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Our Persistent God

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Our Persistent God

Luke 18:1-8

Shannon J. Kershner

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois

In some ways, this should have been the easiest sermon I have written in a while. Luke tells us right off the bat what this parable is supposed to be about. While introducing Jesus’ telling of it, Luke states outright in verse 1 that it is a parable about the need for persistent prayer and the call to not lose heart. Thus, that interpretation should direct the way we hear the parable, right? Maybe. Let’s meet the characters in the parable. First, we have a judge. As a friend of mine said, “We know about judges in Israel. We know their role was to maintain a reasonable harmony in the community and to adjudicate disputes fairly and impartially . [Furthermore], it is particularly worth remembering that Jewish law, the Torah, described a particular responsibility for such judges when it came to protecting the rights of the poor—of widows and orphans and refugees.”1 So that is our judge. Our first character. And then, we have the widow. Now immediately, when Jesus introduces us to the widow, the drama intensifies. Because, as we just heard, a faithful judge would know of his duty to pay particular attention to people like that widow. Yet herein lies the dilemma—when Jesus introduced us to the judge, he also gave us insight into his character. The judge, according to the parable, was not faithful. He had no reverence for God (what the Bible calls fear of the Lord) or for anyone else. Frankly, the judge did not seem all that interested in being an actual judge to begin with. He did not seem to really care about even the conceptual idea of justice. He certainly had no concept of compassion. We make those assumptions because of his actions. The judge was not moved one bit by the widow’s pleading of her case. “Grant me justice,” she said, every single time she went before him. Yet, “No” was always his answer. “No No No No No.” Amazingly enough, though, that widow was never deterred by his denial. I guess she felt that as a widow, she literally had nothing to lose by going to the court every single day and demanding to be heard. Whatever it was, something gave that widow a stubborn determination. Furthermore, she also must have sensed that she was getting to him. So she continued to go to his courtroom again and again and again and again. And while Jesus does not tell us how many times she walked up to that judge and demanded he act with compassion and grant her justice, we do know her persistence, her dogged determination, her sheer unwillingness to give up or to give into his “No” or “Not yet” grated on the judge’s nerves. We know this because Jesus lets us overhear the judge’s internal thoughts. “Look, I could care less about God, and I sure don’t care about anyone else, but this widow is standing on my very last nerve. So fine, I will give her what she wants so that she will finally leave me alone.” And all is well that ends well, because the widow gets the justice she demanded, even if compassion was nowhere to be found and it took much longer than it should have. For a parable, a type of story typically meant to provoke and disturb, it is strangely

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rather cut and dry. Just imagine, Jesus seems to conclude, if this horrible unfaithful judge will finally grant justice for the widow, think of how much more a good and gracious God will compassionately respond to the cries of the vulnerable, the outcast, and the oppressed. All you have to do, the parable seems to say, is bug God day and night. Keep at it. Don’t stop. Your prayers will eventually be heeded sooner or later. But regardless of God’s timing, summon the stubborn persistence of the widow. And don’t lose heart while you are doing it. Cut and dry. The end? I hope not. Let’s be honest. You know and I know that many of the vulnerable, the outcast, and the oppressed have been praying ceaselessly for the coming of God’s justice and compassion to transform the hearts, the institutions, and the structures of our world, and yet, here we are. The wolf does not live with the lamb. Nation continues to lift up sword against nation. Justice does not roll down like waters. Righteousness is not yet like an ever flowing stream. No, for generations, God’s people, people like us, have been lifting our voices to God in fervent prayer, pleading with God to end the violence, to end the wars, to bring about equity for all people, healing for creation. But day after day we learn of another shooting or another bombing or another eviction or another hungry child or another woman assaulted or another man without meaningful employment. Thus, if the sole point of this parable is only to encourage our persistence with God, then frankly, I don’t know how much use I have for it. I’ve sat by too many bedsides and heard too many stories from people who have diligently gone to God in persistent, stubborn prayer, and yet their prayers for justice and for compassion were not answered in the ways they had hoped. So regardless of how Luke introduces the parable, I cannot get comfortable with the conclusion that the only thing Jesus wanted us to hear is the message that all those people must not have been persistent enough or things would have turned out differently. That kind of vending machine God is not the God to whom I have given my heart. That is certainly not the God I see in Jesus. So since parables are always meant to be disruptive and provoking, is there another way this parable might work on us, in us? If we do not assume we are in the place of the widow and that the judge is the example of what God is not, then what else might we hear? Actually, what happens if we switch roles? What happens if we sit in the seat of the unjust judge and God takes on the persistent cries of the widow? Now, you might not like that seat assignment, and you might argue you have nothing in common with that unfaithful, unjust, disrespectful judge, but let’s stay there for now and listen. What’s the first thing we hear? We hear that widow’s cry, God’s cry, for justice, for compassion. “I am coming to you on behalf of the vulnerable, the outcast, the oppressed,” God says to the Church through her voice. “And trust me,” she says, “I am not going to leave you alone until you listen to me, until you act in response to what you hear, until you, as disciples and as an institutional structure, repent of all the myriad of ways you continue to ignore all these cries or dismiss them. I am demanding justice on their behalf. I am demanding that you respond with compassion.” God calls out to the Church through the voice of the widow, “Yes, I am going to keep coming to you, Church,” God stubbornly says, “again and again and again, no matter how many times your collective words, your collective actions or inactions tell me No or

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Not yet. Like the widow, you cannot get rid of me. I will persistently wear you down with my grace,” God claims. As we sit in the seat of that judge, this parable reveals that no matter how many times we, like that judge, just try to move on with our own lives, take care of our own people, or simply keep our own heads above water, our persistent, stubbornly determined God will keep coming to us. And our persistent, stubbornly determined God will keep challenging us to let the priorities of God’s compassion and justice reorder the priorities of our lives,2 of our life. Hear that again: God desires for the priorities of God’s compassion and justice to reorder the priorities of our lives, of our life. That reordering was the widow’s challenge for the judge in the parable. That reordering is God’s challenge for the Church today, for you and for me. So we have a decision to make—how long will we ignore God’s persistent prodding of us to respond to the cries we hear for justice and compassion—justice and compassion not just for the people we understand or look like or love, but particularly justice and compassion for those who are the vulnerable, the outcast, and the oppressed in our day? Because like that widow, God is not going to stop demanding that we hear those cries and that we respond to what we hear. God loves us just as we are, but God loves us too much to let us stay just as we are. So God will keep pressing us. Like that widow and the judge, God will not give up on us. In light of that, I must ask you a question. Today, in your life, as you sit on that judge’s seat, what do you think God is persistently calling you to do/to be/to say as a disciple? What call for justice and compassion in our world and in this time is God asking for you to hear and to heed, asking for you to help in enacting? What will God not leave you alone about, no matter how many times you try to brush God off? As you ponder that, I will tell you mine. Though it has always been a part of my call as a female clergyperson, I believe God is once again bothering me, persuading me, demanding that I, as your pastor, speak up and out in this holy space against the myriad of unjust ways women and girls are actively being demeaned in both daily acts and in our national conversation. As a person who, no matter what the world tries to tell me, is created in God’s image just as much as any man, as a mother of a daughter who, no matter what the world tries to tell her, is created in God’s image just as much as any boy, and after this past week in our world that we have all collectively endured, I can no longer stay silent. I cannot go along to get along or let my fear of upsetting some of you keep me from testifying—testifying against the daily dismissals and denials of the myriad of ways in which women and those who identify as female regularly encounter aggression against our bodies and against our souls. It starts young and it does not stop. I believe God is persistently asking me, persuading me, to not just let this one go unchecked anymore. Too much is at stake for me to remain silent, for the Church to remain silent. For did you know that after that tape of the bus conversation with the candidate and the reporter aired, phone calls to this country’s biggest sexual assault hotline jumped 33% over just one weekend?3 The executive director said they had to bring in additional staff and ask their other staff to stay for longer hours. Too many people were calling in distress over memories unearthed or with experiences of verbal and physical sexual assault finally being articulated. Furthermore, the Friday before the second Presidential debate took place, writer

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Kelly Oxford wrote on Twitter about her first experience of sexual assault and asked other women to share their stories in response. Within one evening, she had received one million responses. One million responses. I know from personal experience that we are not making this up. It is not about locker room banter or letting boys be boys. It is about a demeaning and a dismissing of our full God-created, God-given humanity and a passive acceptance of our female bodies as public property. Why else would we have had so many purple ribbons outside during Awareness of Domestic Violence month? As men and women of faith, siblings in Christ, we all must take this unjust and unfaithful cultural attitude seriously and do what we can to dismantle the idol of maleness as reigning supreme. As Christians, we must speak up when something demeaning is said; carefully consider the ways we speak of God in order to make sure our words are as inclusive and as expansive as our Creator; stop ignoring or denying the stories of pain that so many women carry over past experiences; and do whatever we can inside the church and outside of it to make sure that all of our children, regardless of gender identity, know they are deeply valued and loved. Because I believe God, like that widow, is going to keep coming to us as Church, as followers of Jesus Christ, again and again and again and again in order to keep asking us why we are not speaking up or acting out in ways that embody God’s compassion and value God’s call for justice and equity. God is not going to just leave us alone about it. It is not who we are, and the toxicity of that idolatry is damaging our country and it is damaging our souls. My daughter gave me permission to tell you that what she has been hearing scares her. So this is my conviction as to where I feel called to act and to lead in response to our persistent God. What about you? As you move into this week, take that question with you. Open your heart to hear what God is bothering you about these days. How is God persistently challenging you to allow God’s compassion to reorder the priorities of your life, so you might resist the temptation to be only an unjust judge, and instead act in response to God’s call articulated through the widow’s voice for compassion and justice? Because God will not stop continually coming and doggedly calling and persistently persuading until those cries, God’s cries, are answered. Thank God.

Notes 1 Bob Dunham, Day 1, October 21,2007. 2 Alan Culpepper, NIB, Vol. IX (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 339. 3 Heard on NPR, Morning Edition, October 14.

December 31, 2017
Preaching Advent: A Theocentric Approach in an Anxious World

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Preaching Advent: A Theocentric Approach in an

Anxious World

Frederick W. Schmidt Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois

Work through any good history and it becomes clear that the church’s preaching during Advent has often been shaped by the some measure of distress and alarm.1 That will be the case again this year.2 According to the Forewords for this journal, that has been the case in years past3 and that was the case from the beginning, of course. The very texts that frame our preaching during Advent are firmly lodged in days of distress and alarm. In approaching the task of preaching yet again in this Advent season, awareness and empathy are two of the preacher’s great gifts. The preacher who hopes to connect the message preached with the lives of those in the pews needs to be in touch with the events of the day and have the emotional intelligence to speak directly to our anxiety. Both gifts are also seductions, however, and their power to seduce is magnified by anxiety. A preacher trapped by the complexity of the day’s news and by the sense of dis-ease that infects our society will be tempted to draw on the vocabulary and theological formation that has shaped preaching in pulpits now for almost 150 years. For that reason, I will argue that preachers need to take a more theocentric rather than anthropocentric approach to the texts at Advent. Growing out of the theological debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, two mutually polarizing movements have shaped that vocabulary. Reacting to the perceived threat of modernity, fundamentalism emphasized “the importance of self-abnegation in the lifelong struggle against sin.”4 In reaction to fundamentalism , Protestant liberalism increasingly emphasized and enthusiastically embraced the modern world and the transformation of society.5 The contemporary children of both movements, then, offer a stark choice: one of personal salvation, the other the promise of social salvation, and much—though, thankfully not all—of the preaching that we do falls into one camp or the other. There are flaws to both approaches that the other side is quick to point out. The Fundamentalist emphasis on personal salvation often fails to acknowledge the social dimensions of sin, the comprehensiveness of God’s redemptive vision, and appears to postpone real transformation for some kind of “sweet bye and bye.”6 When navigating society’s anxiety, fundamentalists often engage political questions—if they engage them at all—with an eye to securing religious freedom and the values that they cherish . Liberal (or what are now styled as “progressive”) Christians, by contrast, are faulted for neglecting questions of theological rigor, individual accountability, and a personal witness to the work of God in their lives.7 They are faulted for preaching politics to the exclusion of everything else,8 and it is argued that their eschatology amounts to little more than the triumph of a particular social vision. The validity of those criticisms and the weight of them varies from individual to individual. There are also those who appropriate the emphases of both theological traditions in a fashion that avoids many of the criticisms that are leveled at them.9 But

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the deeper difficulty with both views—and the defect that both approaches share—lies in the choice to emphasize an anthropocentric rather than a theocentric reading of the biblical message. Victims of a debate that has been theologically defining for both fundamentalists and progressives alike have been anxious to demonstrate the relevance of their respective interpretations of the biblical message, promising that God will either heal our personal lives or heal our society. As a result, both fundamentalists and progressives tend to emphasize God’s work on our behalf or our work on God’s behalf rather than our participation in the work of God. The result is a flattening, narrowing, and distorting of the biblical message. Mesmerized by its superiority over the “other camp,” fundamentalism and progressives offer the preacher theological options that begin and end with definitions of God’s redemptive work that are defined by our needs, anxieties, and prescriptions for a solution .10 But the task of preaching the Advent lections lies in asking and answering a subtle but very different question “What is God doing and how can we be available to the work of God?”11 The answer to this theocentric question cannot be found by using historical criticism alone. Indeed, the tendency to read Scripture as a collection of not just discreet, but unrelated pieces of literature has robbed us of the ability to offer an answer to a question of this kind.12 But one way to begin is by contemplating the relationship between Advent, the triune God of Scripture, and the saving acts of God that follow Advent: the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.13 This approach need not and should not replace sound historical critical work with the text. Indeed, as Walter Brueggemann cautions, in reading the Old Testament and in particular the texts from Isaiah, it is important not to “preempt” the message of the prophet in the legitimate effort “to see how the book of Isaiah fed, nurtured, and evoked Christian imagination with reference to Jesus.”14 However, when that larger theological landscape becomes a part of the picture, several things become clear that serve as the larger narrative of the church’s faith: that creation is God’s free choice bom of God’s character, that creation is good and sustained by God, that humankind is made in God’s image and is meant to serve as God’s vice-regent in the world, and that humanity’s desire to be its own god has undermined its ability to serve as God’s vice-regent, imperiled the well being of God’s creation, and compromised God’s claim to be God. The purpose of God’s saving acts, then, is to restore the image of God in humankind, invite our participation in the work of healing and restoration begun and completed in the person of Jesus Christ, and establish God’s intended reign over all creation. The story begun in Advent is not all about us. It is about God and about God’s intentions for God’s world. We are not saved for our own sake or for the sake of our society. We are saved so that we might participate in the work of God. Discipleship takes us back again and again to an encounter with God in order to find clues for the way forward, because that work cannot be captured by our narrow formulations of what might be good for us or for our world. Salvation, peace, righteousness, justice, love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace are experienced in their fullness only in God.15 With this theocentric reading of the Advent texts in mind, preachers might emphasize a number of themes. What follows are some suggestions.16

