The Way of God (Gen 12:2-4; Exod 19:5-6; Num 23:9; Isa 49:6; 52:13-15; 53:5; Jer 29:5-7)

An OT Field Guide

Next week, we will begin a short journey through the book of 1 Peter. This week, we will prepare for that journey. We will consult our map to familiarize ourselves with the territory we’ll be covering, and we’ll check our inventory to be sure that we can handle the various obstacles of interpretation that might arise.

To put this metaphor into plain terms, we will review a selection of passages from the Old Testament today, because 1 Peter frequently alludes to concepts drawn from the Old Testament. Peter maps the gospel of Jesus Christ onto the story of God and Israel, showing how God’s purpose has not changed—but perhaps our understanding of it has. If we are handy with the Old Testament stories and concepts that Peter employs, then we will better be able to handle the terrain of his letter and to appreciate that the way of God has always been the same—or, as pastor Brian Zahnd puts it so well:

“God is like Jesus.
God has always been like Jesus.
There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
We have not always known that God was like Jesus—
But now we do.”

“Leave Country, Kindred, and Father’s House”

Gen. 12:1   Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

People of faith, whether Jewish or Christian, regularly trace their heritage back to Abraham, the father of faith. These verses tell the origin of his faith. It all begins with a call to leave everything he knows—his country, his people, even his family. Faith in God requires the same from us all—to leave behind our cultural inheritance, to leave behind what we have been taught by our nation, our people, even our family. Faith in God will make us like strangers in the world, outsiders, people who identify with a different kingdom and a different way of living. And it is precisely here, in this state of exile, that we find God’s blessing. And as God’s promise to Abraham makes clear, this is a blessing intended for “all the families of the earth.”  

It may be worth noting that when God called Abraham, God’s good creation had already suffered several setbacks, all of them linked with civilization. The first city is founded in blood—that is, by Cain, who murders his brother and then lies about it (Gen 4:8-9; 17). (Jesus will refer to Satan himself as a murderer and a liar, perhaps implying that the demonic influence that touched Cain also touches the roots of civilization.) As civilization grows, violence fills the earth until a divine flood wipes it out (cf. Gen 6). A little later, humanity is gathered together once more in a city that is built on back-breaking labor and the pretension of dethroning God (Gen 11:1-9).

All of this to say: God calls Abraham out of a world of violent, organizing impulses, to found a new world where families are not cursed or crushed or torn apart in the grinding machine of human civilization but rather are blessed.

“You Will Be Different”

We fast-forward to God’s call and promise to Moses and the people of Israel, which is but a reaffirmation of God’s call and promise to Abraham.

Ex. 19:5 Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

Here God is speaking shortly after having delivered the people of Israel from slavery in the world’s greatest empire, Egypt. God is offering the people a covenant, a special relationship, in which they will become “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Which is fancy language for saying, “You will be different.”

Like priests, you will show the world a good way to live. You will draw the world into a closer relationship with God. As a holy nation, you will be distinguished from other nations, unique among them. “Holy” means something like “set apart for God.” Holy space is space set apart for God, like a temple. Holy time is time set apart for God, like the Sabbath. So Israel will be a people set apart for God, a canvas for God to show the world what it could become.

Not Just Another Nation

This next verse is rarely found on the “greatest hits” lists of the Old Testament, but I think it is quietly crucial. When the Moabite king Balak begged the famous prophet Balaam to curse Israel, Balaam refused. How could he curse whom God had blessed? And so Balaam only prophesied blessing for Israel. Amid one of his blessings, he utters this short description of the people of Israel:

Num. 23:9         For from the top of the crags I see him,

                              from the hills I behold him;

               Here is a people living alone,

                              and not reckoning itself among the nations!

