The Song of Songs—What a Scandal (Song 2:8-13)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 30, 2015)

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Chased Out of the Church

My best from high school and I went separate ways when it came time for college. I headed east to Williamsburg. He went west to Charlottesville. But we stayed in touch, and from time to time we’d call and shoot the breeze. We’d usually talk about classes and grades (we were nerds before it was cool to be nerds). But there was one call when we didn’t touch on any of this. One call that was very different….

My phone buzzed, and I saw that it was him. I answered expectantly, only to hear hushed breathing. The breathing soon gave way to a low, murmuring voice. I could only make out bits and pieces of what was being said. Something about “golden, flowing locks.” And as the voice increased in volume, I heard something about “roguish eyes.” And then “voluptuous lips.” By this point, spasms of laughter were interrupting the flow of strange images. Then there was the sound of running. A shriek or two. And just as strangely as the call began, it ended.

What were the mysterious events that lay behind this call? I would later learn that my friend had picked up a romance novel in the bookstore and then had mischievously begun to read it aloud. His dramatic recitation had soon enough caught the attention of one of the clerks, who asked him to stop, and when he continued unfazed, chased him around and out of the store.

If the Song of Songs were a person, I imagine that it would readily sympathize with my friend’s experience. Ever since its inclusion in the Bible, priests and rabbis have been trying to chase it out of church and synagogue. It’s no coincidence that the Song of Songs only shows up once a year in our lectionary, our calendar for church readings.

And this priestly and rabbinic anxiety is not without reason. The Song of Songs is a rather scandalous text. For one thing, if the Motion Picture Association were to give it a rating, they would likely confer upon it an R for “adult themes.” But perhaps even more scandalous than that, the Song does not make a single mention of God.

Merely a Human Affair?

Considering the circumstances, the Song of Songs has fared remarkably well: better than my friend, for sure, for while the bookshop clerk succeeded in chasing him out of the bookshop, the Song has remained in the Bible. But the priests and rabbis have succeeded in covering up its more risqué bits, making it more suitable for young children. (The Motion Picture Association would rate this priestly remake a G). The priests and rabbis have put on layer after layer of theological interpretation. The Song, they say, is really a song about the love between God and Israel, or between Christ and the church. It is really just a metaphor about God’s love.

The only problem with this, of course, is that the text itself never even hints at the possibility of metaphor. The text itself only sings about human love. Much like my friend’s dramatic reading, which spectacularly involved the impersonation of two enraptured lovers, the Song primarily features a dialogue between two lovers. And this is remarkable in its ancient context. In ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, love was often envisioned as more of a one-way street; love poetry typically featured only one speaker. The Song of Songs illustrates a remarkably egalitarian and mutual love, where both lovers speak of their desire, where both initiate romance. In today’s short passage, we hear the woman speak. She bids us on more than one occasion, “Look!”—giving the sense of immediacy, helping us to imagine that we are in her place, that we ourselves are looking at her lover. She reports what he says, and so we hear him too. It’s almost as though he’s inviting us to arise and go away with him.

It’s an invitation that probably already echoes in many of our hearts, an invitation that many of us have heard before. It’s a most unique feeling, isn’t it? Because we are normally so frightened of change and newness. We are normally so frightened of the unknown. And yet when we hear the call of love, that fear melts in the fire of anticipation, in the desire to explore the unknown, to see more, feel more, know more.

God Is Not in the Song, God Is the Song

When we hear the call of love, it’s almost as though, for a fleeting moment, we realize that our hearts are not ours but rather that they belong to the world. That they are always in relationship with other hearts. That they are connected in some fundamental sense with all of creation. Love not only channels our attention and desire toward another heart but opens us up to all of creation, to sights, sounds, tastes, smells: to the glory of budding flowers and the song of the turtledove (2:12), to the taste of figs and the fragrance of vines in full bloom (2:13).

Juan Ramón Jiménez captures this idea brilliantly, that the love for a particular person becomes a doorway to the universe. That genuine love does not lose itself in a single object but rather invites us to arise and to see and to glory in all of the life around us. Here’s how he puts it:

I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn’t see it.
but everything around
—horizons of land and of seas—,
everything out to the infinite,
was filled with a fragrance,
enormous and alive.[1]

Perhaps love is God’s invitation to life.

And perhaps the reason that the Song of Songs never mentions God is because to do so would be redundant. God is not in the Song because God somehow is the Song, because God is the mysterious call and response of love that leads us more deeply into life. The Bible very rarely tries to define God as one thing or another, but in one of the rare cases that it does, it says simply, “God is love” (1 John 4:16).[2] Not God is power. Not God is knowledge. God is love.

“Come Away”

Our passage today gives us one beautiful suggestion of what this might mean. Twice we hear, “Arise…and come away” (2:10, 13). Which implies that love is a call, an invitation. God has traditionally been defined as all-powerful and all-knowing, and many people ultimately treat faith as though it were about choosing the winning side, that is, making sure you’re in the good graces of the God who controls everything. But if God is love, then perhaps this sort of faith could use some rethinking. Maybe God’s “might” has less to do with the might of an all-powerful ruler and more to do with the “might” of a relationship, the “this might happen or might not,” the vulnerability that allows for new possibilities. Maybe God calls rather than coerces, entices rather than enforces; maybe God makes eyes at us through the window of our existence. Maybe God solicits more than God supervises. Remember God’s words that brought creation into existence? God does not imperiously say, “There will be light,” but rather, invitingly, “Let there be light.” Maybe God has more to do with a knock on our door, a call that draws us out into the unknown, into newness, into change. The kind of call that we would normally be terrified of. But when it is God calling—which is to say, when it is love calling—we are somehow emboldened to say “Yes.”

