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  • Lenten Preaching among Distressed Lives: Five Assists for Lenten Preachers from Intersections between Martin Luther’s Homiletical Theology and a Political Theologian’s Vigil through a Tumultuous US Socio-political Season

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    Lenten Preaching among Distressed Lives: Five Assists for Lenten Preachers from Intersections between Martin Luther’s Homiletical Theology and a Political Theologian’s Vigil through a Tumultuous US Socio-political Season

    Jan Schnell Rippentrop Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

    Introduction In a seminary course I teach, I try to equip seminarians with empathie listening skills; then I get home and turn on the Presidential debates only to hear one candidate interrupt another 57 times—a far cry from empathie listening. Many of our students are actively attempting to dismantle systemic oppressions; we open our news apps too many days to headlines of another fatal shooting of an African American man. Systemic oppressions remain nauseatingly prevalent. The socio-political climate in the United States is in distress and causes distress. This article takes as its context the distressed lives of the people in the assembly and the communities in which preachers find their callings. With intentionality during Lent, preachers proclaim God’s living word into this same distressing context. For Lenten preachers who truly understand the challenge of speaking life into contexts of death, this article offers five tangible assists to the vocational blessing and hazard that is Lenten preaching. We arrive at these assists by bringing into conversation Martin Luther’s homiletical theology and a political theologian’s vigil through the tumultuous US socio-political season.

    Martin Luther’s Homiletical Theology This article identifies five elements that constitute what could be called Martin Luther’s homiletical theology. In order to talk about Luther’s homiletical theology, one disclaimer is needed, for it is widely recognized that Luther took a non-systematic approach to theology; therefore, the five elements named as part of his homiletical theology should not be considered exhaustive, but instead should be taken as crucial and consistent aspects of his homiletic. The five elements of Luther’s homiletical theology explored in this article are 1. the cross as central, 2. the cross as paradox, 3. the word as sacramental, 4. preaching as God speaking, and 5. the Holy Spirit as agent who creates reception.

    The Cross as Central Luther consistently points to the cross as central to Christian convictions. He articulates this through his hymns, treatises, disputations, and the development of what he, in the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, termed theologia crucis or theology of the cross. Luther derived the concept of theologia crucis especially from two biblical passages: 1 Corinthians 1:21-25 and John 14:8-9. First Corinthians 1:21-25: For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

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    but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. John 14: 8-9: Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied. ” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” First Corinthians proclaims Christ crucified as the power, wisdom, and strength of God—a power, wisdom, and strength that stands in contrast and opposition to oppressive domination. Christ crucified as the power, wisdom, and strength of God epitomizes God’s incarnate presence that suffers with humanity. John 14 adds an emphasis that God is known through Christ Jesus. Informed by these texts, Luther claimed a theology of the cross, which identifies God by how God accompanies humanity, i.e., in Christ and the cross. The theology of the cross influenced protestant theology; for example, theologian Jürgen Moltmann built on theologia crucis when he wrote, “[T]he tempted, rejected, suffering and dying Christ came to be the centre of the religion of the oppressed and the piety of the lost. Ian McFarland summarized Moltmann’s use of theologia cruces, saying that “only a God capable of incorporating suffering and death into the divine life is credible in the wake of the unprecedented scale of human suffering. ”2 The cross was central to Luther’s theology; yet, theologia crucis was not only a general theological commitment; for Luther it was also a specifically homiletical commitment. He wrote, “It is the office of a true apostle to preach of the passion and resurrection… and to lay the foundation for faith in [Christ]. ”3 Luther understood the heart of preaching as proclamation of the cross of Jesus Christ.

    The Cross as Paradox The cross that is so central to Luther’s understanding of preaching is, itself, complex because the cross is, in Luther’s understanding, paradoxical. The cross as paradox is a second element in Luther’s homiletical theology. Hope from despair, new beginnings in the end, life from death—these familiar paradoxes in the lived experience of humans and all of creation emerge from the paradox of the cross in which Jesus’ suffering and death yield hope and new life. Homiletically, Luther primarily expresses paradox through the concept of Law and Gospel. Law and Gospel announce that what has humans/creation bound, God has overturned, and that God liberates creation/humanity from what is deserved. Taken together in their paradoxical unity, LawGospel exposes the need for relationship with God, identifies rifts in the relationship, and promises God’s gracious reconciliation of the relationship.4 To drive home the point of what LawGospel is, I’d like to identify several things it is not: Law is not bad, and the gospel, good. Law is not the first 39 books of the Bible, and gospel the New Testament. Law is not Jewish, and gospel Christian. Law is not hard, and the gospel easy/soft. The above list shows appalling misunderstandings of LawGospel. More accurately, Law and Gospel articulates the theological work of the Word and identifies the way a biblical text is received. That is, the Word has the capacity to do multiple things with a hearer simultaneously—the Word can expose, guide, promise, and liberate

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    all at once. Hearers have the capacity to receive these multiple actions of the Word and to be formed by them. Since the whole Bible is Word of God, every biblical text can bear the fullness of LawGospel. Luther wrote, “There is no book in the Bible which does not contain both [law and gospel]. Everywhere God has placed law and promise side by side… .Pay careful attention to this distinction no matter which book you may be reading, whether in the Old or in the New Testament.”5 Although found everywhere in the Word of God, LawGospel is perhaps most clearly evidenced in the cross where Christ exposes sin and death-dealing practices of the world, guides the thief beside him to repentance, promises salvation, and liberates those who are dying to live anew.6

    The Word as Sacramental The Word is sacramental; this third element of Luther’s homiletical theology derives from Luther’s belief “that Jesus Christ is present in preaching as he is present in the sacrament of the Altar,”7 because both preaching and sacraments are enlivened by the Word. The phrase the Word effects the reality it declaresf expresses this theology ; it means that the full efficacy of God’s forgiving, salvific promise is there in the promise made through the Word; in that promise, God makes Godself present. The Word actually does what the Word speaks.9 When the Word effects the reality it declares through preaching, Christ is present to the assembly through the proclamation of hope, grace, new life, etc. The same is true in the sacraments: when the Word effects the reality it declares through, for example, the Eucharist, Christ is present to the assembly in the breaking of the bread. The Word of God enlivens preaching as the Word enlivens the Eucharist because God’s Word, as Christ, has the power to effect grace. The triune God, through the Word, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is the grace-giving agency of the sacramental word. “God must take action to reveal Godself to humanity. That action is God’s Word. God’s Word as revelation, however, is not vocalization or a spirit’s voice or a disembodied will; it is Jesus Christ.”10 Preaching is sacramental because God, through the Word, effects the reality God declares.

    Preaching as God Speaking Luther was adamant that preaching is Deus loquens (God speaking), which is a fourth element of his homiletical theology. Deus loquens means that God Godself is present in preaching, actively speaking to people through the preached word. God’s Word is Deus loquens already before the Word is proclaimed. The biblical text has the capacity to speak to a hearer or reader in transformative ways regardless of a preacher’s participation. However, in Luther’s homiletical conviction, Deus loquens extends also to the preaching event, which means that the preacher has the potential of participating in occurrences of God’s speaking. Preachers who proclaim the living Word, through which others hear God speaking, have been gifted participation in God’s transformative speech acts. Luther was filled with awe, and a deep sense of responsibility, at the prospect of participating in the way an assembly hears God speaking. The conviction that God is present and actively speaking through proclamation supported the Reformation phrase: viva vox evangelii (the living voice of the gospel). The gospel’s voice lives because the living God is agent of the power and efficacy of

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    the living word. The preacher participates in the living voice of the gospel and is called to be a living voice, announcing the redemptive power of the cross and resurrection. God draws preachers into fellowship with the divine and sends preachers forth from God’s generative creating to be a living voice and to serve God and others. Viva vox evangelii is the voice of God calling Elijah in the silence that follows the storm. Viva vox evangelii is the voice of the angels calling the unsuspecting shepherds to see God with them. Viva vox evangelii is the voice you embody—from the organ bench, from the pulpit, from the bedside—as you participate in proclaiming God’s new life.

    Holy Spirit as Agent Who Creates Reception A fifth and final element of Luther’s homiletic that will be explored here arises from his pneumatology : Luther maintained that the Holy Spirit is the agent who creates hearers’ reception of the Word. The Spirit is not merely helpful but is essential to the internal reception of the Word because the Holy Spirit makes the external word, heard by the ear, into an internal word, experienced internally. This section is organized around three questions: In what ways is the Holy Spirit agent of the reception of the Word? How does the Spirit create reception? What happens when the Spirit creates reception? The Holy Spirit is agent of human reception of the Word because the Holy Spirit is the means and the power by which the Word is revealed to humans. The Holy Spirit is the means by which Christ is known. In 1 Corinthians 12:3, Paul writes, “I disclose to you that no one, when he speaks in the Spirit, says, ‘Jesus is a curse,’ and no one is able to say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ if not in the Holy Spirit.” It is the Holy Spirit who is the means by which the Word, Jesus Christ, is revealed. The second reason the Holy Spirit is the agent of human reception of the Word is power: the Holy Spirit has the δύναμις (inherent power) to perform the work of revealing the Word. This power is unique to the Spirit, who empowers any given revelation of the Word. How does the Spirit create reception? The Spirit is continually at work within the believer11 to create reception of the word by disclosing Christ and internalizing the connection. The Holy Spirit discloses Christ. Disclosing Christ means making Christ known or perceptible and thereby augmenting access to Christ. The Spirit discloses Christ in many ways. In John 16:14 Jesus claims, “[The Spirit] will receive from me [Jesus] what is mine and will tell it to you.” John suggests that the Spirit discloses to people what Christ gives. The Spirit generates reception of the Word by making the connection internal. Lirst, an acknowledgement that people can experience the Word as just a good word with good ideas of how to live well; when this occurs, they have encountered the word without the Spirit. Theologian Regin Prenter writes, “The Word may exist without the Spirit. When the Word is without the Spirit it is just a letter. It is a letter in the sense that it only gives a description of the life we are to live, but does not give us the life it describes.”12 However, the Spirit can take the external biblical word and enable humans to internalize it. When people encounter the Word in the power of the Holy Spirit, they experience the living Word that presents Christ and effects the reality it declares. It is the Holy Spirit who has the power to speak more deeply to the human spirit both in terms of meaning and impact. “The Holy Spirit must translate what is heard externally into the kind of ‘language’ requisite to its internal reception—Levtimonium spiritus sancti internum.”13 When the Spirit creates reception of the Word,

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    the Spirit has communicated the living vitality of the Word. So strong was Luther’s conviction, he asserted that “we can have no assurance that the promise of the Gospel is the Word of the living God to us, unless the Holy Spirit says in our heart, ‘that is God’s Word.’”14 It would be hard to overstate Luther’s view of the importance of the Spirit’s work in hearer’s reception of the Word, as Luther himself wrote, “[0]f Christ we should know nothing were He not revealed to us through the Holy Spirit.”15 What happens when the Spirit translates the Word internally? First, the Spirit makes promises real to hearers, and second, the Spirit enables hearers to become witnesses. The Spirit makes the promise of Christ real to us. From Romans 5:5 we hear, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” This has a very real impact on lives because the “enlightening work of the Holy Spirit is responsible for the fact that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a distant metaphysical phenomenon but a redeeming reality in us and for us.”16 The Holy Spirit causes Christ’s redeeming presence to be perceptible as real. A second thing happens when the Holy Spirit enables people to receive the Word: hearers become witnesses. Jesus’ statement in Acts 1:8 claims that the power that Christians are given to witness to Christ comes from the Holy Spirit. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The disciples’ ability to communicate Christ is an effect of the Spirit at work making Christ known. Not only does the Spirit bear witness, but the Spirit creates witness bearers through reception of the word! The Spirit not only has the power to originally reveal Christ but also has the power to enable witnesses to secondarily reveal Christ.