In light of the New Testament, I interpret this short blessing—“here is a people living alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations!”—as an indication that Israel is not just another nation, a nation “among nations.” Which is to say, it’s not identified by all the things that normally identify a nation, like land and a flag and a king and an army. It’s not a competitor in the tournament of nations. It doesn’t play that game. As we saw in Abraham, and as we saw in the wilderness outside Egypt, and as we will see years later when the people have been exiled, the people of God are ultimately not defined by the land in which they live but by the faith through which they live. Their homeland is not a bounded territory that needs to be protected; their homeland is the boundless love of God, which needs to be shared.

When Jesus tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over” (John 18:36), I think he’s referring to the same idea upon which Israel is originally founded. God calls Israel to be a different kind of nation from the other nations in the world. God’s kingdom is not “from” this world. Everything about God’s kingdom seems different. Its king is not crowned conqueror but crucified a convict. Its followers do not fight but forgive. But while God’s kingdom is not “from” this world, it is most assuredly “for” this world. Which is why Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come…on earth…!” Jesus is praying for a fulfillment of God’s promise—a promise that originally showed itself in the people of Israel.

God’s Suffering Servant

But God’s promise eventually founders upon the rocks of Israel’s desire to be like other nations. The people of Israel clamor for a king who will lead their army, a king who will protect them. Even though God feels the sting of rejection, God sees that there is no changing the people’s mind. God allows them a king, and they become more and more like the other nations around them. Finally, their greed and injustice catches up with them, and the fabric of their society starts to fray and tear, and they are ripped to shreds by the more powerful nations around them. Their temple is destroyed, and many of the people are enslaved and displaced, sent to live in foreign lands. Some of them begin to question whether God is even with them anymore.

It is in this context that we hear from the prophets, once more, a reaffirmation of God’s promise to bless all the earth through a people who are faithful to God.

I read here from Isaiah, who refers repeatedly to a “servant” of God, a mysteriously unidentified individual who will lead the people of Israel—and ultimately—the world into God’s kingdom.

Is. 49:6                He [God] says [to his servant],

               “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

                              to raise up the tribes of Jacob

                              and to restore the survivors of Israel;

               I will give you as a light to the nations,

                              that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Here God promises that his servant will restore Israel. But his servant won’t stop with Israel. He will become a “light to the nations,” so that God’s “salvation” spreads throughout the earth. If this seems surprisingly universal for a Jewish faith that often seems particular to one ethnic group, we need only remember that God’s original promise to Abraham was blessing for all the families of the earth and that God hinted to Moses and the people of Israel that their role was not to withdraw but to be priests unto the world, to show the world a different way to live and to draw them closer to God. This servant is taking the baton and doing just that.

Is. 52:13                  See, my servant shall prosper;

                              he shall be exalted and lifted up,

                              and shall be very high.

So far, this is what we might expect of God’s servant. He will be  exalted and lifted up.

This picture seems to portray a man who is admired and well-respected. It seems obvious God’s favor rests upon him.

But the next verses change the picture dramatically.

14           Just as there were many who were astonished at him

                              —so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,

                              and his form beyond that of mortals—

In other words, this exalted servant of God was actually so disfigured, that he hardly looked human at all.

If we thought that his exaltation had anything to do with his honor and his reputation, this picture of events compels us to reinterpret the situation. For God’s servant here is marked with humiliation and shame. God’s servant is repulsive to the eye.

15           so he shall startle many nations;

                              kings shall shut their mouths because of him;

               for that which had not been told them they shall see,

                              and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

God’s servant startles nations and silences kings, presumably because of his difference. “That which had not been told them”—I wonder if this is things like, “Love your enemy” and “Forgive unconditionally”?—things that had not been told the nations and their kings, “they shall see.”

“And that which they had not heard”—I wonder if this is things like “do good to those who hate you” and “turn the other cheek”—that which they had not ever heard before, “they shall contemplate.”

All of this to say, God’s servant is a shock to the system. A shock to the world’s many nations and kings.

God’s servant shows them a radically different way to live in the world.

Is. 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,

                              crushed for our iniquities;

               upon him was the punishment that made us whole,

                              and by his bruises we are healed.

Perhaps most shocking of all, this disfigured, so-called servant of God, is ultimately vindicated.