Over the last month, I’ve been blessed to visit with a number of our shut-ins. And commonly they’ve told me fond memories of dear loved ones. While each shut-in tells these memories differently, their faces share something in common: a certain glow. A glow that makes me think of Moses, whose own face glowed after he had spent time with the Lord. So I cannot help but wonder if perhaps the memories of these shut-ins are nothing less than memories of their encounters not only with their loved ones but with God. I cannot help but wonder if their stories of love are nothing other than the story of God. Each one of them heard a call and went “away.” They ventured into the unknown of other hearts and into the unknown of this wide world. And there they encountered God.

The Real Scandal

I’m happy that the priests and the rabbis and the others who’ve tried were not completely successful in chasing the Song of Songs out of the church and out of the synagogue. Yes, it is a scandalous poem, a poem of erotic human love, a poem without one mention of God. But then, perhaps it need not mention God because its story somehow is the story of God, of how God moves about our world. The human love that the Song sings about is like one of the main tributaries of God’s love, a tributary that catches us in its flow and carries us into the rapids of abundant life.

Perhaps the real scandal of the Song of Songs and the Bible is a God who is love. Perhaps the real scandal is that God does not sit at some master control board, seeing and controlling everything, but instead lives among us and loves us in a very real bodily way, through the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of this world, through the relationships we are blessed with in this world. And perhaps the real scandal is that we follow this God not for reasons of power or knowledge but simply because we want to[3]: we find ourselves overwhelmed with a deep, unknown desire for something that no word can do justice for other than “God,” a desire that makes us say “yes” to life and to want more, a desire that draws us into a vulnerable and loving relationship with each other and with all of creation.

Prayer

The world is a wild and wondrous place, God, although we sometimes make it a terrible and terrifying place. Open our eyes, unstop our ears, heighten our senses, so that we may fall more fully in love with the world around us, so that we may feel your love for us in all of creation, so that we might be a part of this world’s redemption. In the calm of a sunset, in the gentle pull of a gentle moon, in the laughter of a child, in the unspoken understanding of a friend, in the sound of traffic that gruffly says, “Good morning”—in these moments, in any moment when are our hearts are somehow overwhelmed with life, may we hear you knocking on our door, see you looking through our window, receive you proposing on one knee, and may we arise vulnerably and walk away lovingly into the unknown newness of abundant life.

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[1] Juan Ramón Jiménez, “I Unpetalled You,” in Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation (ed. Roger Housden; New York: Harmony, 2003), 60.

[2] Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 16.

[3] Jean Vanier, “Where the Weak and the Strong Dance Together,” in The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World (eds. Bob Abernethy and William Bole; New York: Seven Stories, 2007), 376: “[W]e yearn to discover and know a God who became flesh, not a God who came to manifest the power of God but rather to manifest God’s love and togetherness and tenderness.”

Spiritual Struggles, Real-World Consequences (Eph 6:10-20)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 23, 2015)

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Privatized Religion

It’s the beginning of sixth grade, and the three new friends throw their lunchbags on the table and get to talking. They talk about which eight graders to avoid. Share mischievous rumors about their new teachers. Speculate boastfully on their chances of making the different sports’ teams. Dare each other to go sit down at the table of cute seventh graders. And as lunch wraps up, they make plans to hang out on the weekend.

Paul says, “Well, I can’t do Sundays, because that’s when church is.” David shakes his head, says, “And I can’t do Saturdays, because my mom said I need to go to synagogue this weekend.” And Mo, with a deep sigh, says, “And I can’t hang out on Friday evening, because my family’s going to the mosque.”

These three boys don’t know it, but they’ve given us a rather common definition of religion. For many in society, religion remains confined to a certain time and a certain space: while we may carry our religious identities everywhere, we only do religion on a particular day and at a particular place. Which is why politics and religion are discussed as though they are two separate things. Politics is what happens in the real world. Religion is what happens, more or less, between a person’s two ears or in the confines of a person’s heart.

The modern world, in other words, has privatized religion.[1] It is in the best interests of the governments and corporations that run much of our world to keep religion locked up in people’s souls, limited to isolated times and places. Corporations would much rather people keep their pious beliefs about compassion and charity tucked away in their hearts, so that they can continue to open their pocketbooks and buy whatever new product is promising happiness. A government would much rather people keep their religious convictions about the divine dignity of each person locked deep away in their inner self, so that they won’t take to the streets to protest laws and practices that might lead to oppression and discrimination.[2]

The powers of our world more or less offer religion a truce, a peace treaty: “[G]o practice the kingdom of God in your heart, on weekends and after hours, and the rest of the time, march in step with the powers that be.”[3]

A Real-World Spirituality

The common assumption underlying this truce is that religion has to do with what you cannot see and that politics and the economy and the rest of the world has to do with what you can see. Religion has to do with visions and dreams and feelings and intuitions, while politics and the economy and the rest of the real world has to do with what’s right in front of your eyes. But our personal experience tells us something different. Our experience tells us that the things we cannot see—like love, hate, envy, greed—are inseparable from the things that we can see, that the spiritual is inextricably linked with real-world effects.

One of my new roommates has a beagle, and every time he comes home from work, you’d think the pair of them were reuniting after years of separation. It’s like I’m not in the room: he’s down on all fours, butting heads with his buddy, returning sloppy dog kisses with kisses of his own. Try telling him that the love he and his beagle feel isn’t real. Love is just as real as the kisses it leads to. Hate is just as real as the violence it leads to. Greed is just as real as the obsessive consumerism it leads to. The spiritual is part and parcel of the real world.

So how then do we take a text like the one we have today, where Paul seems to focus exclusively on the spiritual? Where he says that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against dark and cosmic powers, and so instead of recommending iron and steel for the struggle he urges spiritual virtues like truth, righteousness, peace, and faith?