    Five Assists for the Lenten Preacher Below are five assists to the Lenten preacher who recognizes socio-political upheaval in the US; these are intended to offer preachers a thoughtful, biblicallygrounded , contextual approach to one text each week. Each one will relate to one of the five Sundays of Lent preceding Passion/Palm Sunday, which often bears its own unique proclamatory practices. One of the Revised Common Lectionary texts appointed for that Sunday grounds each assist. Next comes a paragraph from the perspective of political theology (theology that addresses systemic injustices) that analyzes a specific concern from the tumultuous socio-political climate in the US. Finally, a preaching assist brings the text and socio-political concern into conversation with one element of Luther’s homiletical theology. The confluence of text, concern, and theology seems particularly compelling because Luther’s homiletic and Lent share a focus on the cross and an orientation toward God and the world in light of the cross of Jesus Christ. Additionally, the perspective of political theology, which examines systemic injustices theologically, is perhaps especially fitting during Lent when the church is, liturgically, more sensitive to human pathos. Luther himself could be considered a political theologian because “one can find no systematic work or essay by Luther unconnected with a political crisis or problem of the time.”17 The following four categories, Week in Lent, RCL Test, Socio-Political Concern, and Element of Luther’s Homiletical Theology summarize the three topics brought together for each Lenten Sunday:

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    Disillusionment Cross as Central Hopelessness Cross as Paradox Distrust Word as Sacramental Reduction Preaching as God Speaking Cut Dead Holy Spirit as Agent Mt 4:1-11 Rom 4:1-5; 13-17 Ex 17:1-7 Jn 9:1^41 Rom 8:6-11 1st Sunday 2nd Sunday 3rd Sunday 4th Sunday 5th Sunday

    First Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2017 On the first Sunday in Lent, the gospel reading—Jesus ’ temptation in the wilderness —comes from Matthew 4:1-11. Jesus’ temptation came when he was famished and isolated. The devil tempted him to prove he was the Son of God by providing bread for himself, to test God’s commitment to him by throwing himself off a pinnade , and to gain dominion over the world by worshiping the devil. In response to each temptation, Jesus calls on his treasury of scripture to offer a direct response that was true to Jesus ’ identity. Temptations to provide preferentially for one’s own needs, to test God, and to accumulate power remain common. In February 2016 President Obama decried the worsening climate in US politics. He said that the system incentivizes divisive language and tearing one another down. Acquiescence to these temptations advances people’s careers. Obama blamed “a poisonous political climate that pushes people away from participating in public life…, discourages them and makes them cynical.”18 There is widespread disillusionment with many aspects of socio-political life in the United States that causes people to wonder if or how to engage in public life. Matthew 4 and Luther ’s commitment to the centrality of the cross offer a response to those wondering if or how to engage publicly. In Matthew 4, Jesus overcame temptations by responding directly and non-violently to the tempter. Remaining communally oriented and grounded in his identity, Jesus privileged his relationship with God and responsibility to others over the opportunistic lure of the temptations. Luther ’s adamant focus on the centrality of the cross offers a compass for discernment. When an opportunity presents itself, how does one discern its true worth? Jesus relied on his relationship with God and responsibility to others to navigate deceptions. For Luther, theology of the cross also is about relationship with God and responsibility to others. God chose incarnate presence that suffers with humanity. Theology of the cross can be a compass for discernment. How can your discernment be guided by knowing that God chooses to be particularly present to the poor and vulnerable?

    Second Sunday in Lent; March 12, 2017 The Second Sunday in Lent includes an epistle reading from Romans 4. It is the story of Abraham’s faith being reckoned to him as righteousness, quite apart from any works he achieved. Ultimately, the righteousness reckoned to Abraham is possible because of what God has done and is doing. Verse 17 praises God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” The very next phrase, which is in verse 18 and not included in this pericope, says that Abraham was “hoping against hope” that God’s promise of new life/new existence would come to pass. Christian hope of righteousness is grounded in the paradoxical cross through which God called into existence what had not existed—namely new life in the presence of death. The US is experiencing a socio-political climate filled with news that leaves

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    some feeling hopeless. The day after Sylville K. Smith was fatally shot by police in Milwaukee, people gathered for a prayer vigil to mourn and to protest injustice. Residents in Milwaukee wondered where hope may be found when this shooting fit a pattern of violence that was decades in the making. The New York Times reported, “Milwaukee, a city of nearly 600,000, joins other embattled parts of the country like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., where police killings did not so much draw outrage for the deaths alone, but for the systemic problems that have so many black people feeling hopeless. “Iv Yet, even in this climate that perpetuates hopelessness, many still find themselves, like Abraham, hoping against hope. Reggie Moore, who works for violence prevention, finds hope in direct community discourse. He is challenging Milwaukee residents to have real conversations around questions such as “What are the systemic issues that need to be addressed around poverty, racism, segregation and inequity to reduce the likelihood of this happening again?”20 Moore links direct questions addressed in community to the ability to discover what a just community looks like. In situations that can seem hopeless, paradoxical hope that communally erupts is the hope of which Romans speaks. It is God calling into existence what had not previously existed—hope in the midst of hopelessness. The paradoxical cross is the source and paramount instance of God calling into existence that which was not. Christian hope in the paradoxical overturning of injustices is grounded in the cross through which God took up death and turned out life. People listening to sermons know all about paradoxes. They find themselves living in all sorts of paradoxes that are part of the human condition. People’s daily situations are full of cross-shaped paradoxes.

    Third Sunday in Lent; March 19, 2017 The Hebrew Bible text for the 3rd Sunday in Lent is the story of water from the rock in Exodus 17. The Israelites’ quarreling and testing of Moses and God erupted because of their physical need for water. Faced with potentially lethal thirst, the Israelites demanded, “Give us water to drink” and accused, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” Hearing their dismay and Moses ’ plea, God gave the unprecedented, and water gushed from the rock. Broad distrust characterizes US citizens ’ view of the federal government. A Pew Research Center study found that only 19% of citizens trust the government most of the time. This number is down 58 percentage points from a 77% trust in the government in 1958.21 The same Pew Research study found that trust in the federal government is not merely mediocre, but that “[ajmong both Democrats and Republicans, large majorities say they can seldom, if ever, trust the federal government (89% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats). ”22 It is not only trust of the federal government that plagues citizens’ political confidence. Trust in the average citizen’s “political wisdom” has also eroded; since 2007, trust has decreased 20-27%, depending on party affiliation. Distrust currently characterizes US citizens’ views of both the federal government and the average citizen’s political savvy. Distrust in the political savvy of fellow citizens and the federal government and dismay at overwhelming and unmet basic human needs (e.g., thirst in Exodus 17) increase skepticism. Skepticism, theologically, decreases one’s ability to imagine

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    that God is about to work in unprecedented ways. Yet, God doing the unprecedented is precisely the pattern of God’s action that Luther indicates when writing that the Word is sacramental. When God breaks into this world, bringing new life that was formerly unprecedented, then God has acted sacramentally, and the Word has effected the reality it declares.

    Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 26, 2017 The gospel text, John 9:1-41, recounts the story of the man born blind. In this text, the man suffers others’ reductions of his personhood. First, the disciples assume that sin is the cause of his blindness. Some of his neighbors are unwilling to believe he could have changed. The Pharisees would not believe that his own testimony about his own experience was credible, so they called in his parents. His parents refuse to stand up for him; since they are “afraid,” they deflect the Pharisee’s question saying , “He is of age; ask him.” When the man challenges the Pharisees to notice the “astonishing thing” Jesus has done, they minimize him by saying that he was “born entirely in sin,” and they send him away. Throughout the story, he is identified by his disability instead of other characteristics. Political discourse that reduces others tragically has a foothold in the US. Enough of the voting population supported DonaldTrump that he became the official Republican Presidential candidate. This candidate is more experienced at reducing others—“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best….They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”23—than at discussing political policy. He vilifies immigrants, name-calls women and people living with disabilities, and declares opponents “losers,” “lowlifes,” and “liars. ” At the time when this article was written, it is as yet unclear whether US voters wifi elect this candidate who habitually and publicly reduces others, which frighteningly shows that his violent, reductive rhetoric works with a significant swath of US voters. Contrary to the reductive discourse so disturbingly effective in the election cycle, the man born blind lifts up God’s action in the world as he has experienced it through Jesus Christ. He does not point primarily to himself as the one who made his life great again. As he retells his story time and time again, he consistently says that he is not sure what exactly happened to him, but he knows whom to praise for his new life. He has heard God speaking and has become a witness to God’s movement in the world. When people compete for attention and accolades, they often do it at the expense of—that is, in ways that reduce—others. This stands in direct opposition to the discourse of the man born blind, who does not compete for attention but focuses the story of health on the God who gives new life. God speaking, one element of Luther’s homiletic, does not reduce others; rather, God speaking brings new life to others where abundance did not formerly exist.

    Fiflh Sunday in Lent; April 2, 2017 The epistle reading on the 5th Sunday in Lent is Romans 8:6-11. Verse 11 reads, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Paul announces the Spirit’s active presence in people’s daily lives as a radical, yet quotidian, concept. The Spirit’s presence is nothing short of the daily

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    enlivening of bodies and circumstances that enables people to make it through life’s struggles. Many systemic concerns in this world—poverty, racism, and ageism, to name a few—cut people dead, which means that they are recognized but their presence is not acknowledged. They are ignored. Political theology concerns itself with any form of systemic injustice. The way that systems cut people dead is a grave concern for political theology, as it silences and makes invisible many individuals and populafions . A political theologian has to ask these questions: Who is missing from public discourse? Who has this society made silent or invisible? How can those who have been silenced be heard? Luther believed it is the Holy Spirit as agent who creates internal reception of God’s word. Paul believed it is the Spirit who enlivens daily human existence and enables people to survive desperate times. The Spirit surrounds people who experience being cut dead by systemic oppressions, both seeing their embodied realities and hearing their stories. The Spirit can also bring about the transformation of people’s stories changing from silenced to heard, of people’s bodies transforming from ignored and cut dead to visible and valued. The Spirit is bringing this new life. How do preachers form society’s vision and participate in radical story telling?