His wounds do not fester. They heal.

His suffering does not debilitate. It saves.

The way of God—the difference of God—is what the world would consider weakness and foolishness. A man who does not fight back. A man who bears the wounds of others. And yet, Isaiah prophesies, this weakness and foolishness is what will save the world.

Fight, Flight, or…?

This broad story that we’ve traced so far through the Old Testament is crucial to Peter.

But it’s not the end of the story. For Peter, the servant’s example is not just something to gawk or wonder at. It serves as a model, a pattern, a road—a way for the people of God.

Peter and his audience are grappling with a difficult question (that we still face today). How should they (we) live in a world that is mired in the old values of competition, violence, and might-makes-right? How should they (we) relate to the empire whose violence crucifies the people who get in the way, people like their savior?

The two popular responses in any situation of difficulty or conflict are “fight” and “flight.” To “fight” would mean becoming more like the world. It might mean trying to infiltrate the empire’s government with good Christians who could change it from the inside. Or it might mean trying to fight it in a more literal way, with swords and daggers. Either way, “fighting” entails a dreadful compromise. It jettisons the values of Christ, values like love, gentleness, humility, noncoercion. It says, “No, we need to fight fire with fire; only after we’ve ‘won,’ can we live like Christ.”

The other response, “flight,” would mean to separate from the world. It might mean setting up an alternative community in isolation from the world, a safe haven where Christians can live in peace among themselves. But again, this path entails a dreadful compromise. It jettisons the desire and mission of God to bless all the families of the earth. It writes off the people whom God longs to embrace. It judges as unworthy or expendable the people whom Christ came to forgive.

Instead of “fight” or “flight,” Peter will opt for an alternative third way, a way that we already see outlined in the Old Testament (because, remember, the way of God has always been the same). Our last text comes from the prophet Jeremiah. It must be remembered that Jeremiah is writing to Israelites in exile, who are now living as second-class citizens, if not slaves, among the very people who conquered their homeland and destroyed their temple. They are living among the enemy.

Jer. 29:5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

According to Jeremiah, the way of God is neither “fight” nor “flight.” It is, rather, to be a light.

“Seek the welfare of the city” where you are in exile (Jer 29:7).

To be clear, I don’t think God is calling the Israelites to become Babylonian, to accept the Babylonian culture as their own, to prop up the Babylonian empire. Because the Babylonian empire is depicted elsewhere in scripture quite vividly as an evil empire, a wicked beast, a civilization steeped in blood. It is just like the Egyptian empire that enslaved the Hebrew people. It is just another empire founded in the violence and lies of Cain, in whom civilization itself was founded. So, I  don’t think God is calling the exiled Israelites to assimilate to Babylon. They belong not to the kingdom of Babylon, but to God’s kingdom.

But they are called to bless the Babylonians as indeed they would be called to bless their neighbors wherever they found themselves. For that is the way of God. We saw it first in God’s call to Abraham to be a blessing to the families of the earth. We saw it next in God’s call to Moses and Israel to be a holy nation, set apart from the other nations, a priestly kingdom that would show the other nations how to live with God and draw near to God. And finally we saw the way of God in God’s servant, who came not to inflict injuries but to bear them and heal them, who came not to impose suffering but to endure it and to redeem it.

All of this to say, Peter discerns within the Old Testament a clear line back to the very beginning, showing that God’s way has always been the same. It is neither a way of domination nor of separation. It is neither winning nor withdrawing. Neither fight nor flight. But rather, to be a light.

To put it simply, the way of God is to be the difference that God wants to see in the world. And that difference is Christ.

Prayer

Loving God,
Whose way we see most clearly in Jesus Christ
And catch glimpses of
In the story of Israel
Going all the way back to Abraham—
Inspire us by the servant
Who came as a shock to the system
…
Inspire us to live as your difference
In a world caught up
In cycles of hurt and despair.
In Christ, our teacher by example: Amen.

