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  • ‘Too Much’

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    “Too Mich”؛

    IKtoRS 19:1-18

    Rebecca Gurney Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, Noith Carolina

    When I was in hrst grade, we were told to bring our favorite book to school. We were going to have our pictures made with the book. I mulled over the choice, weighing one book against another. (I’ve been a nerd since bilth, so this was a big decision.) Finally, I settled on Robeit McCloskey’s Time ofWonder. I biought it to school the following day, excited, ready to pose for the camera. All was well…until I ran into Ginny Hamilton. Ginny was carrying her favorite book: the Bible, of course. Immediately, the guilt kicked in. I thought: I should have biought my Bible. Why didn’t I bring my Bible’? I was, after all, raised in the Bible belt. In fact, this year my hometown was named “The Most Bible-minded City in the US”21 hadn’t considered the Bible as I thought about my favorite book. And to make matters worse, I knew why I hadn’t considered it. The Bible was dehnitely not my favorite book. I still love the book I chose. Time ofWonder, in pait because it’s an escape to a world 1′ ve never seen, a tiny island off the coast of Maine. Everything in the book is beautiful, new, and interesting—the watercolor pictures, the quirky place names like Penobscot and Eggamoggin, and even the book’s end, when the winds of a hurricane rage outside the family’s home and the children and their parents huddle safely inside playing Parcheesi and waiting to explore the new landscape that’s been uneaithed by the winds and rain once the storm has passed. In the story, the violent storm never feels like a threat, just an adventure. I love to escape to that soit of world when I read. The Bible, on the other hand, isn’t much of a beach book, and it’s not an easy read or a means of escape. Now Christians have ceitainly, and not always wrongly, been accused of being escapists, of pining for the hereafter to avoid the responsibilities and heaitaches of the here and now, or of privileging a superhcial peace or cheeiTulness above all. But the Bible won’t let US get away with that. Our scriptures are hard and beautiful and heartbreaking and full of hope, and at every turn, they lay bare the truth about our world and the truth about ourselves. That isn’t easy, and it’s no escape. And yet, on most weeks, especially weeks like the one we’ve just had with the mass shootings at Pulse nightclub in Oilando, I am grateful that neither our scripture nor our God is detached from the brokenness of our world.

    The world of the prophet Elijah may seem distant from ours. We don’t go aiOund carving up animals to sacrihce; most of US don’t interpret natural disasters as a sign of God’s displeasure. But at its core, Elijah’s experience isn’t all that different from our own. When we hnd Elijah fleeing to the wilderness, he is running from a world that is growing more and more violent and more and more at odds with God’s intentions for Israel. He’s angry and disenchanted with the political scene. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel were notoriously bad rulers, and Elijah has watched as Jezebel systematically slaughtered the prophets of the Lord, the ones who keep reminding

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    her there is a higher authority than hers in the land. For years Elijah has been isolated and on the run; he’s been fearful and without food or shelter. But then, just before he heads out to the wilderness again, Elijah has his moment. He’s staged a showdown between the prophets of the Lord (just him), and the prophets of Jezebel’s God Baal. He invites all the people of Israel in hopes that they will turn their heaits back to Yahweh and quit following Baal. It’s like a piophetic duel. (If this was an 80’s movie, it’d be a dance off.) Each camp slaughters a bull, puts it on their altar, and asks their God to send hre from heaven to ignite the burnt offering. The prophets of Baal pray for hours… nothing. And then Elijah, once his opponents have been suitably ridiculed, opens his mouth, and the God of Israel sends a consuming hre. Immediately, the people fall on their faces and worship, piOclaiming, ‘The Lord Yahweh is God.” But that’s not enough for Elijah. He interrupts their worship, gets them off their knees, and raises a mob to enact his revenge. They seize and kill all four hundred and hlty prophets ol Baal. As soon as Jezebel hears about this, she vows to kill Elijah. And that’s where our story picks up this morning: Elijah is fleeing into the deseit because he is mired so deeply in this cycle ol violence that the only way out is to run—or even to die.

    We are not strangers to the cycle ol violence. At times some ol US may have the privilege to ignore it or to forget it. Sometimes we may ؛eel so overwhelmed we want to hide from it. But we can’t avoid it, especially not this week. This week it erupted again, on a large scale, threatening those who have known acutely what it means to be vulnerable and alienated. We are not strangers to the cycle ol violence. It was Elijah’s reality; it’s our reality. We are stuck in the cycle, and we participate in it. Today is Juneteenth, a day when we celebrate the final emancipation ol every slave in America and a time we mourn the violence that persists every day as a result ol it. The cycle continues. It continues when someone at work yells at US and we come home and yell at our kids, or when one person violates the trust in a Lamily and suddenly each Lamily member is grieving and suspicious. We know that abused children are more likely to grow up to be abusive, and we know that the violence we’ve done often has its source in some unspeakable violence or shame or despair we carry with US. And then there’s the violence we saw this week in Orlando, terrible and terrifying in its scope, preying on those olten marginalized in a place that was supposed to be sale. That violence didn’t stop on Sunday morning; it continues to gather malicious momentum. It continued when a veteran ol Iraq showed up armed and breathing threats at a mosque in Raeford, and it continued again in the accusative, aggressive rhetoric ol all our politicians, and yet again as sell-stylized crusaders travel to Oilando to verbally attack the victims’ Lamilies while they grieve. It’s easy to get swept up in the violence, to stait pointing the finger, lashing out. Don’t I know it; sometimes I just get really angry. It’s hard to imagine how to meet violence in any other way.

    Elijah is deeply mired in this cycle. He has been both the victim and the perpetrator . He’s on the run to save his lile, even as he’s unsure if it’s worth saving. He’s come to the end ol himsell and his resources, so he culls up under a single tree out in the wilderness and says to God: Enough. This is too much. Lord. I’m done.

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    I wonder how many of US have said that to God—this week, last week, last year. Enough. It’s just too much. I’m done. Have you been there’? Maybe not in the fetal position under a bloom tree, but crying in the shower or so grieved you can’t feel much of anything. Or maybe you are exhausted from being angry or afraid. Have you been so confused you can’t imagine a way out or a way forward’? Are you just weary of living in your own skin’? Elijah is so worn out that the only thing he can imagine to ask of God is that God might let him die. He’s come to the end. But what Elijah doesn’t know is that with God that’s not a bad place to be. He’s done, but God isn’t. In fact, Elijah’s about to hnd out that God specializes in making beginnings out of endings, in making life where there is none. God feeds him; God sustains him; God is with him; God speaks to him and directs him. At the moment we think we’re hnished, God’s power gives US the grace we need to keep going. Maybe it’s not the soit of thundeiOus, eaith shattering power we expect or think we need. Sometimesit comes indeceptivelysmalbquietways—ameabaquestion, an assurance that we aren’t alone. Or even the death of a little known Jewish teacher alongside a few criminals on a CIOSS outside Jenisalem. In that “small” act, Jesus absorbed all the violence of the past, the present, and the future, revealing that no amount of hatred or despair or confusion or weariness is any match for the grace and power of God. The minute Jesus came out of that tomb, it was over; love won—and not just any love, but the self-giving love of Jesus Christ. And so it is our hope that God’s steadfast love has triumphed, which gives US courage to confiont our biOkenness and sin head-on, to meet violence with compassion, and to trast that when we think it’s the end, God is just beginning.

    When I was in college, I frequently walked past an old church on the edge of campus. One of the paths led from the university to the main street along campus—the street that had everything from the hve-dollar burrito place to the frat houses, to the movie theater, to all the major watering holes. This path went right past the church. As you can imagine, it was a load well traveled. In the middle of the path, the church had placed a sign; it was mostly an invitation to come inside, but it ended this way: “Know that God still cares for this broken world and for all its creatures, and that the CIOSS, even when all else fails, yet makes its appeal.” I read that sign a lot during my four years—after September 11, before we went to war with Iraq, on the day my friend’s father died suddenly. The tragedies of this week biought it to mind, so I emailed the church ofhce to ask if they could tell me exactly what was written on the sign. It turns out the church removed it a while back during construction. When the work was hnished, they didn’t put the sign back up. In the words of the church administrator , “Some people felt it was awfully gloomy to attract students to come in.” It might be too gloomy indeed to attract college students, especially the ones who’ve been told college should be the best four years of their lives or the ones who are busy trying to study or paity the gloom away. But if we avoid the gloom or if we suggest that church is a place to escape it, it’s false advertising. The Bible doesn’t run from the gloom, and neither should we. In fact, if Elijah is any indication, God sends us straight to the heart of it. Most of what God said to Elijah was simply “Why are you here’? Come out. Go back.” Back to the

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    tiOuble, the conflict, the risk. 3 It was too much for Elijah. It’s too much for you and me. But it’s not too much for God. It wasn’t too much on Good Friday, and it isn’t too much now. God’s power sustains us in the midst of a journey we cannot handle, and admitting that we can’t handle it is in fact the best place to begin.

    Notes t This sermon was preached seven days after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in orlando. 2 http://www.americanbible.org/features/americas-most-bible-minded-cities (June 24, 2٥16). 3 Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on 1 Kings 19 in Smyth and Hehvys Bible Coimnentary: 1&2 Kings (Macon, GA: Smith and Helwys Publishing, 2 ,)٥٥٥237.

  • Never Sure to Preach Again: Cancer and Easter Hope

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    Nee Sure to Preach ÀgaÎu: Cancer and Easter Hope

    Guy Sayles

    Mars Hill University, Mars Hill, Noith Carolina

    Seventeenth-century Puritan pastor Richard Baxter, persecuted and sometimes imprisonedfor his nonconformist convictions,said: “Ipreachedasneversuretopreach again and as a dying man to dying men.” Not because of persecution, but because of serious illness, I feel an urgency similaito Baxter’s. I have become unavoidably aware of my moitality, and while my health is relatively stable for now, I have a palpable sense of uncertainty about the frrture. When will I no longer be able to bear witness to the good news about God made known through the history of Israel and through Jesus’? When will be the last time I invite people to lift up their hearts in response to the audacious hope which Easter makes possible’? I preach as never sure to preach again, as one who is dying to those who are dying. Just over two years ago, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (MM), a cancer of the bone marrow and blood. It is an incurable disease, brrt there are life-extending treatments, a variety of which I’ve been receiving since early 2ου. I was 57 years old when I learned that I have cancer. Before then, I had rarely, and never seriously, been ill. A couple of racquetball injuries had kept me out of work for a few days, and a few bouts with a cold or the flu had briefly sidelined me. I’d not been a hospital patient since I was sixteen and had undergone orthopedic surgery to repair an ankle which had been shattered in a high school football game. I had worked hard to be as healthy as I could be, exercising regularly and watching my diet. I was fortunate not to have to take any medications other than over-the-counter pain relievers for mildly arthritic joints. So to say that I was shocked by the hard news is an understatement. It unsettled barely-conscious but powerful assumptions I had made about my physical strength, my ability to provide for my family, and my remaining time for the challenges and opportunities I wanted to pursue. As surprising as the diagnosis was, for about a year before diagnosis, however, I had sometimes complained: “I feel more tired than I think I ought to feel.” It was taking more time for me to recover from long work days. Extended concentration had become more difficult, especially when, as increasingly happened, sleep ambushed me when I tried to read or to write. I was concerned, but I chalked up these annoying symptoms to my being in my mid-fifties and working more hours each week than was wise. I assumed that my near-exhaustion was the result of the way I carried the demanding responsibilities of the role I had as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville, Noith Carolina, a congregation which I was grateful to serve and which always challenged me to grow. I soon learned, however, that extreme fatigue is one of MM’S main symptoms, along with possible bone and kidney damage. In late December of 2013,1 had my annual physical, and lab results prompted my primary care doctor to refer me to a hematologist-oncologist. Further tests showed that I had cancer. I was in an evening Finance Committee meeting at the church when my oncologist called. I stepped out of the meeting, went to a nearby loom, looked out the window at the rain-soaked street shining in the glow of street lights, and listened as the doctor briefly and straightforwardly told me that I had MM. He

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    said he needed to see me as soon as possible so that we could plan treatment which, he indicated, would likely involve several lOunds of chemotherapy and an eventual stem cell transplant. The call lasted less than hve minutes, but the news it bore moved my primary residence from what Susan Sontag called “the kingdom of the well” to the “kingdom of the sick. ” She wrote: “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passpoit, sooner or later each of US is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” إMultiple Myeloma has forced me to acknowledge my citizenship in “that other place,” a place of struggle and suffering. In the kingdom of the sick, I have sustained many losses. I’ve had to surrender my illusions of invulnerability and independence, to come to terms with diminished physical energy and capacity, and to relinquish the role of pastor, a role which had been central to my vocation for more than three decades. When treatment was most intense, I experienced “chemo-brain” which, in my case, caused me to be occasionally disoriented and confused, to have difhculty remembering the names of people whom I know well, and to put dilty socks in the recycle bin instead of the clothes hamper. From time to time, I have experienced searing pain, endured fearful and sleepless nights, been unable to keep food or medicine in my system, had a severely compiomised immune system, and twice come to edge of death. Of course, the kingdoms of the sick and the well oveilap. Both kingdoms operate by the values of market capitalism. In the kingdom of the sick, large healthcare corporations, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers largely govern the treatment of the ill. Both kingdoms venerate autonomy. Medical ethics and practice have so elevated the principle of autonomy that patients and their families are often left without the expeit guidance and prudential counsel which they need to make wise decisions. It is one thing—and a good thing—to guard against paternalism; it is quite another to put the ill in a position to make choices which they feel both inadequate and fearful to make. Both kingdoms deny death until denial is no longer possible. Euphemisms for death abound in the kingdom of the sick as they do in the kingdom of the well. Even with an incurable illness like MM, the terms most often used (except in the hne print of consent forms) are “negative outcome,” “exhaustion of treatment options,” and “irreversible disease progression.” These days, I shuttle back and foith between the two kingdoms, essentially living simultaneously in both of them. I take an oral chemotherapy drug each day, the ongoing side effects of which are diminished immunity, nausea, and bone pain. The cancer is present, but at low levels, and I’ve been able to take up new work as a college professor and as a guest preacher in various congregations. I am learning about how to honor, rather than to resent, my limits. My challenge as a follower of Jesus and as a preacher is to remember that my primary identity is not as subject or slave in either the kingdom of the sick or the kingdom of the well. I am, instead, a participant in the rule and reign of God in which faith, hope, and love endure even when the well become sick and the sick die. When I remember who I am and, even more crucially, recall that God’s gracious order of shalom is the true and transcendent one, I have been able to face the givenness of my

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    death and to trust the gift of resurrection hope. In the month or so before Holy Week last year, I was at risk of forgetting. I had severely adverse reactions to one of the chemotherapy drugs: a rash which turned to whelps which broke-open and bled, unremitting itching, fever, and flu-like symptoms. Then, just as steroids and antibiotics were clearing those piOblems, I came down with the actual flu. There were a few days when I was so out of it that my memories of them are cloudy at best. As I had in times of weakness and pain aciOss the preceding year, I felt viscerally the presence of death. I desperately needed to find a faithful way to live realistically in the kingdom of the sick and, at the same time, mindfully in the kingdom of God. As Holy Week of 2015 approached, I heard the whispers of an insistent invitation : “Tace as fully as you can the fact of your death and embrace joyfully the gift of your life.” I knew that these two tasks were intricately intertwined, because we only begin to live, truly live, when we come to terms with the stark reality that our lives will end. Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom said, “Though the fact, the physicality, of death destroys US, the idea of death saves US.”2 Yalom’s words call to mind the prayer of Psalm 90: “So teach US to count our days that we may gain a wise heait” (90:12). I wanted to learn to hold death in my mind and heait but also to let Joy hold me. While this Holy Week invitation felt difficult to answer, it also registered with me as a calling which tendeily and cleaily demanded a response. Thankfully, the Easter which was approaching was the first in 37 years on which I would not preach. I was relieved because I needed to hear the good news far more than to announce it. Not having the responsibility to preach meant I could spend all of Holy Week simply listening without wondering what I would soon have to say. Since my tenure at Pirst Baptist Church of Asheville had ended in January, my wife and I had been worshipping at All Souls Episcopal Cathedral. The welcome of that congregation, the beauty of the language of The Book of Common Prayer, the fine music and preaching, and especially the centrality and regularity of the Eucharist were sources of rest and renewal for me. I decided to lean in to the liturgies of Holy Week at All Souls and look to them for the guidance and suppoit I needed for the soul-work to which I felt summoned. Maundy Thursday worship was starkly beautiful; it included foot-washing. Eucharist , and “the stripping of the church,” a rich symbol of the poveity and shadows into which the world descended as Jesus moved ever deeply into suffering and death. The choir sang an arrangement of George Herbert’s “Love Bade Me Welcome”; the words and music touched with healing hands the ache of my tired body for mercy, of my weary heait for grace, and

    Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in. Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning. If I lacked any thing.

