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  • Fruits of the Spirit in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians

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    Fruits of the Spirit iu Paul’s Letter to tire Galatiaus

    David Bartlett

    Hamden, Connecticut

    Recently a friend phoned to ask for advice in preparing a Bible study for a group of laypeople. The topic of the discussion was “The Truits of the Spirit,” and one of the questions my friend was supposed to answer was this: Tor Paul what is the difference between gifts of the Spirit and fruits of the Spirit’? My immediate and not very thoughtful response was that the gifts and fruits of the Spirit were pretty much the same thing. In 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 Paul is writing about spiritual gifts, and in Galatians 5:22-26 he is writing about the fruit of the Spirit; in each case he is drawing a picture of the character of Christian community, and the difference is not in the content but in the context. I realized after our conversation that I had spent most of my professional life trying to persuade congregations and seminary students that context makes a very great difference indeed. The Gospel writers tell the story of Jesus somewhat differently because they write out of different contexts, and they write for different communities. Paul is not a systematic theologian who worked out an outline of the implications of the Gospel followed by “Questions for Purther Discussion.” He is the hrst and foremost practical theologian discovering and applying the good news of what God does in Jesus Christ in varying circumstances to differing people in diverse locations. So context is key to understanding. Put briefly the context of 1 Corinthians is some dissension within the community about the various worth of the skills and sensibilities that the Corinthian believers bring to their common life. Paul encourages deeper community by insisting that the variety of attributes in the Church is a variety of gifts, not a variety of accomplishments. Purthermore the gifts are all gifts of the one Spirit, and as they come from one source, they lead to one goal, the upbuilding of the church as the Body of Christ. In writing to the Galatians Paul wants to insist that the characteristics (the virtues ) of Christian life are not the cause of our redemption; they are the result of our redemption. They are fruit, not seed. The reason Paul writes about the Spirit to the Corinthians is that they are suffering internal divisions. The reason Paul writes about the Spirit to the Galatians is that they are in danger of following after intruders. The commentaries by j. Pouis Martyn and Hans Dieter Betz help US to reconstruct the situation among the Galatian churches.) Passing through Galatia, Paul took ill, and kind Galatians cared for him. He took full advantage of the opportunity that his convalescence provided and preached the Gospel among the Galatians. While we can only guess at the content of his preaching, we can be sure that Paul insisted that God’s goodness was now revealed in Jesus Christ. And he told the Galatian men (who were Gentiles) that they did not need to undergo the Jewish rite of circumcision in order to be ftrlly welcome in the community that followed Jesus, and presumably he told all the Galatian believers that they did not need to observe kosher dietary rules and perhaps that they did not need to accept the calendar of Jewish holy days in order to be among God’s chosen people. In brief Paul insisted that the Galatians did not need to become Jewish in order to become Christian.

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    Paul is well aware that other apostles, probably especially James the brother of Jesus and Peter, were more committed to the continuity between the laws of the Jewish covenant and the new covenant that came in Jesus Christ. But he insisted that his call to preach did not depend on the appiOval of those more conservative apostles and that, as a matter of fact, they had given him their blessing to preach the Gospel as God had called him to do. Paul loved the verse about Abraham in Genesis 15:6; in fact sometimes it seems as though this verse piOvided the seed for the elaborate and beautiful expression of the gospel that flourishes in Galatians and later in Romans. Genesis 15:6 says that “Abraham had faith; and his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. ” In a similar way God asked for faith from the Galatians, and when they received the gift of faith, the men did not need to be circumcised, and the whole community did not need to keep kosher table. On the basis of their faith they were baptized; on the basis of their faith they were reckoned righteous; as a sign of their faith they received the Holy Spill.؛ arrived among the Galatians. They too claimed to preach the gospel, and it may be

    that they insisted (Paul to the contrary notwithstanding) that they preached the kind of Gospel that James and Peter and the other apostles would have appiOved. Their message was something like this: “All right, Galatians, you’ve made a good stait by accepting Jesus as Lord and by being baptized. But Paul forgot to tell you that there are also prerequisites for following Jesus. ” Some students of Paul think that these teachers were telling the Galatians that they had to obey every bit of the Jewish law before they could be really Christian. I am one of those who think that these Teachers had a shorter version of the law that they thought required obeying—most obviously they thought the Jewish men had to be circumcised. If they were trying to promote the whole law, they hadn’t made that very clear, because it is Paul and not his opponents who insist that when it comes to the law, it’s all or nothing: “Once again I testify to every man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obliged to follow the entire law” (Gal 5:3). Unfoitunately, from Paul’s point of view, some of the Galatians have been persuaded (Paul says they’ve been “seduced”) by these teachers. (3:1. Either they’ve been “seduced” or they’ve been “bewitched”—neither redounds to their glory.) Paul almost ceitainly wrote more letters than those we still have (see 1 Cor 5:9, for instance), but of the letters we have, this is the only one that is flat out angry. In his typical letter Paul finishes greeting his audience, and then he prays a prayer or Thanksgiving for them, grateful to God for their steadfast faith. In Galatians there is no such thanksgiving section. After Paul finishes the greeting, he launches into the attack: “I am astonished (and not in a good way) that you are so quickly deseiting the one who called you in the grace of Christ. ” It is as if you open a letter from an about-to-be-former lover and discover that the letter does not begin “My Dailing” but “Hello. I need to tell you something. ” Paul is trying desperately to call the Galatians back to the real Gospel—the Gospel where God reaches out to humankind in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and humankind (Jews and Gentiles alike) responds in Laith. It is with that gospel in mind that Paul will come to write about the Lruit ol the spirit. In order to understand his great claim we need to look at the difference between flesh and spirit in this letter, then at the

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    Spirit and community, and then at the difference between works and fruit.

    Flesh and Spirit For Paul the distinction between “flesh” and “spirit” is not primarily a psychological distinction, but an eschatological one. For Paul the whole of human history is divided in two by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Romans he describes this division primarily as the division between the age of sin and the age of righteousness. In Galatians he describes the division primarily as the division between the age of the flesh and the age of the spirit. I have never found any evidence that Paul was explicating the verse from Joel 2:28 that we find at the beginning of Peter’s Pentecost speech in Acts 2:17: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” But the verse captures beautifully Paul’s insistence that the age of the Flesh is passing away and the Age of the Spirit is breaking in. In any case for Paul the new age is not simply an impiOvement on the old; it is a radical new creation. For Israel, and by extension for all of humankind, the age of the flesh was the age of obedience to the law. Flesh and law stand against Gospel and Spirit. It is of course paiticulaily appropriate that in the Galatian situation the primary sign of life under the flesh is circumcision, where the foreskin is both literally and symbolically a mark of fleshly devotion. If as the dispute with Peter in Antioch suggests , another sign of the old age is obedience to dietary laws, then the old age that is passing away is the age when people are devoted to what you feed your flesh as well as whether to cut your flesh (see Gal 2:11-1Τ). In the age of the Spirit, neither being circumcised or not being circumcised (nor kosher table nor pork roast) counts for anything, but a new creation (Gal. 6:15). Furthermore the history of the believers in Galatia replicates the history of the world. They too lived once in the age of the flesh but live now in the age of the spirit. For the world the great turning point is God’s “invasion” of history thiOugh Jesus Christ For the Galatians the turning point is the preaching of the Gospel received by them through faith. When they receive the Gospel, they receive the Spirit, and the face of all the world is changed. When they insist upon circumcision for Gentile believers or insist on eating only kosher diet, they mistake their place in God’s history, and they deny their own identity. “You foolish Galatians ! Who has bewitched you’? It was before your eyes that Christ was publicly displayed as crucified. The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing works of the law or by believing (having faith in) what you heard’?” One thing more. For human history, the age of the flesh was the age of law and sin; in the Galatian community, the age of the flesh was the age of distinctions. “Flesh” not only marked off circumcised from uncircumcised; “fleshly” concerns marked off male from female, slave from free person. We do not know precisely what soit of polity Paul envisioned for the community under the Spirit, but we know the theological conviction that was to define that community. Quite possibly quoting a phrase from their baptism service, Paul reminds the Galatians of the unity of the new creation: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Tire. Fruit of the Spirit: Tire Building of Community

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    Some Christians and manycriticsofPaulSChristianity think thatin criticizing life in the flesh, Paul is criticizing some of the richest pleasures of created life—especially sexual relationships. Paul’s understanding of sexuality and marriage is complicated and perhaps not always as instructive as it might be, but life in the flesh for him is not marked by sexuality but by selfishness. Rudolf Bultmann long ago convinced many of US that for Paul the term “flesh” referred in large measure to any form of self-absorption, self-promotion, or inappropriate pride. In the context of Galatians, we can be even more specific. In Galatians “flesh” is what divides community, and “spirit” is what (or who) brings community together. It is probably worth noting in an age when there is a deep concern for spiritual values that Paul’s concern is always for Spiritual values. That is to say, for him the spiritual life is life driven, shaped, and enticed by the Holy Spirit of God. He is not a very good guide to the somewhat different quest for spiritual practices. He is a great guide to life formed by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In particular it is the Holy Spirit that inspires the most fundamental spiritual practice, the prayer that begins “Abba,” Father. Paul cleaily refers here to some spiritual practice the Galatians all recognize (see Galatians T:6). Perhaps it was a kind of ecstatic crying out in worship; perhaps it was the common praying of the Lord’s prayer. Ceitainly when Jesus addresses his father in Mark’s gospel, he begins the address “Abba, Father,” and this may reflect the ongoing pattern of the Greek speaking churches, which retained the Aramaic “Abba” at the beginning of prayer and followed with the Greek translation (see Mark 1Τ:36; Romans 8:15). The realm of the fleshisthe realm of self-piOmotion and boastfulness. The preachers who came to Galatia insisted that as circumcised believers, they were more truly members of the covenant community. They promoted a division within the Galatian churches between Gentiles who were circumcised and those who were not. By extension we see that the realm of the flesh can include self-satisfaction being male rather than female, master rather than slave, Jew rather than Gentile. “Foryouwerecalledtofreedom, brothers andsisters,onlydonotuseyourfreedom as an opportunity for the flesh (the NRSV uses “self-indulgence,” thereby moving the interpretation from the homily into the text and losing the entire eschatological framework of the phrase), but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ‘ ” In this letter the opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is life according to the flesh. The Spirit builds community; the flesh reaps discord. With this in mind we look at the works of the Spirit in Galatians 6. “Fornication, impurity, idolatry, drunkenness and caiOusing” sound like a list of personal infractions , self-indulgences that fit with a more conventional understanding of “the flesh. ” But the majority of the works of the flesh are marked primarily by their tendency to promote division: “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy. “With this list in mind, we wonder whether even the more traditional lists of personal wrongdoing are not listed so much for what they do to the person as for what they do to a friendship, a marriage, the community of faith. In the contemporary myth of the isolated self, fornication, impurity, idolatry, drunkenness and caiOusing notably do harm to the autonomous individual. In the world of the Galatian churches and Presbyterian, Catholic, and Baptist churches today, these personal infractions still break trust, fracture relationships, wound the Body of Christ.

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    Works of the Flesh; Fruit of the Spirit We are now in a position to return to my friend’s question with which we began. Why “fruit” of the Spirit in Galatians and “gifts of the Spirit” in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians Paul is responding to a set of disputes about the value of individual giftedness—especially the boasting of those who speak in tongues. In Galatians Paul is responding to a different set of questions, questions about whether Gentiles who follow Jesus are bound by ceitain commandments of the Jewish law. Paul’s term for following the law, especially those concerning circumcision and diet, is a “work.” From his standpoint that when 1 do a “work,” 1 seem to piOvide giounds for my own self-satisfaction and evidence for boasting: “1 do good work.” Boasting violates my relationship to God and to the neighbor. “1 do good work,” 1 say, thinking that as good work used to please my Latin teacher, surely good work will earn an “A” from God on the great report card at the end. “1 do good work,” 1 say, contrasting my “A” in Latin to the B minus of my linguistically challenged neighbor. This neighbor of course can beat me handily on the tennis couit, and soon enough we’re arguing about whose work counts for more. 1 write this essay in a season of political debates where the first minutes of every debate are devoted to self-congratulatory listing of works by each candidate with the not very subtle implication that my works are more impoitant than yours. Long ago Paul noticed the correlation between reliance on works and devotion to factions. So of course when it comes to living by the flesh, the proper word for the practices of fleshliness is work—or more correctly “works” (Gal. 5:19). The work is the appiOpriate word because it reminds US that the very mark of fleshliness is self-satisfaction and the attendant division. The plural is the appropriate number because it reminds us that Pve got my work and you’ve got yours, and the strategy for self-satisfaction and its attendant division is to fight over whose list is better and whose list is longer. We not only are divided—circumcised and uncircumcised, male and female, slave and free, capitalist and socialist, pre-lapsarian and post lapsarian, gay and straight, infant baptizer or believers’ baptizer—we boast of the “works” that divide US. When it comes to living by the Spirit, the proper word for the practice of life under the Holy Spirit is fruit, and the proper number of the noun is singular. “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, geneiOsity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” are not the conditions for life in the Spirit; they are the result of life in the Spirit. They are not the seed from which faith springs, but the fruit that springs from faith. The noun is in the singular because the life of the Spirit does not consist in obeying a disparate list of commandments—like the college honor code or Robeits’ Rules of Order. The life of the Spirit is an integrated manifestation of the grace of the one God revealed in the one Lord, Jesus Christ. The description of the fruit of the Spirit is not a list of the different gifts different people bring to the body (as in 1 Corinthians). The list is not really a list at all; it is a portrait. Here is what life in the Spirit looks like. Here is the life that builds community. Here is the fruit that is seeded, nurtured, and biought to consummation by the goodness of our God.

    Notes t L Louis Martyn, “Galatians,” Anchor Bible (Garden City, Doubleday, 1997). Hans Dieter Betzm, “Galatians,” Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). 2 This phrase is L Louis Martyn’s.

  • Sheaves, Shouts, and Shavuot: Reflections on Joy

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    Sheaves, Shouts,Shavuot.- Reflections on Joy

    Christine Roy Yoder

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Long before the Spirit swept thr ough the house as a mighty wind and hery tongues settled on the disciples, Pentecost or the Festival of Weeks (HagShavuot) was all about joy (Deut 16:9-12; cf. Exod 34:22)1 Known also as the Feast of the Harvest (Exod 23:16), the second great celebration in Israel’s liturgical calendar evokes summer heat, helds reaped of ripe barley and wheat, stalks bundled into sheaves and piled at the threshing floor, iron sickles with wooden handles dulled from use, heaps of clean grain stored underground or in storehouses, water jars, and winnowing forks. ؛ Whereas Israel associated plowing and sowing with tears and hardship, they deemed harvest the time to rejoice: “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing , shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (Ps 126:6). Indeed, harvest joy was the embodiment and expression of great joy, a measure of surpassing delight: “You have increased [the nation’s] joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest” (Isa 9:3). To consider joy, I therefore turn to Moses’ instructions for ״״’״،?/؟ ٠ /in Deut 16:912 . On the heels of more extensive and solemn directions for Passover (16:1-8), Moses’ description of Shavuot is a brief four verses in length and centers on the call to rejoice (v. 11). Continuing to address the whole community in the second person singular—whichmakes the instructions simultaneouslycorporateand personal—Moses identifies four key elements of the festival: Count. Give. Rejoice. Remember. What follows are reflections about what each of these elements suggests about Israelite understandings of joy, and how, taken together, Shavuot may inform present-day notions of joy.

    Count Deuteronomy’s naming of the Feast of the Harvest as “Weeks” makes explicit that the community should deliberately mark time from the beginning of barley harvest in late spring to the end of wheat harvest in early summer. Seven days per week. Seven weeks from the moment they first put the sickle to the standing grain until the harvest’s conclusion. (The concentric ring pattern of V. 9 emphasizes the counting, “seven/count/be gin to. ..begin to/count/seven.”) Counting seven sevenfold doubly anchors the harvest season in the rhythms of God’s creation, the cadences of work and rest, ordinary days and Sabbath (Gen 1:1-2:4). Counting sets the annual harvest days of difficult labor for the community’s survival, for their daily bread, within the ancient and enduring arc of time circumscribed by God’s creative work, rest, and delight. Every day and every week of the harvest season anticipates festival joy. In turn, the anticipation pierces the season with slivers and glimpses of delight, including shouts and songs rising from fruitfrrl fields (Isa 16:10). The counting of Shavuot suggests the capacity of joy to be both a situational and background emotion. Situational emotions are episodic, called into being and expression by particular events (e.g., “on that day…let US be glad and rejoice,” Isa 25:9). In contrast, background emotions are pervasive and persistent; they spring from recognition that we depend for our wellbeing on something or someone ultimately

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    beyond our control: the love for a child or life partner, for example, or anger at an unrelenting wrong, or joy that God piOvides fruitful soil that year after year pioduces grain.3 Background emotions are robust and resilient, enduring thiOugh changing circumstances and shaping our actions, even when we are unaware of it. By instructing Israel to count seven sevenfold in Shavuot, Moses charges the community to daily and weekly call into awareness their background joy—joy that sees God’s creation and piovision, joy that weathers the heat and hardship, back-breaking toil and broken tools, thirst and exhaustion, pain and sorrow. Neither hckle nor faint, backgiOundjoy pioves to be a deep and life-giving current that, at festival time, surfaces and overflows in waves of communal joy and celebration.