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Advent One: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37 With a theocentric reading of the Advent texts in mind, the reading from Isaiah serves well as a place to begin at the beginning: with divine initiative and with the recognition that our narrow construals of God’s grace and merciful activity are never adequate. It is also a place to call attention to the importance of asking where and how God is at work in the world, particularly in times of anxiety.17 Isaiah’s plea is both a prayer and a challenge, asking God to act in the unanticipated ways that God has acted in the past (Is 64: l5־a).18 Abraham Heschel’s description of the prophets as homo sympathetikos, as people who long and strain to know the purposes of God, invites us to join them.19 This is not, as I have heard it so often described, an exercise in “doubting.” It is, instead, a candid, vulnerable effort to stand alongside God as discerning witnesses, even when the circumstances we face make that difficult. To grasp both the wonder at God’s work and the responsibility to be discerning witnesses to that work invites the church to free itself from enslavement to the tyranny of fear. It also identifies one of the roles that we are invited to play as the people of God. In a similar fashion, the admonition to “keep awake” that accompanies the apocalyptic vision recounted in Mark 13 enjoins the same attentiveness to God’s agenda. Here, however, as is often the case in apocalyptic literature, the hearer is invited to consider what it means to participate in the work of God, even when the events of the moment overwhelm us (Mk 13:33).20 Mark, then, is doing his own theocentric thinking here. As Eugene Boring observes,

The future apocalyptic kingdom of Mark is not an utterly new discontinuity with the life of Jesus and the life of the church. For Mark.. .the word of the kingdom was planted by Jesus and continues to be planted by preachers and teachers. And when the apocalyptic kingdom comes, it will not be utterly discontinuous with all that has been, but will maintain continuity with what is already mysteriously, paradoxically present in Jesus and his disciples. But it will not simply grow out of their work; the Son of Man will come from the transcendent world to bring it to consummation.21

Advent Two: Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8 There will always be people who are surprised by the emphasis on repentance in the Advent lections, in part because we do so little education around the spiritual disciplines implicit in the liturgical calendar. The surprise can also be traced to the ways in which the secular celebration of Christmas has reduced Advent to little more than shopping and family festivities. Navigating the lections is also complicated by the implicit, cultural assumption that repentance is tantamount to shaming, an effort by the church, if not by God, that is bent on making the penitents feel badly about themselves. (Although, ironically, we have no difficulty in affirming its place in twelve-step programs and similar efforts.22) The second week of lections gives the opportunity to help people understand that a theocentric reading of the Advent texts is not just about focusing on the larger work of God; it is also about acknowledging the obstacles to welcoming God’s coming. This is the point of repentance, and it is worth noting that in the reading from Isaiah 40, that is why words of comfort and images of a God who “will gather the lambs in

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his arms” appears hard on the heels of a nation that has paid her penalty. Preachers will want to look for images that communicate this insight and subvert the distractions that our cultural lenses have introduced, like that found in the work of Archimandrite George Capsanis who writes, “Repentance is…a dynamic condition, a continuous progress towards the Lord. Properly speaking, it is the pursuit of the living God. Its character is neither primarily ethical or legalistic. Instead, it is the fruit of a sanctified eroticism which strains toward the beloved Lord, a sign of profound humility and desire for God.”23 One may also rely on Mark’s gospel and the description of John the Baptist’s ministry to communicate some of the same truths. Here, however, the text invites us to consider how repentance and a positive response to John’s preaching contributes to making the Lord’s paths straight. Mark’s gospel also invites us to consider the ways in which we—clergy and lay people alike—share the same space before God. The theocentric approach to the text reminds us that the spiritual discipline of repentance is not something we demand of one another or that the church as an institution exacts of those around it. Repentance is, for all of us, the process of letting go of those things which make it impossible for us to receive what God longs to give us.

Advent Three: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8,19-28 Having talked about the work of God and the repentance that makes it possible for us to receive the gifts of God, the third week of Advent offers space to turn our attention to the purpose of our lives and the question identified earlier in the article: How can we be available to the work of God? Whether one focuses on the words of Isaiah 61, which find expression in the ministry of Jesus (Luke 4:18-19) or the example of John the Baptist in the reading from John’s Gospel, both texts give the preacher an opportunity to subvert the all too common narrative that God’s purpose is to solve our problems. Although good news is announced to the oppressed and captives are set free, significantly, the coming of God’s kingdom derives both its shape and its inspiration from God’s love of justice and righteousness, the definition of which can only be found in the ordering that comes with God’s reign. The House of Israel and those who hear John are called to cooperate with this vision. As Walter Brueggemann observes in Isaiah 61, “The variation of speakers (human speaker—Yahweh—human speaker) indicates how intimately connected are Yahwistic resolve and human vocation.”24 There are many ways to prompt a congregation to consider how they might cooperate with God’s “resolve.” One of the best ways, perhaps, to invite people to contemplate this calling is to describe the inspiration that shaped the spiritual exercises outlined by Ignatius of Loyola. Mapped out across four weeks of praying with the Gospel stories, Ignatius invited his followers to first pray for the forgiveness of their sins and then to journey imaginatively with Jesus through his ministry, his passion and death, and finally his resurrection. The point of this prayerful journey was not to address the personal and spiritual challenges they faced—although the Exercises often did—but to teach them how to be available to the purposes of God. The order came to be known as “The Companions of Jesus” and this, not the title “Jesuit,” is the one that they still prefer.25

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Advent Four: 2 Samuel 7:1-11,16; Luke 1:26-38 The fourth and final week of Advent centers on a text from 2 Samuel 7 and the covenant made by God with David. David’s throne is, in turn, the throne of Christ, according to the reading from Luke’s Gospel. This last set of texts gives the preacher an opportunity to think about the larger, redemptive task of God against the backdrop of what is to come, giving the congregation not just an understanding of Advent, but of the liturgical year and the saving acts of God in Christ: the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Describing that work as “apostolic preaching,” Irenaeus writes:

Hither were the prophets sent by God through the Holy Spirit; and they instructed the people and turned them to the God of their fathers, the Almighty ; and they became heralds of the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, declaring that from the posterity of David His flesh should blossom forth; that after the flesh He might be the son of David, who was the son of Abraham by a long succession; but according to the spirit Son of God, pre-existing with the Father, begotten before all the creation of the world, and at the end of the times appearing to all the world as man, the Word of God gathering up in Himself all things that are in heaven and that are on earth.26

Here and elsewhere, Irenaeus offers a commanding and comprehensive picture of God’s redemptive work as “recapitulation,” arguing that with the first Advent, Jesus brings divinity into creation and that through Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, he also takes redeemed humanity back into the life of God.27 By working through this theme, the preacher once again has the opportunity to explore the question “What is God doing?” and can rely on the lenses provided by the liturgical year and the church’s understanding of the work of Christ as above or by working exclusively with one of the texts.28 As Walter Brueggemann notes, in Second Samuel, the answer to the question “What is God doing?” is fleshed out in the contrast drawn between David’s dynastic designs and the will of God. David plans to build a temple, as all kings do, but God will not be co-opted. “David will not build Yahweh a house (temple), but Yahweh will build David a house (dynasty).”29 And that divine initiative will not just govern the foreseeable future, but will become the vehicle for God’s redemptive purposes: “I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more… (2 Sa 7:10a).” God is not trapped by moments in history or by our schemes for control. Exercising sovereignty that we cannot understand and do not master even in our freedom to act, God declares, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever (7:16).” The passage should not be interpreted as a promise from God to do our bidding, but as a window into a story that is not finally about us, but about God. By contrast, Luke’s Gospel offers us a different picture. If David, acting as all monarchs do, believes himself to be sovereign, but becomes the servant of God’s purposes, Mary readily and courageously says “yes” to the purposes of God (Lk 1:38). It is little wonder that, contrary to what seems possible in the moment, she becomes

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the God-bearer and the first apostle.

Conclusion Will the approach that I’ve outlined above speak to the anxiety that we experience this Advent or the choices that we may face both personally and publicly? It will depend in part on how the preacher unpacks these themes. Conversations about the will and work of God are always fraught with errors born of quietism on one end of the spectrum and demagoguery on the other. But if we hope to speak a word of hope and challenge in this Advent season, it is important to remember this: God’s redemptive work embraces our lives, but it is not about our needs. It embraces our world, but it is not about our politics. Our hope, then, lies in God’s agenda, not our own. That was the case over 2000 years ago on the uneven roads of Galilee. Things are no different today.

Notes 1 Alongside considerable doctrinal controversy, active Roman persecution of the church stretched in fits and starts from A.D. 64 to 313, when the Edict of Milan brought that particular brand of persecution to a “definitive” end. (See: Ivo Lesbaupin, Blessed are the Persecuted, Christian Life in the Roman Empire, A.D. 64-313, trans., Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987), ix.) That period was not marked by uniform tensions, and it would be a mistake to imagine that the coliseum was choked with Christians for almost 250 years. But even though John the Elder probably wrote to the churches in Asia Minor during a time marked by rather more subtle social pressures and discrimination, his language makes the peril of his day and age clear. Ibid., 12 .־See also: Frederick W. Schmidt, Conversations with Scripture: Revelation (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2005), 37ff. 2 The number of books and articles on fear and anxiety is on the rise. It is not good news that the partisanship that marks public discourse also tends to shape the literature on the subject. What we are left with, in other words, from the people who might help us process our fears is, instead, the message: “My fears are legitimate. Yours are not.” See, for example, from both sides of the political ledger: Molly Ball, “Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear,” The Atlantic (September 2, 2016): https://www. theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and־the־politics-of-fear/498116/; Neil Strauss, “Why We’re Living in the Age of Fear,” Rolling Stone (October 6, 2016): http://www.rollingstone. com/politics/features/why-were-living־in־the-age־of-fear־w443554; Omer Karasapan, “Refugees, migrants, and the politics of fear,” Brookings (April 12,2017): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future־ development/2017/04/12/refugees־migrants־and־the־politics־of־fear/; David R. Henderson and John H. Cochrane, “Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World,” The Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2017): https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate־change־isnt־the־end־of־the־world1501446277־. For a survey of fear in America, see: “America’s Top Fears 2016,” https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2016/10/ll/ americas-top־fears2016./־ 3 Erskine Clark, “Foreword,” Journal for Preachers XXXVII. 1 (Advent, 2013): 1. 4 Bendroth, Margaret, “Christian Fundamentalism in America, ״Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 4 Aug. 2017. http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199340378־e419.־ 5 Ibid. Protestant liberalism had earlier origins, of course, but the aftermath of World War I brought liberals and fundamentalists into sharper conflict. Dietrich Bonhoeffer witnessed to the polarizing effect of that same debate when he visited Union Theological Seminary in 1930 and 31. See: Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), lOlff. Cf. Matthew S. Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23ff. 6 S. Fillmore Bennett(w.) and J.P. Webster (m.), “The Sweet By And By” (Chicago: Lyon & Healy, 1868). 7 See: Stanley M. Hauerwas, “Bonhoeffer on Truth and Politics,” Conference on Lived Theology and Civil Courage, University of Virginia, June 14,2003: 3 and 5 n. 11. For a link to the text of his lecture, see: http://livedtheology.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/hauerwas.pdf.

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8 Libby Sternberg, “Why not a day of rest from politics?” The Wall Street Journal (July 27,2017): https://www.wsj .com/article_email/why-not־a־day-of־rest-from-politics-1501193333-lMyQj AxMTA 3NzAwNDgwMzQ2Wj/ 9 An interesting effort to thread the historical and theological tensions between evangelicalism and fundamentalism is Rhyne R. Putnam’s In Defense of Doctrine: Evangelicalism, Theology, and Scripture (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015): 2ff. 10 Those alternatives continue to be defining—shaping sermons, theological and civic debates, and even the professional lives of the participants. See, for example, on the progressive side of the ledger: David P. Gushee, Still Christian: Following Jesus Out of American Evangelicalism, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017); Hal Taussig, A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2006), 2, 111, 138, 168. On the other side of the ledger, though not always under the label, “fundamentalist,” see: Putnam, In Defense of Doctrine, 393ff. Roman Catholics have been drawn into the fray as well: E.g., Dwight Longenecker, “12 Reasons Why Progressive Protestantism Will Die Out,” Patheos.com, June 19,2016: http://www.patheos. com/blogs/standingonmy head/2016/01 /twelve־reasons־why-progressive-christianity-will־die-out.html. For a historian’s insight into the past, present, and probable future, see: George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): passim. But note in particular his conclusion: p. 257. 11 The same shift from a theocentric to an anthropocentric focus mars our approach to prayers of discernment. The decisive question in such prayers is the question, “What is God doing in the world?” Our tendency is to ask, “What does God want me to do?” The latter is not an inappropriate question, but there is no way to answer that question in a reliable fashion without first asking, “Where and how is God at work in the world?” See: Frederick W. Schmidt, What God Wants for Your Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), Iff. and 129ff. 12 See: William Kurz, “Patristic Interpretation of Scripture within God’s Story of Creation and Redemption ,” Letter & Spirit in The Bible and the Church Fathers: The Liturgical Context of Patristic Exegesis, vol. 7, eds., Owen M. Phelan and Stephen D. Ryan (Steubenville: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2011), 35. 13 All four events anchor the narrative of both the Apostles’ and the Nicene creeds. As William Kurz observes, the creeds have a different historical role, but like “the rule of faith” (described above), they make a similar contribution to the life of the church and to the reading of Scripture (Ibid., 43). Citing the role that both played in patristic exegesis, he observes, “Early Christian Fathers regularly read and steeped themselves in Scripture and participated in liturgies that featured biblical readings over the course of the Church’s liturgical year (readings which together commemorate most of God’s story of salvation ). They expressed their personal and communal prayers in the words of the Old Testament psalms, and they consciously lived with in the biblical worldview. They understood themselves as created by God, as sinners with Adam and his descendants, as reconciled to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son. Through the Church’s liturgical year, they placed themselves with in the biblical events as participants in them.” See: Ibid., 40-1. This approach need not and should not replace sound historical critical work with the text, but exegetical work guided by “the rule of faith” enriches the task and the results. 14 Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, Westminster Bible Companion, Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett, eds. (Louisville: John Knox Westminster Press, 1998), 6. 15 For another, compatible description of the Christian narrative, see: David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 324ff. 16 Given the focus of this article, I have chosen to omit comments on the Psalms and the readings from the Epistles. A general observation that I cannot resist making here is that one of my regular frustrations with the Revised Common Lectionary is the way in which the passages from the epistles have been edited. Far too often, there is no shred of context left and the RCL regularly draws from the opening formula or the closing benediction. This happens again during Advent in Year B. The only options that the preacher has are either (1) to use a different reading or (2) supply the larger context. 17 On the turmoil that governed Israel’s life at the time of Isaiah’s writing, see: Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, 1-2. 18 Ibid., 233-4. 19 As Heschel puts it, God’s passion is the prophet’s passion. “It moves him. It breaks out in him like a

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storm in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes, and hopes… .The unique feature of [his] religious sympathy is not self-conquest, but self dedication; not the suppression of emotion, but its redirection; not silent subordination, but active co-operation with God; not love which aspires to the Being of God in Himself, but harmony of the soul with the concern of God.” Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 308-309. 20 For Mark, those events were part of the turmoil that the church faced somewhere between 60 and 80CE. See: M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary, The New Testament Library, C. Clifton Black and John T. Carroll, eds. (Louisville: John Knox Westminster, 2006), 14-15. 21 Ibid., 357-8. 22 Julia Gatta and Martin L. Smith, Go in Peace, The Art of Hearing Confessions (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2012), 3-4. 23 George Capsanis, The Eros of Repentance, Praxis Pocketbooks 1, trans., Alexander Golitzin (Newbury : Praxis Institute Press, no date), 17. 24 Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66, 212. 25 See, for example, Joseph A. Tetlow, Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series, John Farina, ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 89ff. 26 St. Irenaeus of Lyon, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Armitage Robinson, ed. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1920), Para. 29,48. 27 Or as Douglas Farrow puts it: “If [Jesus] descends as God to man so that man may ascend to God, he also descends as man so that alienated man may not fail to ascend with him….” See: Douglas Farrow , Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 57. 28 Preachers rarely craft a successful sermon around more than one lection. Both the demands of interpreting a text and increasing biblical illiteracy make it necessary to focus on a single text. 29 Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, James Luther Mays, Patrick D. Miller, Jr., and Paul J. Achtemeier, eds. (Louisville: John Knox Westminster, 1990), 255.