On the one hand, we could read the text the way the powers that be in our world would want us to read it, that is, as a text that has nothing to do with the world outside our bodies. We could read it as a set of instructions on how we should try to have better thoughts, stronger beliefs, a purer heart. We could think of these dark and cosmic powers that Paul talks about as spiritual super-villains that live in another dimension, as creatures that we could see if only we had the right set of goggles.

But that would be gravely missing the point. The whole point of spiritual struggle is real-world change.[4] “On earth as it is in heaven.” The dark and cosmic powers that Paul refers to are not spiritual villains against which God and the angels do battle in some other world, but are the very things that prevent the kingdom of God from breaking in on this world, the very things that prevent heaven on earth. The dark and cosmic powers are tied up with the powers that be: with assumptions, ideologies, and ways of thinking. Greed. Racism. Sexism. Ageism. Consumerism. Ways of thinking that turn people into numbers, into dollar signs, ways of thinking that label people either normal or strange, that say “no” to the image of God in certain people. These are the dark and cosmic powers that Jesus fought against when he reached out to include Samaritans and women and children and the lepers in his kingdom, when he reached out to welcome those whom the powers that be had generally excluded.

Real-World Consequences

And look where it got him. The world does not take kindly to people who question the way things are.[5] The scary truth is, the spiritual armor of God does not defend against real-world wickedness. If anything, it emboldens us to step more confidently into the midst of such wickedness, where anything might happen. The shield of faith will indeed quench the arrows of the evil one (6:16) but not the nails driven into the cross, the bullets from a gun. The shoes that make us ready to proclaim peace (6:15) do not promise us a peaceful passage but instead a risky journey into places that need peace, places of hostility and oppression.

About thirty-five years ago, a priest in El Salvador named Oscar Romero put on the armor of God. And he went to proclaim peace and justice in a nation ravaged by an oppressive government, where the poor and the needy received kick in the side rather than a helping hand. One day he found himself speaking in front of a number of soldiers, who were regularly tasked with killing civilians, and he offered them these words: “No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. … In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.”[6] The next day, as Oscar was serving mass to his parishioners, a car stopped outside the church. A single shot rang out. Oscar’s body was broken. His blood spilt.

A Different Kind of Power

Because both Jesus and Oscar wore the armor of God and both suffered death at the hands of the powers that be, I cannot help but wonder if the whole point of Paul’s armor image is to suggest not a similarity between the armor of the world and God’s armor but a contrast. A Roman centurion’s armor is one kind of power: the kind that enforces the soldier’s will upon the people around him. God’s armor is of a different kind of power. If the examples of Jesus and Oscar are any indication, God’s power is one that operates not by force or compulsion but by an enduring, undying love. A love that lives past our deaths.

I don’t mean to suggest that point of Paul’s message is that we all must prepare for a violent end like the ones Jesus and Oscar endured. But rather that the armor of God prepares us not merely for a fight inside our minds or hearts, but for a risky life lived in the real world. It’s no coincidence that Paul refers to himself as an “ambassador in chains” (6:20). The armor of God takes us not away from the real-world but straight into it, where our faith may land us in uncomfortable places. The armor of God enables us to live for what is true rather than what is convenient, to proclaim peace in in places where there is no peace, to work for rightful relationships among a broken world, to hold an unswerving faith in the powerless power of God’s love. The armor of God enables us to stand firm when the powers that be put us in chains; or more simply, when people raise eyebrows, when it would be so much easier to retreat into our privileged corners of the world.

Where Does the Armor of God Enable Us to Walk?

But perhaps it’s difficult to identify with spiritual superheroes like Paul and Oscar. So the last question that must be asked is, “What about us? Where does the armor of God enable us to walk?” The answer might begin closer to home than you’d think. 

I’m reminded of a simple scene I witnessed at a church back in England. A street drifter had drifted in off the street, and at the time of communion, he stood up and began stumbling forward. He was half-speaking, half-praying, mumbling some of what seemed to be nonsense, making a bit of a commotion. A number sitting in the pews looked about, wondering who was going to tidy up this strange scene. But no one got up. No one except the minister. And with a kind smile hiding behind his bemused eyes, he stood firmly in front of his congregation and served the man communion. Sure, he may have been risking the wrath of some of his parishioners, those who would have preferred a proper communion over a shambles such as this and would as likely as not later tie the minister up in emotional chains…but how better to live the truth of God’s unconditional welcome, to proclaim the good news of God’s peace, to reconcile among different groups of people, to let God’s kingdom come on earth, than to eat and drink at the Lord’s table with a man whom most would never think about eating and drinking with, a man whom the powers that be would not even acknowledge?

For what and for whom do we need to stand firm in our community, our workplaces, our circles of life? Where does the armor of God enable us to walk?

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[1] Cf. Kim Knott, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (London: Equinox, 2005), 62.

[2] See Russell D. McCutcheon, Religion and the Domestication of Dissent, or How to Live in a Less than Perfect Nation (London: Equinox, 2005) for a broader discussion of the interests that various world authorities have in keeping “religion” delimited to the private realm.

[3] John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), loc. 6544. Here Caputo exposes the interests invested in the concept of private religion, namely that such a religion’s adherents would remain subject to the world’s “powers that be.”

[4] Thus Eph 1:10, in which the Pauline writer asserts that the ultimate desire of God is “to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” This ultimate eschaton, or in-gathering of all things, is one that collapses the distinction between heaven and earth, between “things in heaven and things on earth.” The kingdom of God that dwells in our hearts, in the heavenly realm, becomes none other than the kingdom in which the material world lives. On earth as it is in heaven.

[5] Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 508, cites Rutilio Grande, a Salvadoran martyr, who said: “It is a dangerous thing to be a Christian in our world.”

[6] Christopher M. White, The History of El Salvador (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2009), 100.

The Days Are Evil, So Give Thanks (Eph 5:15-20)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 16, 2015)

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Impossible?