"Children of God" (Acts 2:1-4; Gal 4:1-7)

This morning I will continue with the practice of interspersing some commentary among the scripture. If you’re following along on the insert or in your Bible, just know that I will be pausing periodically to elaborate on what we’ve read.

“A Wind from God”: God’s New Creation

Acts 2:1   When the day of Pentecost had come, they [the disciples] were all together in one place. Pentecost was another name for the Jewish Festival of Weeks, a pilgrimage festival that originally celebrated the first fruits of the wheat harvest and later came to be identified with the day on which God gave Israel the law. As we will see shortly, there’s a poetic reversal at play in the Christian celebration of Pentecost. The day that once commemorated the receiving of the law, has become for us Christ-followers a day that commemorates our graduation from the law into the freedom of the Spirit.

2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. In Hebrew, the word for Spirit is the same word for “wind.” We are told in Genesis that when God created the heavens and the earth, a “wind from God” swept over the waters. God’s spirit was brewing something, stirring up new life. We can see Pentecost in a similar way. God’s spirit is brewing something, stirring up new life, amid the followers of Christ who are gathered together. They are going to become the church, a distinctive witness to God’s new creation in Christ.

3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. I must confess, I have trouble imagining people suddenly speaking languages they have no knowledge of. Is this just an inexplicable miracle, nothing more than a sign of God’s power? Maybe so. But in the context of what we’ve already noticed—namely, that Pentecost is reminiscent of creation, where God’s wind-spirit sweeps over the elements, stirring up new life—in this context, I can’t help but notice the emphasis on words and speech. Creation began with God speaking the world into existence. Or as John puts it, in the beginning was “the Word.” God’s new creation in Christ begins in a similar way, with the Spirit inspiring people to speak. In the rest of the book of Acts, the Christ-followers proclaim the story of Christ. Which is to say, they begin to change the story. The story that the world tells, which is a story of gods of power, a story of competition, a story of winners and losers. They begin to proclaim a different story, a countercultural story, a story of a crucified God, a story of an alternative way, the Jesus way of forgiveness and generosity and peace.

Stories shape our world. We live into them. By proclaiming the story of Christ in word and deed, the church is speaking God’s new creation into existence.

Graduating from the “Basic Principles”

Now we pivot to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which we’ve been reading the last few weeks.

Just to refresh before we begin: in the last couple weeks, we’ve heard Paul proclaim that followers of Christ have been fully received into God’s fellowship, not by virtue of anything they have done but by virtue of Christ’s love for them and faith in them. Paul’s proof for this claim is simple: people’s experience of the Holy Spirit. He reminds the Galatians about how they experienced the Spirit of God in some amazing ways—which we can only imagine refers to the kinds of life-changing events that we see elsewhere in scripture and in early church history, changes like the personal divestment of wealth and honor, and the breakdown of the social class system at a common table, and the healing of diseases.  Paul’s point is that all of this happened not as the result of following some rules, but as the result of trusting in the love of Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit. For Paul, the free and unconditional love of Christ becomes our new center of gravity, our new identity. It’s like putting on a different set of clothes, living with different habits. It also means taking off our old clothes and setting aside our old cultural identities, based in things like our nationality, our gender, our race, our religion, and so on.

Today, Paul  elaborates on the experience of the Holy Spirit, on what it feels like and how it changes us. He uses the rich metaphor of growing up.

Gal. 4:1   My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property 2 but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. Last week, Paul compared the law—meaning the traditions and dos and don’ts of our culture, Jewish or otherwise—to an old-fashion school-teacher. Here he’s riffing off the same idea. When we are children, subject to that old school-teacher who’s keeping us in line, we are held back from the fullness of life. We have not graduated. We have not come yet into our full inheritance.

3 So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. Another translation is “enslaved by the basic principles of the world,” which is to say, the customs and laws that ordered life in our culture. These basic principles (back then as well as now) might include things like, men should be strong, women should be pretty, time is money, money is power, and so on. These principles told us how to live, and in some ways they might have been helpful. But they also limited us and held us back from the fullness of life.