December 31, 2017
All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir: Psalm 148 and Romans 8:18-21

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All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir

Psalm 148 and Romans 8:18-21

D. Cameron Murchison

Black Mountain, North Carolina

The title of this essay reaches into the memory bank and pulls out the title of Bill Staine’s classic folk tune “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” It concludes this way:

It’s a simple song of livin’ sung everywhere By the ox and the fox and the grizzly bear Grumpy alligator and the hawks above Sly raccoon and the turtle dove.

All God’s critters got a place in the choir Some sing low, some sing higher Some sing out loud on the telephone wire And some just clap their hands, or paws Or anything they got.

These lyrics capture at least a portion of what is spoken of in Psalm 148. And, of course, in doing so they stand squarely in a long line of songs inspired—directly or indirectly—by this Psalm. Think for example of hymns like “Praise, My Soul the God of Heaven,” “Let the Whole Creation Cry,” “I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” and of course, the classic one written by Francis of Assisi—“All Creatures of Our God and King.” Whether in the folk music of a Bill Staines or in the stately text of a Francis of Assisi, this music is a profound summons to come to terms with something essential for Christian living—today and into the indefinite future. It reels us back into the world of the 148th Psalm and invites us to understand afresh something basic about life in our twenty-first-century world. I

I The central claims of Psalm 148 are both cosmological and anthropological. They have to do with the universe as a whole and with human beings within it. The universal claim is that all creation is summoned to the common task of giving praise to the God who is its initial source of— and its final resource for—being. The first six verses focus on the outer reaches of the cosmos—the heavens, the heights, those upper reaches of the universe with their animate and inanimate denizens (angels, sun, moon, and shining stars). Almost as if the psalmist has not stretched far enough into those upper reaches, the psalm appeals again to the “highest heavens” and to the “waters above the heavens.” In the Hebrew way of thinking, this amounts to an exhaustive reference to “all that is out there.” The reason that praise of God is demanded of the highest and outermost reaches of creation is because these have been uttered into being by God’s own command, and they have been founded and bounded by God’s own act. As vast as “all that is

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out there” may be, God is vaster still. Small wonder that St. Anselm, a theologian of the eleventh century, came in prayerful appreciation to understand God as that than which nothing greater can be imagined. So when this soaring majesty of the universe confronts the yet more soaring majesty of its source, praise is the only fitting response. The roll call turns from heaven to terra firma in verses 7 through 13, bringing things down to earth, as it were. Here too all the elements of earthly locale, both fanciful and ordinary, are summoned to praise. The unruly, natural forces of the world (sea monsters, deeps, fire, hail, snow, frost, and stormy wind) are also depicted as obedient to the God whose command they fulfill in being what they are. Moreover, the landscape itself is captured in the summons (mountains and hills), along with the flora it nurtures (fruit trees and cedars). And finally the psalmist includes the parts of creation which we, perhaps mistakenly, think are alone in the ability to sense the world around them. The psalmist summons animals, domesticated and otherwise, to the chorus of praise (wild animals, cattle, creeping and flying creatures). This is of course the part of the psalm that Bill Staines incorporates into “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” It captures in delightful verse some of these last named members of creation that are summoned to praise.

It’s a simple song of livin’ sung everywhere By the ox and the fox and the grizzly bear Grumpy alligator and the hawks above Sly raccoon and the turtle dove.

All God’s critters got a place in the choir Some sing low, some sing higher Some sing out loud on the telephone wire And some just clap their hands, or paws Or anything they got.

And after these nonhuman animals are comprehensively named, the Psalmist moves on to the full range of humankind, embracing in the call both the elite—kings, princes, rulers—and the ordinary—young and old, men and women. Together with those earlier mentioned “outer reaches” of the cosmos, these “inner reaches” are summoned into the universal combined choir that acknowledges the glory of that One above earth and heaven than which nothing greater can be imagined, and in whom is found the origin and destiny of all creatures, great and small. Thus the overarching, universal claim of Psalm 148 is that the proper purpose of all that exists—known and unknown, seen and unseen—is to give adoration and praise to God. So the language of praise is in the words of Patrick Miller “the speech that is truly primal and universal. All existence is capable of praising God and does so. In such speaking, God is identified.”1 In this way creation itself is witness to the reality of God as Creator. And that is precisely the universal claim of Psalm 148—all nature acknowledges the Maker of Heaven and Earth in its chorus of praise. II

II We come closer to the “orienting” significance of this psalm for our lives in the

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twenty-first century when we turn to its claim about humanity. Karl Barth has suggested that this psalm impresses a deep humility on humankind. “As we must say of [human beings] that [they are] what [they are] only in gratitude towards God, we shall have to say the same of all other creatures.”2 So the first point of the psalm’s anthropology is not that humanity is distinguished and different from the rest of ereation , but that humankind is united to all the rest. As the repeated refrain of the psalm makes clear, that unity is found in the wonder of praise to God. As James Mays has put it, “We human beings are one with all being in our relation to One whose name alone is exalted and whose majesty is above earth and heaven.”3 Our kinship with all of creation is complete in the act of giving praise to God. Yet the theological anthropology of Psalm 148 has another dimension. Notwithstanding the unity of humanity with the rest of creation in the chorus of praise, humanity has a special vocation within this shared, common vocation. Just because we can voice the praise native to all creation, we humans have a unique responsibility not only to call upon the rest of creation for praise, but to attend to the well being of the rest of creation so that it survives and endures to give praise. And as we are learning all too well, whether creation will survive and endure for such praise is an open question. The most chilling vision I know that depicts a created order without vitality sufficient for such praise is Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. As an account of a father and son trying to survive in a world that has suffered an undefined apocalyptic collapse, it depicts a world without any of the delight found in Psalm 148. The story gives us frightful descriptions of human community that has broken down under the weight of societal collapse. But equally chilling are its descriptions of a natural order that renders no praise, but only a relentless, sluggish, gray, wet, cold, oppressive, death-threatening presence. It portrays a landscape with only fleeting glimpses of life, all passing inexorably toward death, rendering no praise. And if we are too readily inclined to dismiss this as fear-mongering fiction, we might want to listen to the testimony of Denise Giardina, novelist and Episcopal priest. She speaks with simple eloquence about the spiritual devastation wrought in Appalachia by mountaintop removal —a mining procedure that forgoes tunneling into the earth and instead simply breaks majestic mountains into rubble in order to more easily extract the coal—a procedure that has become the preferred way to satisfy our insatiable demands for energy. Where once magnificent vistas of mountains existed that have inspired poetry, prose, and song, there now remain flattened plains, occluded streams, polluted waters, and barren fields that cannot support the life that previously called it home. And in deepest irony, the coal thus produced when converted to electricity is likely a prime contributor to long term climate change that tends toward the kind of “collapse” that Jared Diamond has chronicled in a book of that same name. Multiply that kind of disregard of the earth’s vocation to give praise to God over the face of globe, and Cormac McCarthy’s eerie vision seems much too close for comfort. Put simply, the theological anthropology of Psalm 148 is finally a theological ethic that requires the human family—and certainly the Christian family on behalf of the human family—to give priority to the care of creation as a fundamental part of its core belief—that humanity’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy God forever . Knowing that this chief end is shared with all creation means that we have a

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fundamental responsibility to support and nurture the highest beings of heaven and the lowest creatures of earth (from mountain tops to snail darters) so that their voices continue unabated in the universal, combined chorus of praise.

Conclusion But what in the world can we do about any of this? The greatest threat to our meeting the challenge that Psalm 148 lays before us comes from the fear that what we do will not make a real difference. After all, we are not by and large in positions of authority, able to issue orders and expect results to follow. But we are the people of a God who in the resurrection of Jesus has given the first fruit of what is promised, not just for humans, but for all creation. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul voiced a scope to salvation that encompasses all of creation when he said it is not only the human family but “the creation itself [that] will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). Every day the theme of resurrection is as crucial as it is on Easter day. For in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, we discover the resource that will enable us to summon the universal choir to its proper praise. Jesus’ resurrection is the enactment by God of something beyond all human and creaturely possibilities, the establishment of a new creation just where the old creation has come to its inevitable end. Psalm 148 does not speak of a tree-hugging, animal rights political correctness. But it does speak of a theological vision that may move us to hug trees and many other creatures and features in this splendid, praise-rendering world that God has made. So let Psalm 148 awaken us to the deeper meaning of folk songs and great hymns of worship. It is more than good music for tapping our toes or marching in and out of worship. It is music that recalls us to a special vocation for the human family in tending the creation that God makes and summons in its entirety to joyful, continuous, even raucous, praise. Let us not mistake care for the creation as incidental to the life of faith, but rather let us regard it as belonging to the fabric of faith itself. And let us look for ways in our common life that may help us live into the challenge. Then we will begin to grasp—and begin to be grasped by—the claims of this psalm on us and on the world. Then we will begin to embrace our unique vocation to sustain the ability of the whole creation to “Praise the Lord!” All God’s critters got a place in the choir!

Notes 1 Patrick D. Miller, Interpreting the Psalms (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 73. 2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), 172. 3 James Luther Mays, Psalms: Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville : John Knox Press, 1994), 445.

December 31, 2017
Mary Magdalene

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Mary Magdalene

Paul Roberts

Johnson C. Smith Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia

This sermon is about formation—specifically the faith formation of Mary Magdalene , and I begin the sermon with the end of her story. No matter how many times I read Luke’s account of the Resurrection, I get stuck at the end of it. The disciples’ reaction to Mary is peculiar to me. I imagine Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women who were with them hastening from the empty tomb to the location where the disciples were; and upon rejoining the disciples, wouldn’t there have been something unusual about them that would have caught the attention of the others? Wouldn’t the women have been breathless? Sweaty? Animated? Disoriented? Joyful, or something ? Yet, according to Luke, the disciples consider her story an idle tale. Except for Peter, they don’t even budge. Why did the disciples react in the way they did? Were they too filled with grief? Was the story too fantastical? Was there something about Mary’s credibility? Was it because she was a woman? Since these questions of power and identity rummage through my mind every year this time, imagine my interest when I stumbled upon a credible conversation about Mary Magdalene’s identity—on social media! The conversation revolved around a 2014 article by Gail Wallace, founder of the Junia Project, titled “Five Things You Should Know about Mary Magdalene.” Thing one. The most likely reason Mary is called “The Magdalene” is that she came from Magdala, a thriving fishing town on the coast of Galilee, near Capernaum where Jesus’ ministry takes off. She’s a contemporary of Jesus “from back in the day.” Thing two. Though Mary is regularly thought of as having been a prostitute, there is no evidence in the Bible to suggest that she was. It could be that her identity was merged with that of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36-50). Mary Magdalene is named a dozen or so times in the gospels, and none of those references indicates that she was a prostitute or known for a lusty lifestyle. Thing three. Mary traveled consistently with Jesus and the disciples. The gospel writers are specific in noting that Mary and a number of other women had followed Jesus from Galilee (Matthew 27:55). The first mention of her is in Luke 8:2-3, so we know that she was with Jesus from very early in his ministry. The last mention of her is in John 20, where Jesus appears to her at the empty tomb. This suggests that Mary intentionally left her home and lifestyle to follow Jesus throughout his public ministry. Thing four. Mary supported Jesus’ ministry financially. Luke 8:1-3 reads, “The twelve were with Him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means.” Many scholars agree that this was financial support rather than mere domestic support, although the

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women probably did that as well. Thing five. Mary is called “Apostle to the Apostles. ”After giving her report that Jesus had risen, Mary Magdalene disappears from the New Testament, but we find some clues about her later life in extra-biblical texts. The apocryphal gospels depict Mary as a disciple who has a deep understanding of Christ’s teachings. Several early church writers portray her as a leader in the early church movement. At some point she was given the title “Apostle to the Apostles” because she was the first person to see the risen Christ and the first to share the news of the resurrection with the disciples. Now, this may be more than we ever wanted to know about Mary Magdalene! However, on close inspection, her life is worthy life that demonstrates the nature of the Christian journey and faith formation. The little church I grew up in in Florida sang a lot of early 20th century hymns. One of those written in 1914 is entitled “Since Jesus Came Into My Heart. ” Here are several verses:

What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought Since Jesus came into my heart; I have light in my soul for which long I have sought, Since Jesus came into my heart.

I have ceased from my wand’ ring and going astray, Since Jesus came into my heart; And my sins which were many are all washed away, Since Jesus came into my heart.

I’m possessed of a hope that is steadfast and sure, Since Jesus came into my heart; And no dark clouds of doubt now my pathway obscure, Since Jesus came into my heart.

Refrain: Since Jesus came into my heart, Since Jesus came into my heart; Floods of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll, Since Jesus came into my heart.