It was a dark night, and darker still because of all the heavy hearts. In a Nazi concentration camp, a group of Jewish prisoners huddled together. The evil that they had suffered was unthinkable. And so tonight, they would do the unthinkable. They would put God on trial. They appointed attorneys. They worked through a number of accusations. And after a period of deliberation, the judges solemnly announced: “God has not held up God’s end of the deal. God owes us something.”

And if that were not outrageous enough, immediately after they closed their proceedings, they gathered for evening prayer. In the space of seconds, words of accusation gave way to words of devotion and thanksgiving.

I’ve often wondered about this legend. Did it really happen? Could it possibly be true? Because it seems impossible to me: to pray and give thanks to the same God whom you’ve just accused.

And I’ll confess, Paul’s words in today’s scripture seem impossible to me too. If you’ve read your bulletin carefully, you’ll already have noticed that I was, as the British would say, a bit “cheeky” with the sermon title: “The Days Are Evil, So Give Thanks.” If that strikes you as a bit impious, then you’ll have to take it up with the apostle Paul. They’re his words, not mine. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me to struggle with the question: If these days are “evil” (5:16) as Paul says they are, then what could it possibly mean to give thanks “at all times and for everything” (5:20)? Isn’t it illogical—impossible—to give thanks for everything if the time we live in is evil?

Escaping Life

It’s an interesting coincidence that Paul lived at precisely the time that the motto “Pax Romana,” or “the peace of Rome,” first appears in writing.[1] This slogan was meant to suggest that for the first time in the history of the world, there was an empire of order and peace. And while this may have been true from a broad political perspective, it wouldn’t have fooled Paul or anyone else in his day into thinking that life was actually peaceful, just as no-one is fooled today by the relative security we enjoy. One look at the paper, one minute of news would have told you then as it tells you now that despite our living in a nation that enjoys unparalleled power in world politics, we live in days that could rightly be called evil. How else do you describe days plagued by senseless gun violence and hateful discrimination, or more simply, days when millions wake up and go to sleep hungry for the same food that millions elsewhere enjoy an abundance of?

For Paul, there are two basic ways of responding to the reality of our evil days, two ways of making sense of a seemingly senseless world. He describes the first way with the specific image of “get[ting] drunk with wine” and earlier in his letter with words like “empty” (5:6) and “unfruitful” (5:11). This collection of words and images bring to mind a striking memory from one of my first experiences of culture shock in England. I was walking home from a friend’s on Friday night, and my walk took me straight through West Street, which was the main drag in Sheffield. It was lined with pubs, bars, clubs, and sprinkled throughout were a handful of “chippies” and kebab shops. And on a Friday night, it was hopping. Needless to say, my personal space bubble (a radius of six inches or so) was violated again and again. I rubbed up against University students decked out for themed parties, dressed as pirates or smurfs or wearing Hawaiian-themed attire. I pushed through locals who were wearing a few layers less than I would have thought England’s perpetually cool and damp weather called for. I stepped over puddles of people’s sickness. I walked by countless adverts that promised the best night ever.

I would later acclimate to West Street. I would even walk it myself with a few friends from time to time, and we could enjoy ourselves. But even so, I can’t help but feel that much of West Street on a Friday was little more than misery dressed in happiness, desperation wearing the mask of a good time. As a chaplain at the university, I saw this firsthand. Students would post Facebook pictures of their fun on West Street, and yet in the safe space of a few close friends, they would reveal their deep and abiding unhappiness.

West Street holds a curious place in my memory. I remember it not with disgust, but with a surprising sympathy. Because we all have our own West Streets. We all try from time to time to escape the reality of our evil days. Confronted with personal unhappiness and the despair of a world that doesn’t make sense, it’s tempting to think that the solution is somewhere else—if not at the bottom of a glass, then in the next job or social gathering or relationship or maybe even just the next nice meal. But like Paul says, this way of living is empty and fruitless. Life is hollow when we look for it somewhere else.

Embracing Life

The alternative, Paul says, is to look for life precisely where we are—in these days and these times, however evil they may be. This is why rather than advising us to run away from these broken times that we live in, Paul urges us to “mak[e] the most of the time” (5:16). In other words, Paul is saying, don’t try to escape reality. Embrace it. Don’t discard this damaged time. Redeem it. “Be filled with the Spirit” (5:18), Paul says, and what else can he mean but, “Be filled with the God who says ‘Yes’ to us and our world, who takes our flesh and lives among us, who comes not to condemn us where we are but to redeem us where we are.” There are divine possibilities simmering in every minute of every one of our evil days.[2]

We began today in a concentration camp, where a group of Jewish prisoners honestly confronted the evil of their days. If you’ll follow me, let’s go now to a different concentration camp, where another prisoner gives us a glimpse of how we might live the impossible—how we might actually embrace our reality rather than escape it, how we might give thanks to God amid evil days.

Corrie ten Boom was arrested by the Nazis for hiding and protecting Jewish families. After living in solitary confinement for a month, in a bitterly cold cell six steps long and two steps wide with a single light bulb that was operated according to the whim of her guards, she had just about lost the will to live. But at just this point, her life was transformed—by God, she would say. But if we were to take her at her word, we would all agree it was a God unlike the kind we would expect or want.