    Give Harvest gathered and grain stored, Moses identifies the second movement of ‘/?،״״’״ ١٠ /to be giving from the bounty in gratitude for God’s blessing. The gift of harvest inspires, indeed calls for, a grateful response to the creator God who yet again made possible the heaps of wheat and bailey. While admittedly Moses stipulates the response, he invites a “freewill offering from your hand” (V. 10), namely, a gift that is prompted by the heait of the giver. Freewill offerings were ideally voluntary and spontaneous—not commanded or coerced, not made to satisfy promises or obligations , not performed to receive ceitain calculated returns. Exodus recounts how every Israelite “whose heait was stirred and…whose spirit was willing” (35:21) biOught freewill offerings of gold and silver, yarns and linen, skins and leather, wood and oil, spices and stones until there were more than enough materials to build the tabernacle (Exod 35-36). Likewise, freewill offerings of precious metals and stones made possible the construction of the first Temple (1 Chr 29:5-9). Moses further prescribes that the freewill gifts of Shavuot be “in piOpoition to” God’s blessing in the harvest (v. 10), neither more nor less. Presumably an out-of-proportion offering signals some motivation other than thankfulness, such as the aim to curry favor or gain prestige (e.g.,Amos T:5). By urging people to give back from the blessing they receive, Moses ritualizes the interplay between joy and geneiOsity. Israel and its neighbors recognized and practiced the connection, as when Nehemiah commands the returned exiles to rejoice, eat and drink, and send poitions of the feast to those who were without (Neh 8:10, 12); similaily, the book of Esther describes the festival of Purim as “days of feasting and joy, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor” (Esth 9:22)5 Joy can prompt grateful geneiOsity, even as geneiOsity may enliven personal and communal joy.

    Rejoice The heait of Shavuot is the communal embodiment and expression of joy. Moses not only sanctions the public celebration, he commends the festivities as the fitting complement to the community’s hard work: harvest and joy are vital to the community’s flourishing. As people together performed their joy, the community experienced and learned or relearned enjoyment—performance, that is, helped to form a joyful people of God. The celebrations featured movement and noise, shouting , singing, dancing, clapping, and feasting (e.g., 1 Sam 18:6; Ps Τ7:1). Several texts suggest that the occasions were so boisteiOus—cacophonies of songs, tambourines.

    Pentecost 2016

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    trumpets, and pipes—that Israel’s joy “was heard far away” (Neh 12:43; cf. Ezra 3:13), and the eaith quaked at their noise” (1 Kgs 1:40). The din was known even to draw people from surrounding lands, as when, at the appointment of David as king, Israel’s neighbors from Issachar, Zebulun, and Naphtali streamed to Hebron, “bringing food on donkeys, camels, mules, and oxen—abundant provisions of meal, cakes of hgs, clusters of raisins, wine, oil, oxen and sheep, for there was joy in Israel” (1 Chr 12:40). To heighten the clamor of public celebrations, David purportedly appointed Levites as singers and musicians of harps, cymbals, and lyres to raise “loud sounds 0fj0y”(l Chr 15:16). Israel understood theirjoy to participate in a vast and ongoing cosmic celebration. Perhaps the tumult of their noise was, at least in part, so they might be heard within creation’sjubilant roar. The community’s joy mirrored God’s ownjoy, God’s delight in creation and in the faithfrrlness and wellbeing of God’s people (e.g., Pss 104:31-34; 147:11 ; Deut30:9). God also givesjoy, hlling mouths withlaughter, turning mourning to dancing (Job 8:21; Ps 30:11). And Israel’s elation swelled the chorus of morning stars and the sprinting sun, forest trees and mountains, roaring seas and blossoming deserts—all creation singing before God (e.g.. Job 38:7; Pss 19:5; 96:11-12). Creator and creation alike proclaim theirjoy. Whereas Moses does not say a word about which instruments or songs or dances should animate Shavuot, he is clear that everyone participates. Harvest joy is not celebrated solely by landowners and farmers, foremen and reapers. Harvest joy is not some form of compensation, measured and due as reward for hours, labor, or yield. Rather, Shavuot is a gift to the whole community—its enjoyment never at the expense or exclusion of a neighbor. Moses underlines this with instruction that is personal, local, and radically inclusive: “Rejoice… you andyo ־?״sons and daughters, ״״־ ١ ‘/male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are amongyo( ”״v. 11). Moseshvefold repetition of the second person possessive sufhx leaves no doubt that the people of Israel, especially the most fortunate, share the moral responsibility for ensuring that everyone is able to rejoice before God and share in God’s blessings. ״״’״،?/؟ ٠ /is a good for all. Just as no one may restrict who participates in the festival, no one but God decrees where the celebration happens. Moses leaves that open with the imperfect aspect: “at the place that YHWH your God will choose” (v. 11). Moses is ceitain there will be a place appropriate for the community’s worship and joy—a location that is neither arbitrary nor just anywhere. At the same time, God’s choice for the place of joy remains open, and God’s choice may change. ؛So the community must wait and anticipate, aleit and ready to move.

    Remember Finally, Moses loots Shavuot in the memory of Exodus, of God’s liberation of Israel—of yo—״from captivity in Egypt (v. 12). Moses reminds the community that today they are able to put their sickles to the standing grain, offer freewill offerings, rejoice together loudly, and enjoy dwelling in yo ־?״towns with yo ־?״children, because God once heard theii ־guttural cry, took notice of theii ־bittei ־oppression and suffering, and came down to set them free (Exod 2:23-25). Celebration of festival joy and the entirety of theii ־lives spring from a freedom wrenched and worked by God. Israel piOclaims again and again that theii ־joy rises from God’s !־edemption and

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    protection. Delight, in the end, is not Israel’s own doing—not something they purchase or will for themselves, not something they achieve thiOugh determination and resourcefulness. Israel shouts with gladness because they see and know the great things that YHWH has done and continues to do for them (Ps 126:1-3; cf. Isa 48:20). So the psalmist declares:

    I always put the LORD in front of me; I will not stumble because God is on my right side. That is why my heait celebrates and my mood is joyous… You teach me the way of life. In your presence is total celebration” (Ps 16:8-11, CEB).

    Conclusion As we anticipate the Christian holiday of Pentecost this year, Moses’ four brief instructions for the Jewish festival of Pentecost, or ‘/?،״״’״ ١٠ ,/invite fresh consideration about joy and its expression in ancient Israel and our own contexts. Taken together, the instructions suggest that: 1) Joy is a background emotion, a persistent and resilient way of viewing the world that anticipates and is aleit to God’s goodness, even and especially in the midst of difhcult and painful work. This is joy that does not shirk from grief or deny hard realities, but toils within them, trusting that God can and does spiOut helds of bailey and wheat out of dilf. 2) Joy and geneiOsity are mutually reinforcing. 3) Joy is not solely the concern of individuals. Joy is performed and formed in communities. Physically. Loudly. Joy is the complement to hard work, and both are necessary for human flourishing. 4) The people of God, paificulaily the most foitunate, have a moral responsibility to ensure that everyone is able to worship and rejoice. 5) Joy is a gift. Joy emerges from the deep memory of God’s works and wonders wrought for the sake of the world, and joy testifies to divine wonders ongoing. Count. Give. Rejoice. Remember.

    Notes t At various times in its history, Israel used three different dating systems for its festivals: Exodus 23 and 34 records the earliest; Deuteronomy 16 was likely introduced as part of Josiah’s reforms in the late seventh century BCE; and Leviticus 23 was developed during the exilic or early post-exilic periods: Oded Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 38-40. 2 For more on the agriculture in ancient Israel, see Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, and Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel (HSM 60; Winona Inke, IN: Eisenbrauns , 2000). 3 Martha c. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence ofEmotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 69-75. 4 For further examples and discussion, see Eunny E Lee, The Vitality ofEnjoyment in Qohelets Theological Rhetoric (BZAW 353; Berlin/New ‘١ork: De Gruyter, 2005), 70-71. 5 Patrick D. Miller, Deuteronomy (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1990), 131-32.

    Easter 2016

  • Preaching Jesus as a ‘Peregrinus’

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    Preaching Jesns as a “Peregrinas”

    SungguYang Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Winston Salem, Noith Carolina

    In conventional messages for Advent, we tend to preach Jesus as King of Kings, the Lord of the universe, the Son of God, and the like. We want to celebrate Jesus who came and will come again as the eternal Ruler, Restorer, and Sustainer of the whole natural and human worlds. Though ceitainly there is nothing wrong or inappropriate in this type of redemptive message, it lacks any mention of the human nature of Jesus and thecloseconnectionofhumanJesus with down-to-earthhumanbeings.The“super divinity” of Jesus has so occupied the Advent message that the humble humanity of Jesus is lost in Advent spirituality as well as more broadly in our dogma. Advent is, however, also about how Jesus came down to eaith in the humble, human form in order to live together with humanity, weep together with them, piotest together, drink and eat together, and eventually walk together on their faith journey as pilgrims on eaith, now in the Spirit (Augustine). We Christians are and will be perpetual pilgrims on eaith until th efinal Advent when we shall see Jesus. The season of Advent should be when we learn and practice this pilgrim spirituality as is well exemplihed in the eaithly life of Jesus himself. courages a message of spiritual pilgrimage during the season. To achieve this purpose,

    the aiticle hrst considers the biblical portrait of Jesus as an archetype of the Christian pilgrim and then looks at Epistles that describe the Christian life as pilgrimage. The aiticle in turn introduces the LatintermpgrggriiMvftheiootwordforpilgrim in English) as a potential designation of Jesus during the season of Advent. Peregrinus is indeed a term used in the Vulgate Bible for the Hebrew term ger (sojourner or stranger) and the Greek parepidemos (resident alien or exile).! To conclude, the aiticle piOvides homiletic insights on Year A Advent texts in light of this understanding of Jesus as a peregrinus. In the New Testament, Jesus, the very model of Christian life, appears as a concrete example of spiritual pilgrimage. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus comes down to eaith, lives as a stranger (ignored even by his own people), and then goes back to his heavenly homeland where he is seated at the right hand of God, glorihed and praised. ؛Here our focus falls on Jesus’ human life, his spiritual journey on earth. In John, the eyes of Jesus are not always hxed on heavenly matters alone. That is, Jesus does not understand his spiritual concerns as always other-worldly or Platonic. Rather, because his concerns are focused on the eaith (he came voluntarily to eaith in the hrst place, says John), his spiritual mind is oriented toward the heavenly realm. Jesus, in the Gospel of John, knows that what is going on here in the world, especially given the problems of individual human sins and the variety of human suffering and social injustice, does not have the “hnal word.” Instead, Jesus piOclaims and demonstrates that God has the hnal word on every aspect of human life and that this hnal word will be fully accomplished on the Last Day. Until then, we humans strive every day for the paitial achievement of God’s Last Day, as purposeful pilgrims who will carry on what Jesus piOclaimed and staited as a fellow pilgrim. Ceitainly, John’s Jesus has

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    pastoral compassion on his fellow Christian pilgrims and adds an ethical or prophetic dimension to the pilgrim concept. Paul in several New Testament writings reflects a pilgrim ethos similar to that of Jesus. He says.

    As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy Τ:6-8)

    Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away Lperegrinar¡■] from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). Paul uses the terms “departure,” “finish the race,” “will . . . on that day,” and “longed for,” “peregrinan, ייall ol which imply an eaithly lile ol spiritual pilgrimage toward the eventual culmination ol all human spiritual and eaithly yearnings. Once again, just like Jesus, Paul recognizes that this salvation-seeking world cannot claim the final word. Only God, standing at the finish line, has the final word that will bestow on him the “crown ol righteousness.” Until then, he intends to continue to walk in Laith, fighting the good fight, as a pilgrim who follows the path paved by Jesus, the best exemplar ol pilgrimage. Peter, a prominent disciple ol Jesus, briefly reflects a pilgrim ethos similar to that ol Jesus. Hear what he preaches:

    Deaily beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims [parepidemous] abstain Irom fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorily God in the day ofvisitation. (1 Peter 2:11-12, KJV, emphases added)

    Peter acknowledges as one ol the Lundamentals ol Laith that Christians are commissioned to live as strangers and pilgrims in this world, showing good deeds by their Christian lives. By the pilgrim lile style and the good deeds ol Christians, the world wifi know that Christians have a different moral and ethical vision, the Lull achievement ol which is yet to come, but surely will. The Book ol Revelation, the last piece ol Christian Scripture, summarizes the pilgrim motil and describes the eventual end ol spiritual pilgrimage in the most vivid and imaginative way. Thus the visionary author ol Revelation writes:

    Then I saw a new heaven and a new eaith; Lor the first heaven and the first eaith had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out ol heaven Irom God, prepared as a bride adorned Lor her husband. (Revelation 21: 1-2)

    According to John the Seer, we humans, or more specifically we faith&l Christians , are temporary residents or pilgrims who dwell in ־־the first heaven and the

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    first earth,” which will pass away sooner or later. ‘ When that final time comes, John envisions that all human sin and suffering will also melt away. That is exactly what he hears fiom the heavenly voice:

    See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear fiom their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21: 3b-4)

    John is instructed by this ־־voice” that God has already prepared an eternal and ultimate home for God’s people, ־־the weary, foot-sore pilgrims, scarred by the trials and temptations of a world in which they could no longer feel at home.” ًاAll they have to do is endure the earthly life that is filled with inevitable pain, tears, and death, and, as pilgrims, wait for their return to their true home above. Again, we are not to think that John has a strictly dualistic or Platonic worldview, as if he regarded the earthly life as unworthy to live in compared with the heavenly one, the favored reality . Definitely a major portion of all his spiritual concerns is about how to live here and now on the earth as the people of God. Living earthly lives as the faith&l is as important as participating in that other-worldly, bliss&l life. In sum, during the biblical era, Jesus’ first appearance on the earth was itself a catalyst for the concept of pilgrimage among Christians, and the same concept became a pervasive theological motif or ground in the production of the New Testament .5 Especially, it is interesting that both Paul and Peter draw on the same concept of pilgrimage (peregrinan and parepidemons) as a fondamental Christian identity. Later in the Vulgate Bible, this spiritual-existential concept of pilgrimage is easily adopted as peregrinus in Latin for the same Jesus-oriented Christian identity. Peregrinus (per meaning “thiOugh” and ager meaning “field, country, and land”) is a loot word for the English term “pilgrim.” The Latin term describes a traveler journeying to a ceitain place or someone making a shoit or long trip to a foreign land. We saw eailiei ־that peregrinus is also a term used in the Vulgate Bible for the Hebrew term ger (sojourner or stranger) and the Greek term parepidemos (resident alien or exile).® All these terms rightly describe the eaily church’s understanding of the Christian life as a heaven-bound pilgrimage—that is, Christians as temporary residents in the world. Yet the Latin term conveys a more comprehensive meaning that includes related concepts of the Christian life such as stranger, traveler, sojourner, resident alien, along \{] pilgrim The term, thus, has good potential to describe the biblical understanding of Jesus’ eaithly life and that of fellow Christians as strangers or residential pilgrims in the world. In Year Aof the lectionary, the Gospel’s apparent “theo-geographical” movement is of Jesus coming from heaven to earth—from the first Sunday in Advent (Matthew 24:36-^; expectation of Jesus coming) to the last Sunday in Advent (Mathew 1:2825 ; Immanuel, “God with us” on eaith). Of course, the first reading is, on the surface, mainly about the Second Coming, and the second reading is about the First Coming. Yet, in our conventionalAdvent theology, the distinction between the First and Second Coming is only nominal and indeed interchangeable. The First Coming anticipates the Second Coming, and the Second Coming is anticipated to achieve only what the First