    A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: Love said. You shall be he. . . .

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    Canon Thomas Murphy’s homily spoke directly to the challenge I was attempting to meet; he talked about how preparing to die is a way to make loom in oneself for new life. As I reflected on what Thomas said, I connected his words with Ernest Becker’s claim that “the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are piOtected from: the fear of life and the fear of death. ’3 I’m convinced that we fear life because we fear death and that the greater our sense of un-lived life, the greater our anxiety about our impending deaths. We will regret the end of our lives all the more if we come to our deaths with a sense that we have never pursued our dreams, used our gifts, spoken our truths, told our stories, and sung our songs. It’s the ultimate vicious cycle: fear of death begets fear of life which increases our fear of death which heightens our fear of life. Maundy Thursday added clarity and urgency to the work I was doing. On Good Friday night, I experienced the solace of long stretches of shared silence, hauntingly lovely music, and guided prayers of petition and intercession. After the service, I sat for a while in the darkened church, and this prayer took shape in me: “o God, give me the love which embraces my death and transforms the fears it generates. Cause me to trust anew that all shall be well. Show me how to die, and, by so doing, show me how to live.” For me to be able to trust, as Julian of Norwich did, that all shall be well, I had to reckon with what I believe about life after death. I have been, for most of my adult life, unceitain and agnostic about what, if anything, lies beyond our deaths. There have been times when I have been faiily sure that the Ash Wednesday liturgy, echoing Genesis, speaks the last word: “From dust you were made and to dust you shall return. ”At other times, times when I most needed resurrection faith, it has risen in me. It ceitainly did when life was ebbing away from me during the stem cell transplant piocess at Duke University in the summer of 20 IT. One late-night and eaily morning, I was on the thin border which marks the passage from life to death. Chemotherapy had torn me down, and weariness had biOught me close to surrender. I was drifting away. Suddenly, I was staitled to aleitness by the loud sound of iron slamming into iron, like the shutting of a massive gate or the clanging closed of a prison door. Though the light had not disappeared, the shadows were darker than the light was bright. I could easily have gone more deeply into the valley of the shadow. To turn back toward life would, I knew, take more determination and effoit than would dying. To live would take more will and strength than I had. Then, to my surprise, anger oveitook me. I got, as my West Virginia kin would put it, “good and mad. ” If I had had energy to do it, I would have “cleared off a place and pitched a fit. ” I wasn’t mad at God or myself or the doctors or even the medicines that had to neaily kill me in order to cure me. I’m still not sure who or what exactly I was mad at, except that I was furious at the thought that I would go that far down, endure so much, and then let the treatment itself kill me. Unbidden, except perhaps by the wordless prayer of the Spirit in my spirit, I felt Jesus nearby, joining me in my anger and my tears. Though I heard no words, his presence seemed to say, “If you want to live, let’s do this together. ” Together, we prayed for the strength and courage to live; then he responded gently but tenaciously to the prayer we prayed. We clawed our way back from the borderline. Three days later, as I lay in Duke Hospital with a high fever, I went back to the threshold. I again felt Jesus’ presence, but I heard nothing new. I was aware that I

    IT

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    could live if I chose. It will not always be that way, of course; there will come a time when my choice will simply be whether to welcome or to resist the end which will come no matter how I respond to its approach. That night, though, quiet but palpable Love gave me the freedom and the will to live rather than to die. I decided to live. On Good Friday night, then, as I reflected on what I believe about life after death, these powerful experiences of Jesus’ presence on the verge of death tempered and questioned my agnosticism. I came to a conclusion which I think Pascal would recognize : I would either die into nothingness and, because I would not be conscious of this oblivion, all would be well; or, I would die into the arms of God, and all would be well. I felt a bracing release from constricting anxiety about what comes after death; and since that night, my trust that we die into God’s embrace has become stronger. I have been to the edge and to the bottom, and God has met me in those hard places; it makes sense to my heait that God will meet in and beyond death. At Saturday night’s Great Easter Vigil, reaffirmation of baptism was the pivot on which worship turned from Lent to Easter, from shadows to light, and from death to lile. We read from Romans 6, which included a phrase I heard differently than I have heard it before: “You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:11). I was struck by that word convide?—־deliberately think of—yourself as both dead and alive. I saw what had always hidden in plain sight: to view lile with baptismal imagination, with Eastei ־discernment, is to perceive that we are dying to the powers that distoit, demean, and diminish US, even while we live, and that we are living by the energies ol creation and resurrection which flow into US, fill US with joy, and inspire US with hope, even while death is at work in US. Baptism is OUI ־Eastei.־ Multiple Myeloma has ceitainly affected my preaching. I keenly ؛eel the urgency which Richard Baxtei ־described: I preach as nevei ־sure to preach again, as one who is dying to those who are dying. It’s not just that I no longei ־take it for granted, as I sometimes did in the week-to-week and year-to-year lOutine ol the pastorate, that I will “always” have the oppoitunity to preach. It is that my sojourn in suffering has made the good news we preach more tangibly and immediately a mattei ־ol lile and death. The themes which flow from baptism keep demanding that I give voice to them. Ovei ־and ovei ,־I ؛eel gladly compelled to remind people that because we are immersed in grace, submerged in mercy, and flooded with love, we are who baptism says we are, beloved children ol God in whom God takes great delight. God sees US and responds to US as God sees and responds to Jesus. Because that is tnie, there is, as Paul affirmed, “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We Lace both lile and death with the assurance that God has freed US from the guilt, shame, and Leal ־which cause US to disengage from the present and dread the future. I keep coming back as well to the companion promise at the end ol Romans 8: “I am convinced that neithei ־death, noi ־lile, noi ־angels, noi ־rulers, noi ־things present, noi ־ things to come, noi ־powers, noi ־height, noi ־depth, noi ־anything else in all creation, will be able to separate US from the love ol God in Christ Jesus OUI ־Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). Foi ־the children ol God, there is no separation and no condemnation. Nothing separates US from God’s love—neithei ־death which constantly threatens lile noi ־ lile which ؛ails to be more than straggle. No mattei ־what happens, God is ؛Ol ־US, not against US, and with US, not distant from US. Sometimes, these baptismal promises are all I know; and always, they are enough.

    Eastei2016 ־

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    I began chemotherapy onAsh Wednesday of 2014. The week before, I had spent a few days at Valle Crucis, a retreat center operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Western Noith Carolina. I wanted to prepare for, and especially to learn how to pray about, whatever I would face. I walked in the mountains, sat near a waterfall, and stayed up late in my loom, listening for words which might become prayers. I wrote page after page in my journal. Eventually, these sentences found me:

    0 God, remind me always that my life is your gift, that I live under, and rest in, your Mercy. 1 offer you what I have: a broken but grateful heait, a wounded but wonder -hlled spirit, an unknowing but searching mind, and a sick but yielded body. Break what is broken in me, o God, then fashion me anew from the pieces. Break the grip which biOkenness has on me, and let me know freedom and joy. Fill my heait with trust in your love, my mind with thoughts of your goodness, my spirit with hope, and my soul with joy. Give me courage to face pain, strength to carry weakness, and help, from you and others whom you send, to bear what I cannot bear alone. Show me how to cooperate with your Holy Spirit and my truest spirit and with doctors, nurses, and other caregivers. Use the drugs I take as agents of curing. In all things, reduce and increase me to Love. Amen.

    As I continue to pray these words, it is the healing of biOkenness even more than the curing of cancer which I seek. Brokenness, whether we experience it primarily physically or psychically, affects the whole person. Because body, mind, soul, and spirit are all connected, it is impossible to keep the varieties of our biOkenness apait from each other. When sickness diminishes our bodies, it also threatens how we feel, think, and believe. When loneliness wounds our souls, the pain registers in our bodies. We can’t corral our hints behind gates which keep them from limning thiOugh every dimension of who we are. Acioss these two years, I have had to come to terms with a disease I did not cause, but I have also had to face pain to which my own failures contributed. Cancer has gathered up and biOught other wounds to consciousness. I have been shattered, and it is such a gift, a hard and holy gift. Anne Lamott wrote that “the three most terrible traths of our existence [are]: that we are so rained, and so loved, and in charge of so little.” ־اThe Easter good news is that we are so loved that God, in and with Jesus, has taken our pain, even our forsakenness , into God’s own great heait. From God’s now wounded but healed heait and hands, we receive hope amid the rains, light in the shadows, and joy within and beyond suffering.

    Notes t Susan Sontag, Illness as a Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1977), 3. 2 Irvin Yalom, Staring at the Sun (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2٥٥8), 7. 3 Ernest Becker, The Denial ofDeath (New York: The Free Press, 1973), 53. T Anne Lamott, Helplhanks. Wow. The Three Essential Prayers (N :’١Riverhead Books, 2٥12), 27.

  • Does God Provide?

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    Does God Provide?

    Genesis 22:1-19 and Luke 22:47-53, 63-65

    Kristy Farber, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, Noith Caiolina, and Mark Ramsey, Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas

    In the decade after the end of Woild War II, work was started to rebuild Coventry Cathedral in England—that place that was destroyed by air bombardment during the war. They rebuilt a new, modern cathedral alongside the burned out shell of the old one. Two charred beams stand in the open air of the shell, forming a CIOSS. A makeshift altar piOclaims the words “Forgive them.” For the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, composer Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write a musical work for the occasion. “My subject is War, and tire pity ofWar.The Poetry i٠s in tire pity.” YWneAk words of Wilfred Owen, a British army officer in the First Woild War. Owen died one week before the war ended. He was 25. Benjamin Britten used those words on the title page of the score for his War Requiem, a work that juxtaposes the Fatin mass for the dead with Owen’s own poetry and was hrst performed in 1962 at the new Coventry Cathedral. Included in his war poetry was the work “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young,” where Owen reflects on our Old Testament text—the Sacrifice of Isaac—in the light of the war that subsequently took his life.’

    Our subject today is war. And the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity. 2

    To talk about anything in church means we have to talk about God. To ask questions about war means we have to ask questions about our understanding about the character of God. To think about war and social justice, especially on Palm and Passion Sunday, we need to ask this fundamental question: Does God provide’? The first war mentioned in the Bible is just 13 chapters into Genesis. Wars are fought thr oughout the Old Testament, and Jesus grew up in a land of armed occupation , just as Paul traveled through a world ordered by the forced acquiescence of the power of Roman soldiers. When the Bible talks about war, the most common way it is referred to is that kings and rulers made war. Today we declare war. We go to war. In the Bible, people made war. Who today would claim that’? Who today wants to say they “make war”’? War was complicated then as it is now. WhenAristotle wrote his treatise on the nature of viltue, his model of courage was the soldier. The novelist Ε.Μ. Forster famously said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he would have the guts to betray his country. 3 But for a soldier it’s usually a false distinction because soldiers in battle fight for their friends. When Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” soldiers know exactly what he’s talking about. You don’t hull yourself into the line of fire in battle because you believe in freedom, justice, or the flag; you do it because you see your friends have been hit, and you can’t bear for

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    them to die. Soldiers bear witness to the world that there’s something that matters more than self-preservation. Wars are fought over matters of principle. GiOucho Marx once said, “These are my principles; if you don’t like them – I have others.” Soldiers are a witness that some principles are worth dying for. Some principles are more impoitant than life itself. A person who believes and embodies that is a person of integrity and courage.^ We cannot imagine a world without war. And so we believe in war. We believe in war! Sometimes it seems we believe in war more than we believe in God. We want to believe there’s something more precious than life itself. Once a war begins, the lives of the fallen become their own irrefutable logic: this war must be about something more impoitant than life, otherwise these beloved men and women would not be dead.5 War shows US depravity, ugliness, and horrifying cnielty; but it also raises our passion above the mundane. It gives a nation a reason for being, a moment to dehne itself, and a story to tell.6 At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, Roheit E. Lee said, “It’s well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.” Do we believe that God will provide’? Will God piOvide in all ways, in all places, and for all our needs’? War is terrible. And in our time, the terror of war, along with the means used to hght “the war on terror” has been terrible. Jesus was tortured. In this week that we observe beginning today, Jesus was tortured by Roman soldiers on the way to his death. His torture was not to elicit information or for the enemy to gain advantage. Presumably it was because Jesus was a threat. He was tortured the way all torture works—degrade the body to try to gain contiOl of mind and soul. Our culture has become largely numbed to torture. Sydney Bristow, Jake Ballard, Carrie Matheson, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, Liz Keen, Jack Bauer—these are characters, respectively, on TV shows Alias, .V ,/،،?،;״،׳ Homeland, The Americans, Blacklist, and, of course, 24 who regularly engage in torture in service of saving the world. Torture, even though it is against the Geneva Convention, scores of international laws. United Nations resolutions, and our own Uniform Code of Military Justice, hasbecome pait of our national life in the last 15 years,? aided and abetted by the vision of Jack Bauer saving the world one epic episode at a time by the degrading torture of another human being. The aim of torture is to break the body to gain contiol of the mind and soul of another. The thing is, as we have tortured, what has happened is what always happens: the ones who do the torturing and the nation that allows it degrade themselves and risk losing their soul. Jesus was tortured. On the last week of his life, Jesus was spat upon, stripped, beaten, andhumiliated. Unspeakablepain was inflicted uponhim. Andpeoplewatched. And they laughed. And they mocked—they mocked Jesus and they mocked his faith and they mocked his God. Jesus was entirely and completely vulnerable. More than that, he displayed that the character of God is best known thiOugh vulnerability. He showed us that weakness is strength. He risked everything to show US what life is. It is true that the aim of torture is to break the body in order to gain contiol of the mind and soul of another. In this week, Jesus offered his body, broken, that our minds and souls might be healed. Do we believe God will piOvide’? Do we believe that’? Sometimes it seems we believe in war more than we believe in God. What if something else was true’? What if we did believe something was truer than war’? In Wilfred Owen’s poem” The Par­

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    able of the Old Man and the Young,” Owen begins:

    So Abram lose, and clave the wood, and went. And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, “My Father, behold the preparations, fire and iron. But where the lamb for this burnt-offering’?”

    Owen is building up to the moment where God offers the ram instead of Isaac. And Owen’s classical ld-line sonnet is lOunded off with these words:

    Lo! an angel called him out of heaven. Saying, “Lay not thy hand upon the lad. Neither do anything to him, thy son. Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns, A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.”

    The poignancy of the story of Abraham and Isaac is that Isaac utteily trusts Abraham and Abraham completely trusts God. Christians read this story in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We see Jesus reflected in Isaac because we see Jesus’ complete trust in God and we see the sacrifice to which Jesus is put. We see Jesus also reflected in the ram, because unlike Isaac, Jesus really is sacrificed to the point of death. And when we use the word sacrifice, it is not intended to be an equation or a formula or some “blood atonement” theology of old. This is sacrifice as the fullest expression of God’s self-emptying love for US, seen in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Lamb of God whose sacrifice delivers US from death. Because of Jesus we can see ourselves as Isaac, bound to death but delivered by grace.® And this is the Christian gospel. All the pointlessness and horror of human existence is drawn to the CIOSS. The CIOSS is what happens when unending love is seen by our limited human imagination, and we cannot tolerate it. The CIOSS is humanity’s appalling reaction to the love of God. But the reason why the CIOSS is good news is that the eaily church recognized it as the last sacrifice. The sacrifice of the Son of God is the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. So the war to end all wars was not the Civil War or the First or the Second Woild War; it was the CIOSS. The good news of the CIOSS is fundamentally that war is over. At this point, the irony of Wilfred Owen’s poem becomes almost unbearable. Because the poem is a sonnet it ought to finish at the end of the fourteenth line.

    Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns, A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

    What a perfect ending: “Offer the Ram of Pride instead.” Allow your pride to die and stop trying to make meanings, purposes, and glories for yourself that are greater than the ones God has given you. But the poem doesn’t stop there. Jarring the principles of poetry and the gospel, Owen sombeily records what happened next:

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    But the old man would not so, but slew his son. And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

    In Britten’s War Requiem, those hnal words are repeated:

    And half the seed of Europe, one by one. And half the seed of Europe, one by one. And half the seed of Europe, one by one. And half the seed of Europe, one by one.5

    Owen portrays the First Woild War as a rejection of the Christian gospel. He sees it as a declaration that sacrihce must continue because the sacrihce of Jesus is not enough. In other words, we’re not clear we believe in God, but we know for sure that we believe in war. A culture of fear and a bankruptcy of trust believes that war makes us noble and gives us dignity and shows us truth—beyond any other dignity, beyond any other truth. God gives us the sacrihce that ends all war, and thus war becomes the most profound way we show our rejection of God. The hnal irony of war lies one step further. Like irony in general, it has to be handled with care, because irony seems like an insult when one is living with the crucihed heaits and loves and memories of war. For Christians, the piOblem with the weapons of war is fundamentally not that they’re too strong, but that they’re too weak. God has shown US how God goes about setting things straight. The way God redeems evil is not by responding in kind, but thiOugh self-giving, patient, openheaited , risk-taking, non-resistant, vulnerable love. So it’s not that war is so powerful that it’s more powerful than God. It’s that war is a failed attempt to establish our own meaning, when God has already given US the world’s meaning in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The saddest day in modern American history was September 12, 2001.“ The previous day the nation suffered a grievous blow. What took place went to the core of our common life and made US search desperately for meaning, personally and collectively. The following day was a dehning moment for our nation and our sense of God and our place in the world. Would the CIOSS be followed by resurrection’? Would the sacrihce of the CIOSS be seen as the end of sacrihce’? Would America and its friends show the world that they believed in God more than they believed in war’? In Owen’s words, would we not “slaughter the lamb of pride instead”’? We know the answer. We came out all guns blazing. Like the old man in Wilfred Owen’s poem, we would not so, and slew our offspring. And hall the promises ol God, one by one. Does God piOvide’? It is the essential question for our lile ol Laith. It is the essential question for our church. It is the essential question as we enter into Holy Week. It is the essential question as we are so immersed in our culture ol fear. Does God piovide’? That is such a risky question! It is risky because it the answer is no (which is often our lived answer to the question), then we get war and poveity and racism and conflict and exclusion. It is a risky question because it the answer is yes, then we are totally exposed, and we are so prone to be seized by fear, and we are so vulnerable, and we have nothing to do but completely trust that with God, weakness leads to strength… and the CIOSS leads to resurrection.

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    Notes נhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Requiem, accessed March 15, 2015. 2 Much of the theme and direction of this sermon owes substantial debt to two sermons by Sam Wells, one preached at Duke Chapel in 2٥٥7 (“T he Pity of War”) and one preached during Mid-Winters Lectures at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (untitled) in 2٥11. 3 Ε.Μ. Forster and Nicolas Walter, What I Believe and Other Essays (Fondon: GW Foote, 1999). 4 Sam Wells again, in the above referenced sources and in other general writings. Our debt to him is substantial in forming our approach to this sermon. 5 Gary Wills, “Essay on War and Making War,” The Atlantic Monthly, c. 2٥٥5. 6 Chris Hedges, War Is the Force That Gives Us Meaning (New ‘١ork: PublicAffairs, 2٥٥2). 7 We are grateful to one of our church members, retired Air Force Brigadier General lerome Iones for his conversations with US on the subject of torture and warfare. 8 Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997). 9This interpretation connecting Owen’s poetry with theAbraham/Isaac narrative was first introduced to one of us (Mark) in lectures by Dr. Nathan Scott in an English and Religion seminary at the University of Virginia in 1978. 1 ٥This sentiment has been expressed by numerous sources, including Richard Rohr and Wendell Berry.

  • Advantage McEnroe!

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    Advantage McEnroe!

    Isaiah 45:1 ١9-13; Acts 10:34-43

    Walter Brueggemann

    Cincinnati, Ohio

    Advantage McEnroe! It could have been “advantage Federer,” or “advantage Williams.” Or “advantage Nadal.” It is usually “advantage” for the highest ranking players in the National Lawn Tennis Association, because in tight tennis matches, you cannot win a match without “advantage.” Better than that, as long as you have “advantage” in a tight tennis match, you cannot lose. You can do the numbers. So I want to think with you about having “advantage,” the difference it makes and the problems it creates.

    History is the endless performance of the advantaged. The un-advantaged mostly do not leave a track in the sand. But the advantaged leave many tracks, many carefully recorded monuments, and rich carbon footprints on the eaith. The Bible is the memory and testimony of the advantaged. The Old Testament is the story of Hebrew-Israelite-Jewish advantage and was so from the beginning. The hrst word uttered to Abraham and to Sarah was about an advantage consisting in a name, a land, a great nation, a carrier of blessing. When that story impinged upon the slave camp of Egypt, Israel is said to be “my first-bom son,” the one entitled to all the gifts and piOpeities (Exodus τ:22). It is anticipated that Israel will be forYHWH a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6). By the time of DeuteiOnomy, it is declared: “For you are a people holy to the Lord our God; the Lord our God has chosen you out ol all the peoples on the eaith to be his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6). “For you are a people holy to the Lord our God; it is you the Lord has chosen out ol all the peoples on eaith to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. ΙΥ2). That was not because Israel was big or righteous, but only because the Lord “set his heait on Israel,” lusted after Israel, and gave Israel glorious gifts. Likewise the New Testament is the story ol God’s chosen people:

    You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear Irait, trait that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. (John 15:16)

    But God chose what is Loolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. (I Corinthians 1:27-28)

    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may piOclaim the mighty acts ol him who called you out darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.

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    Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (I Petei-2:9-10)

    John, Paul, and Peter are all agreed on that. As you know, we have pailayed that chosenness into economic authority and advantage, so that the Popes, the Popes for US PiOtestants for hfteen centuries, did not allow error the same right as truth. It is our pope who divided up the new world so that Spain and Poitugal could split the income from the mineral deposits. Since then all kinds of prohts and advantages have accrued to Jesus ‘ well-beloved church, all the way to clergy discounts and tax advantages, even baseball passes in such enlightened wise cities as St. Louis! All rooted in chosenness! That Christian advantage for God’s people has segued over into Western White advantage that Ta-Nehisi Coates has termed “The Dream” for those whom he characterizes as “the Masters of the Galaxy.” Coates writes of white advantage:

    “White America” is a syndicate arrayed to piotect its exclusive power to dominate and contiOl our bodies. Sometimes that power is direct (lynching ), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it “white people” would cease to exist for want of reason.)

    The “advantaged” whether Jewish or Christian or Western or white or even black thugs who run dictatorships in Africa-control the press, the media, the courts, the church, the university… whatever; we are indeed “masters of the galaxy.”? We have gladly performed such hegemony, and mostly we do not even notice we are doing it. We simply assume it and expect others to acknowledge it as well. The Bible is a narrative of such wondrous divine advantage:

    From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died. Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth, her charter of salvation, one Lord, one faith, one birth.?

    Ye chosen seed of Israel’s race, ye ransomed from the fall, … hail him who saved you by his grace, and crown him Lord of all!)־

    The Bible, however ,־is a narrative of advantage negated. Hard to believe! But the story concerns a God who extends advantage and then moves against the advantaged . The Jews in exile waited for ־homecoming. In their ־grief they knew that God willed to bring them back home to Jerusalem. But God’s intention for ־them was not so singularly Jewish. Isaiah has God declare that deliverance and homecoming will be accomplished by a Persian, by a goi whom God calls “my Messiah” (Isaiah Τ5:1). What a contradiction in terms! Goi-Messiah. The Jews had lost their ־assumed advantage in history and then must be saved, if at all, by the agency of a goi. God found it neither ־necessary nor ־possible to contain history in the conhnes of the advantaged. God’s way lies beyond such tight assured advantage. It was a Persian who would

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    tend to the advantaged in the world. Some among Isaiah’s audience noticed the contradiction and did not like it. They must have piotested. They wanted to be saved the way they always were saved in the past, by the wonder of their Jewish advantage. Some said, “We will not be led home by a goi. We will wait for an advantaged Jewish Messiah.” In response to such resistance, the poet chides his Jewish companions: “How dare you question God’s way of rescue, even if it is not the way of your old advantage!” The advantaged Jews are like a clay pot that questions the potter. The advantaged Jews are like a fetus that questions the bilth piOcess or like semen that does not want to follow the usual path of connection. The poet says:

    Woe to you who strive with your maker…. Woe to those who say to a father, “What are you begetting’?” Or to a woman, “With what are you in labor’?…” Will you question me about my children. Or command me concerning the work of my hands’? I made the eaith; I created humankind; I have aioused Cyrus the goi.

    “It will be the way I say and not the way of your advantaged expectation. My ways are not your ways, and my ways will not be squeezed into your advantage.” The poet says “woe.” Big tiOuble is coming to those who cling to their advantage when it collides with the purposes of God. The resistance encountered by Isaiah is not unlike the resistance that Peter voices in the Book of Acts. Peter knew the purity laws. He knew the guidelines of advantage. He knew that snakes are unclean and must not be eaten. When commanded to do so, he protested: “I have never eaten anything unclean” (Acts 10: IT). I kept to the rules of advantage. He knew Gentiles are unclean, and we should not eat with them because we reserve the right to refuse service to the unclean, to the colored, and most recently to the gays. Except that Peter’s advantage is interrupted by a nightmare. The voice in the trance said, “What God has made clean you must not call piOfane” (Acts 10:15). It took some doing for the Spirit to bring Peter along. But when Peter gets ready to preach this new disclosure, he bluits it out: “I truly understand that God shows no paitiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:3d-35). I truly understand that the old purity laws do not work. I truly understand that the old advantage is now completely compiOmised. In the opening section of his sermon, Jewish advantage is abruptly put to flight. In his homiletical thesis, the end comes dramatically to privilege, ceititude, and contiOl. The God who chose now shows no paitiality. And Paul will line it out, perhaps in baptismal formulation: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring , heirs according the piOmise” (Galatians 3:28-29). Paul names the privileged ones: Jews…free…male. We transpose the list: free, male. Western, white, straight. We could imagine this new list of heirs is the equivalent of a goi Messiah or like eating a snake or welcoming a Gentile who has come to emancipation, not unlike Jews,

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    males, and free persons. And now the piotest against God’s new arrangement is thick in our midst. Male advantage is disappearing. White advantage is being called into question. We know in our guts that advantage is evaporating all aiound US. American advantage is fading as China initiates its own IMF and controls bigger paits of the world and the economy. And straights are not, with their biblical advantage, any longer privileged. And the church has no more advantage. In many churches it is said this way: a) “The world is going to the dogs,” or b) “We must take back our country.” When probed, this means taking back advantage, and “to the dogs” means the disadvantaged are asseiting themselves. I say this to you because I have come to think that political health and economic wellbeing in our society now depend on the graceful and willing acknowledgement that ancient advantage has been taken from some of US by God. It is that loss of advantage that fuels the anger and anxiety and rage and violence among us. But that advantage is now over, as Isaiah taught his exiled companions and as Peter witnessed to the eaily church. It is by the mercy of God over. God has moved beyond old chosenness.

    III. We are inching by the mercy of God toward a new level playing held. Peter, in his post-trance sermon voices this hard truth as the Spirit had given it to him: “I truly understand that God shows no paitiality” (10:3Τ). The giOund of that truth is the peace preached by Jesus Christ to Israel: “He is Lord of all” (10:36)! And Peter in his sermon describes the inexplicable force of Jesus of Nazareth: “He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (v. 38). But the people who sought to maintain advantage killed him. They put him to death on a tree. And they will kill anyone who threatens their advantage: King, Romeio, all the daring witnesses who attest the end of advantage. And then Peter, in his own testimony, reports on the instant in the sweep of human history when these ancient advantages came to an abrupt end: “God raised him up on the third day” (v. TO). The power of Easter does not let the old niceties of chosenness prevail. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, the chief priests and the Roman governor and the entire male, straight white Western ownership class would have had paitiality from God to perpetuity. But he has been raised! The world has new possibility because it is under new governance. Peter concludes his sermon by declaring the nature of the new possibility beyond advantage and disadvantage: “All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins thiOugh his name” ؛V. Τ3). F؟r believing with the neighbor. The new evaUgelical possibility is grounded in forgiveness, the

    cancelation of debts. People are held in disadvantage by unpayable debt. But the advantaged are also held in debt by the unending anxiety and the unforgiven guilt of exploitation and diminishment of brothers and sisters. We advantaged remain in a cocoon of denial and do not even know our guilt for such leverage that dehles the neighbor. But it is there. It is, moreover, such a relief when all of that is forgiven. We become free, we males, we would-be free, we Jews, we chosen, we whites, we Americans, we so long in advantage. It turns out that advantage is only a necessity (a desiratum) in the pre-Easter

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    domain of death. That domain of death is a zone of a scarcity. There is not enough for all in the world, so holding advantage and keeping advantage and securing more than the neighbor is essential to wellbeing. Advantage piotects US in a zone of scarcity where all are vulnerable. But here is the news. Easter has dispelled the truth of scarcity. In the kingdom of the resurrection there is no more scarcity. There is an abundance. That is why debts can be cancelled and sins can be forgiven, because post-Easter reality is a zone of geneiOus abundance from God toward US and toward the neighbor. It is so abundant that in the next paragraph we are told that the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles; we dare say even on Greeks, even on slaves, even on females, even on non-Westerners, even on non-straights, even on non-whites, even on nonChristians . Because the Spirit is a flood and surge and a torrent of generosity for

    IV. We make the move as we are led from scarcity to abundance, from Friday scarcity to Sunday abundance, from fearftrl coercive leverage to glad emancipated wellbeing. I tell you this because many of you are pastors among those who are losing their advantage and do not understand beyond their fearftrl anxiety. You are pastors among those who have arrived at the edge of the new zone of abundant forgiveness and now must find new neighborly ways to exist, to share, and to love. Or at least this much: you and I live in a society that is stunned at the loss of advantage so long assumed that now must find ways to live in the alternative world of Easter abundance in which no one is kept in hock to unpayable debt. All is forgiven. I tell you this because you and I are a part of a great institutional advantage that is abruptly ending. We could be in despair or in denial or in disappointment. We could be, except that God raised him up on the third day. Here and there we have found in our loss of advantage that we are overwhelmed by the gift of the spirit who surges among US. This is the news:

    -There is no partiality; -The kingdom of death and scarcity has been defeated by this Sunday surprise; God raised him up! -The Spirit surges in forgiveness upon those who have no advantage.

    We are then free for a different life, forgiven, empowered, free from fear, ready to turn the world right side up! McEnroe threw a tantrum every time he lost an advantage. So do most of the rest of US. It was never his best performance; neither is it our best performance.

    Notes t. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2٥15), 42. A Ibid., 92. 3. “The Church’s One Foundation,” Glory to God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2٥13), 321. 4. “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2٥13), 263.

  • ‘Did You See Their Faces?’

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    “Did You See Their Faces?”

    Romans 7:4-6 and 1 Corinthians 6:19

    Mark Ramsey

    Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas

    In our Lenten sermon series, we are addressing how the gospel puts light on social justice issues, but we are working to approach these issues theologically, not by way of the pre-cooked viewpoints and talking points of MSNBC, Fox News, The Wall. Street Journal, ־،i Tire New York Times, wYucA seem Vo dominate vk wax we talk about these hard things. Today, we take up race. But, if we take away those precooked categories, we need a way to bring the gospel to this hard, painful place in our society. We need a place to stand. And we begin with this: together we are the Body of Christ. That is our identity, our comfoit, and our challenge. What can it mean for us to address hard issues of race and racism while saying, “Together, we are the Body of Christ’”? Romans 7:4-6″ .׳In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law thr ough the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinftrl passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held US captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own’?” This is the haunting refrain in a poem by Claudia Rankine:

    Call out to them. I don’t see them. Call out anyway. Did you see their faces’?!