Listen to her account of the fateful morning: “Into my cell came a small, busy black ant. I had almost put my foot where he was…when I realized the honor being done me.”[3] At night, she crumbled bits of her own meager portion of bread on the floor. “[A]nd to my joy he popped out almost at once. He picked up a piece, struggled down the hole with it, and came back for more. It was the beginning of a relationship. Now, in addition to the daily visit of the sun, I had the company of this brave and handsome guest—soon of a whole small committee. If I was [doing anything else] when the ants appeared, I stopped at once to give them my full attention. It would have been unthinkable to squander two activities on the same bit of time!”[4]

Corrie ten Boom lived in the most broken of days. And yet it was precisely this shattered world that she embraced, precisely this evil time that she redeemed. She saw the divine possibilities for our world in the tiniest of God’s creatures. Corrie would survive the war, and she would later write and speak words of healing and peace, words of forgiveness and reconciliation. And I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that all of this happened because she saw God’s grace in one small tireless ant who walked into her life. And the grace of that encounter renewed her hope for more life, for more life-giving relationships like the one she had with this ant.[5]

The God of Impossible Possibilities

Perhaps it’s more than mere coincidence that Corrie ten Boom’s story of transformation involves the smallest of God’s creatures. Think about the Bible. Jesus tells stories about the smallest of seeds and the least of these; Paul talks about the nobodies and the nothings (1 Cor 1:27-28; cf. 2 Cor 11:30; 12:9-10); the rest of the Bible tells stories of the divine waiting to be born in the smallest and most unlikely of characters. All of this emphasis on divine grace springing from the smallest and weakest things illumines why Paul can say, “The days are evil…[so] giv[e] thanks...at all times and for everything” (5:16, 20). We worship a God who infuses the smallest of things and worst of times with divine possibilities. We worship a God who is born on a bed of straw, a God who dies weak and helpless on a cross. We worship a God of the littlest and seemingly most insignificant moments, a God of the most tragic and unjust moments, because inside these moments we are also worshiping a God of impossible possibilities, of new life breathed into the deadest and most hopeless situations...a God of resurrection.

The last eight words of our scripture today are probably the easiest to dismiss. We say them all the time at the end of our prayers: “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We say them so often that we may forget that these words actually have meaning. For Paul, these words are crucial.[6] They are precisely the reason we do not run away from our evil days but instead give thanks to God. To give thanks for everything “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” suggests that everything somehow assumes that name. It’s almost like all of creation assumes the last name, or “family name,” of Christ. So an ant becomes “the ant in Christ.” And that coworker you cannot possibly get along with becomes “that coworker in Christ.” The complication that you could have done without—when your car breaks down, when a friend calls begging for help, when someone hurts you—that complication becomes “the complication in Christ.”

All of which is to say, all of creation—every moment of every day—carries within it the new life promised by Christ. As followers of Christ, we don’t run away from this life because this life has been claimed by Christ, by the God of impossible possibilities. So we say “thank you.” We say “thank you” not for the evil of our times, but for the divine goodness that is waiting to spring from it and to redeem it. We say “thank you” not in spite of these devil days but precisely because of them: saying “thank you” is our only hope of redeeming the evil, of drawing forth goodness and life from within the worst of times. Saying “thank you” is the first step in welcoming God into our broken world. It’s our human way of cultivating God’s desire, it is the water and sunlight that nourishes the divine impulse, that strengthens its roots and brings it bursting up from the ground. Saying “thank you” is our way of opening ourselves and the world up to transformation, a transformation that may well lead us not away from the evil of our days but even more boldly into it so that it might be redeemed through the powerless power of God’s love and peace.

By saying “thank you,” we say “Yes” to God’s vision of new life, and we live to make that vision a reality.

I’d be a hypocrite to say it’s easy to embrace this life with thanksgiving. But I’m not sure I could call myself a follower of Christ if I didn’t passionately believe and feel compelled to say, “What a divine world of difference it would make.”

Prayer

Loving God, the goodness of your creation is all around us. But sometimes it is overshadowed by pain, death, and suffering, by the evil of our days, and we would rather escape than embrace this life. Assure us in times of doubt that you are the God of impossible possibilities, the God of ants and seeds and the tiniest elements—the God of resurrection. May our lips sing your praise, may our lives be a beautiful song to you. May your will be done in us. Amen.[7]

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[1] Ali Parchami, Hegemonic Peace and Empire: The Pax Romana, Britannica and Americana (New York: Routledge, 2009), 25, cites the first mention as occurring in Seneca’s writing at 55 CE.

[2] Cf. Jean Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment (trans. Kitty Muggeridge from original text of Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence; London: Fount, 1981), 36, who says that God is “forever available, forever being received.”

[3] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (???), ???.

[4] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, ???.

[5] Yet another story from a different concentration camp helps to focus even more the idea of giving thanks in evil times. In the case of the Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe, who was arrested for sheltering Jews and speaking out against Nazi violence, one man destined for execution cried out in despair at the prospect of never seeing his wife and children again. Maximilian asked to take his place, and on the day of execution, he led other executionees in song and prayer. Kolbe’s feast day is August 14. His story demonstrates the extremities of what it means to give thanks in the worst of circumstances. Certainly he wasn’t giving thanks for his loss of life. Rather it was for the love and life of God that would continue because of the witness of their and others’ deaths. Cf. Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 400.

[6] Cf. Eph 1:9-12. The idea that the divine plan is “to gather up all things in him [Christ]” is fundamental to the theology of Ephesians. It inflects the letter’s discourse with an eschatological hope that reminds us of the divine desire to see all of creation redeemed.

[7] Adapted from Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove, and Okoro, Common Prayer, 398.

Life Is Living for Others (Eph 4:25-5:2)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 9, 2015)

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Here and Now

Many of you who have grown up in the church may have memories similar to mine. Did you ever have a Sunday School teacher, perhaps, or a youth camp leader who encouraged you to write down and always remember the day that you became a Christian, the day that you accepted Jesus into your heart and were saved? A sort of retrospective save-the-date. The idea, I suppose, is that this was the day you booked your ticket into heaven. It was a day to savor and remember. The way you might remember winning a competition and receiving a trophy.

Or the way that some might remember a wedding day.