It’s a fine tune, but it presents Christianity as sort of a “one and done” occurrence. Jesus visits you once, and you’re done! Nothing else required. All is right with the world—“and the skies are not cloudy all day ! ” The Bible presents the Christian faith as the result of a formative process. Peter, for instance, the only disciple who took Mary’s witness seriously, was plagued with impetuousness; and despite his close relationship with Jesus, he denied knowing him on three separate occasions when the chips were down. Later, empowered by the Holy Spirit, this same Peter preaches with power before skeptical audiences. One wonders whether he would have been able to proclaim his faith so boldly had he not had to reckon with his earlier cowardice. Mary Magdalene’s life is an equally fine example. She didn’t just walk up to the

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empty tomb; though she may not have known it, her journey to Christ’s tomb was years in the making:

• She didn’t get to that tomb except that by God’s providence she was a Galilean like Jesus. • She didn’t get there except that she had an encounter with Jesus in which she experienced healing. • She didn’t get there except that she walked many a dry dusty road alongside or more likely behind the male disciples. • She didn’t get there except that she was frowned upon, ostracized, for breaking with the customs associated with her gender. • She didn’t get there except for experiencing some personal loneliness. • She didn’t get there except that she shed tears at her Lord’s assassination. • She didn’t get there except that she met an angel on the side of the road who pricked her from her despair. • She didn’t get there except that she had the unmitigated courage to actually peer into that cave herself and see with her own eyes.

Human beings never arrive at the point of resurrection, rebirth, or any sort of renewal except by the often arduous formational processes God affords in life. You know who makes this point very well? Beyonce! For anyone who does not know her, Beyonce is a Texas-born African-American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. In the 1990s, she rose to fame as the lead singer of R&B girl-group Destiny’s Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. When the group disbanded, she pursued a solo career which catapulted her into iconic fame and fortune. She has won all kinds of awards, and Forbes Magazine listed her as the most powerful female musician of 2015. In February of this year, Beyonce released a track called “Formation.” I have to listen to a song a long time before I’m able to catch the lyrics (I don’t have a keen ear in that way), but a few words stood out pretty quickly, even for me:

My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils

I was interested enough to watch the video. I’m glad I did. What I found was a montage of images with the beautiful grit of the human experience embedded within it. The words “my daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana; you mix that negro with the Creole make a Texas bama” intriguingly describes her parentage. But there’s a bigger picture. Beyond her immediate family origin, Beyonce is weaving together various aspects of southern culture and history. She creates a tapestry in the song rooted in the experience of African Americans, juxtaposing that which is crude and troubling alongside that which is inspiring and lovely. Her images describe a prominent piece of Americana, offer social commentary, affirm feminist thought, and call for justice—all within a five minute window. Said another way, Beyonce is describing the nature of formation. She spares nothing. The grittiness, the glam, and much of the in-between

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of our culture are there. The same can be true of the gospel. The grittiness, the glam, and the in-between are there. Yes, there are the illumined angels who inform the women that the one they have come for is not there; but there is also the backdrop of the tomb—a cave rough-hewn, humid, smelly, unsanitary. It’s the fullness of the experience together that makes for the truest formation. Likewise, earnest Christian formation engages the fullness of the human experience. Why is this important? Because it is out of the depth of our formation that we really find our power as Christ’s own. Christ went up on a cross for your and my sins, but the strength and power it took for him to stay that course came as a result of his formational experiences. Do you remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane? Knowing what was ahead of him, Jesus prayed, “Lord, I don’t want to do this. If there is any way, please take this cup from me; and if not, your will not mine be done. ” The sacrificial spirit, the power, of that prayer is evidence of the sum total of his experiences. One of the greatest critiques of the modern day church in the west is that we don’t demonstrate our power! We’re weak. People are unsure about what we stand for. Every year at Easter time, I tell the story of a boy whose grandmother was a very good seamstress. He loved to watch her sew. It was amazing to him that she could take shapeless cloth and turn it into wearable garments. When Grandma wasn’t in her sewing room, the boy would sneak in and sit at her machine. He would press the pedal and carefully drag fabric across the table just as he had seen his grandmother do. In his mind’s eye he made shirts and pants, but in reality, no garments were ever made. His grandmother always unplugged the machine when she finished. So, when the boy sneaked in to the sewing room there was no power at his disposal. He went through all the motions, but there was no power. He produced nothing. Jesus told his disciples that they would do the works he did and even greater. I’m convinced we have the potential to do exactly that; that we have access to a resurrection power of our own provided we are adequately plugged into the fullness of this earthly journey God has made for us. Henry Knox Sherrill said, “The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice; but the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.” Hallelujah! Christ is Risen.

December 31, 2017
Unity, Diversity, and the Holy Spirit

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Unity, Diversity, and the Holy Spirit

Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-13

Brent A. Strawn

Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

“There the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there… scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” (Gen 11:9)

“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” (Acts 2:4)

The Diversity God Desires The big question in the Old Testament lesson taken from Genesis 11 is: Whaf s so wrong with the tower of Babel that was, at best, probably no more than thirty stories tall? If God isn’t disturbed when we hit our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, why is God so put off by this tower? Well, if you know something about biblical interpretation , it will come as no surprise to hear that there’s more than one opinion on this matter. Some readers think the problem with the tower was one of pride. The people wanted to build a tower with its head in the heavens, after all (v. 4a). That sounds arrogant, doesn’t it? Some interpreters have gone so far as to suggest that these folks actually wanted to storm heaven and wage war against God. But that seems like stretching things. The story doesn’t say as much, and even if that were the case, the story doesn’t seem to take that possibility very seriously. Quite the contrary, in fact, as verse 5 says that the LORD had to “come down”—evidently a long way down—to even see that great big mighty tower way, way down there. I guess it didn’t quite reach the heavens after all ! Other readers have noticed the detail of the humans wanting to make a name for themselves. That, too, seems to smack of pride, of hybris. Just next door, in Genesis 12, it is God who promises to make Abram’s name great; Abram doesn’t make such a name for himself, all by himself. In this light, the tower builders, again, look to be guilty of being excessively proud. But, only a bit later in the Old Testament, David earns a name for himself without coming under judgment (2 Sam 8:13). That means that making a name or having a great name isn’t necessarily a bad thing all by itself . So, if there is pride in the tower, it isn’t too pronounced and shouldn’t be overdone , especially in the face of another issue that is equally if not more prominent: fear. “Come, let us build… and let us make a name… otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” they said (Gen 11:4). There is anxiety in that statement, insecurity even. There’s strength in numbers, after all. It’d be better to hunker down and stick together. The world is a big scary place when you stop and think about it. Why not just ride it out here where we all speak the same language and the same words and where we are united—united in fear…and perhaps also pride, but really just a pride born of fear? Sticking together is much, much safer. “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower…,” Genesis says, and God was not pleased. Not because their energy was wasted. In fact, after surveying

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the scene, God believes there will be no stopping these folks, and the LORD seems slightly concerned about that. This towering city, this fear-produced isolationism, is just the beginning of what they will accomplish. And so God puts an immediate stop to it—in the space of only a verse—confusing their language so they can no longer understand one another. Then their greatest fear comes to pass: the text emphasizes, not once but twice, that “the LORD scattered them abroad… over the face of all the earth” (vv. 8, 9). That’s the story, but, still, what’s the problem? Is the Lord who has to “come down” to even see this grandly puny tower really and truly threatened by it or the humans who built it? Surely not! Then what? Is the Lord just mean-spirited, punishing people by realizing their worst nightmares? Before we jump to that conclusion, we need to recall what has come before this in the opening chapters of Genesis. Right from the start, you’ll remember, the Lord created humans to fill the earth (1:28; cf. 9:1) and to serve and preserve it (1:26; 2:5, 15). That is the creational purpose—the creational command—and it is threatened, directly disobeyed, by these people who prefer to hunker down and stick together rather than fill the earth and serve as the image of God, God’s representatives, in the world. But God resists their resistance to the commands of creation; their language is mixed up, and they end up scattered and dispersed throughout the earth. Seen in this way, one might say that this story indicates that there is a diversity that God wills and a unity that God does not will.1 Isolationist, balkanized unity that resists God’s creational purposes is divinely rejected. Seen in this light, these people are not guilty of hybris as much as sloth, not overstepping as much as under-reaching . Both types of sins are deadly. But make no mistake, God’s judgment here is lined with grace: in scattering the people, their fears are realized, yes, but they are also enabled and empowered to obey God’s creational command. That there exists a diversity that God wills is an important word to hear, even and especially here, in Church. Not just here at this particular church, of course, but also beyond it. Here in the melting pot of the USA and in the global village, diversity is a reality and it is a valued reality. It is not equally valued everywhere, of course, not in all parts of the world or in all parts of the Church for that matter, but it is a valued entity nevertheless because cultural-linguistic diversity throughout creation is, according to Genesis, something that God wills. Not all humans are to be in one place, speaking one language, working on one project—not if that means they are resisting the will of God concerning the world. God’s will involves filling the earth and serving it for God. So, yes, there is a diversity God wills and that is the kind of diversity God wills. But two things should be said about diversity. First, if we are honest, we have to admit that the diversity with which we are familiar isn’t always the kind that is rooted in the creational purposes of God. But it should be! I don’t know if you know this, but some people don’t like diversity. It sounds leftist or radical to them and, in some iterations, that may well be true so that such judgments are not simply alarmist. They are accurate. But those of us who listen to Genesis 11 and take it up as God’s address must assert in the face of those who fear diversity that there is, in fact, a God-willed kind of diversity. God’s kind of diversity cannot be simplistically dismissed by calling it “leftist” or “politically-correct” or some other term designed to scare people. God’s kind of diversity is actually part of the Gospel. If—and let this be underscored—if it

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is the diversity God wills. And that’s the mb. The second thing that should be said about diversity is that it isn’t easy to deal with. On the contrary, it is often very difficult to deal with. Those folks in Genesis 11 were fine one minute, and the next minute they couldn’t understand a single thing other people were saying to them. And then they were scattered, just as they feared. Diversity may be something God wills, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to handle. God’s will seldom is. So take heart if in your church or in some other corner of your world, you have encountered diversity not simply as something to celebrate but also (or instead!) as a very real problem to negotiate. Join the club. It’s a lot harder to get things done when everyone is speaking a different language and they’ re scattered all over the map. (As a professor, that sounds exactly like a faculty meeting to me!) Remember: the people in the story never finished that tower. It’s just a lot harder to get anything done. Maybe we should call that the down side to diversity, even to the diversity God wills.

The Unity God Wills (and the Spirit Gives) Now if there is a diversity that God wills and a unity God does not will, perhaps the converse is also true: could there be a diversity that God does not will and a unity that God does?2 That brings us to the New Testament lesson from Acts chapter 2. It seems quite clear that what happens on the day of Pentecost is nothing less than an undoing of Genesis 11. Gathered in Jerusalem are people from every nation under heaven (Acts 2:5), and suddenly all of them, no matter their nationality, hear those disciples with their thick Galilean accents (cf. Matt 26:73) speaking perfectly the nafive tongues of folks the world over: Parthians, Medes, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Romans, you name it! This text about the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost and the close connections between it and Genesis 11 suggest that, yes, alongside the diversity that God desires, there is also a unity God wills. In Acts, it is a unity marked not by pride-tinged, fearinspired building projects, but by testimony: “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” the listeners said (2:11). “What does it mean?” they asked. Well it doesn’t mean that the diversity established in Genesis 11 is suddenly done away with. It isn’t that the disciples all started speaking some proto-language that existed prior to the mix-up at Babel. No, the Spirit gave them ability to speak within all those diverse languages so as to speak about God’s wondrous acts (2:4, 11) and as Peter proceeds to do, in order to preach the Gospel (2:14-36). So yes, there is a unity God wills. And it too, no less than the diversity God wills, is connected to the redemptive purposes of God. But two things should be said about unity. First, if we are honest, we have to admit that the unity with which we are familiar isn’t always the kind that is rooted in God’s redemptive purposes. But it should be! Instead, the unities that we know of often seem nothing more than thinly veiled tower of Babel projects. They are unities—and I use the plural form here quite intentionally and ironically—they are unities that are actually masks for parochial isolationism, a sticking together at all costs, resisting all else, including at times the very diversity God wills. Those kinds of unities are the kind that marked Babel. They are not the kind of unity God wills, however. The LORD rejects and scatters those types of unities.

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The second thing that should be said about unity—real unity, of the sort God desires—is that it is difficult to achieve. Really difficult to achieve. And, even when it is achieved, Scripture tells us that it won’t always be understood. Some people present at Pentecost sneered; they didn’t think the disciples were unified in the Spirit, but drunk, smashed out of their gourds.

Grieving Our Disunity, Working Toward Unity And who could blame them? A unity willed by God, rooted in God’s redemptive purposes, sounds great, but honestly, sometimes—maybe even a lot of the time—it seems like a pipe dream if not an alcohol-induced hallucination. Here and now, right before our eyes, things seem far more diverse, and not always helpfully so—not always of the kind of diversity God wills, and not always easy or manageable. Here and now, right before our eyes, unity is hard to believe in, let alone achieve. I mean really, what unity: democrats and republicans? What unity, progressives and conservatives, let alone “fundamentalists” and “liberals”? What unity: Catholics and Protestants? Calvinists and Wesleyans? What unity here, in the South, with its enduring legacy of racism? What unity on Sunday, the most segregated day of the week? What unity, with so many denominations poised to fracture? Yes, on most days, unity is hard to believe in, let alone achieve. But listen to this: in Acts 2, the unity that is present is not a unity that is achieved. It is a unity that is given. It is not only desired by God, but it is provided by the Spirit. The kind of unity that God wills is granted by God. Scripture is full of statements to that effeet , replete with exhortations for all of us to realize the unity that God has already established. Here are two famous ones: from Galatians 3, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28; cf. Eph 2:14), and from Ephesians 4, “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received… .Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph 4:1-3; cf. 4:13; 1 Peter 3:8; also Ps 133:1; Rom 15:5-6). Listen to Galatians: “All of you are one in Christ Jesus.” And also to Ephesians: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.” We are one, you see, but we must work at keeping it so. Maybe at those times when we aren’t one, it is because we’ve fallen short of making every effort to be what we are in Christ. Maybe when we aren’t one, instead of giving up on the unity that God desires and provides—maybe instead of refusing to believe in that unity when we don’t experience it—maybe we ought, instead, to grieve over it. Grieve that we don’t have it, grieve that we aren’t yet one. Worry about it, wonder about it, and redouble—make that re-triple—our efforts, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. What would that look like if it happened? Can you imagine what might happen? At Pentecost, about three thousand were added to their number in a single day (Acts 2:41). According to Jesus, all people, everyone, everywhere, will know we were his disciples by our love for each other (John 13:35). “You are all one in Christ Jesus.” That’s the fact. In all our amazingly rich, variegated , God-willed diversity, nevertheless also and indelibly one. So, then, even now, make every effort to become what you already are: one. In Christ. One. By, with, in, under, and through the power of the Holy Spirit. It won’t be easy, but who knows? With God, all things are possible.

