefore, our hope does not disgrace or shame because God promises to be present in our afflictions and sufferings and God is trustworthy and honest, because by Christ we have seen God suffer on our behalf.[5]   

Paul reminds his audience that if they received all of this while they were hostile (ἐχθρὰ ὄντες) to God and still missing the mark (ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν), then how much more will they receive in their reconciliation and union with God. Now God establishes God’s love for us, yet while we still missing the mark, Christ died on behalf of us. It is our missing the mark that brings Christ to the cross, for our ability to determine good from evil runs askew, as promised back in Genesis 3. Yet, even though we put Christ to death, God resurrects him meeting our demand for death with God’s gift of life.[6] This is love, this is grace: not giving someone what they deserve but giving them that which they do not deserve. Where we had the right to be judged and condemned for Christ’s death, we are given life, love and liberation.[7]

Now, receiving this divine grace and love while we were still hostile to God, how much more do we receive as those reconciled? We receive God, we receive the whole world, we receive ourselves in right relation with God and the World, thus with others.

Conclusion

We are rightly timid to derive our relationality from our own strength, trying desperately to reduplicate past experiences. We are right to be nervous to venture outside and commune with others, putting ourselves in physically vulnerable situations beyond our control. We are far from being out of the woods of the pandemic, and there are new bugs around, putting precious lives at risk. It is right to be cautious with whom you share your dreams and wishes for the world; the caustic socio-political climate that started back in 2016 is still percolating—for many people things are continuing to go backwards, away from what they had, or thought they had. Relationality right now is intimidating: with neighbors, with friends, with family, maybe even with ourselves.

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we reverse this trend of losing relationality, this threat of loneliness? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for relationality.

As those who have been encountered by God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are those who have been given life, love, and liberation. We are given union with God, we are given solid ground to endure the hardest tribulations with the most amount of hope. We are not given hope founded on false expectations for the future; rather, we are given hope that is present tense, that calls to mind what God has done, thus remembering what God said God will do. This type of hope is here, it is now, it is in spite of the world, transcends the world, and is for the world.[8] In our union with God we do not need to run away from chaos of multiple relational fractures or cling to what is behind denying the disordered relationality at hand. Rather, we can stand here, where we are, in the chaos and tumult, in the trial and tribulation, and know we are not alone for God resides with those whom God loves, with those who suffer, with those who have the audacity to experience their awakened hunger for God.

In this way, beloved, we are not alone; through God’s love for us we are not alone for we are with God. And if we are with God then we are with each other. It’s here where we’re brought further out of ourselves and our desperate attempts to keep ourselves from the difficulties of this life, from the anxiety of what lies outside the security of our homes, and from fear of the other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find relationality with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

[1] Translation mine.

[2] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1972. 43. “Since we are justified through God’s imputation, therefore by faith, not by works, we have peace the world and with God, although not yet with men and the flesh ….”

[3] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2022/12/04/peace-even-now/

[4] LW 25, 43-44. “Through whom , as our Mediator, we have obtained access, to God by loving and knowing and delighting in Him, by faith, because there will be no salvation through Christ without faith, to this grace, of peace, remission of sins, and justification, in which we stand, through the firm confession of faith, and we rejoice, not in a present thing before men but in our hope of sharing the glory, the exaltation, that is, the glorification in the future life of the sons of God, those who are of God.”

[5] LW 25, 44. “And endurance produces trial that we might be proved by God and found without deceit and guile and hypocrisy, and trial hope, that is, of ‘the glory of God,’ as has been said (v. 2). 5. And hope does not disappoint us, because it neither deserts nor fails us. All these things, I say, happen because the love, etc.,’ because the love, which creates an insuperable attachment, of God, that is, from God, has been poured, freely poured out, not received by merit, into our hearts, because love performs its works voluntarily; for works done unwillingly and by force do not endure, by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, through Christ from God the Father”

[6] LW 25, 44-45. “For hardly, it is extraordinary, I say, to die for the ungodly, for what is righteous, that is, for the sake of righteousness and truth, will one die—though perhaps, it is customary to die, for what is good, for its usefulness and desired features, one will dare even to die. 8. But God, the Father, shows, He makes it more commendable and worthy of love than all these things, His love, with which He loves us, for us, that is, the love which has been given to us, because on His part, in that while we were yet sinners, which he earlier (v. 6) expressed with ‘while we were still weak,’ at the right time (an expression which is not in the Greek at this point but only above) Christ died for us, the ungodly, so that we might not die in all eternity.”

[7] LW 25, 45. “For if, while were enemies, because of our sins, we were reconciled, so that we were not deserving of perdition, to God, not by our own merits or those of anyone else, except by the death of His Son; much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we, as His own, be saved by His life, in his resurrection to eternal life. 11. And not only  so, do we rejoice in tribulations, but we also rejoice in God, that is, because we have a God and He is our own God, because He has given Himself to us, through our Lord Jesus Christ, our Mediator, through whom we have now received our reconciliation, the remission of sins, so that we may receive God Himself, through One. I say. Christ.”

[8] I’m reminded here of similar tones in this post by J. Scott Jackson, http://derevth.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-peace-that-disturbs-berrigans.html

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Identity

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Genesis 12:1-4a

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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