Except that, anyone who’s been married—and I realize I have no place to speak here—anyone who’s been married will tell you that the wedding day is not the end of a journey. It’s the beginning. You’re not cashing in; you’re rolling the dice. And that’s why I love Paul’s letters. He writes with eyes wide open about the new life we find in Christ. He’s fully aware that joy and good feelings do not themselves complete our lives or resolve the problems of our world. To Paul, new life in Christ is not a diploma that ensures a good, easy life. It’s not a final championship that means we stop practicing our sport. This new life that Paul writes about is not marked by a one-time event that recedes further and further in the past.

New life in Christ is all about the here and now. If the community he was writing had any illusions about an easy life in Christ, about victory already achieved, Paul yanks them back and plants their feet firmly on the ground of human experience. If they had any illusions that their fine feelings or new insights alone made them better persons,[1] Paul reminds them that life in Christ has to do with the nitty-gritty of daily living. His message today reads almost as a list of rules—don’t lie, don’t nurse your anger, don’t steal, don’t insult others—as if to say, you’re still made of the same dirt that you were yesterday, and you’re just as susceptible to these all-too-human tendencies.

Leaving Ourselves Behind

Speaking of all-too-human tendencies…I’m happy my father isn’t here today. Because Paul’s chat about the nitty-gritty of life brings to mind a very vivid memory of my dad, a less-than-flattering image, perhaps, that I’d like to share. My brother and I were generally obedient kids. We didn’t give him too much trouble. But he was also a soccer coach, and corralling a bunch of thirteen-year olds is a different story to maintaining the order of two generally compliant sons. I can’t recall any one instance, so frequent was its occurrence: my dad would explain a practice drill, and invariably a few of the guys would be goofing off instead of listening. Throwing balls at the backs of unsuspecting heads, squirting water at each other. And I can see it. His tongue out, his jaw clenched, his eyes closed. Anger incarnate. I learned then that “biting your tongue” was more than an expression.

And I’m learning today that biting your tongue may have a good bit to do with what Paul’s talking about. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Paul says, as if to say, be yourself—don’t deny your feelings—but don’t be consumed by yourself. All the behavior that Paul condemns here—lying, feeding one’s anger, stealing, slander (4:25-29)—has one thing in common. It’s all about protecting and promoting the self. We might lie to protect our image. We nurse our anger to fuel our projects of vengeance, of maintaining honor or respect. We steal to add to our possessions. We put others down in order to build ourselves up. It is our habit to live more or less according to a system of exchange, where we attempt to balance accounts and keep ourselves in the black, where we live first and foremost for ourselves, for getting what we’re due.

And Paul is aware of this. He cannot ask us to deny our feelings. “Be angry,” he says. But for Paul, we are also called to leave our selfish feelings behind. So it becomes a sort of paradox: be yourself, but leave yourself behind—because who you are not only has to do with you but also with others (cf. 4:25b). This is why for each time Paul gives a “don’t,” each time he says don’t live only for yourself, he also give a “do,” he also reminds us of the call of Holy Spirit that we hear within us, a call that begs us to break the bank with acts that don’t account for who’s done what or who deserves what, a call for us to leave ourselves behind for the sake of others. Don’t insult. Build up (4:29). Don’t steal. Give (4:28). Don’t seek vengeance. Forgive (4:26, 31-32).

After a good twenty years of coaching soccer, my dad’s tongue probably bears countless bite-marks. They are scars that testify to his anger. But they are also scars that testify to his nitty-gritty decision to leave his selfish feelings behind. See, I think my dad was following the Spirit’s call (cf. 4:30). By the world’s system of accounts, he would have had every right to yell at the kids in practice, to whip them into line with a sharp barb here and a well-placed insult there. But instead he bit his tongue, literally. And then, more often than not, he’d leave behind his self-concerned feelings and demonstrate concern for others with words of encouragement. Words meant to build up.

More Than a Golden Rule

If we were to stop here, we might walk away with a refined list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” We might walk away saying, we shouldn’t live for ourselves but instead for others. But there’s a curious, ever-inquisitive child inside us, and I don’t think she or he is satisfied with this lesson. That child is nagging us, “But how? How could I possibly get myself to live for others instead of for myself?”

How indeed?

Rules by themselves do very little to inspire living for others. Instead they keep us thinking about ourselves. We normally follow rules because in the end we seek our own wellbeing, if not advantage or reward. We follow the rules to receive a sticker from the teacher, or a bonus from the boss, or a smile from someone we respect.

Even the golden rule itself may be understood to operate this way. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, treat others according to how you yourself want to be treated...so that, hopefully, both fingers crossed, you yourself may in the end be treated that way too.

But if we listen beyond Paul’s “dos” and “don’ts,” we discover that he isn’t giving us a list of rules, or even the golden rule. He’s suggesting something radically different. He’s suggesting that we live beyond ourselves—that we bite our tongue, that we forgive and encourage, that we make gifts of ourselves to others—not because we’ve sat down and done the math and worked out the benefits for ourselves and chosen this way. But because this way has already somehow chosen us, has already somehow taken hold of us and inspired us in a way that we never could ourselves.

Life Is Living for Others

If you think about it, it’s not that much different from the spirit in which we play games. Have you ever watched a group of children passionately play a game? Maybe they’ve just finished watching the World Series. And they’re so inspired, that they throw on their gear, grab their gloves and bats, and run out to the nearest patch of grass. And they play with uncontained enthusiasm, for the love of the game. They’re not playing because of the rules and they’re not playing for a trophy. They’re not even thinking of these things. They’re not thinking so much as they’re doing, so much as they’re hitting and catching and throwing and sliding and diving and catching their breath and losing it all over again.