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    Coming envisions. Yet theological or Christological distinction seems to be obvious at least in a literary sense. In Matthew 2Τ:36-^, Jesus corns from heaven while in the latter Jesus is with US (Immanuel). Thus the last week of Advent heightens the joy and wonder of Jesus being with US on the eaith as our fellow peregrinus. We can easily approach and read texts for the First Sunday of Advent, paiticulaily Isaiah 2:1-5 and Psalm 122, from a pilgrim’s perspective. Isaiah envisions the people of YHWH shouting at the top of their lungs in anticipation of God’s Kingdom being established, “Come let US go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach US his ways and that we may walk in his paths (Isaiah 2:3a).” Here Isaiah describes the people of God on the way to something or somewhere really wonderful and thus desirable. The place where they are currently located is not where they should remain! They should be pilgrims “walk[ing] in God’s paths” to an utteily different and distinct reality. That is why the Psalmist responds with another welcoming invitation declaring “Let US [walk] to the house of God. “The Psalmist knows we should be on the journey to the place to which God calls US. Yet being a pilgrim people is never an excuse to become apathetic toward the existing world (of injustice) just because our ultimate hope lies in another reality somewhere else. As Jesus’ example and that of Epistles and Revelation show, the opposite is the case. The eschatological pilgrim’s hope and vision calls for and indeed demands the transformation of the fallen reality we face every day. De facto, it would be correct to say that we are on the pilgrim journey for the purpose of utter transfermation of our existing reality. Surely we Christians journey on in this world, not in a different dream world. Thus readings from the Second and the Third Sunday make great sense when they convey the hope and vision of justice, equality, righteousness, reconciliation, and peace. Hear what they beseech:

    Give the king your justice, o God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. (Psalm 72:1-2)

    The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the eaith; he shall strike the eaith with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (Isaiah 1Ρ2-Τ)

    My soul magnihes the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness ol his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; (Luke l:-16b-t8)

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    He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the piOud in the thoughts of their heaits. He has biOught down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has hlled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

    behind the concept of Jesus as peregrinus, its piominent applicability to Christian life, and— important for this essay—to most lectionary readings in Advent. I need to make sure at this point that the traditional Jesus concept for Advent as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is still desirable and to a great extent necessary not only for Advent, but for all Christian seasons. That is why, then and now, we need a text like Matthew 21:36-^ as it appears in the current lectionary. Peregrinus as a Jesus concept is not a negation of the traditional Advent understanding of Jesus and Christian identity. Instead, the pilgrim concept is the recovery of the lost or hidden Advent theme of Jesus as a pilgrim who calls for and relies on his fellow pilgrims (us!) for his ongoing transformative mission on the earth. This recovery is indeed the truthful completion of Jesus’ holistic identity as both Divine and Human, as both King and Servant, and as both Eternal Host and Perpetual Pilgrim. For Jesus’ Grand Journey has not ended, and so neither has ours. Let US journey on, therefore, with Jesus our fellow Pilgrim, in this season of Advent and beyond.

    Notes t For instance. Genesis 23:4 (peregrinus) and Hebrews tt: 13 (peregrini). 2DeeDyas,Pilgri1mgeinMedievalEnglishLiterature,700-1500{‘Woodbridge, Suffolk,UK;Rochester, i D. s. Brewer, 2٥٥1 ), 21; Wayne A. Meeks, “Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91, no. 1 (1972): Ψ1-72. 3> ,ﻗﻌﻼذأPilgrimage, 25-2,6. 4 Ibid., 25. 5 Craig G Bartholomew and Hughes eds., Explorations in Christian Theology ofPilgrimage (Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2٥٥3), chapters 24. 6 For instance. Genesis 23:4 (peregrinus) and Hebrews 11:13 (peregrini).

  • Preaching Crucifixion

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    Preaching Crucifixion

    Samuel Wells

    St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, United Kingdom

    Before I served in ministry in the United States, 1′ d never come aciOss the service of Tenebrae. When I served at Duke University Chapel, I found it one of the most memorable worship services of the year. At around 7:30 p.m. on the evening of Good Friday there would be a single reading followed by a sermon; then, interspersed with Passiontide hymns, there would follow a series of readings, and after each one, one of seven huge candles placed on the altar would be snuffed out; hnally the congregation of aiound 1,300 would listen, in darkness and silence, as the tower bell tolled 39 times. That silence was louder than any music or words. The question that exercised the ministers and musicians of the Chapel in preparing for the service was what should happen after the great silence’? The tradition I inherited was that a candle would be biOught forward slowly from the back of the Chapel, more than 50 rows back, a journey taking a minute or so, and that the acolyte would light a candle that was placed to one side of the altar, at a lower level. It was a beautiful and compelling moment. The symbolism was unmistakeable: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1.5). From this flame, the whole world would shine in glory. God’s love had been snuffed out, but you can’t snuff out the nature and destiny of all things. Humbly, quietly, but relentlessly , it would reassert itself. The tiOuble was, it was an action befitting a Saturday night Easter Vigil rather than a Friday night Tenebrae. It seemed to me to represent a profound reluctance to stay with the unresolved, tragic, and terrifying experience of Good Friday evening. In subsequent years we tried various endings, but in the end we concluded that there could be no conclusion: the bell should toll, there should be silence; and, after a solemn inteilude, there should be sufficient side-aisle lights lit to enable those who wished to do so to leave in safety. This liturgical question goes right to the heait of the theology of Good Friday. Was the CIOSS an agonising, horrifying, but ultimately successful and triumphant enterprise in which a limitlessly-loving and inexpressibly-gracious savior secured our eternal salvation by assuaging the rasping hunger of death and satisfying the just demands of recompense for sin’? Or was it, rather, the tragic, cruel, and ugly epitome of the world’s failure to embrace the utter goodness of God embodied in Christ, an ending so shameful, so isolated, so apparently final, that it exposes the church’s deepest, yet invariably suppressed fears about the absence, defeat, or non-existence of God’? If it was the former, the solemn entry of a candle is an appropriate and tender sign of completion, celebration, and first fruits of redemption. If it was the latter, the candle is a sign of our denial of the cost, risk, and full horror of the CIOSS, a hasty and perhaps shallow attempt to turn tragedy into comedy, to resist pathos and rush to a happy ending. If preaching crucifixion errs on one side or the other, it must surely be the latter. This is not the day to dodge the searing questions of suffering, doubt, and evil, in the assured confidence that it was “all pait of the plan”; instead this is the day to go to the bottom of the slough of despond, knowing that the resurrection (though predicted)

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    would lose its power if anyone had seriously seen it coming. The seven last words from the CIOSS are the utterances of an agonized and dying man; they lose their poignancy if they’re simply transposed into a story where everything comes right in the end. At the climax of the ghastliness of Golgotha, John’s gospel tells US, Jesus says one single word. Finished. Finished. This is the word that seems to validate the upbeat version of Good Fridaythe one that emphasizes the word good. Let’s ponder for a moment the host of meanings of that word. Finished. The dissertation’s hnally edited and handed in. Finished. The marathon’s run and I’m totally done in. Finished. The relationship’s over, and she’s told me she doesn’t love me. Finished. The work of art is completed and ready for display. Finished. The counselling has run its course, and I can face the world without fear or bitterness or anger. Finished. I’ve served my sentence, and I can come out of prison. Finished. I’ve been told I’ve no longer got a job and needn’t come back to work. Finished. But it’s dangerous to rush too quickly to calling Good Friday “Good.” Surely Jesus’ climactic words from the cross must be ironic. This isn’t the way the story was supposed to end. Consider the heavenly host of angels in the skies above Bethlehem singing of peace on earth. Surely this wasn’t the way they imagined it would all turn orrt. Recall the crowds on Palm Sunday waving branches and shouting Hosanna. Surely they weren’t thinking of this apocalypse hve days later. A lot of other words might capture it. Ruined, betrayed, wasted, lost, destroyed, devastated, ravaged, spoiled, wrecked… but not “finished.” What might this word finished, mean’? Let’s look a little closer. Let’s see if we can discover what is finished by Friday afternoon. The cross polishes off not just a facile rendition of The Plan, but almost everything else that characterizes a too-easy codification of Christianity. Let’s snuff out the seven candles on that altar of superficial tidiness one by one. One thing that’s finished is the blond Jesus with the constant smile, the loosefitting toga, and the baby lamb constantly aiound his neck like a primal life-jacket. That would be the Jesus whose picture perched above my bed as a child. The one that loves the little children. There’s nothing sentimental about the CIOSS. There’s no guitar-playing, commune-dwelling, tie-dying, knitted-yogurt-eating, country-roadsinging , 10ng-haired-10ver-fr0m-Piverp001, John-Denver-bespectacled Jesus in the face of Good Friday. Jesus is mutilated. He’s taunted. He’s asphyxiated. The Jesus of our projections, the kind friend, the handsome suitor, the Mr Fixit, the husky organic farmer, the country sage, the wandering minstrel they all die at the foot of the CIOSS. The lose-tinted Jesus of soft-focused piOmotional paraphernalia is gone. Finished. Anotherthingthat’sfinishedistheconqueringJesus with the righteous fist, theJesus whom the Crusader thought he was upholding as he smashed the head of the infidel, the Jesus whom the Inquisition thought it was promoting by torture and cruelty, the Jesus piOclaimed by conquistadores with colonial mind-sets and rapacious ambitions, the Jesus that demands to seize contiOl of the government, the Jesus that obliterates other religions from the face of the eaith, the Jesus whose name is invoked to justify one race or people or gender giving themselves sanction to oppress and marginalize and laud it over others. On Good Friday Jesus doesn’t conquer. He’s humiliated. He’s defeated. He’s dragged thiOugh the streets like a slave or a dog. The Jesus that gives credibility to human power-grabs is gone. Finished. And that’s by no means all. The Jesus that makes for good citizenship and stable social relations is finished too. Jesus died a criminal’s death. We can plead his in­

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    nocence as long as we like, but in the eyes of the Sanhedrin, he was acting as if he was the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who was bringing Israel’s long exile to an end. And that meant he had to die. And in the eyes of the Romans, he was a rabblerouser and a potential king, and that made him guilty of a capital crime. Jesus was a good citizen of the kingdom of heaven, but not a very reliable citizen of Rome. So the meek Jesus that believes in law and order, the mild Jesus that instructs children to be good and kind and to obey their parents, the Jesus that doesn’t want to lock the political boat or disturb the neighbours – that Jesus dies in the face of the CIOSS. That Jesus is hnished. And what about the Jesus of The Plan, the Jesus of the mathematical equation-the Jesus that says, “Take one drop of total human depravity, add one pinch of utter divine grace, mix with one broken law and blend in one innocent death, and then subtract one angry devil”’? That Jesus, who seems subject to some extraneous logic invisible to the eyes of the disciples but obvious to the well-informed cosmic legal historian, that Jesus disintegrates in the face of the circumstantial detail of the CIOSS. If Jesus were simply a component in a mathematical equation or legal formula that got US off the devil’s hook, then why would the gospels tell US so much about the disciples who deseited him, the women who followed him, the mother who loved him, the sinners he forgave, the sick he healed, the poor he accompanied, the blind he led’? By the time we get to the CIOSS, the gospels have shown US enough about Jesus not just to show us how much he loves US but to make US love him. You don’t love a formula or an equation. The CIOSS shows US not forensic symmetry but wondrous love. The Jesus of the divine bargain is hnished. And then there’s the Jesus that watches idly by while eaithquakes destroy countries , while ISIS andAl-Quaeda plague a generation, while civil war becomes a way of life acioss the world, while loved ones develop cancer, while diOught afhicts continents , while hurricanes and tsunamis wreck households and livelihoods and cities. Nero watched from afar and hddled while Rome burned; but Jesus isn’t looking idly thiough some heavenly telescope. Jesus is suffering an agony as bad as any known to human experience. Jesus isn’t tucked up in the sky, peering down from a safe distance : he’s in the middle of a human train crash, the glass and wheels and rails and twisted metal all contoiting his body and piercing his soul. If you ever look up to the sky and shout “Oh God, why’?” you’re looking in the wrong place. You need to be looking into the face of the crucihed Jesus. That distant remote-control God has got nothing to do with Christianity. In the face of Good Friday, that Jesus is hnished. And here’s a painful one. The Jesus that belongs to the church, the Jesus that gives an affirming thumbs-up to everything Christians set out to do, the Jesus that makes a congregation a circle of holiness and a cradle of wholesomeness that Jesus withers in the face of the CIOSS. It’s not clear when the church begins. Maybe when Jesus gives Peter the keys of the kingdom. Maybe when Jesus says to Peter, “Feed my Sheep. ” Maybe when Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “I send you. ” Maybe when the Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost. But a good candidate for the beginning of the church is right here at the CIOSS, when Jesus hands his mother over to the care of the beloved disciple. You can see Mary representing Israel and the beloved disciple representing the church, and Jesus’ instructions portraying the inextricable destiny of the two. Not a glamoiOus scene, is it’? This is two fragile hgures amid a vista of apocalyptic devastation. Not exactly a mega-church bent on growth. Fends a

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    whole new irony to Jesus’ words, “Where two or three are gathered, I am with them,” doesn’t it’? In the face of the CIOSS, there’s no place for the self-congratulatory church that’s holieithan God. There’s only a place for church that looks like Jesus. Any other church is like any other Jesus. It’s hnished. But here’s the most impoitant one of all. The CIOSS confionts US with the fragility of Jesus. He’s no superman who leaps down and says, “Only joking!” He suffers to the end. We wonder how this awful spectacle can possibly be necessary for our salvation . We’re supposed to wonder that. We wonder whether this tiny, broken, wasted body can possibly be the body of God. We’re supposed to wonder that. We wonder how any joy, any hope, any glory can possibly emerge from this hideous catastrophe. We’re supposed to wonder that. We wonder why God doesn’t utteily reject us after we’ve shown the very worst that we can do. We’re supposed to wonder that. All of those wonderings should be pait of our faith, our imagination, our daily prayer, and our compassionate heaits. But for all our wondering and pondering, one thing is uttelly clear. When we see the pain, when we feel the grief, when we look upon the loneliness, when we touch the wounds, when we hear the cries, we know, we know that God will go to any lengths for US, God will never be separated from US, that loving us is written into God’s DNA, that there’s no pait of God that has any desire to be except to be with US, that Jesus is the embodiment of the way God’s destiny is wrapped up in us forever. Any other notion of God, any other speculation about God’s wishes, any other idea about what lies at the heait of God is gone. Over. Dispelled. Tinished. Jesus’ hnal word: “Tinished.” His life is hnished. His ministry’s hnished. The scriptures are hnished. The reconciliation of God and creation is hnished. And a host of misconceptions are dispatched at the same time. Jesus isn’t a cosy companion. He’s not a triumphalist conqueror. He’s not a law-abiding do-gooder. He’s not legal formula. He’s not a heaitless onlooker. He’s not a pretext for Christian self-satisfaction . All those idolatries are hnished. They’re snuffed out like a line of candles, one by one. Tinished. Tinished. Tinished. Tinished. Tinished. Tinished. Tinished. Everything’shnished. Everything’sdesolate. Everything’slaidwaste. Everything’s lost, except the heait of God laid bare. And if we’re not seduced by a comfoiting saviour, if we’re not mesmerised by a merciless heiO, if we’re not domesticated by a model citizen, if we’re not obsessed by a mathematical equation, if we’re not alienated by a distant deity, if we haven’t hed from the CIOSS like most of the church for most of its history, we might just get close enough to glimpse that sacred heait laid bare. This is the context for preaching cnicihxion. It’s not about offering a form of salvation tidier and cleaner and more assured than Jesus. It doesn’t have to be putting further doubts in the worshipers’ minds than are already there. What it does have to do is to name and explore the vivid feelings of betrayal, despair, lostness, shame, fear, sorrow, and profound, perhaps total, abandonment that Christ experiences in his Tassion, and at least hint at the ways these feelings are mirrored in the lives of the listeners. If people go to church on Good Triday and don’t return on Easter Day, they can expect to hnd themselves in an unresolved state of turmoil, confusion, and dismay. If people appear at church on Easter Day without having been present on Good Triday, they can expect to sense they are in the midst of relief for which they knew not the preceding anxiety, joy for which they shared not the foregoing terror.

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    plenitude for which they perceived not the former scarcity. If the preacher on Good Friday has not done his or her job, the preacher on Easter Day will be deprived of the delight of piOclaiming release from a prison that was never fully entered. If the Good Friday preacher goes ahead and resolves the unbearable tension of Christ’s death (was it all in vain’?), then the preacher on Easter Day has little left to say.

    at the conclusion of the Tenebrae service. But it was an impoitant grief for all to share. That powerful silence that followed the extinguishing of the hnal candle was the most eschatological moment in our liturgical year. If 1,300 people could sit together and live with that unbearable tension, perhaps they were really being formed in soul and mind and character to encounter the worst that life can bring. And perhaps, like at no other time, they were coming face to face with God.