    As a review of Rankine’s work noted, the challenge of making racism relevant, or even evident, to those who do not bear the brunt of its ill effects is tricky. She pushes poetry’s forms to disarm readers and circumvent our carefully constructed defense mechanisms against the hint of possibly being racist ourselves, all while revealing her impoitant truth: what passes as news for some (white) readers is simply lived experience for (black) others.! An incident in a drugstore in which a man inadveitently cuts the line because he did not see the narrator flows into a haunting meditation on Hurricane Katrina that ends with the following lines of dialogue:

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    For the last 10 days, I’ve been asking people I know and some I barely know… about racism. The most prevalent comments: Racism is bad. Racism is complicated. Racism is painful. Racism is horrible… and inescapable. Racism is better than it used to be. Racism is as bad as ever. Someone who is black asked, “Are you white folks asking this because of so-called Black History Month’?” One white person said, “Are we still having to talk about racism. Can’t we move on’?” And bnally, as more than one of you has said this week, “We seem so stuck confiOnting issues of race.” When it comes to race and racism, it really does depend on where we stand on how we experience “racism.” Just so, many white Americans tend to see the piOblem of racism as unfoitunate incidents based on individual circumstances. Black Americans see a system in which their black lives matter less than white lives. ؛And I know that “race” is far bigger than black-white. But for today, that’s the place we are going to staif.) And then there are the things we do know, or at least things our scholars and surveys tell US: * Two scholars sent out hctitious résumés, responding to job ads. Each résumé was given a name that either sounded stereotypically African-American or one that sounded white, but the résumés were otherwise basically the same. The study found that a résumé with a name like Emily or Greg received 50 percent more callbacks than the same resume with a name like Lakisha or Jamal. Having a white-sounding name was as benehcial as eight years’ work experience.‘־ * That’s interesting, considering that a 2011 study by scholars at Harvard and Tufts, that found that whites, on average, believed that anti-white racism was a biggei ־ problem than anti-black racism * The net woith of the average black household in the United States is $6,000, compared with $110,000 foi ־the average white household. The United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apaifheid. * The black-white income gap is lOughly TO percent greater today than in 1967. * A black boy born today in the United States has a life expectancy hve years shoifei ־than that of a white boy. * Black students are signihcantly less likely to attend schools offering advanced math and science courses than white students. They are three times as likely to be suspended and expelled, setting them up foi ־educational failure. * Black men in theii20 ־s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated today than employed. Neaily 70 percent of middle-aged black men who nevei ־graduated from high school have been imprisoned.؛ To all of us who think the good intentions of good people make a difference in regard to racism, here are two more: * Police arrest blacks at 3.7 times the rate of whites foi ־marijuana possession, even though surveys hnd that both use marijuana at lOughly similai ־rates. * Scholars have found that blacks and Hispanics treated by doctors foi ־a broken iUury.o’

    Enough’? I’m not sure knowing this can ever be enough foi ־me. It is a world I can scarcely imagine. I want to tell you—even in the face of this—of my good intentions in regard to race. How exactly do my good intentions alone go up against all that’? “Did you see theii ־faces’?”؛

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    What faces do we see’? Often, we can have good intentions but end up talking in such a way that seems to suggest that black people know what race is in a way 0إ1;;ﻻ0;١ ا :ا :،; ا،ا do؛t, as if ::؛Wiglaf ا־1إﻻ );־;(! ا١ل10ا11; ،ا1:;،ﻻ ١١ ئ1ل1 :،( اا ;ﻻإ ،إ١ل ;: ا0;ا

    races differ in varying degrees’? But of course that’s nonsense. Race is something everyone has, and it’s a signihcant pait of anyone’s identity because it’s not subject to change. There are also times in our good intentions we downplay, as Sam Wells reminds us, the historic injustice and present imbalance in the relation of black and white in this country by setting it in a wider context of the assimilation of a host of races and nationalities into this nation’s culture, or even going wider and looking to the mutual hospitality, undei’standing, andappi’eciation of many kinds of difference ranging across class to disability to sexual orientation, all under the general label of diversity. In this spirit, it has sometimes been said that Maitin Luther King died and lose again as a white liberal, because his legacy has somehow been hitched to a multitude of causes about which he expressed no public view.8 But some time this week, go to a dictionary—online or otherwise. Listen to this entry under Black. “Black commonly represents lack, evil, darkness, bad luck, crime, mystery, silence, concealment, elegance, execution, end, chaos, death, secrecy. Black magic is a destructive or evil form of magic, often connected with death. Evil witches are stereotypically dressed in black. “And then click acioss and listen to this entry on White: “White commonly represents purity, snow, ice, peace, life, death, nothing, fiost, good, air. White is the color worn by brides at weddings. Angels are typically depicted as clothed in white robes. Someone who is whiter than white is completely good and honest and never does anything bad. ” The characterization of pale skin as white and pure and those of dark brown skin as black and therefore flightening nms so deep in our culture that it still permeates an online dictionary in 2015. Black persons in the English-speaking world, even in the unlikely event that they’ve never been racially abused, discriminated against, excluded, or humiliated, still pick up any dictionary and hnd the weight of culture as a burden on their shoulders and the incline of social standing set to permanently uphill. But we’re gathered in worship this morning—gathered as Christians, and so together we ask, “What is the question of race really about’?” We can’t be content with sociological answers. We want theological answers. What’s the piOblem’? In what ways does Jesus address the piOblem’? How does the church witness to the way Jesus has addressed the problem ‘? Paul, writing to an eaily church, asked a very penetrating question: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own’?” What does it mean to be the Body of Christ’? That’s more than membership. It’s more than afhliation. It’s much more than like minded people binding together. It’s so much more than the collection of our good intentions. We understand ourselves to be before God and responsible to God. That is our identity that comes before all other impoitant identities. It comes before race; it comes before nation; it comes before family; it comes before job, church, school, or anything else. Our forbearer, John Calvin, contemplating the verse “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that

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    you are not your own’?” wrote: “We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will therefore sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let US therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for US according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can let US therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God’s: let US therefore live for God and die for God. We are God’s: let God’s wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the paits of our life accordingly strive toward God as our only lawful goal.” Five hundred years after Calvin, that still means that our lives may be ordered by commitments to many different things: wealth, power, reputation, sex, nation, church, tribe, race, or ethnic giOup. But we are not meant only for these things. Our belonging to God must serve and order all those other loyalties, and under God’s guidance this will mean what any call of God means—at times we must sacrifice our wants for God’s vision; we must give up our rights for God’s ways; we must set down our loyalties for God’s promises. God wants US together—all of US—in the Body of Christ. Period. We must do anything—and everything—to follow God there. Human life is well ordered when it is oriented toward the larger reality of God and God’s glory.و We get to glimpse the glory of God not through judging skin color, not thiOugh holding on to what we need, not by piOtecting “our rights.” We glimpse God’s glory when we live the truth: together we are the Body of Christ. There may be no more counter-cultural statement than that. Together we are the Body of Christ means that we are not our own. That yes, we have our own gifts, our own perspectives, our own convictions, our own histories, our own ethnicity, our own skin color, but even with all that, our chief identity is that we belong to God. We are not our own. It means what Dorothy Day once said, “Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for US all a time of terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested in’? What else do we all want, each one of US, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work-in all our relationships’? God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other.”)٥ Racial reconciliation isn’t something that any of US can delegate to anyone else. It’s something we each have to embark on for ourselves. And we have to do it individually, but also together—as the Body of Christ. For a long while our good intentions have had US speaking the language of rights and access and entitlement. That’s impoitant, but it can’t achieve the change that really matters. It’s only when the language of rights and access and entitlement are transformed into the realities of begin to com ؛down. This is hard journey. We can’t do ؛t by ourselves. We can’t do

    it if we think we belong only to ourselves or our tribe. Together, we are the Body of Christ—that is an imperative. That is a call to all our life. Do you not know that you are not your own’?

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    Notes t Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2٥14). 2 Holy Bass, “How It Feels to Be Black inAmerica,” a review ol Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, The New York Times, December 28, 2٥14. 3 Jim Wallis, “A Pastoral Letter to White Americans,” Sojo.net, December 11, 2٥14. 4 Nicholas Kristol, “Straight Talk lor White Men,” The New· York Times, February 22, 2٥14. 5 Ibid. 6 Nicholas Kristol, “Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist?” The New York Times, August 28, 2٥14. 7 Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2٥14). 8 Sam Wells, “You Are Not Tour Own,” preached at Duke Chapel on January 18, 2٥٥9. This sermon owes a huge debt to Wells’ sermon and his other sermons and writings on this topic. 9 Douglas Ottati, Feasting on the Word-Year B, Volume 1: “Advent throughTransfiguration, Theological Perspective on 1 Corinthians 6:12-2”.٥ 1” ٥Daily Dig for February 22” from Plough.com.

  • Preaching: Acting Up with the Holy Spirit

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    Preaching: Àcting Up with the Hoty Spirit

    WillWillimon

    Duke Divinity School, Durham, Noith Carolina

    A student emerged from Duke Chapel after service saying, “Thanks for a good sermon. God really spoke to me today.” I asked, delightedly, “How was my preaching helpful’?” “Your sermon gave me the guts to call my father and tell him I’m not going to law school. If he doesn’t like it, he can go to hell.” “Don’t mention where you were at eleven this morning!” My point? I didn’t do that. Not only is the Holy Spirit the “more” of Christian preaching because the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus, it’s the invasive, disruptive agency of preaching. I could preach without having a nervous stomach if I knew how to keep my sermons safe from the threat of the Holy Spirit. TiOuble is, on more Sundays than not, in spite of our locked doors, the Holy Spirit rips the sermon out of my hands and says more than I meant, disrupting a church that Ι-by theological training and natural inclination-intend to sedate. Christians are nothing without the Holy Spirit. Little in the Christian faith is selfderived . Jesus commands US to venture courageous, countercultural, demanding lives. He orders us to love one another, to love our enemies, to take up the CIOSS and follow, but never by our own devices. That’s why the historic core of the service of ordination is the Veil¡ Creator Spiritus, “Come, Creator Spirit.”) The church in its wisdom knows that preaching ought not be attempted alone. Just as the Spirit blooded over the waters at creation, faithful sermons are conceived and bilthed by the Holy Spirit. Preparation for preaching requires the discipline of regularly standing before God empty-handed, mute, brashly begging God for words we cannot say on our own. James Kay characterizes sermon prep as human work undertaken in conceit with the Holy Spirit: “All sermon preparation therefore must be a prayer for the Holy Spirit to take our ordinary words, however eloquent or inaiticulate, and make them the bread of life. Here the sermon, on analogy with the Lord’s Supper, is always a matter of epiclesis or invocation. . . . Come Creator Spirit!”) When we pray “Come, Holy Spirit!” it’s as if we ask, “Bring it on. Holy Spirit! Shake our foundations, send us foith, kick us out, set us on hre, and give us something more interesting to say than we would have said on our own!” If not for continuing Pentecostal commotion, we would have nothing to say that the world couldn’t hear as well thiOugh exclusively worldly means. That s why seminary homiletics courses are susceptible to the charge of a-theism-tempting students to substitute merely human rhetorical technique for empty-handed, pneumatological dependence. The church speaks not by savvy, worldly wisdom, strategies for church growth, or helpful psychological advice, but piOphetically, in all times and places, driven by the prodding of the Spirit. Preaching is based upon the character of God. We know from Scripture that God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is relentlessly revealing. When someone hears gospel, Luther’s verbum externum (the external word we cannot say to ourselves), it’s a practical, mundane validation of Scripture’s claims of God’s determined selfrevelation . If a preacher manages to asseit anything faithful in a sermon, it’s a Holy

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    Spirit induced miracle, public, practical demonstration that God has refused to be God without us. When Christians say Holy Spirit, we are talking about God. More pointedly, we are saying Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are one. When you are third in a list, for instance, like in the Apostles’ Creed, third can seem an afterthought. The Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Spirit-well, what does the Spirit do?2 The Holy Spirit is more than personal, vaguely spiritual experience; the Holy Spirit is who God is and what God does as the Trinity, whether we feel it or not, God’s anything-but-vague self-presentation. Thus, in a sermon on the Holy Spilit, Gregory Nazianzen says that we ought never compromise the unity of the Tilnity when we talk about the Holy Spilit. The Holy Spilit ought only be distinguished from Father and Son by a title: proceeding. Gregory explains that “ingenerate” belongs to the Father, “begotten” to the Son, and “piOceeding” to the Spirit. ؛The Holy Spilit is the means by which God the Father and Son piOceed into human history. God shows up, invades, self-reveals, impregnates, and becomes incarnate as Jesus Chilst, in the power of the Holy Spilit. Others in this issue of Journal for Preachers will speak to vailous gifts of the Spilit. Let them take mercy, peace, etc. As an aging preacher, I would like to testify to a spilltual gift that Paul fails to mention, perhaps because it was so obvious to him personally-disruption. A Chilstian is someone who has submitted to an unbalanced, instable life, a life out of control, dilven by and accountable to someone more interesting than ourselves or even our church, i.e. the third person of the Tilnity, God in action.

    TheJesus drama is instigatedbytheHolySpirit’sdisruptiveimpregnationofMary, who “became pregnant by the Holy Spilit” (Matt 1:18). Just as the Spilit blooded over the waters at creation (Gen 1), so the fecund Spilit continues to create, God for us, whether we asked for so interesting a God or not. As Jesus came up from the water, the heavens were opened, “and he saw the Spilit of God coming down like a dove and resting on him” (Matt 3:16). Descilbing the Holy Spilit as “resting” on Jesus could be misleading were it not for John the Baptist’s warning that whereas he baptized with water, Jesus’s baptism was of “the Holy Spilit and hre” (Luke 3:16). As I heard Barbara Blown Taylor say in a sermon, this dove has claws. Because the Holy Spilit is the Spilit of the Son, the Holy Spilit is as disraptive, as demanding, and as communicatively aggressive as Jesus. Thus light after baptism, Jesus, “full of the Holy Spilit” (Lk 4:1) is dilven into the wilderness (Mk 1:12) for head-to-head homiletical competition with the devil. “Filled with the power of the Spilit” (Lk 4:14), Jesus bursts Loith into Galilee. At his premier sermon, Jesus immediately incites an otherwise serene Sabbath-keeping congregation to murderous llot because “The Spilit ol the Lord is upon me, …to preach….” (Lk 4:18). The question, “What can the Spilit do that Chilst cannot do better’?” hnds its answer in Luke 4. The Spilit teaches Jesus to preach. Disraption is a gift ol the Holy Spilit, given for the sake ol all who attempt homiletics. To all the sweet people who come to church murmuring, “I want to be more spilltual,” the church responds not only with, “Have some bread, take some wine,” but also with “Listen to the trath about God delivered by someone who looks suspiciously like you without killing her for saying it. 1 ؛that works, well baptize

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    you and make you subject to the same Sprit who has emboldened the preacher.” The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is sent not to give us a warm feeling of peace, but rather to “teach you everything, and remind you of all I have said to you” (John 1Τ:26), everything, even the offensive commands of Christ that we have tried so hard to forget: turning the other cheek, praying for enemies, and letting the dead bury the dead, etc. That the Holy Spirit “will teach you everything, and remind you” of all that Jesus said is a bit threatening. Here is truth we cannot teach ourselves, truth that is not only a great mystery to us but also truth so demanding that we, in our human sin, cannot attain on our own, truth that we have martialed some of our best intellectual resources to avoid. That the Holy Spirit teaches is also reassuring. We preachers don’t work alone. The truth about God makes a way for itself, in the power of the Holy Spilit, boilng into the hard heaits and thick skulls of our listeners in ways we do not contiOl. We preachers thus take heait that when it comes to speaking, healing, and obeying God’s word, in speaking to and listening to God, we are not left to our own devices. As Paul says, “The Holy Spilit comes to help our weakness” (Rom 8:26).

    tfc ﻳﻠﺚ ﻳﻠﺚ ﻳﻠﺚ ﻳﻠﺚ

    The Acts of the Apostles makes clear that the Holy Spilit induced disraption embodied in the preaching of Jesus now accelerates, goes worldwide, infecting his followers, pushing them out of their comfoil zones all the way “to the ends of the eaith” (Acts 1:8). The Body of Chilst, the new visible presence of the Tilnity, is God in motion into the world. On Pentecost, Jews from all nations were convened in one place. Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a herce wind hlled the entire house, flames of fire alighting on each. Filled with the Holy Spilit, they began to speak in other languages, enabled by the Spilit (Acts 2:1-1). They spoke of God’s deeds of power. Paithians, Medes, Elamites, and all the rest of the far-flung Jewish diaspora heard in their own languages a new “thing.” That new creation by audition would bear the name church. That the bilih of the church by the Holy Spilit entailed the gift of languages is not accidental. At Babel humans had tiled to reach to the heavens so that they might be as gods. Speaking one language gave them the presumption that they were in control of communication, in charge of their destiny. In response to their attempt to be like God, they were punished by being separated from one another by different languages. Unable to communicate amid the babble, they became Strangers, enemies. At Babel the violence begun with Cain’s fratricide of Abel (Gen 4) became the new normal in a world with no common language and many barriers to community. Pentecost biOught peace, not by healing difference thiOugh the technique of “English only” institutionalization of one language to replace the many, but thiOugh a multilinguistic community called church. Chilstians would be forced, by baptism, to learn the language of the stranger, Chilst, making them strangers to the world as a people of peace in a world of violence. Dilven by the Holy Spilit into the world, they would be forced to learn the language of others in order to spread the news that God has destabilized present arrangements in a continuing revolution called the Kingdom of Heaven. Some who witnessed the gift of tongues at Pentecost mocked those who were possessed by the Spilit as drank, under the influence, out of control. Peter, however.