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Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.

Notes 1 For this language, I am indebted to Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Interpretation; Atlanta: John Knox, 1986). 2 Ibid.

December 31, 2017
Easter People Discipleship

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Easter People Discipleship

Acts 9:36-43

Shannon J. Kershner

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois

In the beach story from John 21, we learn that even after Peter saw the risen Jesus two times, he still made the monumental decision to go back to what was familiar —fishing. At that moment in his life, living as a part of God’s new creation felt too daunting for Peter. Proclaiming Jesus dead and risen was too risky. It is one thing to claim being a disciple of Jesus, but it is something else entirely to change your whole life because of it: to change how you make decisions or spend your time. So rather than make all those dramatic shifts, Peter went back to what he knew— fishing—and he took many of the other disciples with him. But then, as you recall, Jesus messed Peter’s normality all up. Jesus appeared on the beach and gave him another shot. He redeemed Peter once and for all, showing Peter that he did not need to be afraid of his calling to live as a disciple. He did not need to be afraid of living as an Easter person. And that third resurrection visit must have made the difference because Jesus’ words finally took root in Peter’s heart. “Do you love me, Peter?” Jesus kept asking him. “Then feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Live your faith.” And at last, Peter stepped fully into who God hoped he would be. He took his call seriously—the call to live out his discipleship, to show Christ’s love in every aspect of his life. And that brings us to this text from the Book of Acts. Immediately before our particular story about Peter and Tabitha, we read that Peter was going from here to there among all the people, teaching, preaching, and healing all in the name of his risen Lord, Jesus the Christ. He wasn’t fishing any longer. He wasn’t hiding behind closed doors anymore. He wasn’t denying who he was—a follower of God in the way of Jesus. Rather, Peter finally let Jesus’ invitation to newness soak deeply into his soul. And in response to that soaking, Peter dove right into ministry. According to Acts, the Spirit had clearly taken hold of Peter. And in response to the Spirit’s claim on him, Peter lived out his discipleship by loving God, tending to God’s wounded, and feeding the hungry with the Gospel. With his life, in just about everything he did, Peter re-presented Christ to his world. In today’s story, we see a small snippet of Peter’s travels. As he went around and word got out about his ministry, two men found him and asked him to travel to Joppa because a female disciple named Tabitha had died. Now, let us pause for a moment. It is imperative that we notice that something new is happening in this Joppa experience . This is the only time in the entire New Testament that you will find the feminine form of the Greek word disciple. We infer from this that the writer of Luke/Acts felt it was critical to demonstrate that even before Peter arrived in Joppa, God’s Spirit was already at work stirring things up and creating new possibilities. This is what happens throughout the book of Acts. And here, we are shown that women could be disciples too. Furthermore, we realize that this female disciple named Tabitha was such a significant part of her community that when she died, two men came to get Peter and bring him to her house.

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And after Peter listened to the widows tell him how powerfully Tabitha had cared for them throughout her life, he asked everyone to step out of the room. Peter knelt down and abandoned himself to God’s power at work within him. He prayed. Then he told Tabitha to get up. And she did. The healing power of God’s Spirit worked through a willing Peter to create new possibilities. This time new possibilities for Tabitha. YetTabitha’s healing was not simply for her alone. God’s healing is never only for the individual affected. In Scripture, God’s healing always ripples out into the larger community, healing others with the fresh possibilities of the Gospel as they hear the stories of how God is at work in their world. And that is exactly what happened in Joppa. Tabitha’s healing meant the widows would have their caregiver again. But in addition to that life-sustaining gift, word of what God had done spread throughout the land. As the writer of Luke/Acts succinctly puts it, “Many people believed in the Lord.” Peter, however, did not linger. He went back to work, continuing to go here and there, refusing to stop. His encounter on the beach with the risen Jesus had planted in Peter the conviction that being a disciple, living out his baptism, included more than claiming Christianity as his religion. Peter realized that his faith was to be, as Catholic mystic Richard Rohr wrote, “not [only] an affirmation of a creed, [or] an intellectual acceptance of God, or believing certain doctrines to be true or orthodox, although those things might well be good.” Rather, through his three-question encounter with Jesus, Peter learned that his profession of faith, his declaration of trust in God, was only the very beginning of his discipleship journey. In that third encounter with Jesus, Peter discovered that to be a Christian, a follower of God in the way of Jesus, meant he was now sent into the world on Jesus’ behalf, to go here and there, to love God, to tend to God’s wounded, and to feed the hungry with the Gospel. And we could go on and on, following Peter as he went here and there. For again, Jesus had convinced Peter with the crazy idea that being his disciple meant much more than only an intellectual acceptance or creedal assent or orthodox belief. His discipleship did not consist of claiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior but then picking up his rod to go back to fishing again. He could not say, “I believe, help thou my unbelief’ but then immediately move away from the riskiness of the Gospel to go back into the comfort of the old order, pre-Easter. Peter had discovered that his discipleship could not end with getting his spiritual needs met on Sunday so that he could feel good the rest of the week. While being nourished in his faith was crucial, his discipleship required more of him than being self-absorbed. Through his encounter with Jesus on the beach, Peter learned that living as a disciple was not a spectator sport. God called him to re-present Christ to the world with the totality of his life. He was to re-present Christ in all the decisions that he made about how to spend his money and his time; in the ways he interacted with others, particularly those who lived on the margins of power like Tabitha and those widows; in the ways he spoke about others, especially those with whom he disagreed as he and the Apostle Paul would frequently do. Re-presenting Christ formed the marching orders on what it meant to be a disciple in God’s Easter world. But re-presenting Christ in the world was not only Peter’s calling. Peter could

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not do it by himself. Re-presenting Christ was and is the church’s calling too. And Peter knew that. He was intimately tied to his community of faith—the church. He had come to realize that one cannot be a Christian, a disciple, by him/herself. To be a Christian means to immediately be called into being a part of the body of Christ and to live that discipleship out in a local congregation or worshiping community. Yet for many of us post-modern day disciples, that call into participation, into involvement, into living out Christ’s love in every aspect of our lives, can be difficult to remember. In our culture it still remains challenging not to view the church as we do so many other institutions—as a vendor with goods we consume. It is a challenge not to view the clergy as the church’s sales representatives or to talk about evangelism as marketing. When we see our discipleship primarily through that lens, we will come every few weeks to sit in the pew during worship, hoping that the sermon will be spiritually stimulating and intellectually challenging, the music familiar and easily sung, and the prayers short, so that we do not go over our hour time limit. But sisters and brothers, if this becomes our primary way of thinking about our discipleship, then we miss something crucial. We miss a vital part of Peter’s testimony to us. If we approach our discipleship from the perspective of being consumers or spectators , thinking that what happens here on a Sunday really has nothing to do with who I am on a Wednesday, approaching our faith primarily as an interesting intellectual exercise to doubt or to affirm, then we miss our invitation to do what Peter did. We miss the fullness and excitement of our calling to be the body of Christ. Not to speak of it, but to be it. We miss our God-given challenge to re-present Christ in the world. Peter was not the only one God called to be fully engaged in living out the Gospel. Tabitha was not the only one God called to be a force of healing and care in her community . God has called every single one of us to follow in Peter’s and in Tabitha’s footsteps. God has called every single one of us to live and embody the Good News of grace and freedom in Christ. The clergy are not the only ones whom God has called to re-present Christ in the world. As my seminary professor always reminded us, we clergy are merely paid Christians. All of us are challenged by God to live out our discipleship with the totality of our lives. All of us are invited to be more than spectators to or consumers of the Gospel. We are all called to re-present Christ in the world—both as individuals and as a particular faith community. Now, not all of us are called to be Peter, going here and there. But as disciples, followers of God in the way of Jesus, we are all called to re-present Christ. And how we do that—the options are unlimited. Our responses may be small and personal —calling someone you have not seen in a while in church or in the fellowship hour, saying hello to someone you have not met before, treating those who sit on the corners outside the church with dignity and respect, learning names and stories. Our responses may be more public—saying yes to serving as an officer or teaching an academy class, using your vacation to go to Cuba or Guatemala for a partnership trip, volunteering to help with Sunday night supper or tutoring. Our responses may be bold—getting involved with the interfaith coalition against racism, agitating on behalf of people who get left behind in the wake of progress, paying attention to and participating in public advocacy efforts to push for jobs and opportunity to come to all neighborhoods so that all people can imagine a future, being in hard conversations about how we, as a congregation, might join with other

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congregations in trying to be “repairers of the breech” between police agencies and the communities they serve. How you will respond to your calling to be a disciple with the totality of your life is between you and God. We, as a church, will stand with you and beside you as you discern your response. But make no mistake about it—there must be a response. Like Peter and like Tabitha, you are called to re-present Christ in the world. You are called to be more than a spectator or a consumer of the faith. You are called not simply to be satisfied with getting your own spiritual needs met or your own mind stretched and challenged without asking the “now what” questions with your life, with your time, with your resources. Being disciples is who we have been created to be in every moment, in all our decisions, in the way we see each other, in the way we view our lives. And I trust with everything I have got that the Spirit can and will move through us and work through us, creating new possibilities in our own congregations, in our own cities, for life and healing, for Easter newness. Through his interactions with Jesus, Peter learned that living as a disciple involves far more than our intellectual assent or our small decisions for Jesus. Living as a disciple involves loving God, tending to God’s wounded, and feeding the hungry with the Gospel. Here is how John Calvin put it: “The Gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only but is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart…. Our religion (discipleship) will be unprofitable if it does not change our heart, pervade our manners, and transform us into new creatures.” Indeed. So what does that look like in your life? Friends, let us not just go back to fishing—to what is normal or comfortable for us. Let us choose to fully live out our discipleship, to re-present Christ to one another and to our world with courage, tenacity, and the hope-filled boldness that God’s Spirit will give. Can you imagine what God might do with all that? May it be so.

December 31, 2017
If These Were Silent

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If These Were Silent…

Donovan Allan Drake

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee

I don’t know if you pay attention to the email that goes out from the church on Friday afternoons. You may have it rigged so that it automatically goes into your junk mail folder. But for you who faithfully read it and are going to heaven (I’m kidding!), you know that there is always some information about the worship service on Sunday: the biblical texts, the sermon title, who’s preaching, the music for the day. You may have noticed, too, that there is also a picture that is tied to this information . Lately, they have been paintings. Three weeks ago, the text of the day was God’s promise to Abraham: “You will have children as many as the stars in the sky.” I thought Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night would be good. Two weeks ago, the parable of the Prodigal Son was portrayed by the Thomas Hart Benton painting of that old deserted farm with the bones of what was once a fatted calf in the yard. Maybe you can wait too long to come home. Well, for Palm Sunday I could have easily snagged some Renaissance painting of Jesus coming into Jerusalem, but I wanted something that captured how impossible it is to stop or even slow the journey to the cross. Like a pebble plinking down a mountainside, it tips a precarious stone; the stone rolls down to dislodge a rock; the rock hits a boulder, until the whole mountain is rumbling, tumbling down. Such is the inevitability of the cross. I wanted a painting that conveyed this parade that cannot be stopped. Nothing hinders the progression. Jesus tells two of his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘ Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” How in the world did that not stop the progress of the story right there? That would never work. Can you imagine conducting grand theft donkey and getting away with it by simply uttering the words, “The Lord has need of it”? I have a neighbor who is a member of the church and who also has a Porsche. I do believe the Lord needs it; at least that’s what I tell him. He just smiles and holds on to his keys. I suspect he knows that he’s dealing with a jealous preacher. But let’s say that there exists an example with a purer motive. For instance, I suspect that with all the flooding in Arkansas and Mississippi, there are people in need of the Body of Christ to lift them up out of the muck. What if you were to go out among the inhabitants of Nashville and snatch a purse from someone’s arm or take a wallet from someone’s pocket? “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” And you say, “The Lord needs it to resurrect the dead, bring life, and restore health.” Do you think you’ 11 hear, “Well, go ahead then”? No! You would spend the rest of the day wiping ink off your fingertips, getting your mug shot taken, and calling your lawyer. The mission and ministry have ground to a halt. But Luke is sending us a clue that there is no stopping the progression. The colt is taken, and no argument is heard. “The Lord needs it.” You would think that maybe his own disciples might have stopped the progression. After all, Jesus said that he would have to “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be killed… ” (Luke 9:22). Jesus said, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by

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the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him…” (Luke 18:31-33a). The trigger has been pulled, nothing to stop it now. But if Jesus were your friend, wouldn’t you lift a finger to stop him? His friends put him on the colt, and not one of them said a word. In fact, they celebrated: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king.” The Pharisees hear all the racket and say to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” I hear this as the Pharisees raining on the parade. But I think that their intentions may in fact be good. The original Greek can be translated, “Teacher, you need to warn your disciples to stop this or something is going to go terribly wrong.” The Pharisees see the progression: “If this keeps up, someone is going to get hurt. Order your disciples to stop.” Jesus answers, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” Nothing can stop this! You can’t hinder a desire. The people want a leader. It’s been that way since the time of Samuel. The people said, “We want a king! We want a king!” Samuel said, “A king will take your daughters, tax your income, kill your boys in battle.” They said, “It doesn’t matter! We want a king.” And God said to Samuel, “Chin up! They haven’t rejected you. They have rejected me” (1 Samuel 8:4-22). Some things can’t be stopped! People want a leader to make them great. People want someone to save them. People will sell their integrity. They’ll steal, run over others, and shout for someone who will make them great at all costs. Not even God, it seems, can stop a human desire. “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” It is this sense of the inevitability of our own desires that I wanted to capture in a painting, a picture that would go into an email to the congregation on Friday afternoon. I could think of nothing that would capture this sense of the text, so I googled the words, “What we want—painting.” What popped up was a painting that at first glance I thought would be perfect. The artist had captured a colorfully dressed crowd lining a sidewalk, almost spilling out into the street. Great anticipation is written on every face. The little children were on their knees, peering out from underneath or around the legs of police officers in dark-colored uniforms. The officers in the foreground had locked their arms together, making a barrier along the parade route. I googled the words, “What we want—painting.” What came up would have been perfect—the crowd, desire on every face—perfect, except that the police officers in dark uniforms had brown shirts and red arm bands with black crosses—crosses that had been twisted, bent, distorted and shaped into swastikas. It was a Nazi propaganda poster from the 1930’s. The title: “We want to see our Führer.” (This painting can be viewed at yooniqimages.com #102042536.) I finished reading a novel this week, All the Light We Cannot See, a Pulitzer Prize winner written by Anthony Doerr. Set in World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy, whose paths eventually cross. The German boy, Werner Pfennig, is a small, tow-headed boy who is selected to attend an elite Nazi training school. While small, he is well suited because he’s brilliant and disciplined. At the school, Werner befriends a near-sighted boy named Frederick, who has a love for birds. Part of the discipline of this training school is to ferret out the weakest boys so that only the strong endure—survival of the fittest. Of course the near-sighted boy who loves birds emerges as the weakest. He becomes the boy who is picked on by