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. “Adoption” may be a misleading translation. Earlier in Paul’s metaphor, he suggests we are already children awaiting an inheritance, but we are kept under the guard of our teacher-disciplinarian—that is, the law of our culture. In other words, the moment of change or transformation to which Paul refers is not a matter of space but a matter of time. It is not a matter of us being outside God’s household and then being brought in, but a matter of us being adolescents and then graduating or growing up into our full inheritance. We graduate from the “basic principles” and enter into the freedom of love.

If you think for a moment of the parable of the prodigal son, consider the character of the older brother, the one who stays at home and is a dutiful servant of his father. When his brother returns home and his father throws a homecoming feast, the older brother refuses to join them. Why? He has not graduated from the law. He has not grown up into an appreciation of his father’s love. He still lives according to the basic principles of good and bad, deserving and undeserving, winning and losing. He sees himself as a dutiful servant of his father, someone who deserves reward, and his brother as a wrongdoer, a failure, someone who deserves to be kicked out.

Beyond Teenage Rebellion

6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

I’m fascinated by Paul’s metaphor of growing up and graduating from the law.  In the past, when I’ve read the verse about the Spirit crying, “Abba,” I’ve thought of a little child crying out to God, “Daddy!” And I don’t think that is invalid. Jesus teaches us that to enter the kingdom of God we must become like little children. But as I read these last couple verses today in the context of Paul’s metaphor, I think they are painting a different picture.

Think for a moment about the idea of “teenage rebellion.” Perhaps you went through this stage yourself. Or perhaps you’ve seen it in others. It is undoubtedly a complicated time in anyone’s life, and I wouldn’t want to reduce it to a simple lesson. For some people, there may be very good reason to rebel. For others, it’s just a part of differentiating ourselves from our parents. In either case, a teenager who is in active rebellion probably does not see their parents as loving guardians but as something more like a slavemasters. And yet at some point down the road—it might be in their 20s when they get their freedom and encounter the hard knocks of life on their own, or it might be in 50s or 60s as they care for their aging parent—but at some point, they begin to acknowledge and appreciate their parents’ love for them.

Of course, that love is not always expressed in healthy or helpful ways. I remember hearing once a woman speak about her abusive upbringing, and how her  mom was constantly on drugs and wrecking whatever residence they had found to live in. When the daughter grew up and left home, she determined never to see her mom again. But as it would happen, one day she received a phone call to inform her that her mom had dementia and was dying. With great trepidation, she went to meet with her. The daughter was in a much better, much healthier place herself, and she felt strong enough to face her past. She says that when she saw her mom on the nursing home bed, it was like seeing the sun for the first time. She said she realized that all her life, her mom had loved her, but that love had been hidden behind the clouds of addiction and bad habits and a long history of hurt. But finally the clouds had lifted. Not everyone with abusive parents is blessed with such a moment, but I have to believe the truth holds. Love is always there, however much it is buried underneath disease and dysfunction.

All of this to say, when I read these verses in the context of growing up, what I see in my mind’s eye is not an infant crying out, “Daddy!” but a mature son or daughter outgrowing their rebellion and finally recognizing God for who God is: not a taskmaster, not a disciplinarian, but a loving father, a loving mother. I imagine the prodigal son’s older brother having a moment of clarity, waking up to what he’s been missing his whole life. His father loves him. Would give him the world. Even if he didn’t deserve it. Even if (like his brother) he’d done everything not to deserve it.

And that is a profoundly different kind of story than the one our world tells. Which is why Pentecost is pivotal. It marks God’s new creation, when God’s wind swept over the waters once more, when God’s Spirit filled followers of Christ with a new story to share with the world, a story of a father’s unconditional love.

Originally Pentecost marked the receiving of the law. But in Christ, it marks a growing up beyond the law, a graduation into the freedom of love. Through the Spirit of God that has come to us through Christ, we realize we are beloved children of God, forgiven and free to love others as we have been loved.