    Notes 1 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 62. 2 Ian McFarland, “Theologia Crucis” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 50F 3 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works., [American ed. ] (Saint Louis: Concordia PubHouse, 1955), 35, 396. 4 The concept of Law and Gospel is articulated well as one concept. Attempts to break it down into component parts (i.e., of Law as distinguished from Gospel) often fall short of the complexity of Luther’s thought and fall prey (as did Luther himself) to reinscribing anti-Semitism. That is, when Law is identified as wrath or brokenness and Gospel is identified as grace or liberation, then one treads treacherously close to an anti-Semitic articulation since the Pentateuch is so frequently called “the Law,” etc. 5 “Luthers Werke (Weimarer Ausgabe) – Luthers Werke (Weimarer Ausgabe),” 10: I, 2, 159, accessed October 5, 2016, http://www.proquest.com/products-services/luther.html. 6 This cross narrative is found in Luke 23:32ff. 7 H. S. Wilson, The Speaking God: Luther’s Theology of Preaching (United Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India, 1982), 119. Wilson is, in this sentence, expressing Luther’s theology of the Word. 8 Winston Persaud in Global Dictionary of Theology : A Resource for the Worldwide Church (Downers Grove, 111.: Nottingham, England: IVP Academic; Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), 511. 9 Genesis 1, John 1, Matthew 9:1-8, to name a few. 10 Thomas J Davis (Thomas Jeffery), This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought / Thomas J. Davis (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2008), 58. 11 SW (vol 1 p. 154) Select Works of Martin Luther, trans. H. Cole, 4 vols (London, 1826) and WB 104 (Luther’s Primary Works. Ed. Wace and Buchheim. London 1896, in Philip S. Watson, Let God be God!: An Interpretation of the theology of Martin Dither (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 168-169. 12 Prenter, Spiritus Creator, 122. 13 Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 1991), 386. 14 Luther’s Sammtliche Werke Erlangen 1826-57 vol. 1 p.451, quoted in Philip S. Watson, Let God be God!: An Interpretation of the theology of Martin Dither (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 167. 15 Martin Luther, Werke (Weimar, 1883ff) vol XI, p52. Kritishe Gesamtausgabe (48.27) quoted in Philip S. Watson, Let God be God!: An Interpretation of the theology of Martin Dither (Eugene: Wipf

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    and Stock Publishers, 2000), 185. 16 Prenter, Spiritus Creator; 112. 17 J.M. Porter, ed., Luther – Selected Political Writings (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1974), 1. 18 New York Daily News, “President Obama Decries Cruelty in Politics,” February 11, 2016. http:// www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/president-obama-decries-cruelty-politics-article-1.2527709 Accessed 10.3.2016. 19 JohnEligon, “Racial Violence in Milwaukee was Decades in the Making, Residents Say, ”inThe New York Times, August 14, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/racial-violence-in-milwaukeewas -decades-in-the-making-residents-sayhtml?_r=0 . Accessed 10.8.2016. 20 Ibid. 21 Pew Research Center, “Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government,” November 23, 2015. http://www.people-press.org/2015/ll/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government/

    . Accessed 10.10.2016. 22 Ibid. 23 Donald Trump, Presidential Announcement Speech, June 16, 2015.

  • Where Loyalties Lie

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    Where Loyalties Lie

    1 Corinthians 1:10-18

    Erin Keys

    First Presbyterian Church, Greenwich, Connecticut

    I almost titled today’s sermon “Gospel Politics,” given that is precisely what is going on here in this letter from Paul to the church in Corinth. Paul had a sticky situation on his hands: the members of the church he founded had begun to play favorites among their leaders—pledging allegiance to this person or that person. Chloe, who we believe was a wealthy patron of the Corinth church, was concerned. The way the congregation was dividing themselves was threatening the unity of the church. So she had her people send a letter to Paul, who responded with a letter of his own in which he in no uncertain terms told the Corinthians to knock it off. “What are you doing?” he asks, almost as if he can’t quite believe it, like he can’t quite understand how these brand new Christians, with their hair practically still wet from their baptism, had so quickly started forming separate allegiances and segregating themselves from one another. “Has Christ been divided?” Paul presses. But, unfortunately, this is what people do. We divide ourselves from one another. We draw lines in the sand and say they are there and we are here. No doubt this instinct developed as a survival strategy at a time early in human history when we needed it, but is that time still now? Paul doesn’t seem to think so. Not only in this text from Corinthians, but in all of his writings, we hear the clear call to open our minds and hearts when it comes to who we see as our brother and sister. “God is for everyone,” Paul says over and over again. This during his time, as with our own, is a message about both religion and politics. For as much as we may try to keep the two separate, the reality is that in the Bible, they are constantly intertwined. Go back through and read the stories of our faith, and you will find that “House of Cards” has nothing on scripture when it comes to political drama. Sampson and Delilah, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, the Exodus, Esther and Mordecai, David and Uriah, Judas and Jesus, just to name a few. The details of the stories differ, sure, but the underlying theme remains the same—human beings trying to figure out which side they are on and who is on that side with them. For this reason it always surprises me when people say that politics should not be discussed in church. To do that we would need to leave out large portions of scripture. Of course I know that when people say politics and religion don’t mix, what they mean is that faith is not, and should not be, aligned with a political agenda. This is true, because no party platform could ever hope to fully embody the standards of our faith and no candidate could ever hope to represent that faith and be voted into office. Such a person would never be elected. We know this. And how we know this is because the one person who could have done it was executed by the government with the approval of the majority. But that reality does not remove for us the need to acknowledge the overlap of politics and religion. Especially not today. Not when our country faces a divide unlike any we have seen in recent memory—a divide that has only grown wider in the past

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    forty-eight hours. No matter who we voted for and no matter how we may personally feel about it, there can be no denial that the people of our country are at great odds with each other. Neither can there be a denial that for all the talk of the need for unity, the political rhetoric on both sides continues to further the opposite. And in many respects that divide cannot be avoided. There are some things that are just wrong, and the need to say so, the need to draw that line, is a vital part of our citizenship as Americans and our freedom as human beings. But, at the same time, if we say we want unity in our world, if we say that all people are our brothers and sisters, if we say God’s grace is wide enough and deep enough to hold us each and every one, then something has to change, and we cannot continue on as we have been. For while my own belief and prayer has been that our country is neither as dark as the new administration has made it seem nor will the next four years be as dark as many fear they will become, for that to be true a lot more is going to be required of us—of all of us. Because it is not enough just to cast our vote and then let the chips fall where they may. It is not enough to throw up our hands in celebration or lament. It is not enough to protest or to criticize those who do. It is not enough to advocate and donate to the causes we believe in because these actions, as important as they can be, do not necessarily further unity. And I do hope and believe that is what we all ultimately want, even though we cannot yet seem to agree on how to get there. And I think this is what Paul understood about the church in Corinth too. I don’t think he believed that deep down what they really wanted was to be separate from one another. They just did not yet know a better way. That is why he tries to remind them, and us, that Christ does not belong more to Cephas than Apollo. Christ does not belong more to the Wal-Mart employee in Kentucky than to the Wall Street executive in New York. Christ does not belong more to those who are wealthier or better educated than to those who are not. Christ doesn’t belong to one race, one gender, one zip code, one party, one person any more than any other. That, he says, is the wild and scandalous claim of the gospel. Which, yes, to some is going to sound like sheer foolishness but for others is saving grace. Christ belongs to us all. And we all belong to him. For those who are upset about the new leadership in our country, those who are wondering and asking what can be done, I realize that what I just said could still sound abstract. But I assure you, once you start putting it into practice, once you start measuring every word, every choice, every action in light of whether or not you are furthering the unity of God, what you will find is that it is more than enough work for the next four years; it is more than enough to fill the next forty. And for those who are pleased with the new administration and those who feel all will be well, be alert for the lure of complacency. It is all too easy to see only what we want to see and hear only what we want to hear, all the while missing the steady erosion of rights and the breaking down of the bonds of trust that link us to our neighbor. Any voice that seeks to lead by pitting one group against another should raise our suspicion and make us all the more critical of what is taking place. The truth at the center of our existence is that what happens to one of us happens to all. It may not seem that way given all the talk lately about the “bubbles” we live in that separate us from one another, but I think we all know how easily those bubbles can burst. And how the fear that keeps the young father up at night worrying about

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    the future of his job in manufacturing is not all that different from the fear of a newly immigrated mother who sought out this country for a better life for her children and now wonders if she will have to leave. Because we are, as Martin Luther King said, “tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” “[Because] for some strange reason,” he says, “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured .” This, to me, serves as a reminder that God does not give up on us, that throughout the span of human history, as the pendulum has swung from one side to another, through all the zigs and zags, and for every two steps forward and one step back, God has not given up on us, and so we ought not give up on one another. Even when it is really tempting to. Especially when it is really tempting to. Because while the work of unity is no small task, God has determined that we are up for it, and that by linking each life to the life of another, God has placed a significant amount of belief in us and has pledged a great deal of loyalty to us as we see this work through. I’m not sure we always think about it this way. We tend to talk more about the need for us to be loyal to God rather than remembering God already has and will continue to be loyal to us. They are two sides of the same coin, yes, but there is something in knowing that even when it seems like humanity has done everything in its power to create hell on earth, God continues to hear the groans of creation as the cries of labor pains, and with a love that only an expectant mother could have, God remains steadfast . If we can truly believe that, if we can hold on to that knowledge with everything we have, then we will find within us the courage and the strength to keep believing in each other. This, again, to some will look like complete foolishness, but my hope is that we will know it as the power of God. In this way we will be able to rise above the instinctual drive to divide ourselves from one another, because we will know our God believes we can do better than that. Our God believes we are better than that. This is not to say we should not continue to be active in civic life or to stand up when we feel our core values are being threatened. It is not to remove ourselves from the world but simply hold ourselves to a higher standard as we engage with it. It is to remember that despite the significant differences that may exist, any time we are speaking in favor of or against someone else, we speak about a child of God, a life that, just like ours, is woven into God’s tapestry of destiny, and a soul to which, just like ours, God says, “You belong to me. And I haven’t given up on you. I haven’t given up on you.” Because today as with every day before it and with every day to come, God’s loyalty will remain firmly on our side. We just need to decide where ours will be. Will we continue to let politics divide us, or will we aim for something bigger, something better, the great striving towards unity which we have been called to undertake, a task that none of us can complete on our own?