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the bullies. Werner begs him to go back home, but Frederick says, “We don’t have choices. We don’t own our lives.” Is Frederick weak or are there things that cannot be stopped? In the novel, a man who has escaped from a concentration camp is re-captured. The prisoner is staked to a post outside on a freezing winter day, and the commander orders the boys to go one-by-one and throw a pail of water on him. The first cadet goes by and does what is commanded. The water hits the prisoner, and he is awakened and delirious. What follows are orders fulfilled. It is a torturous death. But then the pail is passed into the hands of the weakest boy, Frederick, the boy who said, “We don’t have any choice. We don’t own our lives.” Frederick takes his pail of water and pours it on the ground. The commander gives him another pail of water. “He is gone, sir.” Once again Frederick pours it on the ground. The commander gives him another pail of water. He pours it on the ground. “I order you!” says the commander. Frederick replies, “I will not.” What do you think happened to this weak boy who had the strength to keep his integrity in a world gone mad? What do you think happened to this boy who would not participate in the inhumane? What do you think happened to a young boy who loved birds? What do you think happened to him? Whatever you think, you’ re probably right. Some things cannot be stopped. I looked at that painting that was done by a Nazi propagandist. I looked at the faces of the children, the mothers, the fathers, and the brown shirts. I wondered if they were the faces of people that the artist knew. Painters often do that, you know. They place in their paintings faces of friends and neighbors, mothers and fathers. I wonder if all the faces were of real people, real people who had expectant faces, yearning to see their leader. It is one thing to have your face in that parade in 1937, quite another to have it in that parade in 1945. “If I had only known….” “If I could have only stopped it….” “If I had to do it all over again….” “If only….” “If only….” But some things can’t be stopped. I have no doubt that Luke takes a paintbrush and with marvelous detail paints in the faces of people we know. Look! There’s Peter and Andrew. Look! There’s James, Philip, and Bartholomew. “God, give us what we want.” “Lord God, give me what I want.” How many times have we been painted into that picture? All the disciples were painted into that picture; and a few days later, they were doing everything to get out of the frame. “I tell you, I’ve never seen him.” “Look, I never knew him.” “Leave me alone; I told you I never knew him.” Jesus predicted it would happen. I mean, who’s going to stop it? “We don’t have choices. We don’t own our lives.” It’s inevitable that we lose our integrity in order to save our own skin. Jesus says, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.” Who can do that? “Cadet, I order you to throw that water.” “I will not.” Did those people in that swastika-laden painting have a choice, or were they just caught up in a swift-moving stream that could not be stopped? No choice! The Gospel of Luke, however, says we always have a choice. Luke says, “You will have a gate, and there at the gate will be a poor man who longs for a crumb from your table. Will you stop to see him?” Luke says, “There will be a road, and along side of it will be someone who has been left for dead. Will you stop to see him?” Luke says, “There will be a Samaritan, someone who is not from around here, who

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has the heart of God. Do you see him?” Luke says, “There is sand, and there is rock. Where will you build your house?” Luke says, “You can be mean or you can be kind.” Luke says, “You can hate or you can love.” Luke says, “You can have mercy and grace… and it cannot be stopped.” Wouldn’t it be something if God were painting a picture and in it were all these people who refused to follow the commands of a culture? “I command you to sell your integrity as one made in the image of God.” “I will not!” Wouldn’t it be something if God has a painting filled with those kinds of people, people who are possessed by the power of the cross, a power that cannot be stopped? “Lord, order your disciples to stop!“ “I can’t; if I did, the very stones would cry out.”

December 31, 2017
Let’s Have Another

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Let’s Have Another

John 2:1-11

Amelia A. Stuckey

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Greenville, South Carolina

If a preacher is lucky, and she usually is, Scripture can be counted on to be at least a bit baffling—the kind of thing that you need a Divinity degree, a few jokes, and a knack for storytelling to unpack. But there are rare occasions when a story is so plainly told, so simple and concise, that the preacher should stand back and let the story tell itself. The Wedding at Cana is one of those stories. But bully for you, because I find myself at this moment unable to sit back. I’ve been reading a lot about Christianity lately, and I’ve been hearing a lot of hemming and hawing about our future. People are worried. And I’m worried too, but not because I ’ m afraid Christianity is dwindling or becoming somehow less vital than in the glorious 50s. I’m worried because when I look at the church, the Reformed church, the Presbyterian church, I see congregations full of mourners. And it seems to me that we could each do with a glass, perhaps two, of Jesus’ miracle elixir. There is no doubt that our present moment does, at first glance, lend itself to apocalyptic thinking. In May 2015, we mainline Protestants got national coverage when the Pew Research Center issued America ’s Changing Religious Landscape,1 the results of a major long-term study mapping the religious affiliations of Americans. For years we pastors have been bemoaning the declining church, calling on pallbearers to carry its casket, ordering flowers to place on its all-but-certain grave. Now we’ve got the numbers to confirm the diagnosis: Christianity is declining across the United States, and our brand, mainline Christianity, has found itself bearing the brunt of those changes. In 2007 mainline Protestants represented 18.1% of responders. Now, less than a decade later (only 7 years!), our numbers have shrunk. We represent only 14.7% of US adults. And it’s not because megachurches are booming or Catholicism is growing. Christianity in twentieth-century America is on the decline. Meanwhile those who identify as “unaffiliated,” known as “nones” in the popular parlance, have grown drastically from 16.1% in 2007 to 22.8% in 2014.

Crank up the organs, y ’all, we’ve got dirges to play. The church is dying. Christianity is over! Sing your hymns now before they’re all forgotten! The church, and I fear we Christians, has become so caught up in our self-obsessed narratives of past splendor, so consumed by early American Christendom, so focused on borrowed nostalgia for misremembered glory days—you’ll have heard the wistful remembrance “when everybody came to everything,” when everyone was like us, and everyone believed how we did and thought like we did and looked like we did—that we have allowed a generation to come through our doors unnoticed, lost in the fray of our anxiety, our arguments, and our gloom. We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our quarreling—with each other and with the greater culture. It’s no wonder, then, that so many young Americans see the church as an outdated, irrelevant, and occasionally harmful institution. Well that’s the bad news…and a heck of a way to begin a sermon. But there’s

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good news too, and it’s wine. Cana’s miracle is a simple story. But don’t let that fool you, because from every corner, within every word, there’s life breaking out of this overlooked scene at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Life calling the church away from her funereal anxiety and into the joyous feast of the Kingdom of God. So before I get (more) worked up, let’s turn our attention to a Galilean province that may well have been Greenville. This is the first thing—the first thing—that Jesus does in his public ministry in the Gospel of John. He’s called some disciples, but this is his debutante party. What happens at Cana will set the mood for everything to come. You might expect something big, a major healing or a minor resurrection, but this begins rather quietly. Only John reports the trip from Nazareth to Cana. The newly formed rag-tag group of disciples have traveled three days—the number is significant, three days. John is setting a tone here—for a wedding reception.2 They’ve barely been there for a minute when the wine runs dry. Imagine it. Or maybe you can’t because you, like me, would have bolted at the first mention of a dwindling bar. Here you are surrounded by your closest friends, and just when things are getting good, the wine runs out. Call up Shonda Rhimes y’all, this is scandalous! Who knows how many people will have noticed the lack before word gets to Jesus. It doesn’t much matter; his mother knows, and she seems to have a plan. Echoing the narrator, she names the reality plainly: “They have no wine. ”Jesus seems unconcerned, distancing himself from such triviality. “Woman, ” he says (there’s no reason to think he’s being cross; he tenderly calls her the same at Golgotha).3 “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come. ” It’s a strange response, but then hers was a strange statement. Jesus is not the host of the feast, and he certainly isn’t going out at this hour to make a wine run. The wine shortage affects neither his nor his mother’s social standing. Most importantly, it’s just not time for The Big One. “My hour has not yet come, ” Jesus replies. Everything , everything Jesus does is pointed toward that hour when the Son of Man finds his throne on a cross. This is decidedly not that. Well either Mary doesn’t listen or she knows something Jesus doesn’t, because she gets the servants involved. And I want you to notice something here, because it’s the beginning of a pattern. In inviting the servants on the scene, Mary opens up the story. Though we found ourselves at a wedding, we were privy to only two characters —Mary and her son. Slowly, though, the frame widens, and we begin to see more and more of this strange gathering.4 Consider it: in the center of the frame stands Jesus, confronted immediately by Mary. Their discussion is brief, but it prods Mary to action. The camera follows her, where it lingers on her command to the servants who hurriedly go to find Jesus. In their hustle to find Jesus, the camera lingers on six stone water jars used for ritual purification. They’re huge, each holding upwards of thirty gallons. When full they would provide an absurd abundance of water. The scene has expanded, and we begin to get an idea of the scope. Still, outside of his mother and the servants, no one is paying much attention to Jesus. Strange that no one seems to notice when, at his request, the servants begin carrying gallons upon gallons of water to the stone jars, filling them right up to the brim… sloshing water as they go, filling the jars until it laps over the brim. “Now draw some out, ” says Jesus who, despite his initial reluctance, has given

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time for this quandary, “and take it to the chief steward.” (The scene opens up once more!) For all the Servants knew, they were delivering a ladle of water to the poor fellow. I imagine they must have thought Jesus was insulting the man, pointing out his failure to provide, prodding him with a not-so-subtle reminder that this wedding would reach a premature end because of his poor planning.5 The servants reach the steward and the steward drinks deeply. Only this is not water—it is wine. The scene is almost comic. The Steward, certainly flummoxed by the last minute appearance of this new vintage assumes some tomfoolery by the bridegroom. Why in the world, he wonders, would anyone serve the good stuff to folks who’ve already been drinking for hours? He calls for the bridegroom—and again the scene opens up, the shot pans over the crowd. Even these many years later, the steward’s protest makes certain sense: “Everyone serves the good wine first and then, after the dancing has started, Lo! the Natty Light and boxes of Franzia, but you, you have saved the vintage Chateau Lafite until now ! ” And that’s it. The narrative action ends with the steward and the bridegroom each thinking the other has gotten up to something. The guests, equally as ignorant, are nevertheless overjoyed at the prize vintage now freely pouring. The party once threatened by a dry well is now guaranteed to continue for days. And we, who overheard Jesus reluctant to divulge glory till “The Hour,” now hear from the narrator that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and the disciples believed in him. ” Six stone water jars. Each holding 20 or 30 gallons. 180 gallons. That’s 604 bottles of the very best wine. His glory revealed. Almost no one knew. In his gospel the author of John never calls Jesus’ transformational acts miracles. It’s always “Signs.” A sign points beyond itself; its significance is not the object, but the thing which the object signifies. What, I wonder, is signified by 180 gallons of the very best wine? We’ re used to the big signs—signs based on need. Eyesight restored, the strength to stand up and walk, 500 fed, a demoniac relieved. But there’s none of that here—not yet. The sign at Cana addresses an all too human party foul. One would not imagine such an error would attract the eye of the Messiah. Nevertheless Jesus Christ, God become man, appears on the scene and makes provision. The one who is very-God and very-Man transforms the mundane, ordinary celebrations of mundane, ordinary human beings and provides an absurd bounty, sanctifying their celebrations by his presence. The sign at Cana is often overlooked. It seems trivial in light of what will come, unserious in the face of far more important things. Yes, yes, I reply, Jesus has come for The Hour, for the Great Act. And everything he does points to the cross—to those three days. Our lives hinge on the glory of a King raised high. But he has also come for this, for joy and celebration and merrymaking. This is the fullness of incarnation. Not only the cross but also the wine. And not just any wine, but the very best. And not just the very best, but an absurd excess of it, more than the disciples and the wedding guests and the town could have ever consumed! The camera pans out one last time. Why, why would there be so much wine if it weren’t for us? Why would the jars be brimming, overfull, and spilling if we are not those to whom the narrator next turns? The guests didn’t know where this new wine, this great joy, was coming from, but we do. And that’s why Γ m

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not signing up for Christianity’s dour funeral. Here’s what the church and its prognosticators have failed to see. There’s a difference between growing up and dying, between change and decay. The church looks different than it used to, a little battered perhaps and frayed at the edges, but it’s not dying. It’s transforming, like that little wedding where the wine had gone dry until lo! it started flowing again. When Jesus Christ is the host, you can bet that the pots will pour out with rejoicing forever and ever amen. What should our response be to the transformation? Show up and drink of that joy, be served from the finest vine. Before you get ahead of yourself though, remember this. If Jesus is our host, as he is at this table, and if he has enough wine for a crowd, which he does, then we can’t much control who we might find seated next to us. We’d planned a lovely funeral, organized the best preachers, commissioned the best requiems. But a wedding? The guest list for the wedding is wide open. Which, I fear, is precisely why some of us might prefer to dwell on Christianity’s death rather than rejoice in its new life. Because newness is always a risk. Following the abundant wine, which has spilled over into streets and camps and shelters and even a few sanctuaries, are folks who think and look and act differently than we do, folks who demand that church move from sanctuaries to streets. Making room at the feast is a joyful task, but it is not always easy. To make room at this table, in our pews, and in our communities is to finally relinquish the false security of control. To make room is to recognize that it is the Spirit who calls, the Spirit who transforms, the Spirit who provides. There is a joyous wedding banquet. The invitations have gone far and wide. To me and to you, respectable guests no doubt, but also, and perhaps most importantly, to places we would otherwise avoid, people with whom we’d rather not be seen. Christians have gotten so bogged down with infighting and policing Christianity that we’ve forgotten that the living Lord has called us to new joy in a community wider and deeper than we ever could have imagined. A community of merrymaking that looks a lot more like a party than a wake. A community of welcome that builds bridges, not walls. Where, O church, is your joy? Where your barrels of finest wine? We are a people called to the cross, yes, but what use is our freedom, what use is our great hope, if we do not also have the joy of Cana’s wine? And how do we expect to pass on to the generations our hope if we are always caught up in nostalgia and mourning for something that never truly existed? It is my sincere hope for each of us, beloved church, that the wine we drink from today be as real to us as it was for the steward, as real as it was for the bridegroom and the disciples. It is my sincere hope, beloved friends, that we too might taste the intoxicating joy that has come with Christ’s incarnation. Among the disciples this new wine, this small glory, inspired belief. They saw only the edge of what would come, but by its beauty, its simplicity, its uncomplicated welcome, they were called further up and further in, following the thrilling scent of new wine mingled with holy blood, the paradoxical scent of life. So it is for us today at this table and every day in this world. Jesus shows up, and the intoxicating flavor of glory breaks out. The world changes. He is transforming our sadness into joy, our anger into mercy, our fear into the King-

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dom of God. And everywhere and always he is transforming water into wine. Always inviting, always calling.6 So let’s have another, shall we?