Prayer

Tender God,
Who cares deeply for us,
Whose Spirit broods over all creation—
Today we celebrate your Spirit,
A spirit of fierce love and forgiveness,
Meant for us, but not only us
…
God, sometimes we have trouble believing
We are your children,
Truly forgiven, truly free.
Open our hearts to receive
This good news,
So that we might share it with others,
And enter more fully into your new creation
In Christ: Who taught us to say, “Our father,” “Abba.” Amen.

Caught (Ps 9 Haiku)

caught up in my plans,

"in the work of [my] own hands" -- 

or, caught up in Grace.

Underneath (Ps 8 Haiku)

who are we that you

should make our home here your own,

underneath the gods?

"No Longer Jew or Greek" (Gal 3:1-9, 23-29)

“Christ Crucified”

Reading Paul’s letter to the Galatians is a little bit like overhearing a conversation. We can hear all the words but miss the meaning, because the speaker and the listener already share a connection. The speaker might use a single word to refer to a complex situation.

This morning as I read the scripture, I will continue to incorporate some commentary along the way to explain the situation, to unpack a bit more fully what’s being said.

3:1   You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It’s a rhetorical question. Paul and the Galatians both know of whom he speaks. Paul has already pointed the finger (as we read last week) at a group of Christ-followers who insist that to be a real Christ-follower one must also become Jewish and fully submit to all the Jewish laws.

It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! For Paul, the simple message of “Christ crucified” abolishes any idea that we draw near to God through our own achievements. The good news is not that we can get to God by a bit of hopscotch, by following the rules—x, y, z. The good news is that God has come to us full of love and is even willing to suffer and die for us. The cross shows that God’s love is not earned. It is freely given to all. 

The Spirit of the Game

2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

Paul is popularly known as the church’s first theologian, but here’s where I like him best. Before he gets to any theology, he begins with an appeal to honest experience. He asks the Galatian Christ-followers how they encountered Christ in the first place. Was it through a rigorous regimen of rule-keeping? Did they check off every box on a list and only then the Spirit entered their heart?  His rhetorical questions suggest quite the opposite. It was simply by hearing the story of Jesus and trusting in it that they received the Spirit. You “experience[d] so much,” Paul says, implying wonders that we can only imagine. Ancient testimony from outside the Bible suggests that these wonders included extraordinary things such as the rich relinquishing many of their possessions and joyfully breaking bread with the poor, and people with addictions finding relief from their compulsions and living in gratitude, and ambitious merchants dropping lawsuits and forgiving their debtors. All of this, Paul says, happened at the prompting of the Spirit—without you following this law or that law. To start with the Spirit (all these wonders they’ve experienced) only to go back to the flesh (the idea that they must secure God’s favor through their deeds) would be to go backwards. It would be spiritual relapse.

I heard recently about a sports team that had been struggling. When their new coach came on board, one of the first things he did was stop practice in the middle of the day. He told everyone to be quiet and to listen. Then he was silent. He didn’t say anything.

But the team’s facilities were right next door to an elementary school. Through the silence there filtered the gleeful shouts and unbridled joy of children at recess. Finally the coach spoke and said that that was the spirit that the team needed to recover. The problem was not that they were bad and needed to get better. The problem was that they had fallen into a spirit of fear and self-protection. They needed to remember why they were playing in the first place. They needed to rediscover their love of the game and play with the freedom and joy with which they had first played as children.

Paul is saying something similar. He’s inviting the Galatians to remember how the game got started and why they were playing in the first place. He’s inviting them back to the Spirit of love and grace that overwhelmed them, not because of what they’d done but simply because they’d received it. It’s no coincidence that now he pivots in his letter to the father of faith, Abraham. He goes back to the start of everything to remind his readers what faith is all about.