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    denied they were drunk, saying it’s “only nine o’clock in the morning!” (Acts 2:15). Then, under the power of the Spirit, Peter preached, drawing on the prophet Joel’s dramatic apocalyptic imagery to indicate that a new age was breaking out. His sermon would become the model for Christian preaching in Acts, piOclaiming that Israel’s messianic hopes were now fulhlled, even expanded, in Jesus Christ. Remember where we left Peter in Luke’s Gospel’? Peter was unable to say one faithful word when confiOnted by the maid in the courtyard before Jesus’s crucihxion (Luke 22:54-62). Now Peter boldly preached! No exclusively human explanation accounts for Peter’s homiletical courage. Peter’s preaching is solid evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit. According to Peter the giving of the Spirit was nothing less than the advent of a new age inaugurated by the Holy Spirit. In former days, the Spirit was given to a few individuals, that is, prophets who were empowered to speak God’s truth. But there would come a day, piophesied Joel, when God’s Spirit would be poured upon all. That Spirit flood would result in piOphetic sons and daughters, visionary young persons, and old folks daring to dream. Even slaves, men and women alike, would prophesy. All, even those who were previously voiceless and hopeless, would be enabled to speak up and speak out in God’s name. Thus Peter boldly piOclaimed that the work of the Spirit is no different from the work of Christ. To have the Spirit is to have Christ. The Holy Spirit does not enable US to say more than Christ; the Spirit enables US to speak of Christ (Acts 2:37-39), leading US to say things we would not venture on our own. The Holy Spirit descends to US where we are and communicates God to US in ways we can comprehend, healing the chaos and conftrsion of Babel. While a new age is inaugurated, bringing into existence a new people, the essential mission of the Spirit remains the same: the Spirit disrupts settled power arrangements, mocks official modes of explanation, and kicks down boundaries we have erected between one another. The primary mode through which this divine commotion is accomplished is through uppity, brash prOclamation. The church, says Chris Hughes, is subject to a “permanent Pentecost.” By the Spirit the church is gathered in order to utter the cry toward which it lives: “Come, Hrrd Jesus” (Revelation 22:2()). اUnfortunately, the church is often comfortable in its captivity and cultural servilities; therefore, in the !»wer of he Holy Spirit, Pentecost keeps hapj»ning, a preacher rises to s!»ak, he Spirit descends, shakes up the congregation, and it’s Luke 4 and Jesus in he pulpit at Nazareth all over again. As I sought to offer consolation to an Alabama pastor after a fire destroyed his church, the pastor surprised me by saying, “We lost a lot in that fire. A hundred years oL memories. Still, maybe God was in it.” “How do you mean’?” I asked. “We had talked about moving up on the highway, talked about how we ought to merge with the ALrican-American congregation up the road. Nothing ever came oL it. Maybe we loved this old building too much,” he explained. “I ain’t saying that the Holy Spirit was behind the fire that took our building, brrt it is the kind oL thing God might do it God really wanted US to move rather than sit here. God’s done it before.” Before venturing an epiclesis, be sure you can handle what happens it your prayer should be answered! The first time we hear Jesus preach in Mark (Mk 1:21-28), it’s on a Sabbath in Capernaum. The congregation is settling in to once again hear the sweet bromides

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    and platitudes they crave. Everyone is centering, achieving greater balance, quietly keeping Sabbath. Then Jesus begins to preach. “I know who you are Jesus!” shouted a possessed man. “You are from God, come to destroy US.” Mark gives not a word of Jesus’ sermon, perhaps because the explosion was not due to what Jesus taught but rather how he taught. Jesus spoke as “one with authorÍty ,”that is, speaking undeithe compulsion of external authorization. That same Spirit that had descended upon Jesus at his baptism, that had driven him into the wilderness with the devil, had now driven him to speak in a way that caused demons to stir and all hell to break loose, destroying the faithful’s Sabbath. In Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, heaven has opened and, among the faithful, all hell breaks loose. Jesus is crucihed and entombed (in a vain attempt to shut him up and hold him in one place). In the interim between his death and resurrection, according to First Peter 3:19-20, Christ descended and preached to the dead, harrowing hell during the sermon. First Peter’s claim is so in keeping with Jesus’s character to disrupt, liberate, dislodge even the dead. (I have found comfoit in this text when I’ve had to preach in some moribund congregation.) After decades, I’m still invigorated by the homiletical task. I still question why God called somebody like me, to whom the status quo has been so good, to preach this discombobulating good news. Oh, but what joy to cast my words into the silence on the wager that God might use my Southern-accented, scratchy voice for purposes greater than I intended. The faithful gather seeking consolation for their aches and pains, conhrmation of their illusions about themselves, a purpose driven life, additional aid in their preservation of the status quo, or whatever it is they worship rather than Jesus. And then I rise to preach, the Holy Spirit slips into our moderate, Methodist meeting, the place begins shake, I smell smoke, demons are let loose, the Holy Spirit intrudes, and I step aside and watch the hreworks. Fellow preachers: I don’t care how demanding it can be to work with the Holy Spirit, a less interesting God wouldn’t be worth our effoits.

    Notes t James F. Kay, Preaching and Theology (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 2٥٥7), 67. 2 This is Eugene Rogers’s formulation of the question in his book.»- the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatologyfrom Resources outside the klodern West (،Grand Wa؟è, Werdmans, Ί5>و ,١ . 7>>؟ee.؟réí’rcHrr’r,,؟FaithGi١esFull١١ess to ReasoningrTheFiveTheological Orations ofGregory ofNazianzen, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams (leiden: E. T Brill, 1991). Gregory, Holy Spirit,3V.L 4 Christopher R, T Holmes, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2٥15), 262.

  • Self-Control

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    Self-Control

    Matthew Myer Boulton

    Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana

    The word itself is a false start. In twenty-hrst-century North American English, self-control is often associated with will power and restraint, paiticulaily in the face of temptations to indulge or act recklessly in one way or another. We hear it invoked in connection with decadent desseits, for example, or managing a hot temper. And while this kind of self-regulation is surely included within the range of what Paul means by egkrateia in Galatians 5:23, that range is considerably broader and deeperso much so, in fact, that the translation “self-control” carries a risk of steering US away from what Paul has in mind. There are at least three related reasons for this. First, the term “self-control” can seem to assign the decisive locus of agency to the human “self’whereas the drift of Paul’s overall argument is that the decisive locus of agency belongs to the Spirit, or rathertotheSpirit-in-intimate-relation-with-the-human-self,suchthatahuman being “lives by the Spirit.” Second, “self-control” can seem to suggest a mode of ongoing human achievement whereas for Paul, egkrateia is a graceful divine gift, and in that sense a mode of ongoing divine geneiOsity and human reception. And third, “selfcontiOl ” piovides little if any hint of the Spirited anthropology at the heait of Paul’s thought, and in particular, of the ways in which the call to Christian life is a call to freedom and communion. In what follows, I explore these three interwoven ideas.

    hiving by tire. Spirit Egkrateia derives from two loots: en (“in” or “in the realm op’) and kratos (“strength” or “dominion”). “Inner strength” would be as htting a translation as any, pointing toward an underlying idea of something like “gumption,” “steadfastness,” “courage,” or “resolve.” This alternative already moves in a quite different direction than “self-control,” since it lays the emphasis not on resisting temptation but rather on foititude and vigor. The spotlight, we might say, moves from the horse’s bridle to the strength of the horse’s stride. hikewise, “inner dominion” opens up a wider avenue of thought than “self-control ,” invoking an idea of “being in command of one’s faculties” as opposed to being able merely to restrain oneself. “Inner discipline” opens another door, paiticulaily given the ways in which “discipline” can connote both mastery and instraction. And still another potential valence here derives from the fact that the Greek prehx en can mean not only “in” but also “in the realm of.” Read this way, egkrateia may suggest not so much “inner strength/dominion” as “being in the realm of strength/dominion,” or to shift the metaphor, being in tune with a broader song or symphony or tapping in to a wider flow of power. Like sailboats on a windswept lake, if we move forward gracefully, we do so not only because of something within US, but also and primarily because of something we are within. There is no telling, of course, precisely how the term resonated in Paul’s context, and egkrateia only occurs four times in the New Testament, each time in a kind of list. But the Epistle to the Galatians itself piovides a rich backdrop, and Paul’s over­

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    all argument lends suppoit to the lines of interpretation just outlined. His theme is Christian freedom, and the opening line of Galatians 5 sounds an exhoitative note that freedom requires, above all, inner strength: “For freedom Christ has set US free. Stand hrm, therefore, and do not submit to the yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). The Christians in Galatia, in Paul’s view, are at risk of losing their way in conflict and confusion, and even as Paul makes his own contribution to the unfolding debate, he also calls on his readers and hearers to use the freedom to which they have been called not for “biting and devouring one another” but rather for the sake of love and concord. In this context, he intioduces a pivotal contrast: on one hand, “living by the Spirit” (which leads to love and concord), and on the other hand, “gratifying the desires of the flesh” (which leads to confusion, conflict, and ultimately destruction). For Paul, true Christian freedom is only possible thiOugh living by the Spirit; and conversely, engaging in “the works of the flesh” is in fact, he insists, a form of slavery, the very predicament from which Christ has called the Galatians to be free. In effect, Paul is raising the stakes of the conflict in Galatia by framing it in epic, soteriological terms. The laundry list of vices he calls “the works of the flesh” contains all manner of misbehavior, but at the heait of the list, bookended by sins of sex and appetite, are the kinds of piOblems central to Paul’s concerns in the epistle as a whole: “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissension, factions, envy” (Gal 5:20-21). These are the vices uppermost in Paul’s mind in this correspondence, and accordingly, the “fruit of the Spirit” to which he contrasts these vices are themselves social phenomena that cultivate harmony: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, geneiosity , faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control [(egkrateia]” (Gal 5:22-23). Indeed, it is perhaps a measure of the Christian fascination with sexuality in recent decades, in North America and elsewhere, that it would even occur to US to interpret egkrateia primarily in opposition to, say, “fornication and licentiousness ” rather than in opposition to the “quarrels and dissension” that so concern the apostle in this letter. Understanding egkrateia as “inner strength” can help. In fact, if we end the list of the fruit of the Spirit this way (“geneiOsity, faithfulness, gentleness, and inner strength”), new interpretive possibilities emerge. The concluding item of a list can be rhetorically crucial: it can culminate, emphasize, sum up, reveal, or reframe the entire list. In this case, one possibility is that Paul means to end his list with the idea that such things as “love, joy, peace, and patience” require strength and resolve a reading supported by Paul’sopeningappealthattheGalatians“standfirm”and remain free in the face of enciOaching forces of slavery. Put another way, freedom requires struggle, and struggle requires strength. To love is no light thing. To be peaceful is no light thing. Each requires a vigor deeper than the muscles of the body. That is, each requires “inner strength.” And so the Spirit piOvides egkrateia as a viltue underlying all the others, a deep stamina that makes the rest of the list possible. But this stamina is no feat of Christian excellence; it is a divine gift and a function of the intimacy with the Spirit-Giving by the Spirit”that the Spirit herself initiates and sustains. This is not the fruit of Christian discipleship. It is the fruit of the Spirit. Should the Ford piOvide, this fruit may and will be involved in Christian discipleship, but always and only as the Spirit’s fruit. If we possess these benefits, we do so according to something like the ancient practice of usufruct, the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another.

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    When Paul writes of vices, he uses the phrase “works of the flesh,” underlining that these are our works, things we do at our own peril. But the contrasting list he calls not “works” but “fruit”of the Spirit, yes, but even the term “fruit” moves the mind in a very different direction than “works.” Fruit arise out of the earth; we may plant seeds or give the plants water, but only God provides the growth (cf. 1 Cor 3:67 ). We don’t effect fruit, much less “do” them; we can only receive and enjoy them. The phrase “fruit of the Spirit” is therefore a double warning: first, that we should not understand them to be our works (they are “fruit”), and second, that we should not understand them to be ours in any case (they are “of the Spirit”). Translating egkrateia as “self-control” can mislead us into overlooking these key features of Paul’s case, mistakenly assigning the decisive locus of agency to the human “self” supposedly controlling and being controlled. Like the young Luther, Christian disciples can be drawn by this line of thought into a downward spiral of self-chasing-self, a contorted death-grip of alleged regulation and rebellion, law and lawlessness. To the contrary, in Galatians Paul paints a picture of being “led by the Spirit” (Gal 5:18) in a way that releases US from this tortured relation with the law. For Paul, the ftrll and free human being is indwelt by the Spirit, sustained in the Spirit, challenged by the Spirit, strengthened by the Spirit. In this sense, the ftrll and free human being continuously receives and enjoys the fruits of the Spirit. In short, she lives by the Spirit, and in a real sense this entails a frrndamental departure from death-dealing forms of “self-control.”

    Spirited Anthropology As Paul conceives them, these ideas are by no means for Galatians alone, or for Jews alone or indeed for any particular subset of humanity. Paul is an apostle, an evangelist sent to the nations. As far as he is concerned, this account of law and freedom , love and envy, enmity and inner strength is epic in scope. He paints a portrait here of Christian freedom, but also of human freedom. We are created to “live in the Spirit. ” For Paul, to live in the Spirit is to be ftrlly and freely human. But how does a person’s “love,” “joy,” or “inner strength” belong to her on one level and yet at the same time be a “fruit of the Spirit” continuously originating in God’? Even the phrase “living by the Spirit” itself raises this kind of question: What does it mean to live in a way that our vitality itself is somehow shared, such that we live “by” or “thiOugh” another life not our own’? Here we arrive at a great mystery at the heait of Paul’s thought, according to which genuine human life is lived in and thiOugh divine life. Just a few chapters earlier, he puts it this way, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Or again, in his sermon to the Athenians, he describes God in similar terms, “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Again and again, Paul contends that the actual human situation is a kind of spiritual symbiosis, such that we live in and thiOugh a mystical, intimate dependence on God the creator, on Christ, and on the Spirit. For Paul, this is the truth about Christian freedom, but it is nonetheless the truth about human freedom more generally and about human being itself. Indeed, we may be paiticulaily well-positioned today to conceive these theological poetics in light of recent scientific discoveries of how prevalent symbiosis is in the world, and in particular in our own bodies. We tend to spend our days thinking of ourselves as independent creatures, and yet our health and wellbeing depend on

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    a microbial communitya microbiome on and within each of us-that, were it to be gathered together, would weigh as much as six pounds ! The more we learn about human biology, the more we recognize the symbiotic character of our lives; and likewise, the more we learn about the natural world, the more we recognize the interconnected, symbiotic character of the “maciObiome” as well. Paul’s theological account of human being, informed as it is by another worldview altogether, nevertheless points in a similar analogical direction. Human life and divine life are not separate phenomena, he insists. We live and move and exist in God. Saved from the perils of sin, we live, not us, brrt Christ in US. Freed by Christ for freedom, we are called to live by the Spirit. Exactly what kind of “inner strength” then is this’? It is not a clenched hst, but rather an open, human hand. Its exertion is also reception. It is our inner strength, but at a deeper level it is the strength of the Spirit flowing in US and through US. In this sense it is a participation in the Spirit’s vitality and vigor. It is within US, but it is also something we are within. And so we return to the Greek prefix en and the fact that it can mean not only “in” brrt also “in the realm of.” Accordingly, egkrateia may also be understood as being situated, by the grace of God, in the flow of the Spirit’s strength and dominion, playing a part in the ongoing divine symphony all around US. Just as authors and musicians sometimes speak of their art coming to them or through them, just as the well-known Franciscan prayer asks God to “make me an instrument of your peace,” so Paul’s Spirited anthropology invites US to understand our “inner strength” as at the same time a larger strength we are within, like a surfer borne by waves to the shore or a sailboat carried along by the breeze. Here is a supple, open-ended, relational, responsive form of dominion. It is not solitary; rather, it is a profoundly intimate form of strength in and with God. It is strength-together. Even at our core, even our very life force, our life blood, our strength, the energy and vigor by which we live our days-even at this deepest level of who we are, God is with US. In the end, egkrateia is a form of divine-human intimacy, a great mystery recalling Jesus’ beautiful words in the Gospel of John: “Abide in me, as I abide in you” (Jn 15:Τ). And this great and radiant mystery, Paul declares, is a fruit of the Spirit.