Notes 1 “America’s Changing Religious Landscape: Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow,” Pew Research Center, Washington D.C. (May 12, 2015). http//assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/ll/2015/05/RLS-08-26-full-report, accessed February 14, 2017. 2 Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 97. 3 Ibid., 99. 4 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 359-363. 5 Gail O’Day and Susan Hylen, John (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 36. 6 Dostoevsky, 361-362.

December 31, 2017
Has Judas Died for Our Sins?

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Has Judas Died for Our Sins?

Matthew 26:14-16; 47-50

Theodore J. Wardlaw

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas

Here in the season of Lent, we are always being introduced to a rich menu of characters. Like Peter, the loveable neurotic who so wants to please Jesus but rarely has a clue about how hard that can be. Like Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus, the one who was likely involved in the trial of Jesus. Like the unnamed woman in Luke who was a sinner, who brought an alabaster jar of ointment to a dinner party thrown by a Pharisee so that she could anoint Jesus’ feet and bathe them with her tears and her hair. Such vivid characters, such colorful props, that we encounter during Lent. When Jesus was arrested by the priests and the elders of the people in the garden of Gethsemane, one of those with Jesus reached for his sword and took a swing at the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear; and Jesus said, “Put your sword back… for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” That poor slave—probably there against his will—gets his ear cut off. Then there’s Pontius Pilate—a mid-career guy who would rather be anywhere than in Jerusalem serving as the governor of an occupied territory—exasperated over these Jews who will not compromise or listen to reason. The story of Lent just crackles in any gospel you happen to be reading with interesting characters. And then there’s Judas—the most pitiful character of them all. These portions of Matthew’s gospel that have been read to you today are bookends really, which hold together a more extended story that includes Judas. So we began with the first bookend—a short scene in which Judas goes to the chief priests and says, “What will you give me if I betray Jesus to you?” And they agree upon a price—thirty pieces of silver (It wasn’t that much for an errand like that, but maybe that’s not the point.)—and Judas begins to look for a moment when he can turn Jesus over to the powers that be. What happens next is Matthew’s version of the last supper. It’s the inauguration, really of the Eucharist—the sacrament of holy communion. There is a bowl, there is bread, and there is wine; and you will doubtless get to the bread and the wine before this Lenten season is over. What I want to call to your attention today is that bowl. I don’t know what kind of bowl it was. Maybe it was a finger bowl where you wash your hands. More likely, it was a bowl of sauce into which one might dip some bread. Whatever was in the bowl, Jesus says, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me… .It would have been better for that one not to have been born.” Everybody’s wondering who it is, and everybody asks, “It’s not me, is it, Lord?” “It’s not me, is it?” “Not me, is it?” And finally it is Judas who speaks: “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Jesus says, “You have said so.” Soon they’ re off to the mount of olives, and Jesus says to all of them, “You will all become deserters of me this night….” Peter takes exception with that prediction, and Jesus says to Peter, ‘Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And Peter says, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you,” and all the disciples agree. Judas, by the way, is not with them. He’s

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the treasurer, after all—the one who handles the money. Maybe he lingers after the meal to pay the bill and tip the waiter; or maybe, this close to April 15, he goes to work on his taxes. But soon enough, we see him again—here at this other bookend when he brings a big crowd of temple police. They come upon Jesus near where he’s been praying in Gethsemane, and they’re there to arrest him. Judas, according to a plan they’ve hatched, goes up to Jesus and says, “Greetings, Rabbi,” and kisses him, as if they really need Judas’ help identifying Jesus. Jesus says to Judas, “Friend, do what you’re here to do;” and so, thanks to Judas, the police lay hands on Jesus and arrest him. What happens next is the finger-pointing, the very beginning of the construction of an apparatus—now more than twenty centuries old and still going strong. An apparatus of self-righteous blame, when it comes to Judas. It’s a smear campaign. It happens before the gospel of Matthew is even finished, because not many chapters later, Matthew will write that before Jesus is even crucified, a guilt-ridden Judas returns the thirty pieces of silver to the priests and commits suicide by hanging himself. Of course, since it’s tainted money, the priests can’t return the silver to their own treasury—that would be wrong and impure ! — so they put that money toward a plot of ground, the potters field, to use for burying strangers. Because, don’t you see, Judas is now such a stranger to the gospel story. Even in the writing process of the gospels, the church is doing a smear campaign on Judas. Later, for example, in the gospel of John, Johnnot only slams Judas by name, but calls out his daddy’s name, too, as if now it’s the other way around, and the sins of the children are visited upon the parents. And then at Mary’s and Martha’s house, Martha serves a meal, and Mary takes a pound of costly ointment and anoints Jesus as if for burial. What a beautiful act of devotion! “But Judas,” writes John, “said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”’ This he said,” so John’s narrative goes, “not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it.” That’s a quote from John ! And then in the book of Acts, the story is not that Judas gave the tainted money back to the priests, but that he used it to buy a field himself, but then he fell down and essentially exploded in that same field. “And,” according to Acts, “all of his bowels gushed out.” I mean, really? Is there nothing that scripture won’t resort to to make the point of how utterly alone and untouchable Judas is? If we had been there, back in the days when the story of Jesus was making its way purposefully toward the cross, we would have noticed, I think, the beginning of a smear campaign being done on Judas. And friends, the more unforgiven and unforgivable we make him, the safer and cleaner we are. On out into the history of the church, it was Origen of Alexandria, the third-century theologian, who wrote that the real reason Judas hanged himself was to seek Christ in the other world and to ask for his pardon—which, of course, Origen implied, he would not get. And then later, there was Dante’s inferno, that fourteenth-century epic poem in which Judas is consigned to the lowest circle of hell. It’s a smear job! Had we been there, could we have spotted the apparatus? And, if so, what do we make of it? Why all this interest, across twenty centuries, in driving one nail after another into Judas’ coffin—unless perhaps the very act of focusing on him protects us from focusing on ourselves. Just look at Peter, who, just as Jesus had predicted,

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denied knowing him three times that night—so soon in that night that the rooster hadn’t even crowed once. But look more deeply at the story, because it wasn’t just Peter. Before this chapter in Matthew ’s gospel is over, we read those terrible words that summarize so much of the life of the church across the ages: “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. ” They all had their hands in the bowl ! But they let Judas pay the price. Judas is the one whose job across the ages is to make us disciples look good. So it is that Carlyle Mamey once said, “If Jesus dies for the sins of the world, Judas died for the sins of the church. ’’ But all the same, it’s still so tempting, in these days, too isn’t it, to look for a Judas—in Ferguson, in Queens, along the border between the US and Mexico, amongst the immigrant groups who would love to come to this country. In situation after situation, if we can find a Judas to blame, we get off as clean as hounds ’ teeth. But weren’t we there too, with Judas? And haven’t we always been there? Karl Barth, one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, in his multi-volume magnum opus Church Dogmatics, spent more than fifty pages on Judas—the gist of which was this: that Judas was undoubtedly a disciple of Jesus, no more so and no less so than Peter or John. He could not forgive himself, said Barth, because he assumed that Jesus wouldn’t have forgiven him. But “we,” he said, “are terrible judges of ourselves, and that’s not our job.” I love that: (a) we are terrible judges of ourselves, and (b) that’s not our job. He’s right. We are terrible judges of ourselves, and that’s not our job. It took me a long time to finally screw up the courage to see the movie “Selma. ” It was a disturbing movie on so many levels, but my wife Kay and I finally summoned the courage and went to see it when it was playing in the theatres. We were both children during so much of the civil rights movement, but by virtue of the simple fact that we were southerners, and, I suppose, privileged southerners, we were steeped in its reality. Our families did not know people who were members of the Klan, who committed acts of violence, but we did grow up hearing the rhetoric. Many white people felt betrayed by the so-called “outside agitators” who were coming into communities to just stir up discontent among people who, from that white perspective, had heretofore been so happy, so content and appreciative. And many African Americans felt betrayed by the ongoing word that Lyndon Johnson, for example, is pictured as representing so often during that movie: “Wait, wait, this is not the time; there will be another time that’s better… wait, wait. ” Each side had a Judas. The film recalls the brutal and historic murder of an African American Baptist deacon named Jimmie Lee Jackson. He had taken part in an evening march in Alabama a few weeks prior to Bloody Sunday in Selma, and when troopers ambushed them on that evening and the march went bad, he had hustled his mother and his 82-year-old grandfather into a restaurant where they tried to pose as diners looking at the menu. But those troopers came in with their billy clubs and pulled them out of their chairs and beat up his mother and his grandfather; and because he tried to prevent that, they shot him twice. Killed him. The next scene is his funeral, and David Oyelowo, who portrayed Dr. King at the movie, thundered from the pulpitthis question: “Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson?” And then came the answer: “Every white lawman who abuses the law to terrorize. Every white politician who feeds on prejudice and hatred. Every white preacher who preaches the Bible and stays silent before his white congregation. Who murdered

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Jimmie Lee Jackson?” He asked again. And then he went on: “Every Negro man and woman who stands by without joining this fight as their brothers and sisters are brutalized, humiliated, and ripped from this earth.” In that moment, with tears running down my eyes, I was there with Judas. And in fact there wasn’t just one Judas; there were thousands. We’ve tried all these years to scapegoat him, tried to point the finger at somebody else. But if we fail to recognize Judas dwelling also in ourselves, we have missed the point of the gospel. If we do not acknowledge Judas as our brother, we miss the essence of redemption. And if we continue to silence the voice of Judas, we lose two things—first, we lose something of our humanity; and second, we lose the profound experience of God’s love. Foras someone has put it, “Judas is not the original betrayer; Judas is not the primal betrayer; Judas is only the typical betrayer.” In the chapel at Austin Seminary, which is a beautiful gothic jewel of a place, a kind of cathedral in miniature, there’s a wall that separates the nave (or the sanctuary, as we sometimes call it) from the narthex. And across that wall, just above the doors that take you out of the nave and through the narthex to the outside, are carvings of the shields of all the disciples—twelve of them, disciples who became apostles. I can look at those shields now and identify who they stand for. There’s Peter and Andrew and James and John and Phillip and Bartholomew and Thomas and Matthew and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus and Simon the Canaanite… and then there’s Matthias. He was the one who was added later, to replace you-know-who. If I had just a little bit more courage than in fact I have, I would design a shield for Judas too, and put it up there with all the rest. It might disturb the symmetry of things, but I think he belongs up there. St. Judas. Conflicted and dysfunctional and wrong as he no doubt was, he was no more imperfect than anybody else on that wall. After all, he’s not the one who died for us. Jesus is. And across these many centuries , just like he promised, Jesus still waits to meet us—waits to meet all of us, even Judas—at the world’s most welcoming table.

December 31, 2017
The Love of God

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The Love of God

Thomas G. Long Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Without doubt, there is still a long way to go in order to understand or guess that the wrath of God is only the sadness of love. Paul Ricoeur1

The parking lot of the church where I will soon preach has a few cars in it, and others are gradually arriving. Not like the old days, of course, when one had to come early to find a spot. But these aren’t the old days. The world has changed, society has changed, the church has changed. Inside I will find a cordial enough group, certainly hospitable to the guest preacher. It will tilt grey, but still there will be an encouraging scattering of children and younger families. This is a bright, well-educated, amiably progressive suburban congregation. On bumpers here and there I see stickers reading “God bless all nations,” “Coexist,” and “God Loves Everyone-Ao Exceptions. ” That’s good, because somewhere in my sermon I will remind them of these very things—that God is love, that God loves all people, and that, indeed, God loves them. I will then close the service with the familiar blessing, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Chances are they won’t believe a word of it. They wouldn’t say, of course, they don’t believe God loves them. No, to the contrary, they would chime with the bumper slogan “God loves all people – no exceptions ,” including them. Unlike that church across town, where the preacher shakes the congregation with fear and guilt every week and hell reaches out long red fingers of sin and shame,2 and in contrast to that church a few blocks over, where the flag waves proudly on the jumbo screen as the choir pumps fists and sings “God Bless the USA,” this congregation firmly proclaims the inclusive embrace of a God whose love knows no bounds. But they have said it so often, they have heard it so often, that the bite has gone out of it. The idea of God the Lover does not much amaze them, encourage them, console them, or even arouse much interest. That metaphor, if not dead, is on life support. Well-meaning preachers like myself smile and reassure them constantly, “God loves you,” and they smile thinly back and inwardly say, “Why, of course.” The startling announcement, that the redeemer of all creation is a passionate lover who seeks them out as the beloved, rolls over them with all the blandness of “Nice weather, right?” Part of the problem is with the word love itself, which has become in popular culture as hyper-inflated as the currency of Belarus. Paul McCartney croons in amazement that people haven’t yet grown weary of “silly love songs,” and, it’s true, we haven’t. We’re saturated with them. In movies, music, television shows, blogs, and more, the word love is a constant refrain, a barrage really, so much so that the term gets distorted and trivialized. “Don’t you believe in love?” the novelist Walker Percy once asked, and then answered his own question: “Yes, but the word has become polluted. Beware of people who go around talking about loving and caring.”3 In the 1970s, when he had just read the novel Love Story, with its hopelessly sappy line “Love means

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never having to say you’re sorry,” Percy noted that most readers would not need an emetic to feel nauseated. “Maybe there are times,” Percy said, hyperbolically, “when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness , sententiousness, cuteness.”4 Indeed, when “God loves you!” evokes the image of some cosmic Barry Manilow blowing kisses toward humanity and tossing around heavenly valentines, it’s difficult to take the idea seriously. In scripture, in liturgy, and in the language of the Christian faith, however, the love of God stands in sharp contrast to the sentimentalized versions of love that float around in popular culture. All the more reason, then, to let scripture and discerning theology do some teaching about what is really at stake when we say at the close of our worship, “The love of God… be with you all.” There are many things one could say about God’s love, but decent headway can be made if we start with how playfully free, passionately particular, and dramatically transformative is the love of God.