  • One New Book for the Preacher

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    O. Benjamin Sparks

    Richmond, Virginia

    Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, Meditations of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)

    In “A Conversation with Christian Wiman” in Image} Wiman says that he has been obsessed with “religious” experience all his life and that it’s everywhere in poems and prose he has written but something he only understood as he looked back upon his work from the perspective of faith. “I was led to God by joy, but led to words, you might say, by grief. It was meeting my wife that first made me—made us—want to acknowledge the love that our own seemed to imply and include. It was the threat of death that made me want to give my inchoate feelings of faith some definite form.”2 The overarching compass and subterranean depths of Wiman’s memoir of coming to faith has tempted me to string together a series of quotations from the book, first because I cannot “do it justice,” and second, because it is so rich with insights that a reader can keep it beside her Bible or other devotional book of the moment and return to it day after day—for a lifetime. I have read it twice, not long after it was published in 2013 and then a few months ago to prepare for a seminar. I was surprised how fresh it seemed the second time. It cascades and soars in a poetically written prose for which one longs, something to savor in heart and soul and mind, something of which you never tire, like the poetry of George Herbert (a favorite of Wiman’s) or G. M. Hopkins or T. S. Eliot. It helps, of course, that Wiman is himself an accomplished poet and essayist, educated at Washington and Lee and at Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He also taught at Stanford and at Northwestern and Lynchburg College. He has travelled widely and, in addition to his own published works, is the translator of the PolishJewish poet Osip Mandelstam. In 2003 he became editor of the influential Poetry magazine, which under his leadership began including prose and tripled its readership . In 2013 he left the magazine to teach at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.3 The first reason to recommend this book to preachers is that it requires a depth of cogitating, thinking, meditating on one’s own faith, one’s own personal and pastoral experience that transcends the normal activity of sermon and teaching preparation, administration, and moderatorial/administrative duties. It engages our souls and leads us to depths of exploration that often get lost in the sometimes necessary busyness and ADHD flavor of parish life, or of programmatic commitments to institutional maintenance, evangelistic techniques, and social justice. Wiman is searingly honest about the pitfalls of the American church. He writes that “we need to be shocked out of our easy acceptance of—or our facile resistance to—propositional language of God.”41 would add that we need to be shocked out of our easy acceptance of recurring religious clichés—both liberal and conservative— and of self-constructed worship that references mostly our own needs and feelings rather than calling us into

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    the presence of the living God, the Maker of heaven and earth, who for Wiman is the elusive, unknown one, the great Abyss whose power and love in this world (even the universe) can only be known through the crucifixion (contingency) of Jesus Christ. After his diagnosis with incurable, unpredictable cancer, Wiman wrote:

    Contingency. Meaning subject to chance, not absolute. Meaning uncertain, as reality, right down to the molecular level, is uncertain. As all of human life is uncertain. I suppose to think of God in those terms might seem for some people deeply troubling (not to mention heretical), but I find it a comfort. It is akin to the notion of God entering and understanding (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) human suffering. If Christianity is going to mean anything at all for us now, then the humanity of God cannot be a half measure. He can’t float over the chaos of pain and particles in which we’re mired… .5

    My God my bright abyss Into which all my longing will not go Once more I come to the edge of all I know And believing nothing believe in this.6

    That poem fragment begins a series of essays which form a loose narrative in My Bright Abyss. Wiman begins by saying that what he craves “at this point in his life is to speak more clearly what it is that I believe.”7 The second reason to recommend this book to preachers is that it is the witness of a layman, who has more to say to us preachers than we do to each other about the acids of modernity and our congregations. Wiman’s experience and erudition (He refers to and calls upon not only poets to speak his truth, but also Kierkegaard and Kafka, Bonhoeffer and George Linbeck, and others.) are the stuff of classic devotional books. Thus he evades or blessedly sidesteps the therapeutic, organizational, and even social righteousness models of presenting the faith. Rather this book, like Augustine’s Confessions, invites, even demands, that we confront the God whom we worship and adore (or not) through the lens of our own personal experience, our own joys and grief, sufferings, and mundanities. Wiman’s invitation and demand (and revelation) come wrought with such beauty and precision sometimes that he takes your breath away. The third reason to recommend this book comes from a conversation last spring that I cannot shake. A friend, pastor of a large and faithful congregation, told me that he often struggled with “what’s next?”—not for himself, but for his congregation: urban, large, socially engaged, liturgically rich, educationally sound and powerful, homiletically grounded, a church that unflinchingly faces the issues of the city in which it worships and to which it ministers. My friend seemed to be asking, “Where are we going; what is the next faithful witness to which God is calling us?” None of us knows, but Wiman’s little book suggests that it’s depth of faith and groundedness we need, not just we preachers, but preachers and congregational leaders together. Without it we will not withstand the depredations of our current political crisis, which is a crisis of language, of truth (human and revealed), and of the foundations of this republic. The answer to William Butler Yeats’s searing question after WWI,

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    what rough beast “slouches toward Bethlehem to be bom?”8 is being revealed before our eyes in every news cycle. The leaders of nations, all but one or two, tremble, and Tillich’s foundations crumble, in reality, not in homiletical imagery. After the massacre at Mother Emmanuel Church and the response of that congregation to terrorist horror, what do we have to say? Who are we in our witness? A Bright Abyss suggests that the appropriate question to ask leads us, personally and corporately, away from superficial expressions of Christianity and opens our hearts and eyes of faith to what is true, good, beautiful—and everlasting. Might it not be that what we have next—and urgently—to do is to cultivate among ourselves a hunger for God? Only then will we draw the attention of those who see nothing of interest in our faith or in our churches.

    Notes 1 Image, “Art, Faith, Mystery, Winter 2013, Number 76,51. 2 Ibid., 51-2. 3 Ibid. 4 Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, Meditations of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). 5 Ibid., 16,17. 6 Ibid., 3. 7 Ibid. 8 “The Second Coming,” on the Web: PotW.org, Poem of the Week, founded August 1996.

  • “The Grace . . .of our Lord Jesus Christ”

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    “The Grace . . .of our Lord Jesus Christ”

    Rush Otey Selwyn Avenue Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, North Carolina

    “I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art…” John Calvin, c. 1551

    All of my life I have struggled with the questions of natural theology and revealed theology. Especially since Karl Barth clashed with the National Socialists and with Emil Brunner and in the realm where faith intersects with political realities, it has been important to remember the scandal and the specificity of the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection. Love of nature cannot stand against tyranny for very long. Hitler ’s mass choreographed rallies often wedded the natural beauty of the Fatherland with the goose step and the idolatrous salute. Yet, there is in the common usage of grace, a loveliness and a beauty and symmetry in Creation for which we give thanks and before which we stand in awe. Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical “Laúdate Si On Care for Our Common Home reminds us of the connections between the desecration of the environment and issues of poverty and justice. The Psalmists cry, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.” John Calvin observed that there is no place in creation where our eyes may not discern at least some sparks of God’s glory. At Christmas we celebrate the Lord’s birth by belting out “And Heav’n and Nature sing.” I give thanks for the music of Creation, the grace of it all—the staccato phrasing of dolphins, the antiphonal spirituals of whales, the slapstick percussion of the beaver’s tails, the bass notes of bullfrogs and alligators, the trumpet chorus of elephants, the counterpoint of cicadas, the raucous laughter of ducks at dawn, the plaintive solos of owls and whippoorwills down in the bottomland—and for the human capacity for seeing, keeping, praying for and with all of these. Jesus invited his anxious disciples to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, cared for by an attentive and loving Creator. In the New Testament benedictions (II Corinthians 13:12; I Thessalonians 5:28 et.al) though, there is specific reference to the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How do we bear witness to that Grace? What do we mean by this? Fleming Rutledge and others have suggested that God’s grace in Christ is not simply favorable treatment, but unmerited favor, a gift bestowed on the undeserving, a reconciliation made possible only by the offended party. In pastoral care I have often noticed that if there is ever reconciling in a relationship, someone bears the pain in unequal portions, and most often it is the offended party rather than the offender. One of the Statler Brothers ’ old songs says, “You Take the Bow, I’ll Take the Blame.” All of the traditional “theories of atonement” refer in some deep sense to this unmerited favor. When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he was very likely in prison and at the end of his life, and at the center of his letter is the kenotic hymn of 2:1 -11, wherein the “self-emptying” of Christ is the mainstay of the revealed Gospel. We are not at all on equal terms or on God’s level, but always recipients of unmerited favor. The Scriptures are not simply transactional, but benevolent and often counterintuitive, poured out, and always for human hope and salvation. A couple of generations ago, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a still relevant book The

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    Nature and Destiny of Man (Scribner, 1943). In volume II, on “Human Destiny,” there is a profound essay in which Niebuhr suggests that Grace is both God’s mercy toward us and God’s power in us. That is a strenuous dynamic, grounded in Galatians 2:20. Cheap grace stops with the mercy toward us and neglects the power (in the Greek, “dunamis” or dynamite) of God which is also extended and realized in the communion of saints/Pentecost. My soul is not only saved by Christ, but it is given life to embody him now, in these very days, in the flesh. There is a power not our own to go along with the mercy not usually found in human relationships. Grace is God’s mercy toward us, unmerited favor which produces the power to continue. InCharles Frazier’s excellent novel Cold Mountain, published in 1997, there is the disturbing and provocative story of an “Everyman” on a journey. Inman is a wounded soldier in the United States’ Civil War. He is walking a long distance from the hospital in Virginia to the mountains of North Carolina. On the way he encounters all kinds of difficulty and pain and engages in deep introspection. At one point he is completely lost; but he is met by a slave, a mulatto, a kind of Samaritan (p. 183):

    “Cut north. Go toward Wilkes. Taking that heading there’s Moravians and Quakers all the way that will help. Hit the bottom of the Blue Ridge and then cut south again following the foothills. Or go on into the mountains and follow the ridges back down to your course. But, they say it’s cold and rough back in there. ” “That’s where I’m from,” Inman said. The yellow man gave him cornmeal twisted up in paper and tied with twine, a strip of salt pork, and some pieces of roast pork. Then he worked for some time scratching out a map in ink on a piece of paper, and when it was done it was a work of art. All detailed with little houses and odd-shaped barns and crooked trees with faces in their trunks and limbs like arms and hair. A fancy compass rose in one corner. And there were notes in a precise script to say who could be trusted and who could not. Gradually things got vague and far apart until in the west all was white but for interlinked arcs the man had drawn to suggest the shapes of mountains. “That’s as far as I’ve been,” he said. “Just right there to the edge.” “You can read and write?” Inman said. “Got a crazy man for a master. That law don’t mean a thing to him.” Inman reached in his pockets for money to give the man. He thought to draw out a generous amount, but he found his pockets empty and remembered what money he had left was in the haversack hidden in Junior’s woodpile. “I wish I had something to pay you with,” Inman said. “I might not have took it anyway,” the man said.

    My friend Jack died about five years ago. His death was unexpected, though he was more than the Biblical “three score and ten” and had survived some major health problems. His soul was always one in whose presence I found gladness and welcome and strength. In the Church he was leader, servant, Elder. He was the benevolent treasurer and also the person who called all the visitors. Also in his “retirement” years he was the moderator of the Board of the Child Development Center (Few want that

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    responsibility and the associated stresses ! ) and also the one who was more than happy to assist with baptisms of squirming infants. We ate lunch together several times a year at a Chinese restaurant where Jack knew all the chefs and the waiters, naturally. At one of these holy meals, we were talking about funerals, and I went on a tangent about the hymn “Amazing Grace.” I said that I was weary of it, that it was overused, common, never mentions Jesus by name, and has become sentimentalized despite its origins with slave trader John Newton’s conversion in the 1770s, and that it would be fine with me if I never heard it or sang it again. Jack just listened and smiled, and we went on to another subject. About a week later, I found in my mailbox a home-made CD. It was from Jack. It contained more than twenty versions of “Amazing Grace,” from Elvis to Judy Collins to the Blind Boys of Alabama, from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to Willie Nelson to Mahalia Jackson, from a Hawaiian ukulele choir to a Jamaican steel drum band to the bagpipers at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and a version our congregation’s choir had sung recently at a memorial service. Grace. Mercy. Power. Amen.