  • A Matter of Life in Death

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    A Matter ο|Life in Death

    Matthew 27:45-56

    Marc Nelesen

    Georgetown Christian Reformed Church, Georgetown, Michigan

    An overlooked. and under heard text When some of US consider how often we have heard the stories in the gospels about Jesus’ crucifixion, it seems as though there should be no surprises left for US. Yet, a pair of verses in Matthew’s version of the story and Matthew’s alone—are ones which I have never heard nor personally mentioned in a sermon. Admittedly, most of us who know they are there are not quite sure how to read them, let alone know what to do with them. Matthew is the only gospel writer who associates a general resurrection with Jesus’ death.

    Gospel writers construc t their stories in their own ways for their own hearers Just as every family has a brother or aunt who tells a story in their own way— sometimes with seriousness, hilarity, or with a stutter or lisp—every gospel has its own flavor and flair as to how the story is told. Details for each narrator are important . These are less about “facts” and more about how they tell the story and what is impoitant in their telling. Only John, for example, tells US that the stalk used to raise a sponge to Jesus’ mouth is from the hyssop plant. When he does, he is reminding us of the Passover and a sacrificial lamb. John is the only one who tells US that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was at the CIOSS. Other witnesses say only the women were present. Luke is the only gospel to suggest that Pilate and Herod hated each other before meeting Jesus. Somehow in the strange constellation of crowds, politics, and shared headaches, these two rivals become reconciled. One wonders if Luke had other impassible conflicts in his congregation in his mind as he included that little tidbit. Was he making a historical point’? More likely he may have been suggesting that Jesus can bring old enemies together, paiticulaily ones whose memories are long and whose fuses are shoit. Gospel writers also share some details in common. Today’s text follows Mark’s lead and observes that not only are particular women present at the execution, but many other women as well. Gospel writers are like any other storytellers. If we were to ask any four members of the congregation to write down what happened in church last Sunday, there would be many similarities, but differences as well. If you were asked to try that exercise, your spoken or written response would likely depend on who was asking you as well as what you know about their situation. It is not just news reporters, parents, or pastors who select details and then emphasize some and minimize others; everyone makes choices about what to share and does so according to their needs or the perceived needs of hearers or readers. Gospel writers do this too as they construct the stories they tell out of the real world needs of the church, some of which we read in the Epistles. The question that might be on our minds today is “Why would Matthew include the detail about a general resurrection at Jesus’ death’?” Why would this feature be impoitant for this

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    gospel writer and not for any of the other ones’? What might have been going on in his congregation so that he saw ht to include this’? The truth is, none of US knows. In light of that, we who preach tend to steer clear of texts like this one because many of us are prone to want to explain texts rather than explore them, or better, let them explore US. Texts like this one deserve to be lingered over. When we stop pondering these texts, we no longer hear them. We either skip right over details as signihcant as a resurrection(!), or we are astonished that somebody crept in and snuck those verses in our bibles when we weren’t looking!

    Signaling early Since we are hard-pressed to answer challenging questions historically, we tend to do the next best thing and answer the question as to “why is this in there’?” with theological answers. If we speculate theologically, we can say that Jesus’ death triggers a resurrection for saints who sleep in death. Creative preachers could say, “Matthew is giving US a sneak preview of coming attractions. The main event, however, is still to come on Easter morning.” If a preacher or congregation is giOunded in the Old Testament, she might read the signs Matthew gives US. The sign language of the tearing of the temple veil signals the end of the boundary between God and humans. The sign of the eaithquake signals the end of the power of death. Holy places like sanctuaries and cemeteries erupt with new life when the Voice of God speaks from the CIOSS (John 5:25: “The dead will hear his voice and come out of their tombs to new life”). These things may be true and may be hne theology, but some may legitimately ask, “So what’?” and by the way, “What really did happen there, and when were these dead raised’? Was it at the eaithquake or were they made alive at his resurrection’? You know, the text isn’t really clear on that.” Rather than trying to solve those problems, I want to return to the question we’ve had from the very beginning: “Why might Matthew include this story as he shares it with hearers’?” Why might this be impoitant to him’? Rather than answering this question with any kind of ceitainty or piOofs, I would prefer to answer the question from experiences that many of US have had.

    A text for and from experience At least once a year, one of my kids asks me about what it is like for me to be with people when they die. They know that their father is a pastor and one who is “acquainted with grief.” They also know deep in their own skins what it means to lose people close to them. “Dad, what is it like to be with someone who is dying or who has died, especially when you love them or care about them deeply’?” I think that question is as hne a point of entry into this text as any I could muster. So what happens when we think about this text thiOugh the lens of our experience of watching a loved one die’? The reality is just what the women named in our text, and the many others, were doing: they were watching a loved one in the hnal hours of his life. Some of us know that experience all too well. It is a sacred and painful place for some of us. If you have been there, you know that the hours can turn into days. You hnd yourself wanting to be anywhere but there, but you also hnd that you don’t want to be anywhere else. Being in that spot is a difhcult and horrible intersection. As I have watched these dramas unfolding in my family and church family, I am always

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    intrigued at the faithful watchfulness of women. Wives, sisters, and mothers often remain longer and more constantly than husbands, sons, and fathers can. While I could only speculate as to why that is, I marvel at how tirelessly many women stay and often, even need to be there to see the dying thiOugh. Many of US know this drama all too well. During the long hours, darkness falls. You hnd yourself present, paying attention to moans, watching as breathing changes, and quenching thirst with a small pink sponge on a stick that innocently looks like a lollipop; its necessity however is so grown up. In those moments, you hnd yourself grateful for the narcotics that take the edge off of raw pain. You hnd yourself with new attentiveness you never knew you had for every change in temperature, every drop of sweat, and every change in breathing. All of these things matter much as you keep watch thiOugh the night. Tile ,’!//،،״//,״the breaths space themselves far apait; eventually, their distance is so great that they stop. And it is hnished. For a moment, you are astonished, and you wonder in sheer disbelief. In another, you are relieved. Then, a heavy darkness born of deep sadness falls because you know that s/he is gone. Some of US don’t need to see this; others cannot be anywhere else.

    God knows This week, I have come to wonder if the author of Matthew’s gospel knew this experience and knew it well. Matthew tells the story of the devoted followers of Jesus who journey with their loved one until he dies. It is the journey that every pastor knows well and s/he knows it because every congregation and every community is acquainted with grief. Maybe the story that Matthew speaks into our own narratives of loss and pain is laced not with narcotics, but with a small yet unmistakable signal of hopefulness. While other gospel writers are preoccupied with other details, Matthew spills the beans eaily. Other gospel writers wait until Easter to talk about resurrection, but Matthew gives US a sneak preview of things to come, not just for Jesus, but also for those who are in ״,:״ ﻟﻢ .A close read makes it hard to discern exactly what is going on; grief and relief will do that. Matthew does it in 26:12 at Jesus’ anointing when he signals that this loving act prepares him for his ./،،/’, دﻟﻢ ״Matthew does it again in OUI’ text when he speaks a word of resurrection into the hospice hallway. These moments should not go unnoticed by those of US who 1’ead and hnd oui’selves living into these texts. How resurrection goes in OUI’ text is not entii’ely deal’ noi’ should one try to answer it. It is not unlike the pai’ishionei’ who will say to the pastoi’ aftei’ the death, “So, is s/he l’aised 1’ight now with the Lord, OI’ is that still coming’?” Evei’y pastoi’ knows that thei’e are multiple questions in that inquil’y. The l’eality of the text seems to tell US that a dehnitive answer may be off limits OI’ out of 1’each. Nonetheless, resurrection abounds foi’ “saints” and “holy ones” who line themselves up in Jesus.

    We can know i.t too Pastoi’ Matthew wants US to know that whatever happens, Jesus’ death undoes death. His death has grave-opening power foi’ those who have watched a loved one die OI’ who have seen fai’ too many of these kinds of deaths. The Voice of God that called whole worlds into being out of dai’kness, chaos, and death is the same voice

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    that reactivates, reanimates and re-energizes life out of death. The voice of God cries out in death; that voice speaks a new word of life for those once dead. The truth is that life can be difhcult and heavy. Darkness often looms large and near, and many of our places of engagement with life are CIOSS-Shaped. Matthew allows us to see a little light breaking thiOugh into our darkness. God’s light and God’s life come to US and we cannot create them ourselves. Easter is not just a day, but a way of looking at the world differently. We look at that world thiOugh tear-stained eyes of pain and loss, but also thiOugh tears of hope. God knows death and life from the inside, and from those places, God does what we cannot do for ourselves. We can imagine Pastor Matthew knowing this well in the narratives of his own congregation. Perhaps this is why he tells the story the way he does. He reminds all of US who watch the dying of loved ones that the death of Jesus means life for others—even US.

  • Pride, Politics, and Our Post-Election Dilemma

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    Pride יPolitics יand Our Post-Electiou Dilemma

    Samuel L. Adams

    Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

    The relationship between act and consequence is complex, both in the Bible and in human experience. One basic issue is whether a person committing evil deeds or using inflammatory rlretoric will suffer negative consequences. Wen posing this complex question, the Biblepresentsasurprisinglymixedperspective.Some passages defend a fair system of retributive justice: تWoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on the one who starts it rolling’’ (Prov 26:27). After giving the law to Moses, God promises to hold human beings accountable for sinful behavior: although merci&l, this Deity is not interested in “clearing the guilty” (Exod 34:7). Similarly, the friends of Job insist on divine justice as they maintain an essential link between human behavior and punishment. For example Eliphaz declares, ־־As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:8). Yet othei ־voices do not see such consistency and rail against the promise of retributive justice. The most famous example in this regard is the authoi ־of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), who observes an unpredictable world: “Again I saw that undei ־the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favoi ־to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecc 9:11). With refreshing candoi ,־Qoheleth is willing to look at the unpredictable tangle of human experience and acknowledge inconsistencies. The relationship between behavioi ־and consequence is essential for exploring our primary verse undei ־consideration, which is from the book of Proverbs: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (PiOV 16:18). The key Hebrew word is the one for “pride” (ga’on), and it can appeal ־positively as “exaltation” or “majesty,”usuallyreferringtoGod(e.g.,Exod 15:7: “Inthe greatness ofyourmajesty [ga’on] you overthrew youi ־adversaries”). With regard to human beings, ga’on usually indicates incessant self-regard (as in PiOV 16:18), the attitude that prizes selhsh advancement ovei ־all othei ־factors. The second half of the saying parallels the hrst, making basically the same point. A person with a “haughty spirit” will eventually stumble. This famous saying in PiOV 16:18 claims that arrogance can cause a person’s downfall. The person responsible foi ־this maxim does not appeal ־to suggest that a thunderbolt will strike the individual who displays pomposity, but rather that brash, self-serving actions eventually lead to 1־uin. Rathei ־than promoting an immediate actconsequence connection, this maxim ai-guesfoi-acharacter-consequencei-elationship. If a person exhibits prideful behavioi ,־at some point he oi ־she will receive ajustihable comeuppance. Pride sparks foolish decisions, and patterns of stupidity based on ego concerns will lead to ultimate “destniction.” When considering the contemporary relevance of this saying, it is appropriate to think about pride in the context of oui ־political landscape. As we draw closei ־to Advent, there is an intervening event that has engiOssed the American public foi ־ ovei ־a yeai ־now: the divisive presidential election. Political discord, especially of an all-consuming, hyper-partisan variety, dominates American culture as nevei ־before.

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    in the UK took only a month), American campaigns are now perpetual. The lengthy primary season, the endless, circular chatter on the cable news networks, constant fundraising by SuperPACs and the candidates,and the unwieldy influence ofcorporate donors and lobbyists have created a permanent national distraction. The opportunities for grandstanding and impugning the reputations of others are more prevalent than ever. The dangers of pride are intrinsic to the political process. As Reinhold Niebuhr famously observed, “Politics, to the end of history, will be an arena where power and conscience meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.”! When the opportunity for power presents itself, humans naturally feel inclined to reach for as much as possible, especially when prideful inclinations take over. The sage responsible for our saying in Proverbs understood the precipitous fall that can accompany decisions based solely on prideftrl self-interest, particularly when matters of conscience become secondary. When considering pride in this context, examples of notorious decline are numerous in the annals of American politics. Obvious cases include the short, tempestuous career of Joseph McCarthy, whose Senate Committee on Permanent Investigations in the 1950s allowed him to pursue character assassinations of perceived rivals whom he labeled as communists, almost always without any factual basis. And yet after censure by his Senate colleagues, McCarthy lost his power in Washington and died a tragically premature death at the age of Τ8. Demagoguery in the service of pride has also ruined other public figures to varying degrees, from Huey Long to Richard Nixon. Despite wielding significant power, such individuals endured ignominious defeat or worse, the vengeftrl bullet of an assassin. The tightrope of political success is tenuous, and prideful behavior often leads to devastation. For example, as governor of Alabama, George Wallace built a power-base thiOugh the politics of anger. He understood instinctively that racist language and vitriol against the federal government could cement his popularity. Wallace mastered vicious populism, using coded language to induce fear. As Dan T. Carter explains in a biography of Wallace, the former governor capitalized on economic woes and rapid social change by condemning those who were different from the white, PiOtestant majority: “It was no accident that the giOups singled out for relentless abuse and condemnation were welfare mothers and aliens, giOups that are both powerless and, by viltue of color and nationality, outsiders.”? Additional examples affirm the veracity of the maxim that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” The assumption of invulnerability after the reins of power are in one’s possession is a timeless one in politics. From local aldermen to members of Congress, pride is a threat to individual careers and the public good. From Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who attempted to sell President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder, to the recent case of Kathleen Kane, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who sullied the reputations of political rivals and then lied about it under oath, the timeless wisdom of PiOV 16:18 is regularly overlooked. The perils of excessive pride are manifold. Adultery, graft, voter fraud, and other issues are usually traced to the personal failings and arrogance of the official in ques­

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    tion. One can also look to such underlying issues as fragile egos, broken childhoods, and the need for constant affirmation. Armchair psychoanalysis frequently characterizes our assessments of pride in politics, as we seek to mine the ultimate reason for dramatic falls from grace. Governor Wallace sought forgiv؛ness from civil rights leaders in the waning years of

    his life. Paralyzed from the waist down after an assassination attempt and observing the shifting tide biOught by the civil rights movement, Wallace reached out to African Americans who had suffered as a result of his brutal tactics. One could argue that opportunism and changing circumstances, especially the voting power of African Americans, drove Wallace’s reversal more than genuine remorse, but his efforts at reaching out to such pivotal leaders as John Lewis are nevertheless remarkable. Lee Atwater, a Republican political operative Lamous for his manipulative campaign tactics, showed contrition at the end ol his battle with cancer. Atwater apologized to a South Carolina Democratic olhcial he had criticized for receiving electric shock therapy, and he expressed regret for some ol his harsh tactics against Michael Dukakis , the Democratic nominee for President in 1988. Once again, one could argue that these were self-serving acts that bolstered Atwater’s ultimate reputation, but it is noteworthy that powerful individuals often experience regret more than contentment it they have used inflammatory rhetoric in the service ol political gain. When we consider hubris and dyslunction in American public lile, it becomes necessary to address the specific circumstances that created our rancorous political landscape and our own culpability in creating those circumstances. Many readers will remember the wise assessment ol the commentator Edward R. Murrow when assessing the dangeiOus tactics ol Senator McCaithy:

    The actions ol the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comloit to our enemies. And whose Lault is that’? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation ol fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successlully. Cassius was right: ‘The Lault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in om’selves.”3

    Murrow’s last reference is from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and it illustrates the need for all citizens and persons ol Laith to recognize our responsibility in creating a climate ol fear and mistrust, where prideful inclinations too frequently sap any movement towards addressing the many piOblems that ail US as a society. Inaction, apathy, and the unswerving belie ؛that our opinions are always accurate reflect a corlosive atmosphere. Readers ol this essay will probably have noted up to this point the lack ol specific references to the candidates for President in 2016 and to one ol the more bizarre years in the history ol American politics. Never has such an outsider captured the nomination ol a major political paity, and no woman has ever come this close to winning the presidency. Whatever the result in November, this is a historic election. Some ol those reading this essay are supporting one ol these two candidates, while others are looking for an alternative. The diversity ol political perspectives in American public lile is a wonderlul aspect ol our democracy, and the new outlets for expression on social media have allowed for a more participatory piOcess.