  • A Disability Homiletic: Opening the Church to the Fullness of Our Humanness

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    λ Disability Hoiailetic: Opening tbe Church

    to tbe Fnllness 0 ؛Onr Hnmanness

    John Swinton

    University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

    There is a tremendous power and exquisiteness about the ait of preaching. To take the word of God, to shape it and form it in such ways that others can hear the God of the universe talking with them in the midst of the preachers words, is both humbling and beautiful. As preachers, the fact that our frail human bodies can be inspired by God in ways that enable US to be communicators of divine truths is remarkable. As we preach, our words become conduits for Grace which reveal the holiness of God and paiticipate in the movement of the healing power of God’s Spirit. To preach God’s word is truly a gift. Preaching is an act of the imagination. Our imaginations contain the concepts, ideas, values, morality, and plausibility structures that help US to make sense of the world. Walter Bnieggemann has pointed out the way in which Scripture is intended to expand the imagination;’ to give US concepts and ideas, narratives, and perspectives that we could never create on our own. When we allow Scripture to recreate our imaginations, we are enabled and empowered to preach stories that transform the world. In Romans 12:2 the apostle Paul talks about the way in which in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are required to have our minds renewed. The renewing of our minds means expanding our epistemological universe in such a way as to allow US to begin to see and to understand the beauty of the revelation given to US thiOugh the Scriptures. As we preach God’s word, so we piOvide our hearers with God’s gift of a changed world. The world of course has not changed, but now as our minds are renewed, the preaching of the word helps US to see the world from a different angle. When we frame the world differently, so it looks different. As we move to the rhythm of that difference, we become more faithful in our discipleship.

    Disability theology The faithful piOclamation of the gospel helps US always to be open to God’s surprise . The surprise that the disciples encountered when they discovered the empty tomb of Jesus is paradigmatic for the surprise that each one of US can and should encounteras we engage creatively and thoughtfully with God’s word. The developing area of disability theology is based on the premise that if we listen to voices that are often excluded from the ways in which we understand Scripture and develop theology and tradition, we will be surprised, and that surprise will be a blessing to the whole people of God. The theology of disability has come into existence as Christians with disabilities and Christians who do not share that experience come together to ask questions of Scripture and tradition with a view to enabling the whole people of God in all of its diversity to see the world differently and to come to comprehend the broad range of possibilities that make up the essence of humanness. Disability theologians have noticed the way in which ceitain human experiences, and questions emerging from those experiences, have tended not to have been at the forefront of the development of a biblical interpretation and a theological reflection.?

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    This has meant that key questions about the nature of God, church, and humanness have been asked, but only from a ceitain perspective. Traditionally theologians and biblical scholars have questioned scripture and tradition from their position within the academy. The range of questions that can be asked is determined by their paiticular context and situation. These questions and the answers that people come to are impoitant. They are not, however, the only questions that can be asked. Theologies of disability seek to facilitate the asking of questions that emerge from theological reflection on the experience of human disability. Such questions can be challenging and new. The point is not to challenge oithodoxy, but rather to open up that which we think we know to the possibility of surprise and awe as we look at it from a slightly different angle. For example, we might consider what it is to piOclaim the gospel to people with advanced dementia or profound intellectual disabilities, that is, those who have either lost their words or never had any in the first place’? How does our ministry of preaching reach into the lives of these folks’? Do we put them to one side and say that such people, whilst obviously an object of pastoral concern, need not be the focus of our preaching ministry’? Or do we preach into the experience; do we thiOugh our preaching seek to enable congregations to think thiOugh the issues of what it might mean to be a disciple of Jesus and to have forgotten who Jesus is, or never to have known him with their minds. How are we to understand Paul’s words in Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heait that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” in the light of lives which cannot declare with their mouths or conceptualise the resurrection with their minds’? What kind of community might our preaching seek to form in response to such diversity of experience’? It is exegetical and proclamatory issues such as this that the theology of disability seeks to bring to the theological and homiletical table of the church.

    A disability hermeneutic Disability piOvides US with a hermeneutic that enables US to see things within texts that perhaps we were completely unable to see previously. 3 In Exodus 4:10-17, Moses receives his call. At first he is resistant. Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant. Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” He asked that God send somebody else. But what does God do’? Does God heal Moses’? Does God take away his stutter and send him out better able to communicate that which he has been given’? No. God simply says, “This is your vocation, and here are the people who will help you. Now go and do it! ” Even more mysteriously God says, “Who do you think does these things’?” “The Lord saidto him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths’? Who makes them deaf or mute’? Who gives them sight or makes them blind’? Is it not I, the Lord?’ ”What are we to make of such an odd statement’? One place where we might begin to preach out of Moses’ experience and into the issue of disability relates to the temptation to equate disability with sin. It seems clear that in Moses’ case, human disability was not a barrier to divine calling. It seems that one does not need to be healed in order to fulfil one’s vocation. More impoitantly perhaps, for those who want to equate the origins of disability with sin or the demonic, God’s statement as to the divine origins of ceitain forms of disability is cleaily a challenge. God does not indicate that these

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    forms of disability are bad things; God simply says that he made them. If the creator God is in the midst of disabled lives, then this offers a fascinating and mysterious answer to the question of whether disability can actually be explained in terms of it being the product of sin. As we allow these new questions that emerge from reflection on human disability to enter into our preaching hermeneutic, so we are opened up to new possibilities and new perspectives as we find ourselves called to form a very new kind of community . As we reflect on the life of Moses and the life of Paul with his thorn in the flesh that was never healed (Does this mean that Paul did not have enough faith to be healed’?), and as we realise that redemption is wrought thiOugh the broken and bleeding body of Jesus, so we are opened up to the complicated fact that in Christ there is “no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, [able bodied or disabled], Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11). In this way reflection on human disability expands our imagination and helps US to break free from a modern anthropology that assumes that such things as freedom, choice, intellectual knowledge, autonomy, beauty, power, and competitiveness are the essence of humanness and of salvation.

    Preaching disability: Re-imagining Acquired Brain Damage “ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God..” fpAAA) It will be helpful at this stage to think more directly about how we might preach into a particular experience of disability. One form of disability that raises interesting questions for any congregation and those who desire to preach into it is the issue of acquired brain injury. The term acquired brain injury relates to all types of traumatic brain injury as well as injuries that occur after bilth such as strokes or any other lesion that leads to lack of oxygen to the brain. One of the effects of acquired brain injury is that very often people encounter what is often described as a change in personality , that is, a sometimes radical change in the particular giOup of characteristics or qualities that are perceived by an individual and others to constitute the essence of identity and character. The author Floyd Skloot’s experience gives an insight into what it feels like to encounter acquired brain injury and some of the issues that can arise. On December 7, 1988, he woke up to discover that the Floyd Skloot who had gone to bed the previous evening was very different from the Floyd Skloot who woke up the following day. Skloot was on a business trip, attending a conference on national energy policy, when he woke up in his hotel loom, everything had changed. He could not remember how to shut off the alarm on his watch. He could not work out why he could not get into the elevator when the door was closed. He literally developed dementia overnight. }־ Skloot had contracted a virus that targeted his brain. The virus had left lesions on his cerebral coitex which, amongst other things, seriously damaged his long and shoit term memory and his basic ability to think. As he puts it, “My entire brain, the organ by which my very consciousness is contiOlled, was reorganized one day ten years ago. I went to sleep here and woke up there; the place looked the same but nothing in it worked the way it used to. ”5 For Skloot, life changed in ways that were mystifying and frighteningly different. The changes he went thiOugh meant that he felt that he was in some senses a quite different person from the person he was before. Skloot’s experience will sadly be

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    replicated in lives of many people within our congregations as they encounter strokes, head injury, and all soits of different kinds of trauma that bring about changes that make them feel like they are strangers to themselves and to others. How are we to preach into such lives’? What possible message of hope could address such an apparently tragic and apparently hopeless situation’?

    Hidden in Christ In Colossians 3:3 Paul informs US, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. “This is a truly mysterious passage. Paul pushes US to realise that as Christians, we are not who we may think we are. We no longer think of ourselves in terms of what we think we already know. Our identity is not comprised of our memory, knowledge, and current capacities. We are who we are in Christ and even that is hidden from US. If we begin to read this passage from the perspective of the experience ofacquired brain injury,aninterestingtransformationin perspective begins to emerge. This change of frame comprises two aspects. Firstly, Christians identify themselves hrst and foremost as being “in Christ.” If someone asks me who I am, my hrst response is no longer “I am John and I come from Aberdeen in Scotland,” or “I am a minister and a preacher,” or “I am a university professor.” I am of course all these things, but hrst and foremost who I am is who I am in Christ. My identity no longer comes from my capacities or self-knowledge. Only Jesus knows my true identity. Secondly, who we are, our true identity, is always a mystery for human beings. We will never truly know who we are until we meet Jesus in glory. “For now we see thiough a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in pait; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Learning who we are, hnding our identity in Christ, is always a piOcess of encounter and discovery. Before I met Jesus, I thought I was doing quite well in life; I thought I knew who I was. But once I met Jesus, I realised that I was a broken sinner and the whole of my life as I perceived it had been quite different. The self is always a mystery. Paul’s insight and language about the mystery of the self and about its hiddenness in Christ helps US to re-imagine and renegotiate the experience of personality change following acquired brain damage.Itiscertainlythe case that our brains are traumatised and that ceitain things within our lives change, sometimes quite radically. It can be extremely difhcult to see precisely how we might bridge the gap between “who we were” and the ways in which we inhabit the world now. But Paul tells US that the gap between what was and what is is not unbridgeable. Everyone’s life is fundamentally a mystery; none of US truly knows who we are. The experience of brain damage simply exacerbates and sharply brings to the fore the uneasy reality that everyone’s life is hidden in Christ. Although things may have changed, we do not lose ourselves. We simply encounter a focused experience of the way that life is for everyone: hidden …at least for now. We may in one sense become quite different, but Jesus bridges the gap. Our task is to trust that Jesus holds US even when we seem to have become strangers. between thOse With brain damage ¿d those who do not share that experience

    and provides US with a hopeful theological grounding and reframing that can

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    help to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between who we were and the ways in which we inhabit the world now. Our task is to trust that Jesus holds who we are even though we can’t quite work it out for ourselves. However, the theological task does not end there. Building theological foundations needs to be matched by a movement towards revised faithful practice. What kind of practices might enable individuals and communities to build on this theological foundation and creatively manage the changes that come with brain damage’?

    Befriending the stranger within In his book Befriending The Stranger, Jean Vanier draws attention to Call Jung’s response to a Christian woman wherein he makes an interesting and somewhat disturbing observation:

    I admire Christians, because when you see someone who is hungry or thirsty, you see Jesus. When you welcome a stranger, someone who is “strange,” you welcome Jesus. When you clothe someone who is naked, you clothe Jesus. What I do not understand, however, is that Christians never seem to recognize Jesus in their own poveity. You always want to do good to the poor outside you and at the same time you deny the poor person living inside you. Why can’t you see Jesus in your own poveity, in your own hunger and thirst’? In all that is “strange” inside you: in the violence and the anguish that are beyond your contiOl! You are called to welcome all this, not to deny its existence, but to accept that it is there and to meet Jesus there.«

    Jung draws upon the imagery of Matthew 25 and the powerful statement by Jesus that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25: JO). Christians are called to be loving and compassionate towards the weakest members of our society: strangers and outcasts, those alienated and vulnerable to the capriciousness of an inhospitable world. Why’? Because that is where Jesus lives. As we act in hospitable ways towards the poor, the outcast, the stranger, so we minister to Jesus as he takes up residence within the stranger. If it is the case that “Christ may dwell in your heaits thiOugh faith” (Ephesians 3:1), then it could be no other way. However, Vanier’s point in using Jung in this way is not simply to highlight Christian attitudes towards strangers in general. He is pushing US to think about the possibility that the “stranger” might actually be within US. The outcast and the stranger are not simply “out there” or “over here. “We can become strangers even to ourselves. Vanier points out that

    Jesus calls US not only to welcome the weak and the rejected … but also the weak and the broken person within US and to discover the presence of Jesus within US. … In order for US to be men and women who give life to others we have to live in the truth of who we are; we have to hnd an inner wholeness, no longer to deny or ignore our wounds but to welcome them and to discover the presence of God in these very places of our own weakness.؟

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    As we reflect on the experience of acquired brain damage, the importance of Vanier’s words and the way that he draws US into the Christian tradition of befriending Strangers comes strongly to the fore. How might we go about befriending the stranger if the stranger is within us; if we ourselves feel like the stranger’?

    From, disorientation to reorientation: ^nding ourselves in a. strange new world of change In his work on the psalms of lament, Walter Brueggemann teaches US that the lament Psalms are intended to take US from the place of suffering and disorientation to a place of reorientation. ؟The structures of the Psalms move within the dynamic of orientation to disorientation to reorientation. Much of our lives are comprised of ordinary day-to-day experiences. Everything seems fine, God is in his heaven, and life is even and stable. Then something terrible happens, and we find ourselves in a place of disorientation; none of the old roadmaps seem to lead US home; our normal coping mechanisms fail to enable US to cope; we are lost, disoriented, and alone. But then, for no apparent reason, in the midst of the Psalm, something seems to change. For whatever reason, the psalmist realises that even in the midst of deep disorientation , God’s hesed, God’s unchanging love remains firm and piOvides hope. Nothing changes. The pain, suffering, loss, and alienation do not instantly go away. However, the recognition of the presence of God brings about deep change in our perspective. Psalm 13 is a good example of this movement:

    How long. Lord’? Will you forget me forever’? How long will you hide your face from me’? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heait’? How long will my enemy triumph over me’? Look on me and answer. Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I wifi sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heait rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.

    What Vanier urges US to consider is that the great reorientation for the followers of Jesus who encounter brain damage is that they may feel that they have become strangers to themselves and to others, but it is precisely because they are strangers that they can be assured that Jesus is with them and for them, holding and remembering them in the mystery of their hiddenness. The disorientation is terrible, but it is not irresolvable. Jesus moves with US into the great unknown as he takes up residence in the heait of this newly formed stranger. What we as individuals and as communities are called to do is to learn what it means to offer hospitality to the stranger within and the stranger without. assured of two things. Tirstly, that they h؛ve not lost themselves, nor havCthey been

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    completely alienated from the rest of humanity. The mystery of who they are may be paiticulaily acute, but it is not unusual. Who we are for all of US is always hidden in Jesus. Secondly, the task of the individual and the task of the community is to learn what it means to offer hospitality to the newly formed stranger. Such hospitality holds in critical tension who we were, who we have become, and what we are in Christ. Such hospitality piOvides a vital conduit for healing, Christian friendship, and the creation of positive identities even in the midst of deep change and disorientation. It is of course right that people should lament for the things that have been lost, but that lament should lead to a mode of reorientation that desires to make strangers into friends and to live faithfully and hopefully within the strange new world that brain damage has biOught to our communities.