  • Down to the Waters

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    Down to the Waters

    Chris Currie

    First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, Louisiana

    “Remember you are baptizedThe reformer Martin Luther once said that perhaps when the Christian rolls out of bed each day, he or she ought to begin with these words, reminding ourselves to whom we belong and for what we are made. Luther even enacted it as he began each day by patting himself on the head and saying to himself, “Remember you are baptized.” To remember and reaffirm our baptism and all that it entails can be an awkward and unwelcome business. It is to remind us that we belong to something and someone bigger than ourselves. It is to remind us that we belong to someone who believes we have been made for a purpose and through whom these baptismal waters help direct us for a life of purpose. Growing up in a minister’s household was not always fun or fair, and often those moments came when we asked to do something our peers had somehow gotten permission to do (or maybe they just simply did it without permission). I remember one of those instances distinctly.. .in which I was not allowed to do something that I did not find all that troublesome on my own moral compass, but the reply I received was, “Remember you are baptized; sorry, you are not going to do that.” Remember you are baptized. Remember you are baptized? I thought baptism was supposed to be self-freeing not self-limiting; why was it keeping me from my heart’s desire? Now one of the favorite things we do in the life of the Christian community is to reaffirm our baptismal vows, but when it was done as a reminder of who I was in the context of my high school extracurricular activities, I wanted to have no part of it. I did not want to remember who I was in baptism, I did not want to become the person I was baptized to be, and I wanted to do what my friends were doing and wished I hadn’t asked for permission in the first place. I wished I had forgotten my baptism all together . When we stand at this baptismal font and baptize an uncomprehending baby, we are reminded in the baptismal liturgy that we cannot be unbaptized no matter how hard we may try. And there are times, at least in my own life, when it would be a lot easier to be a free agent and to try to unbaptize myself. Baptism sticks me with people I did not get to choose, with a family of faith that I did not get to self-select, and places demands on me I would often prefer not to face or try to live up to. Baptism unites me to a Savior, a God whose love will not let me go and whose life obligates me and binds me to people and a way of life that requires more of me than lip service, more of me than the lowest common denominator, more of me than I sometimes prefer to give. Will Willimon has described the problematic nature of American Christianity in this way: our attitude is often “okay, what is the least amount I can believe or the least amount I have to do to still be considered a Christian?” And our consumer culture plays right into that, offering us whatever version of worship or religious commitment will be the most appealing to us and the least invasive or demanding on us. Come worship here, and you can be anonymous; come worship here, and we won’t ask you to do anything. But we know that is not true, because we know the promises

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    of baptism. “Remember you are baptized” is always and everywhere in danger of being replaced by the advertising slogan made popular by Marks & Spencer, where “the customer is always and completely right.” Why not design faith on our terms and design it as we prefer rather than surrendering our prerogative to something and someone outside of ourselves? And then there is Jesus. Today in our scripture lesson, John the Baptist appears for what will probably be the last time until next Advent (so savor this moment). John is out in the wilderness calling all people to repentance and baptizing them for the forgiveness of sins. And many of them are rightly wondering, “This guy sure acts like a prophet and sure doesn’t have problems telling people what to do, and he baptizes with authority; perhaps he is the Messiah, the One who is to come.” And John reminds the crowds that he is not the Messiah but that the Messiah is more powerful than John will ever be and that the Messiah will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. John is weird and hair-raising and unnerving enough, so I cannot imagine what the Messiah is going to be.. .and expect and demand, with water and the fire and the Holy Spirit, not to mention the winnowing fork. And then in our passage, we don’t have to wonder for long about how wild and hair-raising and unnerving the Messiah is going to be because he actually shows up. What does he do? Does he scare everyone straight? Does he make fire flow from his finger tips and put together a pyrotechnic display that would rival the best of our theme parks? Does he bum all the chaff and seek to rid the world of all the rabble and less than desirables? Not according to Luke. According to Luke, the Messiah hears John’s preaching alongside everyone else. In response to John, Luke tells us that all the crowds of people coming to John are baptized, every one of them. Jesus, one of the crowd, joins them and presents himself for this baptism of repentance. Jesus chooses to present himself for baptism of repentance and to place himself among sinners (Isaiah 53:30). And as he does, he prays and the Spirit comes and the Messiah is made visible. That’s right, this Messiah, who has more power in his pinky finger than John the Baptist will ever have, this Messiah for whom John says of himself that he is not worthy to stoop and untie the Messiah’s sandals, this Messiah who is coming to baptize with fire and the Spirit, this Messiah waits in line nonchalantly while the entire mass of humanity gets baptized, and when everyone else is finished, he takes his turn. Really, that’s how this wild and crazy and unnerving Messiah does business—waiting for everyone else and then calmly taking his tum? I don’t get it. And why does he need to be baptized in the first place? For what sins and transgressions does he need to repent? For more than two years I worked in a prison in Scotland. To enter the prison each day, I went through a security door and had to put my possessions through a security belt like in the airport. Then there was a second door in which I punched a button and awaited a camera somewhere to unlock the door for me. Then I went through another door to retrieve my set of keys assigned to me. Then I went through a fourth door that required another camera to verify me and let me through. Then a corridor led me to a fifth door that I opened with my key, a sixth door that led down the main corridor, and then three more doors that I had to unlock and lock until I reached the chapel where there was still one final door that led to my office. Lots of locked doors with lots of cameras that required me to unlock and lock them each and every time, each and every day. My first couple of days, I was a ball of anxiety, not worried so much about

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    interacting with prisoners, but worried that I was going to do something wrong or forget to lock a door and be caught in the act on video. But after awhile, my duties became second nature and my responsibilities became like any habit or routine we do each day. I remember thinking how intimidating it was that I had to cross nine or ten thresholds just to reach these people who had committed crimes destructive and dangerous enough to have that many precautions and safeguards. How clean cut and boy scoutish I was compared to some of these people, and in many ways I was. But one holy week we gathered for special services in the chapel. Easter, Christmas , and really all holidays were a tough time for prisoners, so many came to chapel for these special services, sometimes just to get their minds off being locked away from family during the holiday seasons. That holy week service the chapel was full, and we were reading through the passion narrative in a stations-of-the-cross style service. By way of introduction, my Catholic colleague reminded those prisoners, people who seemed so distant and disturbed and destructive in contrast to me, that like them, Jesus had been a prisoner, that like them, Jesus had served time behind bars, and like them, Jesus knew what it was like to struggle in such a place. I remember almost cursing to myself under my breath, “Jesus has more in common with these folks than he does with me.” And indeed he does. He has no problem with all those doors that stand between us and him. And in a way I think he gets baptized to go through every last door that separates us from him; to experience the whole anatomy of the human soul and condition; to make his way to the very depths of our heartaches and heartbreaks and struggles. He is baptized into the whole lot of us, Luke tells us. And he waits patiently until all of us have had our turn. He gets baptized into our life so that we may get baptized into his and share all the joys and fulfillment and hope his life bears and brings. So remember you are baptized and remember that Jesus got baptized. Remember that he was baptized into the heights, the depths, and the breadth of our lives, so that discovering him there, we may find ourselves in the heights, depths, and breadth of his.

  • ‘Who’s In? Who’s Out?’

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    “Who ﻷIn? Who ﻷOut? ”

    Matthew 15:10-28

    Glen Bell

    First Presbyterian Church, Sarasota, Florida

    We don’t make it easy. Our mothers and fathers in faith, and their mothers and fathers,learned the appropriate waystoapproach God. InJewishtradition, this includes the 613 commandments of the law, the rules and traditions that faithful believers embraced. Some of these seem right and good to our post-modern ears: Remember the Passover, and recall the Exodus from Egypt; that is, remember that God rescued US from slavery. Worship no idols, and do not take God’s name in vain. Do not murder or testify falsely or covet. Respect your parents. Fend to the poor and destitute, and do not oppress the weak. Leave gleanings for the poor. Do not bear a grudge or take revenge. Repent and confess wrongdoing. Do not appear at the Temple without offerings, and give charity to the poor. Others seem strange to US: Do not eat the meat of an animal moitally wounded. Do not eat mixtures of meat and milk cooked together. Do not eat any ηοη-kosher animals. Observe all the laws of impurity. Do not lend with interest. Wear phylacteries on the head and tehllin on the arm, and put a mezuzah on each door post. The king must not have too many wives. Destroy the seven Canaanite nations, and wipe out the descendants of Amalek. Do not wear clothing of mixed hbers. Pay all wages on the very day they are earned. We didn’t make it easy for those beyond the chosen people of God to become a pait of the community of faith. Jesus directly assaulted the laws of impurity, of hand washing, and ritual cleansing , when he piOclaimed, “It is not what goes into the mouth that dehles a person.” It was upsetting and deeply disappointing to all the people of God who did their very best to uphold and keep all the laws and traditions, that they might be worthy before the Ford. But Jesus was clear: it is what comes out ol the mouth-what piOceeds from the heait-that dehles US: evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication. False witness, slander. Sometimes I and perhaps you are so busy keeping the outward rules that we oveilook what is truly most impoitant about our lives. Do we really believe it does US any good to put on our Sunday best and come to worship if we abuse our neighbors or sleep with that person who is not our wife or our husband, if we he and criticize and demean and cheat’? We don’t make it easy. Our mothers and fathers in Faith, and their mothers and

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    fathers before them, learned the appropriate ways to approach God. In American PiOtestantism, this includes all kinds of ritual and lOutine and special language. We sit quietly on pews or rows of seats and stand when directed to sing or speak responsively. We use metaphorical language in our liturgy and songs and sermons, this morning about chains and wells and houses and directions. We speak of the “session ” and the “naithex” even though newcomers almost need a dictionary to dehne those terms. We place or pretend to place our offerings in the plate as it is passed, although many of US don’t even bother to pretend, giving only one percent or one-half of one percent of our income to the work of the church. Often I and perhaps you are so busy attending to all these traditions that we overlook what is most impoitant about our lives. Do we truly think it helpful to go thiOugh the motions of listening and rehecting and singing and giving halfheaitedly if we hold tight to our grudges and oveilook the needy’? if we ignore our neighbors, both down the row of seats/pew and aciOss the street’? if we care nothing about the people of eastern Ukraine and the refugees on Sinjar Mountain’? if we care nothing about justice in Ferguson, Missouri’? if we deny the prevalence of continuing racism, alive and well on the streets of America’? if we turn away from unaccompanied children, seeking to escape the violence of the streets in Tegucicalpa and San PediO Sula’? Do we become insiders by keeping the rules and traditions, without addressing the orientation of the heait, the choices, and the everyday decisions of our lives’? Can we become God’s children by sitting and standing and singing and keeping quiet at all the right times during worship, while ignoring injustice’? Or does life in Christ demand change’? We don’t make it easy for ourselves. In our deep desire to believe that we are good enough, honest enough, sound enough, fair enough, we have a terrible way of drawing the circle aiound ourselves, that we may be inside even if others are out. We don’t make it easy. If you were listening very carefully some time ago, hve chapters earlier in Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus is commissioning the apostles, as he grants them authority to cure every disease and heal every illness, as he charges them to be a force for love in the world, piOclaiming the good news, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons, raising the dead, he also says this, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles. Go instead to the house of Israel.” Even Jesus says to bless the insiders, our people, our friends and neighbors. Not those others. And then we reach the last eight verses of this morning’s lesson which shake our foundations. A Canaanite woman, an outsider, a Gentile approaches Jesus shouting, “Have mercy on me. Lord; heal my daughter.” There is nothing appropriate about the way she approaches. It is shocking to our post-modern ears. If we are only eager to identify the insiders and outsiders, then you and I know this: the church is simply not a place for shouting, for someone to show up and interrupt . Being with Jesus, we believe, is done decently and in order, with decorum and aplomb. But we cannot help but hear her prayer.