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    Yet the reclaiming of mutual trust seems far from ceitain in our current political climate, and baneful pride at all levels is playing a key role in dividing us from one another. The xenophobic, misogynistic, and divisive rhetoric used to great effect by Donald Trump has echoes of many of the political hgures I mentioned above, especially George Wallace, and the whole country is in a surreal fog as a result of his unprecedented candidacy. My task here is not to assess the likelihood of Mr. Trump winning the election, a highly remote possibility as of the writing of this essay, but rather to consider the saying from Proverbs in light of our current political dynamics . And rather than rehearse once again the many incendiary comments made by Mr. Trump over the course of the current campaign season, rather than reiterate the shortcomings of Secretary of State Clinton in the interest of a fair balance, we return to the same line cited by Edmund R. Murrow, which is more relevant than ever: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Our entire society and recent cultural trends, not just Donald Trump, created the atmosphere that led to such a toxic election season. We have segregated ourselves far too much according to race, income, and political persuasion; we have allowed our neighborhoods to become a place where we check Facebook rather than get to know those aiound us; and we have decided thiOugh self-righteous indignation that the other side is wrong and our beliefs are always correct. Moreover, our ever-shortening attention spans, fascination with celebrity, and fear of the other have created the envilOnment for some of the views espoused by Mr. Trump to gain such traction. He has masterfully exploited longstanding mistrust as a means of advancing his own foitunes. All politicians seek self-advancement, but the damage wrought by this incendiary election season cannot be placed back in a bottle after November 8. Our political atmosphere has been so poisoned by prideful mistrust that a rebuilding effoit is necessary. One essay cannot begin to plot a comprehensive blueprint for rebuilding, but a few suggestions are worth noting. The hrst is the need to separate the political piOcess more cleaily from our cult of celebrity. Over the last few decades, the foitunes of publie servants have become another form of celebrity enteitainment. This development can be traced at least as far back as the 1980s. In a piOvocative and convincing book. Matt Bai cites the increasing superhciality of American political discourse, tracing this development to an obsession with personal scandal that intensihed with the infamous episode involving Senator Gary Halt in 1988 and ceitainly with the scandals a decade later involving President Clinton. Bai does not defend such behavior, but he does point to our obsession with drama as a national distraction at the expense of pressing issues like poveity and the solvency of Social Security. He argues that our nation and its media have taken “a hard turn towards abject triviality. ”4 I recently went with my family to the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. The area of the museum focusing on human rights includes heartbreaking descriptions and photos of piOblematic regions in the world, and the impact on visitors is understandably jarring. My 12 year-old son Chailie looked carefully at the exhibit on longstanding strife in Congo, and he turned to me and said, “Dad, why are we talking all the time about what Mr. Trump did or said at a rally, but this is the hrst time I am ever hearing about what is happening to boys my age in Congo’?” I did not have a good response except to agree. The inclusive visionforjustice in Scripture demands that believers seekto piotect

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    the most vulnerable in society, especially those on the margins. This imperative is apparent in the Torah: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exod 22:21). Jesus embraces this call for benevolence: ‘”I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing , I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me’ ” (Matt 25:35-36). The “abject triviality” into which we have descended reflects both pride and fear, and a reclaiming of community is the only way to transcend our current predicament. In a recent editorial. Garrison Keillor argues that kindness and humility are the keys to rejuvenation:

    The old America endures, as long as baseball endures, or gardening, or joke-telling, or the state fair where people go to see pigs the size of Volkswagens and ride inside something like a salad spinner. It endures along with church suppers. They are dying out some places because the Myitles and Gertrudes who were the brains of the church supper movement faded away, but the suppers survive in small towns, a cultural institution.؛

    This last point is not an incidental one: churches have a role to play if we are to reclaim mutual trust. Churches can celebrate our cultural diversity, seek to foster generational friendships, and perhaps show greater flexibility with regard to outreach within the community (e.g., diffei’enttimes foi’WOl’ship, innovative leadershipmodels, creative outreach ministries). Solidarity can triumph over the poisonous balkanization of our public discourse if forms of community, including church, are fresh and welcoming. Our model in this effoit is the life and witness of Jesus Christ. The current calendar year does not culminate with the presidential election, but with the hopeful expectation for a miraculous bilth. Jesus, thiOugh his lowly beginnings and model for humility, reminds US that human pride is never the ultimate goal. The hymn of Philippians 2 explains this perhaps better than any other passage: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:5-7). While capable of attaining any eaithly treasure, Christ did not regard his status as something to be exploited (Greek harpagmos), but took the path of servant leadership. Such a model works against common human instincts. Our prideful inclinations are basic to our humanity, reflecting our fallibility. Yet Advent reminds US of the humble loots of the Christ-child, the expectation of a “new and glorious morn,” and our need to live into this new reality, however impeiTectly. We return to our original question: do we reap what we sow? Is there retributive justice, both reward and punishment, on a consistent basis? The answer in many cases is no. Qoheleth was surely correct that the weak often perish, and those who abuse positions of power do not necessarily receive appropriate punishment. Even so, we can also affirm the veracity of the saying ftom Proverbs: excessive pride leads to destruction. We have operated too ftequently with the assumption that sophisticated methods for communication, gadgets, and othertechnological advances send us on an ever-upward spiral of advancement. And yet the loss of community has perhaps never

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    been more profound. Regardless of who wins the presidential election, the imperative stands before people of faith to be voices for inclusion and hospitality, to find creative ways ofbringingtogetherthose fiom across the ideological spectrum, andto minimize the politics of personal destruction. Withdrawal fiom society is not the best option within the Reformed tradition: the breakdown of community and rancorous division demand our earnest attempts at reform. A rebirth of mutual trust can happen most effectively at the local level, where koinonici (“community” or “fellowship”) is not just our best hope, but one of the essential elements of the Christian faith. One of the most common clichés is that Elections have consequences.’’ This particular cliche is accurate. Perhaps a consequence of the current election is that we might turn away fiom pride and excessive partisanship, seeking to unleash what Abraham Lincoln so eloquently described as ־־the better angels of our nature.” The alternative is a filrther worsening of our fiayed communal life, such that we collectively prove the veracity of the ancient saying: ־־Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a

    Notes t. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Αία,; and Immoral Society (New York Simon and Schuster, 1932), 4. 2. WarrY Carter, The Politics oj Rage: George Wallace,The Origins oJThe Ne >١١Conservatism, And The Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 468. 3. Edward R. Murrow, “See It Now: A Report on Senator loseph R. McCarthy,” CBS-TV, March 9, 1954. 4. Matt Bai, All The Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid (New York: Allred A. Knopl, 2014), 218. 5. Garrison Keillor, “Make the most ol your briel time on Earth,” The Washington Post, August 18,

  • Preaching on Generosity

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    Preaching on Generosity

    Theodore T Wardlaw

    Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas

    Spoiler aleit: if you’re interested in reading this aiticle because it is going to piovide for you the outline of your stewardship sermon this year, you may be disappointed . My task in this aiticle is to write about “Preaching on GeneiOsity,” and, after twenty-three years of parish ministry and fouiteen years of additional service as a seminary president, 1 am persuaded that, theologically speaking, the topic of generosity covers far more territory than the often-dreaded Annual Stewardship Sermon. Moreover, I believe that preaching on geneiOsity is a practice that should be going on acioss the year and in every liturgical season. Preaching that Annual Stewardship Sermon, on the other hand, just like planning a stewardship season, more often than not turns aiOund matters of technique, while preaching and cultivating geneiOsity touches something far more purposeful, and utteily central, regarding the practice of faithful discipleship. Most of us preachers are aware of the technique and spend much time studying up on the latest developments in that technique. The technique has to do with how we can “package” stewardship this year (as opposed to how we did that last year or the year before). I was at a dinner paity a few years ago—a paity thrown by one of the trustees of the seminary I serve, to introduce me to some of her friends in one of the larger, wealthier churches in our constituency. A guest sitting acioss the dining table from me asked me a disarming question: “What’s your pick-up line’?” Immediately, the loom fell silent. “Whaf?” I asked, a little incredulously. “Well,” he said, “you’re a guy who goes aiound asking people for money for your seminary, and I’m curious as to how you stait that conversation. For instance,” he went on, “when you’re standing in line at a bakery ordering a bagel or a croissant or a loaf of bread, one pick-up line you might use would be to say to the guy behind the counter, ‘1 serve a man who once piovided enough bread to feed hve thousand people, and I’d like to introduce you to him. ‘ That’s what I’m talking about, so what’s your pick-up line’?” I honestly don’t remember how I answered that question. I do remember being offended by it. He was reducing the sacred element of relationship regarding what I do—andwhat perhaps youdo,too,in your own settings—toarathercheesytechnique, as if a conversation about geneiOsity staits with a “pick-up line.” The need for such technique is rooted, I believe, in anxiety at the loot of how we often compartmentalize our lives—much the way the ancient Greeks did. For the Greeks, all of the important dimensions of life were divided up into neat dualisms by which they distinguished the world of the sacred from the world of the profane. They developed many such dualisms, these Greeks: heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, soul and body, eternity and mortality, and so on. The Greeks have had a greater impact upon our own thinking and practice than we can imagine. And we, too, have added to their list church and society, faith and politics, spirituality and activism. Something about such dualistic thinking has led many church people to conclude that money is one of those slimy, earthly things that doesn’t really have an appropriate place in the higher affairs of faith but is seen more as a necessary evil.

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    But I don’t buy those assumptions about money—that it’s grimy and sleazy and necessarily evil. In a culture such as ours, after all, money is the primary way we assign value. It is impoitant, therefore, for preachers to build a rhetorical universe—not just on Stewardship Sunday but aciOss the years—large enough for disciples to inhabit regularly. Such a universe—day by day and year by year—enables US to consider, in the management of our money and our time, the value which we are assigning to the Church of Jesus Christ. After all, far from some awkward Greek dualism, it is impossible for biblical faith not to inform our politics, for our spirituality not to inform our activism, for our piety not to inform our ethics, and for our convictions about the importance of the Church and its ministry not to inform the way we spend our money. Where do we stait, though, when it comes to building this large rhetorical universe ‘? We stait, not just with the handful-or-two of piOof-texts which we most often gravitate toward on Stewardship Sunday. Rather we stait with what the whole of scripture has to teach us about geneiOsity. I think, for example, of what Mark the gospel-writer was working on in his image of the growing seed. In chapter 4 of Mark’s gospel, “[Jesus]…said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the giOund, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would spiOut and grow, he does not know how. The eaith produces of itself, hrst the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come. The “seed parables” in this section of Mark 4 are parables of encouragement for Mark’s readers. When Mark wrote his gospel, he had in mind a church that needed an encouraging word. Maybe they suffered from a lack of numerical strength; maybe they needed leaders; maybe they felt ignored or persecuted by their context (does any of that sound familiar, by the way’?). Maybe they were about ready to pack it all in, because by themselves theyjust couldn’t summon the imagination or energy required to get them beyond their despair. So Mark made sure that they had the chance to read these words of Jesus about seeds growing mysteriously; about hopeless beginnings that yield miraculous results; about a tiny mustard seed which, when sown upon the giOund, is the smallest of all the seeds on eaith; yet when it is sown it “grows up” as Mark says, “and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts foith large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. ”2 In the rhetorical universe which Mark was creating, it was impoitant for Mark’s church (and now ours) to understand that, whatever it takes to convey geneiOsity, it’s not all up to us. Sometimes people come to church seeking a blessing from us pastors, only to discover that the blessing which we might speak is the same blessing that surges up, by the power of God, within them too, to hll their heaits and mouths and to bless someone else. And thiOugh such geneiOsity—geneiOsity that comes from a source bigger than ourselves—something not much larger than a mustard seed grows and grows and puts foith branches until a whole community of disciples become a geneious tree, and birds of the air make nests in its shade. This is how God fleshes out God’s geneiOsity for us, and it happens over and over again. I’mtoldthat Maitin Luther King, Jr. —the man most of us would say is the undisputed father of the Civil Rights movement—never claimed that for himself. I’m told that he bestowed that honoruponhisfather,MartinLutherKing,Sr. And that sometime

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    before his own death. Daddy King said that the real father of the Civil Rights movement was the African-American preacher who baptized him—a man named Paschal. But the Reverend Mr. Paschal said, before he died, that the real father of the Civil Rights movement was a white Georgia legislator named Robeit Alston—aman who, long before Civil Rights became a public issue proposed legislation calling for fair and humane treatment of African-American convicts, and was shot and killed for it. But it was Alston who paid for Paschal to go to seminary, and Paschal baptized Daddy King, and Daddy King was the father of Maitin Luther King, Jr., and thiOugh such a ministry of geneiOsity—the conveying of blessing from one person to another—a mustard seed grew into a tree, and birds of the air made nests in its shade. ؛ This image of birds making their nests in the shade is an image of Eden restored. This is like unto the kind of rhetorical universe we can create in a community of disciples when we talk—month by month and year by year—about geneiOsity. When people bless each other thiOugh the ministry of geneiOsity, it is as if the gates of Eden are opened, and we are allowed back in to live together in oneness. It is as if we remember that we were born to be a blessing and to bless. It is as if there is no moment and no occasion when living in such a way is not appropriate. I know a man here in this Southwestern pait of the United States who has made an astonishing amount of money. He is of an age now when he could easily retire, but he chooses not to. He has been a blessing to many causes, many churches, and many academic institutions, including the one I serve. “I want to keep making money,” he has said, “so that I can give it away.” He is blessed—not just to enrich himself, but more profoundly, to be a blessing. Could it be that some pastor somewhere had something to do with creating a rhetorical universe of generosity’? Could it be that, in his congregation, many people were also so encouraged to be blessings’? Such a universe is created week by week, if it is created at all, when people are saturated—through purposeful preaching and liturgy—in the ways of our geneiOus God. In the last congregation I served before coming to Austin, we regularly received new members once a month, and we welcomed them in worship. They would come to the front of the church and be introduced, and then I would issue a charge to them. I would invite them to accept four disciplines—that of regular worship (and if they were away from town over a weekend, I would encourage them to hnd a church wherever they were in which to worship); of Christian formation (I would tell them that “next to the life of love, the most beautiful thing was a human mind dedicated to the glory of God); of hnding two program and/or mission activities in the church in which to participate (one of inhaling the love of God and the other of exhaling the love of God); and of adopting a pattern of regular giving. On that last point, I would stress that it’s not a matter of having to give, but rather one of getting to give—for them and for all of US who have been given so much. The regular opportunity for me to rehearse this fourfold charge and for the newest congregants to hear it and for the rest of the church to overhear it, became a ritualized act of identity that over time helped shape the congregation’s memory and self-perception. It is not a matter, after all, of just preaching generosity, but also one of embedding this value within the church’s liturgy. I once preached on “The Benediction” in a church I served on Long Island. It was the last in a long series on various essential paits of the shape of our worship—praise, confession, pardon, scripture, sermon.