Father Abraham

6   Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”—this is a quote from Genesis 15:6, where God promises Abraham offspring as many as the stars, and Abraham believes (or trusts in) God—7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles—or the nations, the non-Jewish people—by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” This is a quote from Genesis 12:3. 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

This is an extremely clever bit of theology from Paul. He is concerned, remember, that the Galatian Christ-followers are being misled to believe they must fully submit themselves to the Jewish law in order to become fully accepted followers of Christ. We might assume that Paul is ready to throw away his own Jewish heritage, to say that the Jewish law is wrong or outdated and can be dispensed with. But that’s not the case. Just as Jesus commended the Jewish law and expressed his intention to fulfill it, so Paul shows how the Jewish story does not contradict the gospel but is actually an integral part of the gospel. He points out that the Jewish story begins before there is any law. It begins with a man, Abraham, who simply has faith in God—and not just any God, but the God who reveals his desire to bless all the nations. In other words, as much as Judaism may have become for some people a tradition of laws, Paul points out that underneath all of that is something more important. Faith. Faith is how Abraham said “Yes” to God’s call and how Abraham entered into relationship with God. And all who say “Yes” to Christ and his gospel of blessing for all humanity, are entering into that same relationship and that same family of faith.

Beyond the Law: Habits of Love

Having explained how Christ-followers are descendants of Abraham, even though they may not have followed the Jewish law, Paul now feels the need to explain the origins of the law and its purpose. His take on the law is actually quite nuanced. He thinks it is good—to a point. That it has a purpose—to a point.

23   Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Paul’s word choice is instructive. “Imprisoned” suggests a negative connotation. Something about the law held us back from the fullness of life. But “guarded” suggests a positive connotation. Something about the law protected us from the chaos of our many and contradictory desires. Lastly, it seems that now Paul is actually referring not only to the Jewish law but to law in general. Every culture, Jewish or not, has its own traditions and customs, shoulds and should-nots. These are good to a point, but they also ultimately hold us back.

 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. The word for “disciplinarian” is paidagogos, from which we get “pedagogy,” and here it conjures up in the mind an old-fashioned grade-school teacher who carries a book in one hand and a ruler in the other.

25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. Paul’s metaphor of a teacher-disciplinarian here broadens to encompass the idea of a young person coming-of-age and coming into their inheritance. Last week, we heard Paul talk about “the faith of Christ” as a game-changer, as the gift of God’s love and belief in us that liberates us from the game of sin, the game of trying to get everything right. In today’s scripture, the idea seems to be that Christ’s faith in us and love for us opens our eyes to our true nature. We discover that the ruler that has been whacking us from time to time is not in the hand of God. We discover that in fact we have a loving father (which is the patriarchal metaphor of Paul’s day; today we might equally say “a loving mother”).

27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. In other words, to live into this new reality of love is not just a change in the way we think or view the world. It entails a change in the way we live. Our word for “habit” originally comes from a word that means “clothing.” When Paul says we clothe ourselves with Christ, he is saying that our habits get changed. Before, we lived according to rules and customs of our culture. We lived with aspirations inherited from the people around us, whether they be aspirations toward fame or money or power. But when we realize in the depths of our being that we are beloved children of God, we live no longer according to the rules and customs of our culture. We live with different aspirations and different habits.

In short, we live with a new identity, grounded not in a culture but in a person. Christ who loved us and gave himself for us.

28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

God’s Transformative Kiss

If you’ll indulge my imagination for a moment, I want to ponder the meaning of the story Beauty and the Beast. I’m not interested in the details but the broader scope of the story. A prince is punished by an enchantress for his arrogance and turned into a beast. What is it that ultimately liberates him from his captivity to his beastly flesh? It is not great wisdom or great power, not a secret spell or a sword. It is a kiss. Love returns him to his original goodness. 

But for the sake of thinking about today’s scripture, imagine with me that what happens next is not “happily ever after,” but rather that the Prince (formerly the Beast) becomes increasingly concerned with preserving his rediscovered human identity. Imagine that he takes up hobbies that are popular among the human men of his culture, devoting every waking hour to these activities. Imagine that he studies the language of other human men around him and works slavishly to reproduce their linguistic habits in his own speech. Imagine that he studies society to learn what human achievements are most admired—achievements such as the acquisition of great amounts of money and power—and he plans meticulously to achieve these things himself.