    Have mercy on me. Lord. I am biOken.

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    Have mercy on me. My daughter is possessed, and I cannot help her. Have mercy on me. I do not know what to do. Have mercy on me. Lord. I need help. Have mercy on me. No matter who we are or how far we have come this morning, we know that prayer. No matter how wrongly worthy I or perhaps you may sometimes feel, we know that prayer. No matter how many of the 613 traditions we keep, we still know that prayer. Have mercy on me. Lord: I am afraid my parents never loved me. Have mercy on me. Lord. I was so unfair to my children. I don’t know what to say to them. Have mercy on me. Lord. I cheated on my wife. Have mercy on me. Lord. I only give leftovers to church and charity. Have mercy on me. Lord. I’m afraid my husband will never get well. Have mercy on me. Lord. All we do is Luss and hght. Have mercy on me. Lord. I can’t stop drinking or cursing or criticizing or holding that grudge. Have mercy on me. Lord. My lile is coming to a close. Have mercy on me. Lord. It is the prayer, I believe, that God always hears, when we scream it or sob it or whisper it. But, at this moment, Jesus does not hear it. He says, “I was sent only to Israel, not to you Gentiles. It is not fair to take the children’s Lood, the Lood belonging to the children ol Israel, and throw itto the dogs, the Canaanites, the Gentiles, the outsiders. ” But this woman, this Canaanite, this person who does not keep the law and traditions, this outsider who does not know how to read a bulletin or worship appropriately, she persists. “Help me. Lord,” she prays. “Yes, Lord,” she responds, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs. “And Jesus is dumblounded. He recognizes her Laith, her persistence, her deep desire for transformation and healing, and he grants her desire. Jesus changes. Jesus grows. And he invites US to do the same. Jae Won Lee taught New Testament for eight years at McCormick Seminary. He writes this: “This woman who is socially marginalized breaks thiOugh external ditferences to claim God’s mercy. She shouts her demands at Jesus. Again and again, she violates boundaries ol ethnicity, heritage, religion, gender, and demon possession . And Jesus is big enough not to be ashamed to learn something from a Gentile Canaanite woman.” Remember the charge ol Christ in Matthew 10, when he is commissioning the apostles, “Go only to Israel”’? The word is far different at the close ol the gospel, in the Great Commission, when the resurrected Christ commands his followers to go and make disciples ol all nations. Sisters and brothers, you and I are invited to listen and watch for the Holy Spirit, even when the Spirit’s appearing is strange and surprising, in the most unexpected places. You and I are invited never to give only just enough and do only just enough to try to become insiders, but to speak and forgive and share beyond any human measure, offering our very best in Christ’s name. We don’t make it easy. But the Lord has mercy on US, that we may offer mercy to others, every day, to God’s glory.

  • If It Weren’t for Jesus

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    Iflt Weren’t for Jesus

    Mark 8:27-38

    Leigh Campbell-Taylor

    Newnan Presbyterian Church, Newnan, Georgia

    Mark’s Gospel is the oldest gospel, so that, as the hrst written narrative of the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark became major source material for the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke. Some scholars even see those two later writers as aiming to “correct” Mark’s account; at minimum, they expanded it. One passage that really shows this enlarging of a particular episode is Mark’s telling of TheTemptation of Jesus. Mark gives it to US straight—one sentence: Jesus “was in the wilderness foity days, tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on Him.” Period. Enough said. Well, apparently not for Matthew and Luke, each of whom devotes multiple paragraphs to dramatizing a spectacular showdown between the devil and Jesus: “Turn this stone into bread.” “One does not live by bread alone.” “Serve me and all eaithly power will be yours.” “Serve only God.” “Throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple for God will surely catch you.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” It’s great stuff. But Mark lacks all ol that. Mark simply states that Jesus was “tempted by Satan”; we get no juicy details, no smack-down replies. Until now. In today’s text we have what can be read as Take Two ol how Mark tells “The Temptation ol Jesus.” Jesus is on a roll: He has banished demons and walked on water, stilled storms and healed countless people; He has Led 5,000 and He has Led T,()()(), and He has ticked off the religious authorities at every turn. He’s like a lock star. Jesus has Last become a legend in His own time. But being a legend is not what Jesus is about. And so He does a reality check with those closest to Him: “Who do people say that I am’?” The disciples answer, and you can almost see them watching Him out ol the corner ol their eyes, hoping to catch some secret smile that will tell them they’re getting warm: “John the Baptist… ‘? Elijah… ‘? One ol the prophets… ‘?”And then comes Jesus’ follow-up question: “And who do you say that I am’?” And Peter’s hand shoots up like he’s Hermione Granger in Potions class with Harry Potter, “Ooh Ooh! I know, I know! You’re the Messiah.” Bingo. Then, blammo: Jesus staits talking about suffering, rejection, death. And so Peter “rebukes” Him: “Hang on, Jesus. You’ re the Messiah! The conquering king we’ve been waiting for since forever. So, not now, Jesus. You’ll ruin everything.” Poor Peter; he reminds me ol a friend who once groaned, “You know, il it weren’t for Jesus, being a Christian would be a whole lot easier.” Poor Peter; Jesus really clobbers him: “Get behind me, Satan.” That, ol course, is where the temptation theme comes into play. In this presentation ol it, the temptation ol Jesus has to do with that sticky weakness ol succumbing to human priorities: be the messiah that people want, Jesus, rather than the Messiah that God intends. “Come on, Jesus”—Peter might have said—“Don’t make it hard. The world wants a legend, a lock star, a conquering-king messiah; what the world doesn’t want is a suffering, rejected, shamelully executed messiah.” But Jesus isn’t here to pander to what the world wants. That temptation is easy for Jesus to resist. And so, for poor Peter, things go from bad to worse. With Peter

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    standing there dumbstruck, arms ciOssed, eyes stinging, Jesus turns tothe entire crowd. And suddenly, not only is Jesus speaking of His own locky, thorny road. He’s now insisting that anyone who would be His disciple must also walk that road. Jesus tells the crowd that disciples are to deny themselves, take up their ciOsses, and follow after Him. In the context of Lent, we tend to hear the word “deny” and think of giving up treats for six dreary weeks. In fact—and this is absolute fact—at last Thursday’s lunch to celebrate the bilthdays of our Church Secretary and Financial Secretary, when bilthday desseit was being passed aiound the table, I actually heard the Rev. Dr. Harry Barrow say to a colleague, “Get behind me, Satan.” For the record, Harry successfully resisted the temptation at hand. That’s the soit of thing we think of when weheartheword“deny.”Now, this is to take nothing awayfrom Lenten disciplines—I have my own and they are uselul practices—but for right now, rather than thinking ol those give-it-up-lor-Lent things when you hear Jesus’ instructions “deny yourself,” instead translate the word to disown. “”Disown yourself.” Now, put that together with Jesus’ words to Peter, “For you are Locusing not on divine concerns but on human concerns,” Disown human concerns. Jesus is telling US to disown our selves—our concerns, our priorities—and to Locus instead on God’s concerns. Simone Weil, a secular Jew who conveitedto Christianity, once wrote, “1 ؛there is a God, it is not an insignihcant ؛act, but something that requires a radical rethinking ol every little thing. Your knowledge ol God can’t be considered as one ؛act among many. You have to bring all the other ؛acts into line with the ؛act ol God.” So, it we, when conliOnted with Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am’?”—if we are going to answer with Peter that Jesus is the Messiah, the Messiah ol God’s divine intent, not just some human-wish-list messiah—for US to join that claim, we have to come to grips with how God contradicts our expectations, how God’s priorities differ from our impulses, and how, thanks be to God, God’s view ol sinners is more merciful than

    OUI’S. Tomorrow, the State ol Georgia is set to kill Kelly Gissendaner. This execution was scheduled for last Wednesday, but the weather prompted a hve-day delay, and so we’re wrestling thiOugh this sermon on the eve ol the execution rather than after it’s already a done deal. This case has been getting extra media attention because Kelly Gissendaner is a woman. And she will be the hrst woman executed in Georgia since 19^, when the State killed Lena Baker (who has since been exonerated). But the thing about this situation that demands our attention isn’t that Kelly Gissendaner is a woman, is it’? Isn’t it that Kelly Gissendaner is scheduled to be killed? I mean, when we take someone’s lile, we are Locusing on human priorities not on God’s priorities. We are following an itch for vengeance instead ol following Jesus. We are denying God’s justice rather than denying our selves. And we are accepting something that would be a whole lot easier to accept il it weren’t for Jesus. You see, long before He Himsell was a victim ol state-sponsored execution, Jesus once had the opportunity to participate in an execution. And, ironically enough for US here in 2015 Georgia, the criminal was a woman. More to the point, she had been caught in a capital crime. The religious law was clear. It said to stone the adulteress! But, standing there in the presence ol Jesus, her accusers, her judge andjury, can’t do it. 1 ؛it weren’t for Jesus, they could have. 1 ؛it weren’t for Jesus, her lile would have been taken rather than transformed.

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    Saying this, I have to acknowledge that many of you may disagree with it, and I rely on you to receive this as an invitation to thoughtful, faithful conversation about an issue that truly matters. You are not called to agree with me. Instead, you—we—are called to deny ourselves, pick up our ciOsses, and follow Jesus. That’s a challenge that even St. Peter struggled with, but I pray it’s made easier by something that Peter seems to have missed in his rush to dehne his messiah rather than listen to him. When Jesus talks of suffering, being rejected, dying and rising again, Peter apparently doesn’t hear that hnal item: suffer, be rejected, be killed, rise again? Peter gets bogged down in the eaily steps of that sequence, letting them blot out the ultimate point. Andl’11 confess I’ve tended to do soit of the same thing with the sequence of instnictions that Jesus delivers to all of US: deny yourself, pick up your CIOSS, and follow me. ΙΊ1 confess I’ve gotten bogged down in the eaily steps—deny myself, pick up my CIOSS, and follow. I’ve gotten bogged down in “What if that’s too hard’?” Which isn’t a silly concern—I mean, Jesus is, after all, talking about suffering and rejection and death. But what if I focus not on myself as follower, but on Jesus, the One to be followed. That’s the gift. We’re not just following human priorities; we get to follow Jesus. We’re not wandering aiound on our own, without hope or direction. We are following Jesus. In other words, God is out there ahead of US, already creating and redeeming and sustaining. To participate in that, even at our hnite human level, we are to deny, disown ourselves and take up our crosses and follow. And, to be clear. Church, you’re already doing some of that. When you volunteer your time, when you contribute your money, even simply being here on Sunday morning is a disowning of human priorities in favor of divine priorities. And tomorrow, would you join in praying for everyone touched by the crime and by the punishment of Kelly Gissendaner’? I believe Jesus will be doing that; I hope we will follow His lead. Because when we follow Jesus, He leads US to this table where we taste God’s forgiveness, time and again. If it weren’t for Jesus, we’d never get there.