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    song, affirmation, intercession, etc. In this particular sermon, I addressed first the assumption that a lot of Presbyterians (wrongly) have about the benediction—that it is something that only an ordained minister can pronounce. And then I explored what some saw as an outrageous idea—that anyone can bless someone else. What’s more, many of my parishioners had formerly been Catholics, and they had deeplyheld convictions about the act of blessing being rooted in priestly privilege. I did not realize it at the time, but I was shaking some old foundations when I said to my congregation, “Now, just for fun here at the end of this sermon, why don’t we rehearse some of the grammar of geneiOsity. I’d like to ask you to repeat after me: ‘The Lord bless you.’ ” “The Lord bless you,” they said in unison. I said, “Now, say these words after me: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you.’ ” “The Lord bless you and keep you,” they said, a bit like children getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Then I said, “That was good, that little dialogue of benediction! We were each of us born to a ministry of generosity—born to be a blessing and to bless and to receive the blessings of others. It takes a little practice, but soon we learn that there is no moment when benediction is not appropriate, and there is no person, really, unqualified to give a benediction. When you are happy, celebrating with friends, and the air is charged with the geneiOsity of God, don’t be afraid to say ‘God bless you.’ And on the darkest day of your life, when the geneiOsity of God is harder to notice, don’t be afraid, even then, to say ‘The Lord bless you and keep you;’ for those may just be the words that succeed in lighting a candle just bright enough to see by. When you visit in someone’s house, say ‘May God bless you and your family.’ And when you come to church, for God’s sake find a way to say to one another some geneiOus word of blessing. There is nothing any of us needs more.”١ It is the hope of being blessed, in some way expected or unexpected, that compels people to church. They come, just like birds who make their nests in the shade of a flourishing tree. They come because, somewhere in that marvelous nest that is the Church, they hope to see it feathered with layer upon layer of geneiOsity. They also come, at least some of them, because they are searching for purposes larger and more compelling than their own. They often remind me of the rich man, in Luke’s parable, whose biggest problem (or so he thought) was that he didn’t have enough barns in which to store his crops. He addressed his own soul: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. ” But the parable ends with God’s judgment: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be’?” Then comes the moral: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. ”5 Here is a man whose self-absorption had not yet fully anesthetized himself against some dialogue—feeble though it might have been—with his own soul. Do we not recognize him sitting in our pews’? His fundamental problem is not his wealth or achievement per se. Rather, it is the presumption of ownership with which he approaches everything he has. Concentrâting on what he thinks is his bought and paid for; he discovers too late that everything he has—even his own being, even his own soul—is a short-term loan from God. To put it another way, he doesn’t know how to tell time. I don’t mean how to look at his watch and discern the hour of the day, but how to look at life and distinguish the temporary from the permanent, the transitory from the eternal. Since he doesn’t

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    know how to tell time, he looks at all that he has—all of those things, by the way, that separate him from any sense of living in community with others—and decides that these things are what have ultimate value for him. He doesn’t know the time. He doesn’t know how late it is. It is no easy thing, this business of measuring the impact of what we value, of telling time. None of US, by the way, are expeits at it. In my years of ministry, I have encountered and been employed by some of our own churchly, tall steeple versions of barns and bigger barns. But for the fact that our churchly barns have steeples on top, it is otherwise the same insidious game. So we preachers also need to be reminded of that truth of the Gospel—that life is measured not in terms of what we own, but in terms of Who owns US. A while back, I had lunch with a friend who lives in the Noitheast. He was a former parishioner and was in Austin on business. He is bright, nationally recognized in his work, a gifted and effective leader, and at the top of his game. Over lunch, I told him that he looked great. He said, “Yeah, I feel great… now.” And then he told me about being poised a few years ago to take a six-month sabbatical in order to write a book. And just before that sabbatical was to begin, he went to his physician for a lOutine check-up. The doctor looked him over, ordered some tests, and hnally a few weeks later said, “Cancer.” More tests, an operation, recuperation, chemotheraphy, so much for the six-month sabbatical. “I’m doing hne now,” he told me, “but something like this changes everything.” I said, “What’s different’?” He said, “I had a chance to look at all that I had done and to ask myself the question ‘Does any of this make the world a better place’?’” He said, “Now I’m trying to live as if time is my ally as I try to do something useful in my life.” He said, “The main thing that’s different is that I used to think I owned my time, and now I know I don’t.” I am recalling this conversation because he asked me to share with others that lesson he has learned. So this story is yours, too, to share. Consider it a message from—who knows’?—the man in Luke’s text with all the barns. Consider it as maybe the chastened awareness of one who had forgotten for a while that the essential question of life is not “Where can I put all my stuff’?” but is instead “Who, to begin with, has placed me here in the world on loan’?” It’s not what we own that matters, but Who owns us—One Who once said that the more you give away in love, the more you are. And not just for the sake of other people, but for your own sake, too—for the sake, hnally, of your own soul. In the narratives of countless disciples such as my lunch companion, we are reminded that the world is hlled with living embodiments of geneiOsity. They weren’t necessarily like that to begin with, but, after encounters with the One Who owns US, they discovered their faithful destinies. One of my favorite columnists for the longest time was Roger Rosenblatt. Years ago he collected some of his most cherished essays into a book which he named The A{:: in :ﺋﺲ :ا٢;ع٢ ةئ:ة intum, was origmallytLe title of aparticulariy moving

    in Washington was unable to get airborne because of ice on its wings and plunged instead into the fiOzen waters of the Potomac River. Rescuers came from everywhere, and television cameras captured dramatic footage of a man clinging with hve others to the tail section of the airplane bobbing up and down there in the Potomac. Every time a helicopter lowered a life-line and a flotation ring to him, the man waved it

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    away and passed it instead to another of the passengers. It happened time after time, until that man—overcome by the cold—hnally went under himself. And then that man captured our imaginations, both because of his selflessness and because of his anonymity. Rosenblatt put into words what a lot of US surely thought about. “At some moment in the water, ” he wrote, “he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had. to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he deliberately let it happen…. Since it was he who lost the fight, we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the reverse, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind US of our true feelings in this matter… .The odd thing,” Rosenblatt concludes, “is that we do not even believe that the man in the water lost his fight…. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it fiOze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger… .The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do. ”٥ “He was the best we can do.” This is how we describe Jesus Christ. “The man in the water”—the water of baptism, the water of life, the water that courses thiOugh the eons of history and thiOugh the lives of all of us; and thiOugh the life, ceitainly, of the Church. “He was the best we can do.” Look for signs of his body, present in the midst of this body. See him here, in the middle of it all, passing on to US the means of geneiOsity, charging US, in turn, to do the same. For we are not our own; no, we belong instead, always, to the One Who owns US.

    Notes 1 Mark 4:26-29 2 Mark 4: 3032 3 From a conversation with the late Fred Craddock, at a meeting of the Moveable Feast seminar in Atlanta in 1991. 4 Wardlaw, “Encouraging Words,” preached at Setauket Presbyterian Church, Setauket, Long Island, MV- March 1 ,٥1991. 5 Luke 12: 13-21 6 Roger Rosenblatt, The Αία,; the Water (NewV’ork: Random House, 1994), 169-17.٥

  • Save Us from Our Spirituality: Fleshing out Easter

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    Save Us ﻟﺪOur Spiritual^: Fleshiftg out Easter

    Joshua Rice

    Mount Paran North Church of God, Marietta, Georgia

    Now when grace fUls tire soul, that soul rejoices and smiles and. dances,for it i٠s possessed and inspired, so tlrat to ﻹ1,ﻻﺀ1ا ٦ of tire, unenlightened it max seem to be. drunken, cra^x, a٠nd٠be٠si٠d٠e ٠itself. … For with tire. God-possessed rrot οηΐχ i٠s tire, sorrl. wont to be. stirred and goa٠d٠e٠d ٠a٠s i٠t were into ecstasy brrt tire, bod^ a٠l٠so i٠spushed andfiery, wartned bx tire. oversowingjox within !١lri٠c٠lr passes orr tire, sensation to tire, outer man, and thus many oftlre. foolislr are. deceived and srrppose. tlrat tire, sober are. drunk. Though, indeed, i٠t i٠s true, tlrat tlre.se. sober ones are. drunk in a. sense.. Philo of Alexandra, First Century CE

    Being a Pentecostal on Easter is like being a first grade child on Christaas moming . The pent-up energy is overwhelming. The whole day is so enchanted. 1 am not always outwardly emotional, yet 1 stmggle to keep it together during the services. Every Easter Sunday, 1 fight tears fiom the first note of the gospel choir. But when those in my camp stand to preach on this holiest of days, we have to check our sensitive sides at the door. Christ has risen, and this calls for a sermon that might peel the paint off the walls. A little-known fact about global Pentecostalism is that we build our faith communities around the centerpiece of preaching. A lot of people fail to realize this because it’s our spiritual fireworks, not our sermons, that tend to get noticed and make our movement distinctive. But this is mistaken. The Jews have often been called the People of the Book. We Pentecostals might be called the People of the Preacher. It was Martin Luther who introduced preaching as the centerpiece of Christian worship during the Protestant Reformation, with his emphasis on ‘ /،/ ١٠ ״scripture! as the proper foundation of tme faith. Still, the difference between a Lutheran worship service and a Catholic mass is not immediately apparent today for the uninitiated. Although a radical, Luther held ontoabunch ofthe Roman church’s accoutrements: a high view ofthe sacraments, prayers of call and response, goblets, robes, lectionaries, glum paint, manuscripted sermons. Pentecostals, for better or worse, dispensed with all these things. If there is a Hammond organ andapreacher, church can be had. 1 once worked at one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Atlanta, with a huge staff and a fancy new building. Occasionally, our senior minister used to exclaim, “We don’t need this building. Just put me and the music director in the parking lot and they’ll come.” He was probably right. You might say that we Pentecostals have always held onto the protest in Protestantism with greater extremity than Martin Luther. As a result, it is practically a truism to say that Pentecostal preachers go all out. The message cannot be divested fiom the physical presentation, the force&l flesh and blood of the preacher. If you are not a Pentecostal, you cannot imagine the things that 1 have seen. There is the sheer decibel level of our preaching, of course. Many of our preachers do not believe that preaching is preaching unless the sermon is shouted at the top of the lungs fiom start to finish, always into a microphone. 1 have heard preachers in tiny sanctuaries with a dozen people, and they still use a microphone. The heightened

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    decibe] level is often said to be that which distinguishes preaching ftom teaching. It’s perfectly fine if you aren’t shouting much; you’re just teaching, and we value that too. But if you claim to be preaching, then you’d better bring the heat. There is the athletic nature of Pentecostal preaching as well. In our tradition, preaching can take a toll on the body. Some of our preachers carry a towel on their shoulder throughout the sermon, like a heavyweight boxing coach, just to keep the sweat out of their eyes. I’ve seen our preachers sweat through double-breasted suits like they were undershirts, royal bluejackets deepening to midnight navy by the time of the altar call. Our preaching calisthenics are myriad: jumping, dancing, running, crying. Sometimes we create impromptu skits by pulling people ftom the congregation , like a comedy sketch show. تWhose line is it anyway?” There is the dialogical nature of Pentecostal preaching often associated with African-American Christianity but normative for Pentecostals everywhere. I was in Haiti two years ago teaching pastors at a Pentecostal seminary, and I was immediately taken aback by the intensity of the questions routinely shot at me ftom the class. It seemed to me that the students were sparring with me rather than creating discussion (my translator referred to the experience as the “shooting range,” which didn’t help me feel better). After I adjusted to the new scene, I realized that the Haitians were just living out their Pentecostalism in the classroom. Since our movement eschews experts, truth must emerge ftom dialogue. I was a preacher to them, not a professor, so interruption was the ultimate compliment. The Pentecostal preacher testifies like a witness to the jury. There is an unction to it that involves movement and sound, flesh and bones. No one can remain, no one must remain still and silent. ־־Well!” “Preach it, preacher!” Alright now!” ־־We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard,” Peter and lohn protest in Acts 4:20. The sermon is not really a sermon, in the sense of a presentation people listen to. Instead, it is a dialogue that all participate in. It is a contact sport, a ־־Ianguage event” not a PowerPoint, with the requisite calling back and forth, the energy transferring ftom one side of the room to the other until no one and everyone is the preacher.’ len it is done, the physicality doesn’t stop. Pentecostal preachers have this phrase: ־־Shake it out.” You do that when you are alone afterthe service, wringing out the last drops of passion ftom your bones. If “the med، :؛ijS thg message,” asMcLuhan famous{:، remarked, I have beeg

    toanypreacher’sunderstandingandappropriationofthe Easter story. Modernism gave to us the medium of intellectual cognition with its natural message of rationalism as the primary method of discerning truth. Doesn’t this modernistic medium and message diminish the way that we read and proclaim Easter texts? lat might it mean, ftom top to bottom, with every sinew of ourselves, to join the Pentecostals of Acts 2 and ־־flesh out” Easter?

    Fleshing Out Our Stories One of my favorite seminary classiOom tools is a rare gem in historical Jesus studies: the so-called Bar Ma’jan Parable. Found in the Palestinian Talmud, the folk story of Bar Maj’an apparently antedates Jesus, allowing us a small window into Jewish storytelling in and aiound his time.2 In this simple tale, a young Torah student and a rich tax collectoi ־named Ma’jan

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    meet their fate in the afteilife. The Torah student was so socially insignihcant that his death goes unnoticed, while Ma’jan, the wealthy tax gatherer, is given a heiO’s funeral. This strange dissonance is caused by the fact that before his death, Ma’jan threw a great banquet and invited all of the poor, so that the people forgot all about his shameful lifestyle. In hazy dreams of paradise, however, the student is enjoying gardens and fountains, while Ma’jan is unable to CIOSS over. I love to watch the eyes of my classiOom students when they are intiOduced to this story for the hrst time. There is typically a pregnant silence while they piOcess the elements of the story that they already know from several parables of Jesus. Bar Ma’jan becomes a pathway into glimpses of Jesus that are often brand new. It begins to dawn on them that Jesus didn’tjust float aiound Galilee, a semi-conscious oracle of divine speech. Jesus had a brain. Jesus had a context. Jesus reworked new stories out of old ones in order to share his theological opinions. In shoit, Jesus was a real, flesh and blood human being who lived, really lived, among other real human beings. But the flesh of Jesus is not only apparent in his engagement with other rabbinic voices; the stories of Jesus themselves have an inherently fleshly quality. Bar Ma’jan is simply not alive enough for Jesus, so in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, he takes the elements of the story and vivifies them. Jesus turns their grainy analogue signals into roaring high definition. This vivification is intensely physical. In fact, the intiOduction in Jesus’ reworked parable is not only about the rich man’s fashionable outerwear, but includes a depiction of his fancy underwear, made of “fine linen. “This image of fine linen caressing the clean body of the rich man is contrasted with the hunger pangs and skin sores of Lazarus. As if this vivid physical suffering were not enough to behold, Jesus paints in some stray dogs that lick Lazarus’s sores for sustenance . Taking in such a description of Lazarus in an oral culture must be something like watching the recent film 12 Years a Slave today. Youjust want to look away, such is the brutal imagery. The remainder of the parable doubles down on the physicality of the characters. Lazarus comes to rest in the very breast of Abraham, while the rich man suffers in toituiOus fire and focuses on a paiticulaily painful speck on the tip of his tongue. There is a spatial chasm that separates them. This fixed space, like a raging river, simply cannot be ciOssed. And perhaps most creatively, Jesus does not conclude the story with moral platitudes or ethical principles. While the Ma’jan parable leaves the listener hanging, Jesus fills in the blanks. The point of the story is the set of scioIIs that are a pait of the rhythms of life for Jesus’ audience: the pen-and-ink Bibles. “They have the Pentateuch and the PiOphets,” Jesus concludes. “The scrolls are right down the street at the synagogue. Go and handle them.” Jesus’ focus on the fleshliness of the rich man, and Lazarus is the vehicle toward a more visceral reflection on an object that Jesus’ audience could see, touch, hear, venerate. It’s always weird to me when people call Jesus a great philosopher. In my reading, he seems so ardently literal about things: “Go and do likewise.” What does this have to do with Easter’? Easter puts preachers in the shoes of Jesus in that each year we must retell, rework an older story. This story has been with us for many centuries; what do we say about it now’? Could it be that the pulse of contemporary Western culture challenges US to reinvest these narratives with a profound physicality’? Perhaps we can render the Church a great service by taking some preaching cues from Jesus’ parables and fleshing out our resurrection sermons.