    Preaching hope into apparent hopelessness This example of the way in which we can rethink a text in the light of human disability indicates some of the ways in which preaching disability not only helps people at a pastoral level, but also offers challenging new theological perspectives that impact upon the whole people of God. Such preaching can speak hope into a situation that, at hrst glance, seems hopeless and tragic. Bringing such new hope and fresh possibilities is the essence of a disability homiletic. Thinking thiOugh issues of disability in the context of preaching is not something that is a “specialist enterprise” or that only has signihcance for those who are “interested in such things.” Rather, preaching disability takes US to the heait of the gospel and draws US into the presence of Jesus in new ways which bring healing and revelation to those who have ears to hear. Preaching the word in such ways enables the people of God to enter into the fullness of human experience and in so doing opens the church to the wonderful healing power of the gospel as it takes that which seems to be hopeless and turns it into something that is reassuring and potentially beautiful.

    Notes t Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2٥٥1). 2 Nancy L Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). 3 Kathy Black, A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996). 4 Floyd Skloot, “Wild in the Woods: Confessions of a Demented Man,” The Missouri Review 22.3 (Fall 1999): 4. 5 Floyd Skloot, In the Shadow ׳ofMemoir (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2٥٥3). 6 Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2٥٥5): 63-65. 7 Ibid. 8 Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Coimnentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg , 1984).

  • Active Patience in the Lives and Proclamation of Moses and Martin Luther King, Jr

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    Active Patience in the Lives and Proclamation

    0؛Moses and Matin Lather King, Jr.

    Jan Schnell Rippentrop

    Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

    Passive Patience in US Culture US culture often dismisses “patience” as a passive characteristic. Stephen Webb lOte mUk Christian Century,

    In our plugged-in culture, it is the distractions that make our lives so hard, and patience, rather than helping US escape the hustle and bustle, simply prepares US to face more calmly the day’s crowded schedule. But patience needs to be an end, not a means, if it is to become more than a way of coping with the demands of multitasking. The church teaches patience by setting aside Sundays for worship, which should be a restful alternative to the laborious efhciency of the workweek.!

    Webb identihes patience as a characteristic that helps one feel more calm and restful. This asseition describes the US cultural usage ol the term. Similaily, MerriamWebster dehnes patience as the capacity “to bear pains or trials calmly or without complaint.”? The dictionary piOvides this illustration: “I don’t have the patience to wait in line for hours just to buy a ticket. ”3 This meaning ol patience as calm, restful, and waiting prevails in US culture, but it differs drastically from the Pauline view in Galatians 5.

    Active Patience in Galatians In Galatians 5, Paul includes patience as a fruit of the Spirit, not as an individual and calm attribute, but as an active force in community. Patience (μακροθυμι,α) literally means long-passion or longsuffering, as the King James Version translates it. Long-passion is not passive, calm, rest&l, or for oneself. Long-passion or patience behaves actively and generatively for the life of the world. It bears active and community -oriented characteristics.

    Patience Serves Community Patience serves thewhole community. Individuals do not own patience, but instead,

    nity. The lhetorical function of Galatians 5 differs from other Pauline lists of spiritual

    gifts (Rom 12:6-8, I Cor. 12:7-11). Galatians 5 highlights the community-building effects of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit causes and then effects changes in the community. With the fruit of patience, the Galatians community is increasingly guided by the Spirit and moves away from competition among themselves.

    Patience as an Active Practice Patience is an active practice. The Spirit is not passive nor does the Spirit guide communities to passivity. The Spirits patience is an active, long-tempered gift that

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    bears with people in their weaknesses, without resorting to retaliation. It buoys others up so that they themselves can move forward. As an active practice, patience does not flee in the face of urgency and conflict. On the contrary, patience is precisely the fruit needed under these conditions. True patience exhibits itself most cleaily under duress. Moses and Maitin Luther King, Jr. piOvide two models of active patience harnessed for their communities.

    Active Patience, for tire Community: Moses Moses cleaily behaved impatiently at times. He flared with anger at the forced labor of the Hebrew people and retaliated, killing an Egyptian soldier. 4 He hastily called the Israelites “you rebels” and stnick the lock in frustration. ؛Yet, Moses grew into a leader who left an exemplary legacy of patience. How this occurred offers some guidance and hope for those who can easily recount impatient behaviors that mark their past. Moses grew as a patient leader between the time he hastily struck the lock, which resulted in God telling Moses he would not enter the Promised Land, and the time he looked out upon the Promised Land before he died. It took Moses his entire liletime to develop patience. He did so among and for the Israelites, and the book ol Hebrews remembers him as a leader who persevered.؛ Moses’s patience enabled him to see the journey ol the Israelites as larger than himsell. He led as one who valued his community, reaching the Promised Land even when he would not personally attain this goal. His patience imbued him with a long vision that served the community ol the Israelites. Moses also enacted patience on behall ol the community by supporting the succeeding generation ol leaders. He did not just wait passively for others to take initiative. Moses took the matter up with God and advocated for a leader who could succeed him.

    Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, “Let the Lord, the God ol the spirits ol all flesh, appoint someone over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation ol the Lord may not be like sheep without a shepherd.” So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua son ol Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him; have him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and commission him in their sight.” (Numbers 27:15-19)

    Out ol concern Loithe community, thatthey “not be like sheep without a shepherd,” Moses prepared for his successor. He invoked God to appoint someone, pointed out key job responsibilities, laid hands upon Joshua, and piOvided for his commissioning in front ol the people. Moses’ actions exemplily patience because they model remaining steadlast in the midst ol a dilficult transition. His actions employ patience on behall ol the community because they piOvide for the ongoing wellbeing ol the Israelites. Moses exhibited patience as an active practice. For Moses, formation into the Spirit’s patience took a liletime. The entire book ol DeuteiOnomy ؛alls between the lock strike at Meribah and Moses’ view ol the Promised Land from Mount Nebo. Moses does not become apathetic or passive due to his personal loss ol access to the

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    Promised Land. Rather, Moses perseveres and remains actively engaged throughout their journey. Moses received multiple opportunities to rehearse patience thr oughout his lifetime , and he responded by continuing to contribute actively to his community. God repeatedly tells Moses to ascend the mount to see the land he will not enter (e.g., Num. 27:12, Deut. 3:27, Deut. 32:49). Moses responds neither in anger nor defeat; he responds by continuing active preparation of the Israelite people for their new home. Moses also got repeated chances to practice patience as he walked with the Israelites . He bore with the Israelites in their weakness. Instead of retaliating, he rehearsed the covenantal relationship and ordinances again and again. In Deuteronomy 4 Moses spoke, “So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe. …”In chapter 5 he gave the 10 Commandments and in 6 the Shema, “Hear, o Israel.” In 32 he sang to the Israelites the words they would need to pass on to their children so that “they may diligently observe all the words of this law.” In 33 he blessed the Tribes. Despite the pain of his own non-entry, Moses rehearsed the law in multiple forms to the assembly. Moses’ patience grew thiOugh multiple iterations while he actively practiced it in community.

    Active Patience for tire Community: Martin Luther King, Jr. Maitin Luther King, Jr. employed patience on behall ol the larger community by cultivating others ‘ talents instead ol relying solely on his own. He surrounded himsell with other committed and capable Civil Rights leaders. Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. was a close conhdant ol Dr. King. The two conlerred with one another on major and minor decisions and piOvided encouragement as well as correction. King depended on Abernathy, among others, enabling each to lead Lrom his own strengths.

    The different styles ol Abernathy and King combined to create an effective and inspilLng message at the boycott’s weekly mass meetings. While King emphasized the philosophical implications ol nonviolence and the movement , Abernathy helped energize the people into positive action. “Now,” he would tell the audience following King’s address, “let me tell you what that means for tomorrow morning.’؟

    Although Maitin Luther King, Jr. led with chaiLsma, he surrounded himsell with competent co-leaders. He led out ol his strengths and looked to others like Abernathy to likewise contiLbute their best leadership. He invested in this wider circle ol leaders, cultivating their skills and inviting them to manage vaiLous paits ol the movement. King showed loith patience as a communal practice by surrounding himsell with collaborators. King exemplihed patience as a communal practice by deliberating in community about the effects that a Civil Rights action may have on the whole system. On April 12, 1963, King read a local newspaper in a Birminghamjail cell where he was being held because ol desegregation demonstrations. In it eight Alabama clergymen advised people to withdraw suppoit lrom Maitin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights actions in Birmingham. They wrote, “We recognize the natural impatience ol people who ؛eel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these

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    demonstrations are unwise and untimely.”® In a response four days later. King wiote his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” in which he says.

    If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.5

    For King, patience born of the fruit of the Spirit could not settle for injustice. Therefore,King rejects the so-called patience demanded in theclergymen’sstatement. He portrays it as incommensurate with the patience of the Spirit and exposes it as a racist maintenance of systemic oppression. King reflected on the action in Birmingham in his book Why We Can 7 Wait. The gioup of Civil Rights leaders had deliberated when they received the couit injunction that would have prevented the Civil Rights Movement demonstrations until after the activists argued their point in couit. The gioup discerned to move forward with the demonstration as planned.

    The time had now come for US to counter their legal maneuver with a strategy of our own. Two days later, we did an audacious thing, something we had never done in any other crusade. We disobeyed a couit order. We did not take this radical step without prolonged and prayerful consideration. Planned, deliberate civil disobedience had been discussed as far back as the meeting at Harry Belafonte’s apaitment in March. There, in consultation with some of the closest friends of the movement, we had decided that if an injunction was issued to thwart our demonstrators, it would be our duty to violate it.“

    What eight white clergymen had named as impatience was far from an impulsive decision. Civil Rights leaders had discussed it multiple times and came to a conclusion together. King reframed the decision as necessary patience, that is, active patience that moves tenaciously forward for the good of the community. Maitin Luther King, Jr. exhibited patience as an active practice by working step by step towardjustice and reconciliation. The “Commitment Card”thateachvolunteer filled out emphasized this work. This card necessitated volunteers to consent to ten statements that became affectionately referred to as the 10 Commandments of the Birmingham movement. Number 1 read, “Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus,” and #2 followed with “Remember always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.”” These “commandments ” require patience. They are daily commitments minimally concerned with shorttterm wins but٦dcvo،tedU; ل : ل:ئ; إ:ا systemic ١1(1)0 (؛11)1ا؛ .Seeking t؛e longd،:

    patience. King demonstrated that patience is an active piOcess when he turned others toward each other in a shared vision. In his final speech “I Have Been to the Mountaintop ,” he piOclaimed,

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    Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difhcult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop . … And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

    King condones anticipatory grief by saying “I may not get there with you” to an assembly who knew several threats had been made against his life. He displaces his own centrality by acknowledging that he will not always be there. King makes an overt reference to Moses when he talks about seeing the Promised Land and knowing that even it he does not reach it, the movement will. He drew a parallel between the Israelites who reached the Promised Land and the Civil Rights suppoiters. Not only will suppoiters ol the movement reach their goal; they will thrive and be blessed to be a blessing. King removes himsell from the center and turns people toward one another in suppoit and continued movement toward the goal. ThiOugh active patience, he equips others to persevere.

    The View from the Mountaintop Moses’ mountain view resulted from active patience employed for his community . He treated the Israelite’s journey as a movement larger than his liletime, and he suppoited the leadership that would succeed him. He gave patience time to form even while he repeatedly rehearsed it. Active patience granted Maitin Luther King, Jr. his own mountain view. He surrounded himsell with collaborators and deliberated with many on the effects ol Civil Rights actions. He worked toward justice and reconciliation instead ol victory, and he turned people toward one another by sharing the vision. Patience allowed Moses and King to piOclaim God’s word for the people with endurance thiOugh adversity. ContrarytoWebb’sunderstandingofpatience as an end, patience is mostly enacted tenacity for lile’s journey. Life’s journey both forms patience and requires patience. Active patience equips the preacher with the tenacity necessary for the uphill climb. Tenacity enough to hold one’s community together during adversity. Tenacity enough to stay the course in the mission God grants a community ol Laith. The actual moment when one glimpses the Promised Land requires little patience. At the same time, that vision ol the Promised Land is crucial for active patience. Once glimpsed, Moses and MLK never lost the vision ol where the people were headed. In patience, they imbued others with this vision and equipped others to carry it forward. A clear vision ol the lelos piOvides energy to maintain active patience. For a preacher, the vision helps maintain the patience to endure in the midst ol lile’s messiness; it piovides a mainstay when settling for something less would be easier. In many ways, a preacher inhabits an olhce with a mountain view. How do you pioclaim what you see when you look over into the Promised Land toward which your community journeys’? How do you, as preacher, form yourself in the practices ol patience’? The lives ol Moses and Maitin Luther King, Jr. suggest some staiting points:

    Practices ol patience that serve the whole community: 1. Treat the mission as larger than your lilespan.

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    2. Support the leadership that succeeds you. 3. Surround yourself with collaborators. 4. Deliberate in community over the effects of actions.

    Practices of active patience: 1. Anticipate patience requiring an extended formation time. 2. Rehearse patience repeatedly. 3. Work toward justice and reconciliation instead of victory. 4. Turn others toward one another by sharing the vision.

    In Galatians 5, the Holy Spirit gives a particular brand of patience: it is active and it benehts the entire community. While patience may not always feel calm and tranquil, the Spirit’s patience does enable a community to face its greatest challenges and keep moving forward. You have glimpsed a vision of God’s mission. Active patience will enable you to persevere in your pursuit of that vision for the good of your community.

    Notes t Stephen H. Webb, “Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus” in The ChristianCentury , Vol. 131, Issue 15, July 23, 2٥14. 2 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patient accessed 1.7.2٥16. 3 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patience accessed 1.7.2٥16. 4 Exodus 2: tiff. 5 Numbers 2.٥ 6 Hebrews 11. 7http://kingencyclopedi a. stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_abernathy_ralph_david_1926_ 199 /٥accessed 1.7.2٥16. % Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., EightWhite Religious Leaders, and the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (LSL Press, 2٥٥1), 235. 9 Why We Can’t Wait (NewVork: Signet, 2 ,)٥٥٥1.٥٥ 1 ٥Ibid., 68. 11 Ibid., 61. 12 Martin Luther King, “I See the Promised Land,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Λ ,.־ed. James M. Washington, Reprint edition (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2٥٥3), 286.

  • Jesus as a Refugee

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

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    Jesus us a Refugee

    Matthew 2:13-23

    Mary Hinkle Shore The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Brevard, Noith Carolina

    “Life has always been scary here,” observes Anne Lamott, reflecting on the human condition in light ol shootings and terrorist attacks in the summer ol 2016, “and we have always been as vulnerable as kittens.”’ Given the vulnerability that is bound up with being human, it makes sense that the One known as Emmanuel, “God with us,” would know human vulnerability. Sooner or later, Emmanuel would come under threat. Even so, the speed with which moital danger finds him is remarkable. The baby Jesus is not out ol diapers before he and his Lamily are refugees fleeing state sanctioned violence with an urgency so intense that their flight cannot wait even until the morning. Today, the refugee Jesus is joined by tens ol millions ol brothers and sisters. The UN Relugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that at the end ol 2015, there were 65.3 million Loi’cibly displaced people worldwide, and21.3 million ol these were refugees. (Refugees are displaced people who have been Icricetl to flee their own countries.)

    How shall Christians understand and respond to the highest levels ol displacement in recorded human history’? For those seeking how Christians are called to engage with those fleeing their homes in search ol salety, the stories in Matthew 2:13-23 offer a starting place. Engagement with scripture in Christian community shapes our collective imagination and action. To preach these relugee stories today is necessarily to engage the question ol how to live LaithLully in a time ol mass displacement. That is the question ol this essay. How will Christians who are not displaced live differently because ol the shape these stories give to our lives’? What responses do they inspire in those who follow Jesus, and what responses do they exclude’?