    Postscript Because the congregation I serve is more conservative than the congregation that helped form me, I hgured this sermon would meet with, perhaps, hfty-hfty appiOval even though its claim seemed very mild to me. In fact, as I held my congregants in thought and prayer during the writing piOcess, the sermon became milder and milder and milder—to the point that I had to send it to my home church’s pastor to be sure I hadn’t failed to make any claim at all! Among his helpful responses was the suggestion that I specihcally invite congregants to talk with me about capital punishment. So, I added the invitation to the sermon and repeated it later in the service. Although no one actually requested that particular conversation, several people thanked me for the offer. After struggling to give all my hearers “a place to stand,” I hnd it deeply moving that simply expressing a willingness to listen and share may have been my most effective pastoral act. Only one parishioner approached to vehemently disagree with the sermon’s asseitions ; many members of this gracious congregation expressed appreciation for the “thought-piOvoking” sermon; and one woman animatedly thanked me for helping her recognize her inconsistency in opposing aboition while supporting the death penalty. Perhaps the conversation that, at a colleague’s urging, I invited my congregation to enter will occur gradually, internally, and with no further words spoken by me.

  • A God Worth the Wait

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    A God Worth the Wait

    Matthew 3:1-12

    Gary Challes

    Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, Virginia

    Last Sunday, I spoke on the issue of “God abuse.” I railed against those fundamentalist and conservative pulpits in which God is portrayed as a vindictive bully, hateful to all but the select few. I lamented the glowing number of victims of “God abuse” who are too wounded to reconsider faith and life in the church. To be fair though, too many progressive pulpits have advanced their own form of “God abuse.” Much too often, progressive pulpits preach a laissez-faire God who neither commands our awe nor demands our attention. This God is remarkably distant from our daily affairs, and if present at all, is yawning while sipping an espresso, trying to stay awake while listening to our narcissistic, dispassionate prayers. For me and all my progressive theological kin, it is a good thing that Cousin Matthew is back, has unpacked his large biblical suitcase, and is planning to stay with us for a year. The God we meet in Matthew could never be accused of being a “vindictive bully,” but neither is this God an absentee or disinterested parent, distant and aloof, happy for US to do whatever we like whenever we want to do it. The God we meet in Matthew is nothing like that and is well worth the wait.

    I love the way Tom Long describe’ ؛this oddly attired prophet:

    As the door to a new era swings open, John the Baptist is the ideal hinge. He is dressed like the old age, but he points to the new. His preaching style is vintage Old Israel; his message paves the way for the New Israel. He appears to have wandered out of some retirement home for old prophets, but he announces the arrival of one who is even greater than the prophets. Everything is about to change. The old is passing away; the new presses in. The long, long night of hopelessness is coming to an end, and John the Baptist is the rooster who awakens the sleeping world with dawn’s excited cry.)

    Just what is that dawn cry’? Standing knee deep in the Jordan, “John, and the Jesus he announces arrive with the most astonishing combination of acceptance and admonition,” writes New Testament scholar David Baitlett. “We all discover . . . not only that we are cherished for who we are, but that we are responsible for what we do. . . . If God loves me enough to welcome me into Christ’s family, then God loves me enough to expect something of me. ”2 The late Yale preacher and teacher of preachers, William Muehl, points to such a God in this Advent story:

    One December afternoon …a giOup of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried

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    in his hands the “surprise,” the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents all at the same time slipped and fell. The “surprise” flew from his grasp and landed on the floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash. The child . . . began to cry inconsolably. His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfoit the boy, patted his head and murmured, “Now, that’s all right son. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all.” But the child’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said, “Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal.” And she wept with her son.3

    At dawn, John the Baptist cries, “Your relationship with God matters. It matters a great deal.” For those who think of faith as a family heiiloom, something to which they are genetically entitled, John says, “Think again. God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” For those who think of faith as an occasional accessory to wear on special occasions, John says, “Think again. One more powerful than I… will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The God we meet in John’s pulpit is no one’s entitlement and will be no one’s accessory. John’s God will not be squeezed into anyone’s busy schedule. For the dawn cry from the Jordan is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That means that time matters, and we are to use every breath of the day to the glory of God; that justice matters, and we are to execute justice for all, but especially for the least of these; that righteousness matters, and we are to live righteous lives as a thankful sign to the world that God’s reign is at hand. The God to whom John points is a God who I, for one, want to know much better. In my conversations with people who have nothing to do with the church or who were once active in the church but are no longer, I hear a common lament. Some are angry about something they have heard, or they have had a sour experience of church earlier in life. Some feel that they were ignored in a time of need. Some were ignored in a time of need. Mostly, though, the common lament that I hear is one of profound “apathy.” They feel no compelling reason to change anything that they now do, much less give up a perfectly fine Sunday morning or any other time during the week to worship God and commit to a life of Christian service. As they explain to me, the God they have met in too many fundamentalist pulpits is a vindictive bully, while the God they have met in too many progressive pulpits is hardly worth the wait. I wonder what would happen if they were to encounter the God we meet in John the Baptist’s pulpit. His God loves US enough to burn away all the sorry excuses that keep us as casual spectators rather than fervent disciples. His God is no permissive pushover parent who wants US to do whatever makes US happy. His God is a doggedly engaged parent who loves US and cares for US enough to expect US to repent. In too many progressive pulpits, the meaning of repent is diluted to feeling sorry for what you have done or to feeling guilty about your past. That does not scratch the surface of what “the Baptist” means when he roars, “Repent!” To repent, for John, is to say goodbye to one way of living in order to embrace the radical, in-breaking vision of God. It is to live each day with confidence that “the kingdom of heaven”

    Advent 2016

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    will not arrive one day in some distant future, but that the “kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In Matthew’s Gospel, something decisive happened in that Bethlehem manger, in that Palestinian wilderness, on that Jerusalem CIOSS, and on that first Easter morning . By the power of God’s Spirit, the risen Jesus is at work in our lives right now, at work in this broken world right now, and God loves US like the most devoted and demanding parent that you or I have ever met. Isaac Watts long ago captured the true dawn cry from John, the only real reason for repentance: “Love so amazing, so divine. Demands my soul, my life, my all.” As we enter another season of waiting, now that God is well worth the wait.

    Notes t. Tom Long, Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 25. 2. Feasting on the Word, Year A., Volume 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2٥11), 46. 3. William Muehl, Why Preach? Why Listen? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 82.

  • When He Calls Me, I Will Answer

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    When He Calls Me, I Will Answer

    Luke 7:11-17

    Ronald Byars

    Lexington, Kentucky

    My Nebraska father-in-law died in May 2011, about a month before he would get a notice from the Gage County clerk that it was time to renew his driver’s license. If he had lived to present himself at the clerk’s ofhce, he would have been 102. Now that I read the obituaries with real interest, I’ve noticed that almost nobody dies. Instead, they “pass away. “Or, even more awkwardly, they “pass. “No indication of where they might be passing to, just “pass.” Except for the woman whose death was reported a couple of summers ago in the Herald-Leader. The obituary said that she had “passed on July 10 and gone to be with Jesus in Atlanta. ” This evolution of language is no doubt intended to soften the hard words, helping to keep actual dying at arm’s length. Something we’ve been working on for a long time. “Passing” language might have ht in my father-in-law’s case, since he died quickly and quietly not long after enjoying a good breakfast, more than a century after his bilth. But I think “pass” doesn’t work as well for people like, say, Veronica Rutledge, accidentally shot and killed with her own gun last month by her two-year old while shopping at an Idaho Wal-Mait, or the high school student and buddies wrapped aiound a tree at 3:30 a.m. in rural Fayette County. In such cases, “passed” is just too gentle. It doesn’t do it. And I suspect it might not do it, either, for the widow’s only son, whose life was snatched from him long before his mother was ready to let him go. As best I can understand the Bible, death is always a crisis. Not necessarily a tragedy, but always a crisis, even when it’s welcome, even when it’s a relief. It may not seem like a crisis when someone dies quietly, full of years, but it is nevertheless a crisis for the one who’s died. Because, of course, it’s a moment of ending, a real ending. Whatever is undone is left undone. And even when there seems to be nothing left unhnished, nothing that still remains to be repaired, death is a crisis. Maybe just because crises upset US, we feel inclined to pretend that they’re not crises. Somewhere—maybe from the Greeks— Christians borrowed the idea that a person is made up of detachable parts. At the moment of death, the body dies, but the spirit lives on. If that should be the case, then maybe death is not a crisis—or, at least not such a big deal for the one whose soul has been liberated from the body. But it’s another thing if death claims the whole person, body and soul. In Jesus’ time, there was a division among Jewish believers about what happens to one who has died. The Sadducees were the more orthodox party, believing that life simply ended. The Pharisees, who are the forebears of modern Judaism, represented a view that had gained traction in the period between the Old and New Testaments. And the Pharisees believed that, in the hnal consummation, there would be a general resurrection. The Christian view is related to both, but not quite the same as either one. Christian faith takes its cue specihcally from a particular instance of resurrection , and that is the resurrection of the Lord. It’s not that we’ve been programmed to keep on keeping on after dying, the soul simply shedding the burden of the body. No. Resurrection implies something quite different. The dead are just dead, and nothing is going to change that but an act of God. Thus, crisis.