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    Fleshing Oui Spirituality On September 18, 2012, the world of early Christian scholarship was jolted by Dr. Karen King’s announcement of the discovery of a groundbreaking papyrus. Presented in the shadow of the Vatican, the Coptic fragment was received with much media fanfare, including interviews with major news networks. The lines of the relic are broken, but one cleaily reads, “Jesus said to them, ‘ My wife.King claimed that the fouith century papyrus was copied from a second century Greek text, so although it held no relevance to the historical Jesus, it did supply “a new voice within the diverse chorus of eaily Christian traditions about Jesus that documents that some Christians depicted Jesus as married. ”3 Turns out that the scholarly consensus now considers the papyrus a medieval forgery, and not even a very good one at that. 1 am not seeking to throw Dr. King under the bus. Her paper is quite nuanced, but 1 do contend that our newfound fascination with Gnostic understandings of Jesus that has birthed a cottage industry reflects contemporary leanings of spirituality as much as it does a unique niche of historical inquiry. *־For ־those who would seek to endow early Christian Gnosticism with the status of an authentic expression of our ־faith, albeit a different denomination, perhaps we should look not only to the past, but also to the present. Our ־culture’s spirituality is Gnostic, and it is failing. Barth Ehrman describes early Christian Gnosticism broadly:

    According to Gnostics, the world is a place of imprisonment for ־sparks of the divine that originated in the divine realm but have come to be entrapped her־e. These sparks want and need to escape their ־material entrapment. They can do so by learning the secrets of who they really are, where they came from, how they got here, and how they can reton. 5

    Just like some Nazi scholars somehow separate Jesus from his Jewish lineage, the Gnostics divested Jesus of his “material entr־apment,” his physicalityj What resulted was not necessarily some liberation of the soul, but rather the denial of the significance of the body. The Corinthian church took some baby steps toward what would later ־become Gnosticism with their ־libertine cat call: “All things are permissible !” Such a posture led them to downplay bodily ethics (see 1 Corinthians 5-6). The Gnostics were “spiritual brrt not religious” long before the question made it onto census reports. Where do we see the substance of Gnostic Christianity today’? Look no ftrrlher ־ than Facebook, where the ethereality of opinion and affiliation take the place of lifestyle , of embodied action. We may not keep our ־knowledge secret anymore like the Gnostics of old, but we encamp around it, imbuing it with the secret powers of hatred, ;enophobia, and pride. Listento t؛e current pofitical rhetoric (if y(()١u c،an،slomach it)

    need, offering whimsical notions of distant moral support instead. Even the financial support we will send to them isn’t physical, but rather another ־clever ־maneuver ־on the public debt sheet. And the people that we preach to, what Gnostic messages constitute their ־diet’? On a more popular ־level, look no ftrrlher ־than the “spiritual leaders” of blathering Hollywood, those who substitute an external God with a concrete history for a voice inside our heads. Martin Buber, the famed Jewish philosopher described this descent

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    into spirituality:

    But if it is the castle of separation where man conducts a dialogue with himself, not in order to test himself and master himself for what awaits him but in his enjoyment of the conhguration of his own soul—that is the spirit’s lapse into mere spirituality. And this becomes truly abysmal when self-deception reaches the point where one thinks that one has God within and speaks to him. But as surely as God embraces US and dwells in US, we never have him w ithin.۶

    All of it seems Gnostic to me: religion devoid of concrete history, belief devoid of an external ethic, boundaried community subveited by individual inferiority. Enter the Bible, which revels in the physical world so much so that no Hebrew term even correlates with the great modern divide of the “spiritual” (vs. the secular). From the beginning of Genesis, God revels in physicality, declaring the eaithy ereation to be “good” at every turn. Man and woman do not emerge from some divine spiritual realm. They are hued out in the dilt. Jacob’s body slams God, and God hghts back with bone-wrenching vengeance. Moses hits a lock with a stick with the result that he isn’t allowed to set his old feet upon the Promised Giound. Levitical priests mediate what can be eaten, touched, and tithed. Likewise, the Temple is constructed with marked specihcity: measurements, metallurgy, and the pots and pans all matter. In the Bible, holiness is not holiness unless it occupies a space. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Matter matters to God.”8 Are there not over two hundred muscles in the head of an ordinary caterpillar to tell US such a thing’? و

    Fleshing out Easter When I was in graduate school, I took a seminar on ancient Greek texts that might help to illuminate features of the New Testament due to their piOximity or contents. One of the texts that we translated was the Life ofNuma by Plutarch, who wrote just after the Apostle Paul. In Plutarch’s story, Numa was a king in the distant past of Greece’s glory, known for prudence and wisdom. I must admit that I kept wondering what Numa had to do with the New Testament even as we chiOnicled his kingly exploits. Finally, during the last session of the semester, we translated Numa’s grand hnale. In the end of Plutarch’s tale, 500 years after the death of Numa, a flood sweeps thiOugh town and opens his tomb. Surprisingly, no body is found there. In the corpse’s place are piles of books. No resurrection is heralded and no appearance occurs, just books in place of the bones. With five minutes left in the class, it seemed clear that everyone agreed: “The resurrection of Jesus is not unique in ancient literature . We need to forget that confessional nonsense. Have a great Christmas break!” I understand that these matters are complex, but it still felt like the professor cursed my momma. For Christians, the apex of the biblical story arch that begins in Genesis is the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ resurrection is the great surprise of the metanarrative, the ace up God’s sleeve that no one saw coming. Easter is the joker in the pack when the chips have all been lost. At the empty tomb, God takes the conductor’s wand and brings the symphony to its point of tilumph. On Easter Sunday, we realize first and foremost that we regular humans have been simple newborns for millennia, glimpsing

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    shades and colors of reality, but not distinct shapes; hearing echoes and cadences that we have barely begun to translate into anything discernable. Easter is our disorienting bilth where we have to navigate a brand new outside world. Unsurprisingly, the physicality of the resurrection event prevails in the gospel narratives. In John’s account, the grave clothes have been laundered. In Matthew’s telling, the guards tremble, are stupehed, then run. In Luke’s story, there is a piOnounced emphasis on food and eating. In Paul’s account, over a thousand healthy eyeballs see the resurrected Lord at one time. In all the accounts, the stone has been rolled away and Jesus seems hxated on walking the same old dilt roads with his old friends. “Reach out your hand and put it into my side,” Jesus says in John 20:27. But this time he is not refortifying a withered hand; he is challenging the disciple to touch. “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 2Τ:39). And ultimately, in the ascension, Jesus enters the firmament as a body, uniting the heavens and the eaith. In the words ol fine aitist Makoto Fujimura,

    Some say that such “resurrection” is one’s memory ol the disciples’ desire to speak ol Christ, to continue to remember him. To me, the Resurrection is a physical imposition, not merely a psychological recognition. Christ’s sacred reality invaded ours, embedded in the abundant physical reality. The Resurrection is a new generative paradigm. Lull ol the aroma ol Christ, that replaces the old limited-resource reality. Our limited minds and perceptions cannot see yet the Lullness ol that reality. ) ٥

    The resurrection ol the gospels is not some Gnostic secret, but a physical triumph. Without slipping into unnecessary Lundamentalism, maybe it is this physicality that can save God’s people thiOugh our Easter preaching. For heaven’s sakes, is not all preaching sanctified conjecture’? So was it the same heait that was broken for the sins ol the world that revivified with new lile inside the locky enclave that Easter morning’? Was it the same Leet that were pierced by the nails that laid claim to the grave floor and shook off the linen garments’? Was it the same lungs pierced by the spear that inhaled the damp air ol resurrection lile with a stait’? Was it the same hands that were driven to the CIOSS by real Roman hands that dislodged the stone from the tomb’s entrance with a shove’? Was it the same head bloodied by the thorns ol scorn that disappeared into the eaily morning Log, the unlikely herald ol the new creation’? In the Pentecostal tradition, we recognize we weren’t there to know exactly how Easter happened or what it looked like, but we have a phrase for such rhetoric: “That’ 11 preach!” In our cultural moment, we know that our ahistorical spirituality is neither anemic nor on lile suppoit. It is already dead. Let’s invite the resurrected Jesus to the memorial service, even as he smells ol sweat and spices, fresh and unsightly scabs upon his brow. Let’s wrestle with him as Jacob did and dodge his dislocating jabs. Let’s allow the holy temple ol his body to sanctify our space. Let’s watch him play in the dilt. This Easter, may we not stand before a phantom, a parable, or an idea. May we stand before a resurrected person, shocked and awed, yet not stnick dumb. May we have the bravery to look deep into his wounds, then to shout with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

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    If we think there is even a chance of such a miracle among US, we might run the aisles like Pentecostal evangelists, just as sure as Peter and John ran for Christ’s tomb. Karl Baith said that every Christian worshipper, saint and skeptic alike, is stricken by one question in her heait of heaits: “Is it true’?””

    Notes t I borrow this phrase from Eta Linnemann, cited by Peter Rhea Jones, Studying the Parables ofJesus (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 1999), 6. 2 ؟>ﻫﻪ ko’oli.e.veà., The Talmud of the Land of Israel, Vol. 20 : Hagigah and Vloed Qatan ICWcagp■. University of Chicago Press, 1986), 57. On the origins of the Bar Ma’jan story, see Joachim Jeremias, The Parables ofJesus (2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1954), 183. 3 Karen L. King, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife… A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment,” n.p. (2012). Online: http://www.gospel-thomas.net/KingJesusSaidToThem_draft_0917.pdf.Forthelaterpublished article see Harvard Theological Review 107, no. 2 (2014): 131-159. 4 For perhaps the most famously sympathetic reading of early Gnostic traditions, see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1989). ةBálüa, Ηο١ν Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preaclier from Galilee York: Harper One, 2014), 304. 6 On the former, see Walter Grundmann, Were Ist Jesus von Nazareth? (Weimar: Verlag Deutsche Christen, 19^). 7 Martin Buber, land Thou (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 152. 8 Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (New York: Harper Collins), 228. 9 See Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper, 2013), 19. 10 Makoto Fujimara, “Friends, Haven’t You Any Fish?” in What Did Jesus Ask?: Christian Leaders Reflect on His Questions of Faith, ed. Elizabeth Dias (New York: Time Inc. Books, 2015), 274. 11 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Matt (NewT’ork: Harper, 1957), 97-135.

  • Every Cradle Asks Us ‘Whence?’ and Every Coffin ‘Whither’?

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    Every Cradle Asks Us “Whence?”

    and Every Co^n “Whither?

    Thomas Lynch

    Milford, Michigan

    It was the drizzly Monday morning of January 9,1882, in our nation’s capitol. The Teast of the Epiphany lately behind them, a retinue of black-clad Victorians gathered aiound a small grave in the Congressional Cemetery to bury poor Harry Miller, the dailing toddling son of Police Detective and Mrs. George Miller, who had succumbed to that winter’s contagion of diphtheria. The tiny cofhn rested on the ropes and boards over the open giOund while the mother’s sobs worked into a rising crescendo. Once everyone was in place, and though the mother seemed beyond consolation, the undertaker nodded to Ingersoll to begin. He shook his head. The mother’s deep, animal sobs continued. People shuffled their feet in the cold, discomfoited by her grief. “Does Mrs. Miller desire it?” Ingersoll asked. The dead boy’s father, who had asked Ingersoll to officiate, nodded his assent. The dead boy’s mother quieted. Roheit Ingersoll was no pastor or parson, cleric, or priest. He was rather the most notorious disbeliever of his day, his age’s Christopher Hitchens or Bill Maher. Though stridently unchurched, Ingersoll was the son of the manse, the youngest boy of a Congregationalist minister who preached his unabashed abolitionist views, and had, as a consequence, been given his walking papers by congregants in Dresden, New York, and Madison, Ohio, and thiOughout Illinois where Roheit spent most of his youth, shifting from church to church because of his father’s politics. Ingersoll was nine when his father was tried for “prevarication and unministerial conduct.” Because of his father’s mistreatmentatthe hands of Congregationalists, Robert turned first on Calvinism and then on Christianity, and by the time he stepped to the head of the grave that rainy morning in Washington, D.C., he was the best known infidel in Americaan orator and lecturer who had travelled the country upholding humanism, “free thinking and honest talk,” and making goats of religionists and their ecclesiastical up-lines. “Preaching to bishops,” an Episcopal priest of my acquaintance once told me, “is like farting at skunks.” (I have quoted him every chance I get.) And I wonder now if he wasn’t quoting Roheit Green Ingersoll. “Injure Soul” is what church people called him, while the press called him The Great Agnostic. He’d been a Colonel in the Union Army who’d raised his regiment in Illinois, fought at the battle of Shiloh where he was taken prisoner, and after the war served as the Illinois Attorney General. He taught law and lectured on Shakespeare and Reconstruction and Religious Hucksterism and was held in such high regard by WaltWhitmanthat Ingersoll gave the eulogy at the great poet’s funeral. He was able, it seems, to rise to all occasions. As he stepped to the head of the Miller boy’s burial site, Ingersoll began his oration :

    I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life and death are equal

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    kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all the dead have met. The future has been hlled with fear, stained and polluted by the heaitless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds and blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of eaith, patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. Why should we fear that which will come to all that is’? We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing-life or death. We cannot say that death is not a good. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more foitunate -the child dying in its mother’s arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life’s uneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch. Every cradle asks US “Whence’?” and every cofhn “Whither’?” The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions just as well as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The teailul ignorance of the one is as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words of the other. No man, standing where the horizon of a life has touched a grave, has any right to prophesy a future hlled with pain and tears. May be death gives all there is of worth to life. If those we press and strain within our arms could never die, perhaps that love would wither from the eaith. May be this common fate treads out from the paths between our heaits the weeds of selhshness and hate. And I had rather live and love where death is king, than have eternal life where love is not. Another life is nought, unless we know and love again the ones who love US here. They who stand with breaking heaits aiound this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells US that death, even at its worst, is only peilect rest. We know that thiOugh the common wants of life-the needs and duties of each hour-their grief will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will be to them a place of rest and peace-almost of joy. There is for them this consolation: The dead do not suffer. If they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living. Hope for the dead.

    Helpfor The living.Hopefor The dead. If there is a briefer or better motto for what vocation, education, and meditation have summoned US to, as ministry and mission to our fellow humans, I’m not able to imagine it. It comes very close to the directive my father always raised over the work we mortuary soits make it our business to do, to wit: To serve The living by caringfor The dead. It is as if we are all assigned the one endeavor, this brokering of peace between the living and the dead. Perhaps IngersolTs rhetoric seemed an incarnation-his words made flesh of the fist that we humans shake in the face of God when the worst that can happen happens, as it does. Especially at the deaths of innocents, theodicy gets the foot of doubt into the doorway of our theologies, our faith. “What good in this’?” I remember asking

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    any god in earshot, while dressing the body of a dead baby or toddler. “Is this the toll then, for the glory of God’?” I do not think I am alone in this.

    Connecticut, who took care of many of the slaughtered six-year-olds. “Why wasn’t God watching’?” Tom Waits wails in his song “Georgia Lee” on the death of a twelve-year-old Georgia Lee Moses who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in Santa Rosa, California, in the summer of 1997. “Why wasn’t God listening ‘?” “Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?” Or drowned Syrian refugees, or the collateral damage of a gun sick culture? Why wasn’t God there as he was for Lazarus and Jesus’? It is Job’s old query shared by the bereaved forever. It is kin to the case made in the eleventh chapter of the gospel of John where Jesus deliberately tarries in Capernaum so that Lazarus will be dead beyond any quibble, dead with the stench of death on him, by the time Jesus shows up, tardy in Bethany, to call the dead man, putrefying in his winding sheet, from the tomb. “This sickness will not end in death.” Jesus tells his apostles. “No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorihed thiOugh it.” “If you had been here my brother would not have died,” says Maltha, speaking for the heartbroken down the ages. This is Job’s imbiOglio: How can God be both all good and all-powerful and let such sadnesses happen’? It’s the foot of theodicy’s doubt insinuated in the door of faith. If the risen Lazarus is a harbinger of the risen Christ, the former a preview of the latter, then ours is a faith that makes its claims on the emptiness of empty tombs and the dead who yet appear alive. If theologian Thomas Long is right, and ours is a culture and a creed peopled by those who have “lost their eschatological nerve and vibrant faith in an afteilife, maybe it is because we’ve grown unfamiliar with last things, the sick and dying and the dead, the grave, the tomb, the hre or sea to which we consign the bodies of the dead which, like the sick and dying, we no longer see. Just as the aged, demented, sick, and dying are removed from the custody and care of their families, the dead are often quickly disappeared by industrialized cremation that has become the norm for body disposition in many communities and churches the funereal equivalent of a wedding without the bride or baptism without the baby or Calvary without the CIOSS, the spilt blood, and sacrihcial gore. Our celebrations of life have become vapid equivalents to Easter without an animate corpse, saying to everyone in earshot, do not be afraid. We settle for the idea of the thing while the thing itself is steadfastly avoided. Maybe we could go the distance with our dead-intimates and family, friends and co-religionists, colleagues and congregants, dead saints, such as they might be, fellow pilgrims. Maybe the best work any of US will likely do will be done at the graveside or the crematory or the crypt. That is where our cases are made in the maw of human moitality and grief, not the idea of the thing, but the thing itself. Like Ingersoll on that desolate morning, the occasions we are bold to rise to are the best and worst of times, the new life, true love, fresh grief that inform the baptisms and marriages, burials and cremations we are called to comment on, preside over, ofhciate for. The relentless cycle of Sundays and holy days, feasts, and festivals that pepper the liturgical calendar, the sick calls and counseling and pastoral visits, the committee meetings, the civic and secular enterprises that pastors and preachers are

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    bidden to or drawn in byfew present the chance to channel help for the living and hope for the dead as those places where the ante is inevitably upped, the stakes are raised, and the faithful and those of shaken faith are teetering at the brink, ready to go all in, open to a restoration of eschatological nerve. Resolve this Paschal season to go the distance with them, the living and the dead, to the edge of whatever abyss we leave the dead to, commending their beings to God, coaxing the living home in hope. And if the living will not go the distance, as they more and more are disinclined to do, then go the distance with the dead on your own, as the primary ofhce of your calling-to see your saints to the edge of whatever is or isn’t next. The opened giOund, opened hre, the hope of heaven, or the claims we make for eternal life. Accompany them with singing and with faith. It might embolden the timid, shaken family to do the same, to join in some of the work of witness and vigil, watching and praying, digging and lifting, and doing their paits in these primary human duties.