    Scripture. Ful^lled The opening chapters ol Matthew are peppered with Lulfillment citations and allusions to the Old Testament. The inlancy stories ol Jesus recapitulate the lile ol God and the history ol Israel as they had been intertwined Irom the time ol the patriarchs thiough the exile. A shoit list ol examples will make the point. اJoseph, the presumedlatherolJesus, receives divine direction through dreams—just like another Joseph. The patriarch Joseph had dreams and interpreted the dreams ol others offering insight into the luture. Moreover, like Joseph before him, Jesus’ lile is saved as he is carried off to Egypt. اLike baby Moses, baby Jesus comes under threat ol death Irom a tyrant almost immediately (cl. Exodus 1:1-2:10). Also like Moses and the whole ol Israel with him, Jesus is “called out ol Egypt.” After leaving Egypt, the road “home” includes Lor Jesus—as it did Lor Israel before him—the experience ol being a sojourner. The holy Lamily settles in Nazareth not because it is home, but because it is more likely to be saler Lor them than a Judea ruled by Archelaus.

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    اThe reference to Isaiah 7: IT in Matthew 1:23 connects Jesus to a prophetic tradition that has offered judgment and hope to Israel for centuries. Isaiah 7: IT offers King Ahaz hope for the near future and the assurance of “God with us” at a time when the help he may derive from human alliances is, well, limited. For Matthew, the bilth of Jesus hlls this word with new content and renewed hope. اThe voices and experiences of the exile help to shape our understanding of Jesus and the reality of those aiound him. As the innocents are slaughtered in and aiound Bethlehem, Matthew borrows Jeremiah’s description of the aching lament for all that had been lost as the Northern tribes went into exile. On the occasion of Herod’s vengeance, Rachel again weeps for her children, refusing to be comfoited.

    the lens of Matthew 2,1R. Daniel Kirk’s explanation is helpful. Kirk surveys modern exegetical work on the fulhllment citations and offers his own alternative proposal. He concludes that Jesus fulhlls the scriptures in the sense of hlling them up. ؛His image of a vase helps to explain. Jesus hlls up the scriptures the way water hlls a vase: the life of Jesus is given shape by the scriptures even as it gives that familiar shape new substance. As Kirk puts it, “Jesus did not simply come to embody principles or even fulhll piOphetic predictions, but to take the story of Israel to himself, over the course of his life and ministry on eaith, until such a time as the story of Jesus overhows the story of Israel and goes to all the eaith” (28:16-20)7 As the story of Jesus overhows the story of Israel and pours out into all nations, it comes to give shape to the story of contemporary refugees, and their stories give the story of Jesus new substance. It is fulhlled in our hearing. How is Matthew 2:13-23 fulhlled in our hearing’? The Word is very near you. Ask refugees—or people who have had to run for their lives in the middle of the night—about their hight. Nyamal Tutdeal lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and is pursuing a Master’s degree in International Peace and Conhict Resolution. She was born in 1985 to parents who were refugees from Sudan’s civil war and who thought they would be living temporarily in Ethiopia. They stayed for six years. She remembers :

    Then in 1991, our family was separated. While my mother stayed with my brother in Ethiopia, I joined my grandmother and uncle on a 107-mile walk back to Sudan. This was during the rainy season, when flooding was common. Most children my age were carried by their parents or other older relatives, but my uncle was sick during our journey and too weak to carry me. If the water got too deep for me to walk, I’d hold onto my grandmother and float behind her. 5

    Eventually the family, except for Nyamal’s father who was killed in the conflict, emigrated to the US. “The war ripped my family, me, and many others of my generation from our childhood, from our home country, and from our traditions. It stripped me of a culture and an identity.”’׳ The UNHCR reports, “Over half of the world’s forcibly displaced people are children. ”۶ Jesus and Nyamal currently have upwards of 32 million younger brothers and sisters. Near the end of his life, the grown-up Jesus will tell a parable in which the Son of

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    Man separates people at the last judgment the way a shepherd separates sheep from goats (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). The people on his left are surprised to hnd out that when they neglected to piOvide food, drink, welcome, clothing, medical care, and visitation to the least of these, their Lord’s brothers and sisters, they refused these things to him. Those on the right are equally surprised that their attention to the least of these was always also care for their Lord. This parable, with its sneak peek at the end of the story, gives readers of Matthew’s gospel the advantage of knowing that even when we do not recognize the face of our Lord in another, service to others is in ؛act service to Christ. ؟His story is recapitulated in the stories ol all those who are fleeing tyranny and seeking salety.

    Is God with Us, or Not? Two different types ol refugee stories are Lound in Matthew 2. In the first, Mary and Joseph flee with the baby by night. The story highlights the risks that the Holy One ol Israel takes to be “God with US.” When the baby and his parents are sale in Egypt, readers breathe a sigh ol relief. Thanks to the angel’s intervention, the holy Lamily is delivered! The second refugee story ends differently, with blood running in the streets, babies run thr ough by soldiers’ swords, and Rachel weeping, reltrsing to be comlorted. After Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are sale, Matthew directs the gaze ol readers back to the depth ol sin that made their flight necessary in the first place. Herod is ruthless.” The flight to Egypt demonstrates the solidarity ol God with the human condition: like so many, Jesus and his Lamily were threatened by tyrants and had to run Lor their lives. The slaughter in Bethlehem brings the problem ol evil into Locus: why was there no angel warning Lor the others’? Why is Herod permitted to rule’? Or Roheit Mugabe or Bashar al-Assad’? As the current refugee crisis has neared and then surpassed the scale ol the mass displacement associated with WWII, stories ol Jewish refugees denied asylum in the 1930s and 1940s are being remembered. In 1939, for instance, the ss St. Louis set sail from Hamburg with more than 900 Jews on board. Although passengers had visas for Cuba, the ship was not allowed to dock in Havana, nor later in Florida. It was sent back acioss the Atlantic. Eventually, passengers Lound temporary refuge in Belgium, France, Holland, and the UK, where many would again be at risk when Hitler’s tiOops lOlled thiOugh western EuiOpe. In the end, 254 ol the ship’s passengers, all ol whom had been turned away when they sought refuge in Cuba and America, were killed by the Nazis. ) ٥In the summer ol 1942, hundreds more Jewish refugees were refused entry into the US because one passenger on their ship admitted to being a German spy.” Today, reports from Australia,” Turkey,)3 and America” tell ol refugees and immigrants victimized or killed after having arrived in countries they thought would be sale—to say nothing ol those who never made it even to relative salety!

    Evil and tire Response of Those in Christ How shall we understand stories of innocents slaughtered? Is it fair that Jesus is saved and others are not? How can we rejoice that Mary is spared the loss of a child while other mothers, then and now, receive no such mercy? John Swinton argues that the power of evil is its power to isolate its victims from the love of God and the love of other human beings. “The real problem of evil is not

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    simply that evil and suffering exist, but rather its ability to separate suffering human beings ffom the only true source of healing and hope: knowledge of the love of God and a sense of providential meaning and hope. Evil is that which destroys hope in and love for God.”‘5 Stories of children murdered by soldiers threaten to move US to despair. How does a world where this happens make sense? Such an event—wheher it happens in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus or in Syria’® today—unravels what Christians think we know of God’s character, mercy, and justice. As we read Matthew 2:13-23, two responses to the question of God’s presence and God’s justice in the face of evil present themselves to US. The first is seen in the biography of Jesus, the second in the actions of the body of Christ as it exists throughout time and space. The slaughter of the innocents forces US to hold the events of Christmas and Holy Week together, and when we do, we recognize how temporary is the stay of execution that the baby Jesus receives! Pam Fickenscher observes, ־־God’s salvation may seem far off and inadequate to the mothers who mourn, but the promise is deeper than this moment in time…. [Wjhen this child of Rachel returns to Jerusalem as an adult, God enters into the fate of every doomed child and every bereft parent.”‘ ؟Soon enough, Emmanuel—God with US—will be forever a character in both re&gee stories. In the end, the body of Christ will know the experience not only of the bodies of displaced persons who find re&ge but also the bodies of those crushed by state sanctioned violence. Beyond the confines of Jesus’ biography, the Holy Spirit shapes an ongoing response to evil by positioning the body of Christ alongside the bodies of those who suffer. By means of communal practices that resist evil and endure in the face of it, members of Christ’s body, the church, manifest our hope in and love for God. len we embody hope and love with and for re&gees, for example, we give the lie to evil’s claim that the one who suffers is cut off fiom God, love, hope, and human community. By showing up, Christians embody forthe neighborwhat we say we believe: that God is just and merci&l, loving the world so much that God would take the risk even of incarnation (which is, of course, Showing up” by another name). In Raging with Compassion, John Swinton explores five ways that communities of Christians may be present in the face of evil: listening to silence, lament, forgiveness , thought&lness, and friendship. Each of these practices is worthy of study by Christians whose vocation is shaped by a worldwide re&gee crisis. Two practices in particular connect to the responses to evil in Matthew 2:13-23. These are lament and ftiendship. Rachel weeps. Rachel does not turn off the news or fall silent in fear or convince herse If that in the currentpolitical climate nothing can be done. Rachel weeps. Writing in 2004, during the war between the US and Afghanistan, Frederick Niedner names lament as a practice that the world’s two billion Christians—who understand themselves to have died already in baptism—are uniquely able to join in with Rachel.

    Only those already dead, or willing soon to die, can respond in a way that might give hope to Rachel’s children and to all others caught up in all this world’s whirlpools of violence and genocide…. Perhaps we can’t do anything about Bethlehem and Ramallah, Jerusalem and Gaza, Iraq and Sudan, even two billion of us who no longei ־need fear death because the

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    worst that can happen to US already has. But we can weep. We can join our voices with Rachel’s. Imagine the din. Someone would have to listen. God would listen. We have God’s promise. And maybe, just maybe, those who speak for God would listen, too.’؟

    Some people—perhaps many along the way—provide friendship to the fleeing Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. On the way to Egypt, someone had to take them in. Strangers had to trust their word that the child’s life was at stake. They had to piOvide the young family with food and drink, with blankets and a place to rest until they could cobble together a life in a completely foreign land. Later, when Mary and Joseph settled in Nazareth, they required more hospitality. They were separated from home, family, and livelihood. Neighbors had to trust Joseph enough to patronize his business. They had to welcome Mary, even though she spoke with an accent. In his chapter on friendship, Swinton recounts the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) and then comments:

    Jesus is not simply with the poor and the oppressed; in a very real sense, he Athe poorandthe oppressed. He states quite clearlythat such acts of charity and friendship towards strangers are in fact gestures of love towards Jesus. Indeed, one might even go so far as to suggest that such acts of friendship towards strangers are, in fact, acts of worship. They are worship in the sense that to minister to and value the sick, the poor, the hungry, and the victims of evil is to minister to and value Jesus. Showing hospitality is an act of love, worship, and devotion to God.!’

    At the end of 2015, Christians had at least 21.3 million opportunities to befriend the refugee, Jesus, and by doing so, practice their devotion to God.

    “Perfect love casts orrtfear” (1 John 4:18( In present day America, as we consider how to respond to those who are running for their lives, fear threatens to cast out love. If Christians are to live as the body of Christ in the world, however, two responses in particular are excluded for US. First, Christians who practice their faith cannot say, “Refugee resettlement is too dangerous. We feel bad for those people, but we cannot welcome them without putting our own lives on the line.” Whether the risk is as acute as it is portrayed is an open question. But even if our lives are put at risk by actions of love, when has the avoidance of danger ever been an acceptable reason for Christians not to follow Christ’? Two more verses from Matthew are instructive on this point: “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (10:38-39). The second response that isexcludedtopracticing Christians is this: “The problem is too big. We cannot make a difference.” Joseph, having been warned in a dream that Herod sought his child’s life, could not get every family out of harm’s way. Perhaps he tried, and perhaps some neighbors joined them on the road to Egypt, but whether the gaps in the story are filled in that way or not, Matthew’s account makes it clear that not all babies were saved. Here is the point: Herod’s capacity for atrocity is no

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    excuse for Joseph to ignore the angel’s message. Joseph and Mary get at least one baby to safety. Likewise, those who see the face of the baby Jesus in the refugee’s child must stait somewhere. The number of refugees is staggering, and the atiOcities are horrifying. Yet our inability to solve a global piOblem is not an excuse to ignore it altogether. We do what we can. We listen, lament, forgive, think, and befriend. These practices of standing with and for others are the best argument we can make for the claim that evil does not have the power to separate US or others from the perfect love of God. And perfect love, we know, casts out fear.

    Notes t. Anne Lamott, untitled Facebook post, July 15, 2٥16. URL: https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/ posts/894203970709247. Accessed July 21, 2٥16. 2. “Figures at a Glance,” on the UNHCR website. URL: http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glmce. html. Accessed August 1, 2٥16. 3. L R. Daniel Kirk, “Conceptualising Fulfillment in Matthew,” Tyndale Bulletin 59/1 (2٥٥8): 77-98. 4. Kirk, “Conceptualizing Fulfillment,” 97. 5. Nyamal Tutdeal, “More than a Refugee,” Gather 29/7 (September 2٥16): 1٥-12. 6. Ibid., 11. 7. “Children,” UNHCR website. URL: http://www.unhcr.0rg/en-us/children-49c3646cle8.html. Accessed August 1, 2٥16. 8. ArlandHultgren, TheParableofJesustACoimnentaryiGrandRapids .׳Eerdmans, 2 ,)٥٥٥327. Hultgren makes that point from the parable that non-Christians can do service to Christ and “in the end Christ will acknowledge their service as well as that of Christians. What makes Christians different is that they are aware of the service to others as being service to Christ ahead of time” (emphasis mine). 9. While there is no first century evidence outside Mathew’s gospel lor the killing of children by Herod around Bethlehem, Herod the Great’s reputation both lor brutality and the ruthless guarding of his own power is well established by the first century Jewish historian, Josephus. 1 .٥Mike Lanchin, “ss St. Louis: The Ship of Jewish Refugees Nobody Wanted,” BBC News Magazine, 13 May 2٥14. URL: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131. Accessed August 1, 2٥16. 11. Daniel Gross, “The u.s. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies,” Smithsonian.com, November 18, 2٥15. URL: httpF/www.smithsonianmag. com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies186957324 /?no-ist. Accessed August 1, 2٥16. 12. Elaine Wainwright, “Crossing Over; Taking Refuge: A Contrapuntal Reading,” Theological Studies 7/٥1 (2٥14): 1-6, places Matthew 2 in counterpoint with the current treatment of refugees in Australia. It is available as a .pdf at http://hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/article/view/2774/5o7o. See also the more recent report, “Rights Groups: Australia Ignoring Abuse at Refugee Camps,” New York Times (Aug 3, 2016). URL: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/03/world/asia/ap-as-australia-asylum-seekers. html?_r=0. Accessed August 3, 2016. 13. Ceylon T’enginsu and Karam Shoumali, “11 Syrian Refugees Reported Killed by Turkish Border Guards,” New York Times, June 19, 2016. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/middleeast /ll-syrian-refugees-reported-killed-by-turkish-border-guards.html. Accessed August 1, 2016. 14. Megan Julia and Julia Preston, “Delayed Care Faulted in Immigrants’ Deaths at Detention Centers,” New York Times, July 7, 2016. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/delayed-care-faulted-inimmigrants -deaths-at-detention-centers.html. Accessed August 1, 2016. 15. loWSwiY, RagÎ١١g١vith Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problemoi Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 59. 16. UNICEF (https://www.unicefusa.org/mission/emergencies/child-refugees/syria-crisis) and #Chil_ drenofSyria (http://childrenofsyria.info/) provide regular updates on the needs within Syria and in the refugee camps on its borders. A paragraph from a February 2016 “Flash Report” offers these details about a two-week period in a conflict that is now in its fifth year: “UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement pointing to shocking violations and abuses being committed on a daily basis. Reports also point to child casualties as a result of ongoing military operations, and at least

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    three health clinics destroyed. UNICEF is also concerned about separation of children from families as they flee the violence” (“Syria Crisis: Flash Update,” February 13, 2٥16. URI: httpU/childrenofsyria. info/wp-content/uploads/2٥16/٥2/UNICEF-Flash-Update-Syria-Crisis-13Feb2٥16.pdf,accessedAugust 1,2٥16). 17. Pam Fickenscher, “Remembering Rachel: The Slaughter of the Innocents, ” Journey with Jesus (for December 3 ,٥2٥٥7). URI: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/2oo71224JJ.shtml. Accessed July 14,2016. 18. Frederick Niedner, “Rachel Weeping,” Christian Century 121/25 (December 14, 2004): 17. 19. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 225.