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    As for the survivors, though, “crisis” isn’t always the best word—not in every case. It was hardly a surprise when my father-in-law died, and the tears shed were not bitter tears. But there were tears, of course, and tears are entirely appropriate. Sometimes well-meaning folks try to talk US out of our tears, but surely they are misguided . Because those who are left behind are not immune to the shock of an ending, no matter how braced for it they may have been. Those who experience the death of someone in the family, or a friend, are likely to encounter a whole bundle of emotions. Elizabeth Ktibler-Ross studied the grieving piocess and identihed hve stages of grief, each stage followed in more or less predictable order by the next one. But anyone who has come anywhere close to grief has probably learned that it’s not always so neat. It may help to separate the components of grief for the sake of discussion, but grief is frequently not an orderly piocess. Rather, it’s often all over US, all the “stages” cascading down at once. And one component of that perfect storm is likely to be anger. A little anger, or a lot. I wonder about the widow in the village of Nain, stumbling to keep up with her son’s funeral piOcession. We know absolutely nothing personal about her, of course, but maybe it’s fair to speculate a little. In those days, life was typically shoit, and old age was rare. We don’t know how old her son was, but Jesus called him, “Young man.” His widowed mother was more likely in her thiities or foities than in her sixties or seventies. Without a male relative to lean on, she would hnd herself extremely vulnerable.Itmaybe that her bitter sorrow,her deep sadness,might haveoverwhelmed any thought of her own welfare. But she wouldn’t have been entirely out of line were she, sooner or later, to feel angry at hnding herself so bereft, so wounded, and so helpless. Anger isn’t always rational, but that doesn’t mean it’s inappropriate. Pastors and others do well to take that into account. A pastor who had served in Kentucky and moved away received a letter from another widow—a woman the pastor had met here after she had visited the church for the hrst time. The pastor remembered her story. Widowed eaily, a single mother. She had staited her own science-oriented business with much success. She’d had a grandson who’d been both her buddy and her intended successor. The former pastor received this letter from her several years after leaving Kentucky: “Dear Rev. S0-and-S0: You may remember a time a few years ago when you came to call on me after I had lost my twenty-two year-old grandson to a death that could not be explained by any of the doctors who treated him. I met you with the irate accusation that I was angry with your God. What you said at the time was that you had come to tell me that it was all right to be angry with God.” It is, isn’t it’? All right to be angry with God’? The Bible includes a good deal of uncensored anger directed toward the heavens. “How long, o Lord? Will you forget me forever?” or “You have made US like sheep for slaughter….You have sold your people for a trifle . . and “Why, o Lord, do you stand far off’? Why do you hide yourself in times of tiOuble’?” and, maybe “My God, my God, why have yo ״forsaken me’?” To be angry with God is, after all, to have some kind of relationship with God. Better to speak it than to choke on it. Better to be in an adversarial relationship with God than in no relationship at all. (I suspect that a good many who piOclaim themselves to be atheists are, in fact, angry and getting even.) There’s a little more to the story of the widow angry at God. Her grandson was not only her intended successor, but the two of them shared an interest in science fiction.

    Lent 2016

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    They were working on a science fiction novel together when he died. She finished it and had it published under his name. The woman told her former pastor that she was working on a second novel, also science fiction. The plot involves people who have traveled from the eaith to another planet, where they meet other living beings. The humans are trying to explain God to these extra-terrestrial beings. And how do they do it’? With a photo, a picture of Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Pieta—the body of the crucified Jesus, lying limp in his mother’s arms. What’s going on with this woman’? Somehow this widow had moved from anger with a God who seemed indifferent or heedlessly manipulative to an entirely different vision of God. A vision of God as One who joins US in the CIOSS-Shaped places, joins us in the crises marked by the most profound grief and anger and sense of godforsakenness . The God of the CIOSS-Shaped places, she says in her novel, is who God is. Was she wrong’? Jesus and his disciples and others following them were passing thiOugh the village of Nain, only to run into the funeral piOcession. Jesus assessed the situation, identified the chief mourner, and, Luke says, “He had compassion for her.” Addressing her, he said, “Do not weep.” John Carroll thinks the Greek is better translated “Do not go on weeping.” We hear Jesus’ words, but not the tone of voice. Is Jesus gently scolding her for her tears, do you think’? Encouraging her to keep a stiff upper lip’? To think positively’? To look on the bright side’? To count her blessings’? Or is he, like so many others, hoping that she will just put her grief away for a while to spare others from being exposed to it’? I don’t think his words should be heard in any of those ways. He was not setting expectations for a ceitain kind of uptight Anglo-Saxon restraint. I think he was speaking as a parent might speak to a child who wakens in the night, disturbed by a bad dream. The tone and demeanor would speak louder than the actual words. The parent who says, “Don’t cry” just means, “1’m here. I love you. It’ 11 be okay.” Jesus stepped forward, interrupted the piOcession, and actually called out to the corpse: “Young man, I say to you, rise !”The mourners might have been utteily puzzled or heard it as an act of grandiosity and insensitivity. The dead, after all, neither see nor hear. But, Luke tells US, ‘The dead man sat up and began to speak. . . Is it wise to doubt that the Holy God has the power to repair the world’? To set it right’? To overcome the power ol death to cancel US out and plunge US into eternal silence’? To doubt that God has the power to Lashion a new creation’? The whole point ol the Gospel writers is to testily to their conviction that wherever Jesus was, God’s strength, God’s determination, God’s power to make a new creation made itsell Lelt and seen and heard and tasted. God’s reign, God’s dominion, God’s kingdom, was at work in and thiOugh Jesus, wherever he went. In the new creation, all tears will be wiped away, and all manner ol biOkenness will be repaired. For now, we have only glimpses ol that new creation yet to come, made manilest for a moment on that day in Nain. A widow, as good as dead in her grief, hears a voice: “I’m here. I love you. It’ 11 be okay.” A dead son, past Leeling or hearing anything ever again, quickening to the sound ol Jesus’ voice. Did any ol you ever go to church camp’? I went a few times. What lingers long after the campfires are out are the songs. One that I shall never forget goes like this: “When he calls me, I will answer. When he calls me, I will answer. When he calls me, I will answer, ΙΊ1 be somewhere listening for my name.”

  • We Are Called to Be an Eastering Presence

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

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    We Are Called to Be aft Easterlftg Preseftce

    16:1-8

    Timothy F. Simpson

    This sermon was preached on Easter Sunday 2015 at Take Shore Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Florida.. Tim died two days later a٠s a. result of metastatic kidney cancer.

    This is one of the most interesting passages in all of Scripture about Easter. It is actually my favorite, and I will tell you why in a few minutes. It has disturbed the church since the eailiest days. We know this, because there were at least three, if not more, attempts to write different endings onto the Gospel of Mark. Ending the Gospel on the word phobeo, afraid, seemed somehow blasphemous or inappropriate, so somebody got the bright idea that we’ve got to get a committee together to re-write this thing, because this ending just isn’t going to work. Somebody said, we need to put a better spin on this. Of course, the most famous of those spins wound up in the King James Version with that whole lovely ending: And you shall handle snakes, and you shall drink poison, and you shall be hne. Unfoitunately, a lot of people didn’t get the memo that that was not pait of the original ending of the Gospel of Mark, and they played with the snakes or drank the poison and ended up going to meet their maker a lot sooner than they should have. But the Gospel ends on this note, and I think it’s wonderful, even though, in the church, we try to get out of it. We are much happier with the story in the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John where Jesus meets Mary Magdalene in the garden. That’s the one that everybody is comfoited by. So, usually, we read that one on Easter. But, sorry, you picked the wrong Easter to come to church. You get the Gospel of Mark’s ending. But I think it’s instructive. It’s useful for our discipleship that it ends like this, because I think the women have a point. You go to this guy’s execution. You see him hanging there dead on the CIOSS. You see him pulled down from that awful place, a bloody mess, torn to pieces. You see him put in a tomb, and three days later, there’s a guy standing at his grave saying: Oh, he’s not here. He’s alive. And he’s called a meeting at the Starbucks in Galilee for later this afternoon. You all go on ahead, and 1′ 11 meet you there later. Man, you’djust get in your car and go home. You’d say, 1’mnot even going to go there. Because if that guy is alive, if that guy is not dead anymore, and the dead are raised, my goodness, what else in the world is going to happen’? What else am I going to be facing today’? And you might just want to go back home, take another Ambien, crawl under the covers, go to sleep, and hope that you don’t wake up until late in the evening, because you might have to give up a lot of things, a lot of preconceived notions about what is going on in the world. If the dead aren’t going to remain in their tombs, then everything may be about to change, because that is precisely how the Scripture presents the resurrection of Jesus. 1′ ve told you before, I preach the same sermon every year on Easter about Walter

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    Brueggemann’s suggestion that we consider Easter a verb. I know you forget it aiound the fall of every year, so I bring it up again every spring. The notion that Easter is a verb, that God is in the business of Eastering, if you take that seriously, then, my goodness, the things that you imagine going on in the world aren’t really going to last. If the dead aren’t going to remain in their tombs, then maybe the poor aren’t going to stay poor. Maybe the sick aren’t going to stay sick. Maybe the disenfranchised aren’t always going to be that way. Maybe the empires of the world that seem to rule and have their sway for decades and generations and seem to be here for time and eternity, maybe they’re not going to last. That is what the Scripture has to say about God’s Eastering activity, and, if you really take that seriously, you might just be a little bit afraid. You might just be a little anxious about giving up some of those things, because we, in the church, live in the same world that everybody else does. And thus we live with the same assumptions about the poor and the sick and the dying and the empires and the big businesses. And we imagine that the world is always going to be this way, just like everybody else. Except that we’ve had this encounter with an empty tomb, and that empty tomb has changed, for US, everything. We don’t just see the possibilities of the world as it is. We see the possibilities of the world as it might be thiOugh the prism of God’s Eastering activity in Jesus Christ. Thus, we have a challenge before US this Easter, as we do every Easter. That is, to see the world in this new light, this new activity that God is doing in the world, and believe that it might, in fact, be real. What I think has happened is the church has built a kind of hrewall aiound Easter , so that we’re willing to accept that Jesus is raised from the dead. I mean, on the liturgical calendar, we have to have Easter, so we’re willing to buy that. And we’re willing to imagine that that Eastering activity might be good for US, because when we think about our own deaths, and, believe me, I’ve thought a lot about mine in the last year, so this has been extremely comfoiting to me, we’re happy to accept that God is going to Easter US, and we’re not going to be left in the grave. And that eternal life is possible for US, as it was for Jesus Christ. But, after that, we kind of build a hrewall, so that Easter has to do with Jesus and with US going to heaven. But most of the rest of the time, we still imagine that the world is still the way that the world is. So, when we look at a situation, like the Israel-Palestine crisis, when we look at the racism in Ferguson, Missouri, or we look at the intractable piOblems in our own city that we have been working on thiOugh ICARE and other forms for years, we look at those, and we imagine that those are always going to be the same, that God’s Eastering activity stops there. And we don’t allow our faith to spill over into those other places where God wants to be an Eastering presence, and where God intends to use you and me as such Eastering presences out there in the world. Sisters and brothers, we have been touched by that empty tomb not just to get US into glory. We’ve been touched by that empty tomb to be an agent of change in the world spreading the good news that, in fact, Easter happened, and it is God’s good intention for the entire world to be Eastered, not just Jesus Christ, not just you and me in our personal salvation, but the whole of creation God intends to be Eastered. Sisters and brothers, the invitation for you and me this Easter is to take that call sellously and to believe, in fact, that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. If you believe that, it has tangible implications for your life and for mine. Easter is what brings this church together. This is a new community, not built aiound race, not built aiound

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    any social or economic affiliation, not built aiound demographic characteristics. This community was called into being as a new community of hope gathered aiound the love of God and the love of neighbor, believing that Easter should flow out from this place, out from this body of people, out into the world aiound US. Sisters and biothers , that is the call of God to US this Easter, and that is the invitation to US: that we see our lives thiOugh the prism of Easter, that we see our mission as a congregation called to be an Eastering people. Having been Eastered ourselves, we are called to Easter others and take that good news out into the world. Sisters and brothers, Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, life is available, God’s transformation is for everyone and everything. May God help US to live into that promise this day and everyday, as we await the coming of the resurrection in all of its forms.