    Notes t Robert Green Ingersoll, “At a Child’s Grave” in The Works ofRobert G. Ingersoll, Clinton R Farrell, Ed. (published by Library of Alexandria), 399. 2 Thomas G. Long, Accompany Them With Singing, The Christian Funeral (Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Know, 2٥٥9), 73.

  • Peace

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    Page 20

    Peace

    Walter Brueggemann

    Cincinnati, Ohio

    Any study of Galatians in general and “fruits of the Spirit” in particular will be greatly illuminated by the recent work on Galatians by Brigitte Kahl.) She proposes that “Galatia” is not, as we were taught in seminary, a territory (northern or southern Asia Minor). The term is rather a sociological category for those who dissent from the dominant social order and who propose to live apait from that system of domination. Thus Paul addresses those who are ready to dissent and live otherwise. More specihcally Kahl argues, persuasively I judge, that the “law” that Paul castigates in that epistle is not the Jewish Torah (as much of our past discussion had assumed), but it is the law of the Roman Empire that is a law that enslaves in the service of domination and in an extractive economy: “The law and religion that Paul primarily criticizes are the law and religion not of Judaism but of the Roman Empire.”? Thus Paul writes to address those who have opted to live under the rule of Christ as an alternative to the law of Rome; that alternative is an offer of freedom, so that the emancipatory Gospel of Jesus coifarsthe domination of Caesar. Specihcally the “desires of the flesh” are attitudes and practices of self-indulgence and self-promotion that were crucial in an honor/shame society. Kahl, following Roheit Jewett, sees these “desires” as a yearning to gain superiority in the context of Rome that was “the boasting champion of the ancient woi’ld.3 Paul’s bid, against imperial seduction, is to live as a participant in a generative community rather than in the competitive rat-race of the dominant imperial culture.

    I. Because the “fruit of the Spirit” is the alternative to “the desires of the flesh,” we may begin with the negative in order to see what Paul intended by way of contrast. The Empire of Rome, like every empire, was a macho enterprise that celebrated and rewarded military prowess and that placed great accent on success and superiority in the ways that evidenced virility. This “viitue” was attached to self-promotion, selfindulgence , and self-exhibit at the expense of the other. Roman law was designed to reward those who could master the system and to diminish those who are “left behind” who could not compete. Thus Kahl can judge: “Paul’s entire argument from Gal. 3:28 thiOugh 5:15 is then not simply piOjecting an otherworldly freedom but is pait of a coded discourse among the enslaved nations about the spirituality and practice of liberation from the Roman ‘yoke of slavery”’ (5:15).)־ It is not surprising then that “strife” (eris, the antithesis of “peace”) should be prominentamong the “desires of the flesh.” Success accoi’ding to Rome noi’ms 1־equi1־ed “strife”; competition could be abrasive and would readily spill over into violence. In his more theologically programmatic statements, Paul will speak of strife that is practiced among those whom “God gave up” (Romans Ε2Τ, 26, 28) to debasement: “They are filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers. God-haters, insolent , haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish faithless, heaitless, ruthless” (vv. 29-31). In Romans 13, moreover, amid an argument about

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    “governing authorities,” Paul can say: “Let US live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, and not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy” (V. 13). According to Kahl, Paul has in purview the characteristic conduct of both those who dominated Roman social power and those who competed to “catch up.” The church that Paul has in purview in his admonition is a distinct contrast and alternative to that imperial model of well-being based on competition and individual, manly achievement that requires defeat of other competitors, all in a replication of the power and honor of “Caesar.” Paul sees that the church cannot attest the gospel as long as it imitates those modes of life and social relationships.

    Paul is a pastoral theologian; while he has, according to Kahl, the big challenge of Rome on his horizon, his energy and passion are mostly devoted to the life of his beloved congregations. The normative value system of Rome (self-advancement, self-promotion, self-exhibit) had effectively penetrated the life of the congregations that are themselves variously marked by strife, dissension, and quarrels. In the church in Corinth, Paul writes about the wisdom and power of the CIOSS that contradicts the power and wisdom that evoke imperial norms: “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters” (I Corinthians 1:11; see 3:3). The quarrels alose from choosing up sides among apostolic leaders. In II Corinthians 12:20 Paul reprimands such conduct as a prelude to his lyrical exposition on love as the gospel norm in chapter 13. The contrast he makes in chapters 12-13 is radical and complete. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul contrasts those who piOclaim Christ “from good will” and “out of love” with those who do so for self-promoting reasons: “Some pioclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These piOclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selhsh ambition, not sincerely, but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment” (1:15-17). The Pastoral Epistles utilize the same rhetoric concerning strife in the church. Those who depait from what the author regards as reliable apostolic teaching are selfpromoting : “Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes aboutwords. From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft ol the truth, imagining that godliness is a means ol gain” (6:3-5). In Titus, moreover, such strife leads to divisions in the church that are unacceptable to the author who has a passion for unity: “But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprohtable and worthless. After a hrst and second admonition, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes divisions” (Titus 3:9-10). In all ol these references, the congregations have too readily imitated the way ol the empire and abandoned the way ol the CIOSS that is a practical alternative to imperial domination.

    III. It is in the context ol such societal seduction that we consider “the fruit ol the

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    Spirit” and specifically “peace” as a fruit of the spirit. Whereas the “viitues of empire ” imitated by the church assure parsimony and competition for “scarce goods” (honor, recognition, achievement), the good news of the gospel is the geneiOsity and abundance of God that summons to a corresponding geneiOsity and abundance in the answering church. The geneiOsity and abundance of the Gospel (that of God) and the responsive geneiOsity of the community that embraces the gospel contradict the

    and obsolete. Thus “peace” in the life of the congregation (and in “Galatia” among those who refuse the rule of Rome) means to live in harmony and mutual respect, to “look after the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4), and not to insist on the right and domination of one’s own role or opinion. “Peace” then belongs in the cluster of viitues (habits) that rely on the geneiOSity and graciousness of God and on the guidance of the Spirit who will lead beyond where we are prepared to go. The implication of such communal solidarity is the recognition that one’s own status and one’s own opinion are in fact quite penultimate and must be submitted to the well-being of the congregation. Thus “peace” and its cognate attitudes and behaviors do not add up to a code of conduct. “Peace” is rather a vision of a life of gracefulness that is lived in response to the gracefulness of God. The interaction of God’s initiatory and sustaining gracefulness and a responding gracefulness constitute a profound contradiction to the way of the world that is the way of the dominant system of imperial Rome. Paul’s great manifesto of freedom means freedom from the lethal bondage to social relationships based on fear and domination: “For freedom Christ has set US free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery…. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another” (5:1, 13). Paul recognizes that freedom from self-indulgence of a combative society is freedom for the neighborhood: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another (vv. 14-15). “Pove of neighbor” is the antithesis of self-promotion and self-indulgence that will lead to devouring appetites and policies. Thus, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will ftrlfill the law of Christ” (6:2). This is the whole law ! It is the law of the new rule of Christ that contradicts the rule of Caesar. Paul’s horizon is closely upon the church; but it also stretches beyond the church to the “good of all,” that is, to the common good: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let US work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith” (6:10). Paul sees that the alternative conduct of the church has indeed wide implications beyond the sphere of the congregation. The inclusiveness of the baptismal formula of 3:22 is reiterated at the close of his leher with a hope of“peace” for the church: “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them—and mercy, and upon the Israel of God” (6:15-16). I am aware that all of this commentary on the life of the church amounts to a familiar recital of platitudes. The matter is nonetheless urgent in the church because the practice of domination in the church (in imitation of the empire) is such a recurring issue. The issue is joined sharply, for all of its familiarity, in a way that touches deeply

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    into the reality of church life. Suppose, for example, that domination consists in the exercise of power that readily takes the form of knowledge, that is, power belongs to those who “know better.” Over time the church has specialized in “knowledge as power,” a theme voiced in I Corinthians 13. (“Knowledge puffs up.”) Powerthe capacity to control depends on knowledge-control of data that conjugates as the truth. Knowledge takes many forms in the church: – the capacity to manage and manipulate policy; – expeitise in things doctrinal in order to asseit oithodoxy; – the management of moral codes that appiOve or disapprove, exclude or include; – a long memory that “we have always done it this way”; – the ability to shade gospel claims into social ideology, liberal or conservative ; – the ability to out-Bible, out-talk, out-imagine, out-remember; – the capacity to manage technological mysteries and electiOnic connections . Every form of social knowledge may move toward absoluteness. Every form of absoluteness, moreover, leads to exclusiveness and eventually a readiness to minimize those who do not measure up, who do not conform or consent to such knowledge as truth. The piOcess of knowing and controlling and then to absoluteness and then to exclusion and hnally to wounding is a ready echo of the imperialism of the world that Paul occupies. Against suchawayoflifePaul insists on “neighbor.”Whatweknowof“neighbor,” moreover, does not envision contiOl, power, or knowledge; it concerns faithfulness in relationship, to be found reliable even when not “correct.” The gospel of hdelity has been, in Paul’s time as our own, too much transposed into a gospel of ceititude, and ceititude has never saved anyone. Thus Paul, in his catalogue of the fruit of the spirit, urges that the church remember and practice gospel faith that is about reliable social relationships, and not about being right, knowing better, having contiOl, or advancing one’s self. Such faithful social relationships entail a ceitain loss of contiOl for the sake of those whom God has put in front of US. It is impossible to imagine “Caesar” losing contiOl and thereby ceasing to be Caesar. But we have this declaration that God, in God’s self-giving love, has foithe sake of love, given up conventional divine contiOl in the CIOSS in order to create new possibilities for creation (Philippians 2:5-11). It is no wonder that the apostolic preaching of the CIOSS and resurrection caused the empire in the book of Acts to tremble. Indeed, the radicality of the fruit of the Spirit that entails loss of contiOl for the sake of neighboiliness causes the conventional church to tremble. For such self-giving abandonment might lead to all manner of “objectionable” connections for the sake of neighboiliness.

    IV. “Peace” is not simply a Rodney King bid that “we all get along.” “Peace” is not settling for the golden mean or the lowest common denominator. “Peace” is not the avoidance of issues that may cause conflict. “Peace” rather is the offer of the self in ؛؛؛elity for the sake of the community. There can hardly he : ^؛u1؛؛a؛t’^؛impc٥

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    readiness of the church to divide into “red” and “blue” congregations, judicatories, and denominations is simply a sign that the gospel has been transposed into categories that offer “win-lose” options with losers being excluded. Indeed that the Church Growth Movement proposed forming communities of “like-minded” folk is a reflection of ideological passion that cannot welcome neighbors who are of a different mind. The “fruit of the spirit” is easy (or irrelevant) within communities of the like-minded. It is of course more demanding and more costly in a community of the “other-minded” who parse the gospel in ways different from our own. Paul, however, is relentless. He will not compiomise this defining point. He believes that The Big Sort according to opinion, or interest, or ideology is no way to build a chui’ch.5 “Peace” is the recognition that all of our best convictions are penultimate and finally must yield to the presence of the neighbor. The wonder of “Word and Sacrament” is urgently to the point. The sacrament is a performance of an open cluster of symbols that give great loom for different opinions. As a consequence the church cannot impose too much on the thickness of sacramental symbols. It honors a mystery that is beyond explanation.« But sacrament comes with word. Sacrament comes with interpretation of scripture. Our usual assumption is that the sermon “explains” something of the sacrament. But what if the piOcess is in fact reversed’? What if the sacrament illumes the sermon’? What if all of our words of piOclamation are regularly and knowingly passed thiOugh the filter of “blessed and biOken,” “blessed” as infused with power beyond US, “biOken” as the shattering of our best ceititudes. It is such utterance and gesture of “blessed and biOken” that permits a genuine festival of life-giving surplus! If we contrast the “desires of the flesh” with the “fruit of the spirit,” we are promptly plunged into the voitex of scarcity and abundance, or better, intoparsimony and surplus. The way of the empire, in contrast to the festival of surplus, is a way of scarcity. The empire never intends to distribute “freely,” but always arranges that scarce goods are kept for the powerfully privileged. It is the way of the empire and so the way of the parsimonious church to make sure that entitled people have surplus with cost to the rest. Such a way allows for no peace at all. The gospel way, that Paul champions, is a way of abundance, of a community that need not quarrel because there is enough for all of honor, status, and valorization from which follows enough for all of material requirements. The fact that “loaves abound” in surplus means that there can be love, joy, peace, and patience! Those who practice such neighboiliness are giOunded in abundance that emancipates , while the empire of market ideology intends that we will always strive, always be in strife for scarce goods. In the gospel of Mark, after Jesus has fed 5,000 with twelve baskets of surplus and fed T,()()() with seven baskets of surplus, the disciples still cannot compute the surplus of abundance. Jesus says to them in exasperation: “Do you not yet understand” (Mark 8:21)’? Mark, in his wisdom, can tell US why the disciples did not get it about gospel abundance: “They did not understand about the loaves, but their heaits were hardened” (Mark 6:52). The disciples are astonished because Jesus’ actions fit none of their categories of explanation. They could not compute the surplus of bread; they could not connect the dots of abundance. And the reason they could not is because “their heaits are hardened.” That is, they are a living replication of Pharaoh, the great master of scarcity who lived with a hardened heait. They tnisted scarcity and could not fit the

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    abundance of Jesus into that purview. Thus it is a contest of scarcity (that makes for competitive acrimony) and abundance (that makes peace possible). It is an easy move from remembered Pharaoh to present tense Caesar who remains still the master of administered scarcity that requires strife, jealousy, and competition. Contra Pharaoh and Caesar is the Lord of abundance, offering a world where peace among neighbors is permitted, expected, and plausible. It is impoitant to recognize that among US market ideology with its passion for commoditization, backed by an immense military investment, marked by an endlessly escalated fear of terrorism that relentlessly calls attention to violence in the neighborhoods wants to keep US on edge, fearful, anxious, on guard, and exclusionary. We can see this fearful anxiety being acted out in society and much too often in the church that imitates society. But all of that is Caesar’s big lie! And our kids are seduced in powerful ways into Caesar’s big lie. As I write this Nick Bilton reports on his nephew, ten years old, who is “obsessed” with “Clash of Clans, a super popular game played on smalt phones. ”۶ His nephew had advanced enough in the clan to be able to exclude some others from his “clan.” But then in a narrative reversal, his nephew found he in turn had been excluded from the clan he led; he was preoccupied in anxious ways with his own exclusion. Bilton suggests that such exclusionary action comes “naturally to 10- year-old boys, whether online or in the real world.” Such exclusionary action, however, is much more than that. The game is a school for the empire thiOugh which our young are inducted into a world of scarcity and violent competition that make peace impossible. Against such specious world-construction, the real world entrusted to US is a world of abundance where the practice of peace among neighbors is not only mandated but is fully appropriate. The movement of our lives from the “desires of the flesh” (funded by the empire) to “the fruit of the spirit” (gifts given in the gospel) requires a) escaping the grip of Caesar and b) witnessing that loaves abound, fully enough for the neighbor. Such a reality makes a different life possible, a life lived in joy and geneiOsity. As Paul asseits, “There is no law against such things” (5:23). Well, the only law against neighborly geneiOsity is the law of Caesar. But this law of Christ that Paul aiticulates is alternative to the law of Caesar who sponsors and insists upon on-going strife. We in the church are constantly being talked out of the law of neighboiliness, and then we decide yet again for that gospel counter-law. The force of Caesar is powerful; but the “Galatians” knew better!

    Notes Y ΥΥί%Ιϋ, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished tMYmeapoYv .■,؟Yottress Press, 2٥1.)٥ 2 Ibid., 257. 3 Ibid., 364, n. 64. 4Ibid.,256. 1 ة ؟>ﻫﻪ B’âo ,؟Tlie Big Sort: Whs ؛the Clustering of LikeAlinded Americans is Tearing Us Apart (Boston: Mariner Books, 2٥٥9). ة ؟>ﻫﺞ We.%ma Mata ؟Awarti, Sacramental Poetics at the Dasvn of Secularism: When God Left tile World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2٥٥8) concerning the mystery of the sacrament and its ready distortion for the sake of power. 7 Nick Bilton, “Lord of the Screens,” The New York Times (May 2 ,٥2٥15).