Playfully Free Take any romantic movie— When Harry Met Sally will do—and much of the pleasure in watching it comes in seeing the trusty, well-worn gears of an ancient and oft-told plot grind toward the predictable conclusion. We know that the future lovers will meet and, from that moment on, the orbits of their lives will circle around each other. But the pairing up that we know lies surely ahead will take some time. There will be trials and tests; unexpected obstacles along the way; anger, disappointment, and perhaps a few laughs, but inevitably the plot clatters toward the finale as Harry and Sally find true love in and with each other. The old storyline doesn’t disappoint. Two people who were somehow incomplete and alone before move inexorably toward the place where they “have each other.” No matter how many times we encounter this story and in no matter how many versions, it never fails to be deeply satisfying. The text of these romantic escapades is about joy, fulfillment, and ecstasy, but there is also a strong subtext about need and possession, even consumerism (“I’ll have that one”).5 “For once in my life,” sings Stevie Wonder, “I have someone who needs me.” There is much self-love and possession of the needed object of desire in human romantic love. The love of God is different. James Weldon Johnson’s powerful poem “The Creation” has God saying, “I’m lonely—I’ll make me a world,” but theologically this is off pitch. “I’m a lover—I’ll make me a world” is more in tune. The Apostles’ Creed has the chronology right when it affirms, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” That is, God was a parent before God was a creator, and the creation was generated not by the loneliness and need of God, but out of deep parental love. As Calvin said, commenting on 1 John 4:9: “For if it be asked, why the world has been created, why we have been placed in it to possess the dominion of the earth, why we are preserved in life to enjoy innumerable blessings, why we are endued with light and understanding, no other reason can be adduced, except the gratuitous love of God.”6 In his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? John C. Lennox points out that a number of scientists today see the question “why is there a universe?” as futile because there is no rational reason for the universe.7 Some of the so-called “new atheists,” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, have seized on this point as counter evidence to what they see as the delusions of faith and the claims

Easter 2017

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of the faithful that the universe is the result of an intelligent design. Science, say the skeptics, can face up to the hard facts, to the arbitrariness, randomness, and pointlessness of reality, whereas religion is but a superstitious attempt to explain the universe as the grand architecture of some alleged Supreme Intelligence. Responding to this, Terry Eagleton quips that thinking of religion as “a botched attempt to explain the world… is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”8 When the new atheists revel in the pointlessness of the universe, they are, claims Eagleton, unwittingly at one with good theology. Like Calvin, Eagleton insists that the creation exists not out of some grim instrumentality of a higher rationality, but out of the pleasure, joy, and love of God, playfully free, in the act of creation. The only reason for the creation is the reason of love. Eagleton says,

God the creator is not a celestial engineer at work on a superbly rational design that will impress his research grant body no end, but an artist, and an aesthete to boot, who made the world with no functional end in view but simply for the love and delight of it. He made it as a gift, superfluity, and gratuitous gesture—out of nothing, rather than out of grim necessity…. He created it out of love, not need. There was nothing in it for him. The Creation is the original acte gratuit.9

What this means when the liturgy offers the blessing “the love of God be with you all” is that the blessing of God’s love comes freely and without constraint. God does not love out of need but out of freedom. Love flows and splashes from the fountain of God’s own life. “Because God is the Holy Trinity,” writes theologian Miroslav Volf, “God’s eternal love can be self-giving love rather than self-centered love. Consequently, God’s love for humanity is a freely given love rather than a love motivated by the benefits that the object of love holds for the one who loves it.”10 God’s love flows toward humanity, even when it is not reciprocated. On this point, the historical theologian Robert Calhoun helpfully contrasts the understanding of God’s love found in 1 John with the philosopher Philo’s understanding:

John alone among biblical writers ventures to define concretely and suecinctly what God is—not merely to affirm that he is or what he does…. Above all “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). In Philo’s thought, love is a duty toward God, a duty whose fulfillment is human well-being (eudaimonia) and a reciprocal benevolence of God towards those who love him. But for John, it is hardly too much to say that the essential being of God is love, even toward those who do not love him. “We love because he first loved us.” “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son (1 John 4:19, 10).11

For Philo, love was a duty humans have toward God; for John, love is a gift from God toward humans.

Passionately Particular In 2003, John Kerry, then a US senator and presidential candidate, gave a piece of tortured logic when he tried to explain his position on funding the war in Iraq. “I

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actually did vote for the $87 billion,” he said, “before I voted against it.” It was, a chagrined Kerry later admitted, “one of those inarticulate moments.”12 Perhaps, but sometimes a little twist in logic is called for. Take that bumper sticker “God loves all people – no exceptions.” Actually, Christians are against this theological claim before they are for it. To start with the universal love of God—God loves all people, no exceptions—is to bypass the biblical story and to substitute a gaseous Enlightenment deity for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod rightly insisted, the biblical story is not about a God who smiles benignly and impartially toward all humanity but instead about a God who falls in love with Abraham, Abraham in particular, and who loves Abraham and his children above all others. “It is the proclamation of biblical faith,” says Wyschogrod, “that God chose this people and loves it as no other, unto the end of time.”13 Why Abraham? Why the Jews? As is the case with creation, there is no rational reason. God created the world and chose Abraham out of the same impulse—for the sheer love and delight of it. To say that “God chose this people and loves it as no other” may grate against our sensibilities, peel off our bumper stickers, and undermine our easy sermons claiming “God loves everyone, friends,” but it is nonetheless an essential claim for the Christian faith. We worship a God who loves passionately and with particularity. I once had a mild argument with an ethicist colleague who was making a case for a certain form of equity justice, namely that a truly just society is one in which justice is like the blindfolded statue and every person is treated exactly the same. She backed up her argument by telling me about an incident with her two young children. When she discovered them fighting over a candy bar, she told her older child to divide the candy bar in half, one piece for herself and the other for her sister. When the older child did as she was told, my colleague then invited her younger daughter to pick which of the two pieces of the candy bar she wanted for herself. It was a nice solution since the one doing the dividing was not the one doing the picking, thus putting incentive in the system to be completely fair in doing the dividing. Society, my colleague argued, would benefit from such fairness, impartiality, and equality. That may work well for dividing Hershey bars and Social Security benefits, but it is less successful in plumbing the character of human need and desire. At our depths, we do not desire to be treated with impartial indifference; we wish to be known, understood , treasured, treated as we are in our very particular humanity. In fact, the candy bar incident does not really describe the most important ways that my colleague, a very loving mother, actually treats her children. She does not show her love to them blindly and equally, dividing things right down the middle, but very particularly. If one of them has the flu, she does not desert her bedside after 45 minutes in order to give precisely equal time to the other. If one of them comes home from school crying because the “popular” girls fenced her out, she is the daughter who gets that day an extra helping of motherly affection. In the law courts and other public spaces, we may desire that justice wear a blindfold, impartially dispensing benefits in equal portions. But we want parents—and we want God as our parent – not to wear blindfolds, but instead to see us in all our needs and particularities with the eyes of tenderness and love. In his Between Parent and Child, the psychologist Haim Ginott tells the story of a ten-year-old boy named Andy who asked his father, “What is the number of aban-

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doned children in Harlem?” Andy’s father, an attorney, was pleased that his son was interested in social issues, and he gave his son a lecture on the topic and then looked up the number. But Andy had more questions. What is the number of abandoned children in New York City? In the United States? In Europe? In the world? Ginott writes, Finally it occurred to Andy’s father that his son was concerned not about a social problem, but about a personal one. Andy’s questions stemmed not so much from sympathy for abandoned children as from fear of being abandoned. He was looking not for a figure representing the number of deserted children, but for reassurance that he would not be deserted. Thus his father, reflecting Andy’s concern, answered, “You’ re worried that your parents may someday abandon you the way some parents do. Let me reassure you that we will not desert you. And should it ever bother you again, please tell me so that I can help you stop worrying.”14 When my son was a child, there were times when he was feeling frightened or perhaps ashamed of something, and he would ask timorously, “Do you love me, Daddy?” It would have been cold comfort, indeed, if I had replied, “Of course, son, I love all children.” And this is a clue to why congregations hear the words “God loves you” with such dispassion – because as a general overarching idea, as a first principle, the universal love of God is a dispassionate and cold concept. This is similar to why many in the “Black Lives Matter” movement resist the substitution of the seemingly more inclusive “All Lives Matter.” “Black Lives Matter” is a cry for justice when black women are escorted from stores because they were shopping while black, when black young adults get overlooked in the job market, and when unarmed black men get shot in the back by police. “All Lives Matter” may be philosophically true, but in operation it can become a license for indifference and for ignoring the great disparities in our society. God is not like the planet Venus, distant and cold, shining monochromatic love on all peoples. “God loves all people” is not where we start. “God loved Abraham” is where we start, and “God loves all people” is the astounding omega point of this love story. As Wyschogrod again says, “The wonder is that nations not of the stock of Abraham have come within the orbit of the faith of Israel, experiencing humankind and history with Jewish categories deeply rooted in Jewish experience and sensibility. How can a Jewish theologian not perceive that something wonderful is at work here, something that must in some way be connected with the love of the God of Israel for all his children, Isaac as well as Ishmael, Jacob as well as Esau?”15 Christians can go even farther. Ephesians summons our memory of the dramatic and unexpected opening into the family of God created by Chirst:

Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world…. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. (Eph. 2:12, 17-19)

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This is no bland announcement of God’s universal love. This is the breathtaking proclamation that the God who fell in love with Abraham has, through Christ, also fallen in love with us and knocked down the walls that kept us out of the family of God. This is not about a God who floats over humanity in a celestial blimp beaming loving thoughts toward all. This is about a passionate lover God who, in Jesus Christ, came into the strife and anger and hatred and enmity and brokenness of humanity and, out of loving kindness, made peace. This was the news that knocked Paul into the dust of the Damascus Road. Paul knew the biblical story, and he knew that “God loves all people” is not where that story starts. What knocked him to the ground was the astounding, almost unbelievable, discovery that, in Christ, the love of God for all nations is where it all ends. “For this reason,” Ephesians says, “I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name” (Eph. 53:14). As for the bumper sticker “God loves all people-no exceptions,” it may have its usefulness as a political statement in a jingoistic society, and the idea itself isn’t wrong. God does love all people. But if this universal love is the expression of some abstract first principle, the expression of a deity who could never show partiality and who divides all candy bars exactly in half, it isn’t the wrong idea, but it is the wrong god. In worship, then, when the blessing says “the love of God… be with you all,” it is the passionate and particular love of God that is being announced, the love of God who in ways we can hardly imagine sees us, knows us, counts us as beloved, and desires us, the love of the Good Shepherd who comes seeking us in the wilderness and who tenderly carries us home. As Rowan Williams says, “We are seen, known, and held, but above all we are welcomed. We are the objects of an eternal delight. ”16

Dramatically Transformative God does not love us out of need, does not possess us out of insecurity, but God does desire that we reciprocate with love—not for God’s sake, but for ours. “God,” said Spren Kierkegaard “has only one passion: to love and to wish to be loved. ” Because of this passion, said Kierkegaard, God comes to us in many modes of loving: “Now he would be loved like a father by his children, now as a friend by a friend, then he would be loved as one who merely gives good gifts, now like one who tests the beloved; and in Christianity the idea is, if I dare say so, to be loved like a bridegroom by his bride… .”17 A father (and a mother), a friend, a bridegroom—yes, these are the faces of a loving God, but sometimes the loving face terrifies because God the lover desires that we be drawn toward God, that our cold hearts be melted, that our lives of resistance be transformed into love for God. Even what we call the wrath of God is a form of the love of God. In his own moment of turning to Christ, C.S. Lewis experienced this severe love:

Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.”To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with.” I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own.” I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had

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always aimed at limited liabilities. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing: the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation .18

“Abide in me as I abide in you,” Jesus said (John 15:4). To be loved by God is to be drawn toward God. To be drawn toward God is to be transformed into the likeness of God. “Dwell and you will be a dwelling,” preached Augustine. “Abide and you will be an abode.”19 To be loved by an abstract God who radiates love toward the creation indiscriminately is no threat. To be pursued by the God who loves us with passion and who desires a mutual indwelling—God abides in us and we in God—can evoke fear because this kind of love calls for a loss of the old self and the birth of the new. “We may acknowledge that we are loved by God,” writes theologian Janet Soskice, “but it is more difficult to accept that we will be made lovely.” Soskice continues, “The seventeenth-century Puritan clergyman Samuel Crossan spoke more boldly of future promise in what are now the words of a familiar hymn, “My Song Is Love Unknown”: “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me; /Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. /We shall not only be loved, but “lovely be” through the kindness of God.”20 To be transformed by the love of God is to be formed in the image of Christ. This means that we are drawn by God’s love into living in ways that are Christ-like, but this change in us is far more than merely being encouraged to be better, kinder, more generous, more loving people. It is rather, to be transformed by the love of God into being nothing less than a saint. It is the love of God in Jesus Christ that brings us at last into the presence of God’s glory purified, refined, lovely, and redeemed. “So with what body will the dead rise?” asks Jürgen Moltmann. “With the body of love. Not the unlived, might-have-been or wasted life, but the life lived in love will rise and be transfigured.”21 So, to raise the hand of blessing over the people of God and to say “the love of God… be with you all” is to affirm the promise that every day mercy is drawing “us all one little pace nearer to Love’s unveiled and dazzling face.”22

Notes 1 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 67.

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2 Some of these phrases are inspired by Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (New York: W.W. Norton, 1949), 110. 3 Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-help Book (New York: Picador, 2000), 187. 4 Walker Percy, “The State of the Novel,” Michigan Quarterly Review, 16/4 (Fall, 1977), 359. 5 Rowan Williams, Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,2016), 32. 6 John Calvin, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: John 11-21 and 1 John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 290. 7 John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Oxford: Lion, 2009), 62-63. 8 Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 50. 9 Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, 8. 10 Miroslav Volf, “God is Love: A Basic Christian Claim,” The Christian Century, 127/22 (November 2, 2010), 32. 11 Robert L. Calhoun, Scripture, Creed, Theology: Lectures on the History of Christian Doctrine in the First Centuries (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 42. 12 David Paul Kuhn, “Kerry’s Top Ten Flip-Flops,” on cbsnews.com, August 29, 2004. 13 Michael Wyschogrod, Judaism, 10:4 (Fall, 1961), 352. 14 Haim Ginott, Between Parent and Child (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009), 5-6. 15 Michael Wyschogrod, “Why Was and Is the Theology of Karl Barth of Interest to a Jewish Theologian?” in Martin Rumscheidt, Footnotes to a Theology: The Karl Barth Colloquium of 1972 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977) , 97. 16 Rowan Williams, Being Disciples, 34. 17 Spren Kierkegaard, Papirer, XI, 2, 98, as cited by Walter Lowrie, “The Love of God,” Theology Today, 16/4 ( January, 1960), 484. 18 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966) 228-229. 19 Augustine, “Homily 7,” paragraph 10. 20 Janet Martin Soskice, The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 187-188. 21 Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1990), 263. 22 Words found on a sign over the door of St. Peter’s Church, near Suffolk, England.

December 31, 2017