For Paul, the new life we have in Christ is like the spirit that’s gotten into these kids. It’s not about winning a trophy, and it’s not about the rules of the game. New life in Christ is about the joy of playing. It may seem like foolishness to an outside observer—the spirit of living for others instead of ourselves—but to us who love the game, who love life and want to live most fully, this is the spirit of life. We live like Jesus lived, not because some rules inspire us to live that way and not because we want a shiny trophy, but because the spirit has taken hold of us. Love, forgiveness, grace—this has given us life, and we realize that this is life, and so we live this way. We live this way when we bite our tongue and leave our self-concerned feelings behind, when we prepare food and serve and eat with those who have no home, when we put our own agenda aside to actually listen to another. We live this way when we welcome strangers, when we offer encouragement to a broken soul. Life, we have discovered, is only life if it is living for others.

And it is hard work sometimes. That’s why Paul has to write these rules, these reminders. But it’s hard work just the same way that playing a game can sometimes be a struggle, can sometimes take sweat and grass stains and sometimes even blood. Hard work is part of the game.

But for Paul, it’s important that we never forget the reason we first started playing. It’s because of the infectious spirit of Christ.[2] The spirit of Christ gives us new life, which is simply another way of saying, it draws us continually to step outside of our own lives for the sake of others.

A Prayer

Spirit of Christ, you have breathed deep into our lungs. You have drawn us passionately into the game of life, into a life of living for others. But sometimes we lose our breath, and sometimes we lose inspiration. Be with us in the difficult times, when it seems too demanding a task to leave ourselves behind and to live for others, when we simply don’t want to do that. Give us kind words to say when we cannot find them ourselves. Give us the courage to live for others when we would rather retreat into ourselves. And give us a new wind when we lose breath. Inspire us anew when we have lost track of your spirit. May we be caught up again and again in the joy of life, the joy of living for others.

Amen.

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[1] C. S. Lewis, A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works (ed. Patricia S. Klein; San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003), 222: “Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.”

[2] The antithesis between law and spirit is a common theme in Paul’s discourse. Cf. Rom 7-8. Paul appreciates the law. He appreciates the rules of the game. But he prizes the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the game itself. The law in itself only reveals our shortcomings, but it does not inspire us beyond them. The spirit of Christ infuses us with life, leading us to live positively—to play for the love of the game instead of being shackled to the fear of or disappointment at our transgression of the rules.

No Body but Ours (Eph 4:1-16)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 2, 2015)

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Are We Actually Called?

The first time I heard the call of “God,” I was five or six years old, and I was in the downstairs bathroom, excitedly preparing for a trip to the swimming pool. First it was a whisper: “Jonathan….” Then a second time, more clearly: “Jonathan.” Now I’d heard the story of young Samuel in the Temple (1 Sam 3:1-15), and so my heart began racing. Was God calling me? Here? Now? In a bathroom, of all places? Then I heard it a third time, and on this occasion it warbled dramatically: “Joonnnatthan.” That…was not God. That was my brother—who had apparently uncovered the mystery of our house’s ventilation.

Chances are, most of us have come no closer to hearing God’s audible voice than I did when I was five or six years old. And I think that’s part of the reason it’s easy to skip right over the opening of today’s text, where Paul “begs” his audience “to lead a life worthy of [their] calling” (4:1). We skip over that verse because we’ve become so accustomed to skipping over the very idea that we ourselves have actually been called.

Can we honestly talk about having received a call from God? While the calls in the Bible might seem out of our league, many of them actually take place in rather mundane settings: they happen at night or in dreams and visions of the heart, or even in silence. These are settings common to all our lives. So perhaps we have been called too. Has some unknown corner of your heart ever ignited, set you on fire, persuaded you to do something that didn’t fit the life you’d calculated for yourself? Have you ever felt that something’s chosen you more than you’ve chosen it?[1] The distinctive thing about a call is that it confronts us out of the blue.[2] We don’t know what the call is until after we’ve heard it. We may have read about other people’s calls in the Bible, and we might imagine what a call would sound like. But if we’ve prepared for a certain call, if we’ve planned for it, then it’s not so much a call as it is us talking to ourselves. Nobody plans to fall in love. They hear the call, and only once they’re falling in midair do they realize they’ve responded. We don’t plan to be kept awake at night by a thought or feeling that won’t let go of us—a regret, perhaps, that reminds us of a call we did not answer, or a good memory that calls for us to live it again in a new way.

I recently read a story about a lonely woman who lived in the Bronx. She had lost her three sons to Vietnam and her joy to a life without family. Then one day, when she was walking up to her tiny corner in the projects, she saw two little girls being herded through a crowd of hookers. Their mother had died, and a couple of social workers were taking them away, probably to an ill-equipped institution where they would grow up without a mother or father. The woman remembers the moment vividly, as though it were a candle still burning in her soul. She found herself stepping out confidently into the path of the social workers. “It didn’t seem to me that I was in the same body anymore,” she recalls. The workers asked her if she knew these kids. And although she knew practically nothing about them, she heard herself respond: “Yes.”[3]

To my ears, this woman heard a call. It wasn’t simply her saying yes; after all, she hardly knew the kids. It was God inside her, calling her, saying “yes” through her, saying, “Yes, I know these kids, and I know this mother, and I know they need one another.” It was a divine “yes,” which is a “yes” that brings new life. One theologian has said that our calling is where our deepest desire meets the world’s deepest need.[4] This woman heard a call because her unspoken yearning for family and love met these two girls’ need for the loving nurture of a family.

It may take some time, but I imagine that we all of us can remember moments of our lives when we heard such a call. Moments when something chose us more than we chose it. And as diverse as these moments are, I imagine that many of us would trace them back to the same source. To Christ, who calls us to lose ourselves for the sake of God and others. According to Paul in today’s text, it’s this shared sense of calling that unites us here today. There’s a beautiful reminder of this in the original word for church: ekklesia, which means “called (out).”[5]

The Body of Christ: Unity Not Uniformity

So the same call calls us all, out from the security and self-centered rhythm of our own lives into the life of God’s kingdom. The same Spirit haunts all our lives. We all look to the same God, “who is above all and through all and in all” (4:6).

I had a roommate in college who was troubled by all this sameness, all this oneness. He feared that the Christian faith would strip him of his identity, that he would be cut by some Christ-shaped cookie-cutter. But if Paul has anything to say about it, our shared calling and faith does not erase our differences. It celebrates them. We the church, Paul says, are “the body of Christ.” And a body is made up of many different parts, each of which performs a different function. Amanda recently used the metaphor of the body in her “From Where I Sit” reflection, where she also suggests that we’re like a team. And that’s another great metaphor: a team has different players, and they each have different strengths, but all are united together in one purpose.

In Paul’s day, the image of the body celebrated the unity of two very different groups of people: Jewish and Gentile believers. It didn’t matter if you kept kosher or not, whether you said the same prayers in the morning or not. Either way, you were part of the same body. Fast forward 1800 years or so, to the beginning of the movement that would result in the formation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and you’d see a similar celebration of difference. A number of ministers in America at the time were writing up creeds in an attempt to ensure the uniformity of the church.[6] But Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, two forefathers of the Christian Church, resisted these compositions, and they may well have cited the letters of Paul in their defense. In fact, the early Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) came up with a three-word motto that brilliantly paraphrases Paul’s image of the body in Ephesians 4: “Unity not uniformity.”

What Paul is getting at with the image of the body, what Stone and Campbell were getting at with their resistance to uniformity, is the idea that we are united not despite our differences but precisely because of our differences. Paul calls our differences “gifts” (4:11), as though to say that Christ intends these differences, indeed bestows these differences upon each of us. These differences are meaningful because they make us complete, the same way creation is complete because of its differences, because of its inexplicable mixture of land and water, bird and fish and fur, creepy crawly and human.

And just as this inexplicable mixture all harmonizes in a lively ecosystem, so too our shared calling in Christ harmonizes us in our differences, coordinates our movements into the movement of a single body. We are different people, we do different things. But we are all called to live a certain way. Christ is the adverb that attaches to us, to our actions. Christ is the adverb that inflects our behavior, that perfects us in our unique humanity. So to resume Paul’s body metaphor: If you’re an eye, eye the world the way Christ would, with compassion. If you’re a hand, then hand food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, yourself to the lonely, the way Christ would. If you’re a leg, then leg it to whoever is crying for help the way Christ would.

Christ Cannot Live an Instant Without Us

But…this is all probably starting to sound familiar. You’ve probably been asked to consider on more than one occasion, “Where do you fit on Christ’s body? Which body part are you?” These are illuminating questions, no doubt. But they risk distracting us from what Paul is really getting at. Remember, at the beginning of our text, Paul is literally “begging” us (4:1). He’s not begging us simply to accept his metaphor of the body of Christ, or to idly consider which part of the body we might be.

Because in the end, for Paul, it’s not just a metaphor. Paul is begging us to open our ears to our calling, to the reality that our bodies are the only body that Christ has in the world.[7] That if Christ lives anywhere, it’s in us (Gal 2:20). That Christ’s resurrection assumes its fullest truth in us. If we are divided, if we are not living according to the love and forgiveness and hope and new life that marked Christ’s life, then the world will not see a resurrected Christ.[8]

Numerous poets and saints have sung about this mystery, that we are the body of Christ. They are, I think, fascinated by the scandal—that God lives through the infinitely unique and fragile and finite lives of humans. And they are equally fascinated by the beauty: the beauty that we experience in each other and have no other word for besides “God,” the ways that we come to know God by the beautiful love expressed in our families, our friendships, and even (or especially) among the hospitality of strangers.

One particular poet, mystic, and saint from the 1500s, Teresa of Avila, heard the urgency in Paul’s plea better than most. And she revoices it poignantly in words of her own. You might recognize her poem. But I’d “beg” you to listen to it now with a new ear, to hear not simply a metaphor but a reminder of our calling, a calling that chooses us more than we choose it, a calling that we trace back to Christ, who now lives—if he lives at all—in us:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Amen.

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[1] The word “vocation” comes from the Latin, vocare, “to call.”  It is, in other words, a calling.  We don’t choose it.  It chooses, or “calls,” us.

[2] The strangeness and otherness of the divine call is captured in Luther’s describing our righteousness as an “alien righteousness.”  So Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (orig. eds. Gerhard Ludwig Müller and Albrecht Schönherr; trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and ed. Geffrey B. Kelly; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 32, who says that Christians “long for the redeeming Word again and again.  It can only come from the outside.  In themselves they are destitute and dead.  Help must come from the outside.”

[3] Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (New York: Random House, 2009), 324.

[4] Frederick Buecher is commonly credited for the quote: “Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need.”

[5] Ekklesia derives from ek, “out from” and “to,” and kaleo, “to call.”  The church is called out from the world and to God’s kingdom.

[6] See, e.g., Stone’s description of an 1807 meeting he was invited to attend.  D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000), 130-131, cites Barton W. Stone, History of the Christian Church in the West (Lexington: College of the Bible, 1956), 47, where Stone recollects that the meeting was for the purpose of writing a formulary “by which uniformity might be promoted and preserved among us.”

[7] Angelus Silesius, a poet and priest of the 1600s, articulates this concisely. Angelus Silesius, Cherubinic Wanderer (ed. Josef Schmidt and Maria Shrady; London: SPCK, 1986), cited in John D. Caputo, The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 35: “I know that God cannot live an instant without me; / Were I to become nothing, He must give up the Ghost.”

[8] Paul’s lengthy plea for unity derives from the idea we are the extent of God’s existence in the world, that we are the extent of Christ’s resurrection.  (Therefore, Paul can talk about our actions as impinging directly on Christ’s body, e.g., 1 Cor 6:16.)  Our unity attests to the unity of the divine purpose.  Our lives attest to the life and way of Christ.