What happens to him? Even as he remains a human in body, he relapses into the spirit that once turned him into a beast. I imagine that he becomes increasingly cold and callous to his wife, as he shifts attention from her love to his selfish endeavors. He effectively departs from the truth of his life—that kiss, that transformation into his true, good self.

If you think about it, the happy, original ending of Beauty and the Beast is not that the Prince becomes a human again. It is that the Prince discovers love—and in it, his true self. This is the gospel in a nutshell. Just as the Prince gets his identity not from being a beast or a human, but by being loved, so too we get out identity not from being a Jew or a Greek, an American or otherwise, but by being loved by Christ.

I don’t want to burden the scripture with more metaphors or thoughts at this point. What I would like to leave you with instead is a question. Where do we get our identity from? For many of us, this might include a combination of family, hometown, nation—is it a coincidence that God calls Abraham to leave all three?—and other things such as our profession, our workplace, our sports team, our bank account, our political party, a favorite television show, our preferred genre of music, and so on. Whatever it is that gives you your identity, ponder how a total allegiance to these things might get in the way of God’s transformative kiss. Ponder how a total allegiance might get in the way of clothing yourself with Christ and living in the way of him who identified with the “least” of our societies and made clear that they are his brothers and sisters. Ponder what it might mean to find your true identity not in a nation or a religion or a culture, but in Christ.

Prayer

Father God, Mother God,
Whose love transforms us
And reveals our true and good selves
As your beloved children—
Encourage us to set aside
The idols that distort our identity
And do damage to our relationships
…
Inspire us to learn from our brother Christ Jesus
The way of your love.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.

Within (Ps 7 Haiku)

let the wound in my

heart be healed. your "fight" is not 

against but within.

"The Faith of Christ" (Gal 1:13-17; 2:11-21)

The Text in Context

This morning’s scripture is particularly dense and fraught with background. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul regularly refers to cultural and religious dynamics with a word or a phrase, dynamics that are very particular to his time and place and can be easily lost on us in our time and place. I thought it might be helpful this morning to offer some occasional, immediate commentary as I read the scripture. If you’re following along, just know that there will be several stops along the way when I will unpack what Paul is saying with a little bit of commentary. 

^1:13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. A couple of weeks ago, we read about the stoning of Stephen at the hands of angry mob. We learned at the conclusion of that episode that a certain young man, a rising star among his people, had overseen the vigilante execution and was also imprisoning other Christ-followers among the Jewish people. That young man was Paul, the writer of today’s scripture (or Saul as he was known at that time).

¹⁴ I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul reports that he belonged to the Pharisees, the nationalistic branch of Judaism that was intent on restoring the standards of the Mosaic law as standards for all of life. Paul recounts in Philippians that his zeal for the tradition was so great he was “blameless” under the law. One can only imagine how threatened he would have felt by Christ-followers who declared that the law had been fulfilled through a rabble-rousing rabbi, a renegade who ate with tax collectors and violated the Sabbath and ended up crucified. What kind of example was that to follow? A man like that neither honored the law nor had done anything to make Israel great again.

¹⁵ But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased ¹⁶ to reveal his Son to me so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles—Do you remember Paul’s conversion story? How on the road to Damascus, he encounters a blinding light and hears a voice, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”—I did not confer with any human being, ¹⁷ nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. It’s easy to miss what Paul is saying here between the lines. How did he finally encounter God? What brought him face to face with God? It was not through following the law blamelessly, all 613 precepts. It was, instead, “through [God’s] grace.” Which is to say, his encounter with God was a gift. He did nothing to deserve it. In fact, he did everything to not deserve it, but God gave it anyway. This becomes the foundation of Paul’s faith and unlocks the meaning of everything else he says.

^2:11   But when Cephas—i.e., Peter—came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned—that is, he was betraying what he himself knew to be true.

¹² For until certain people came from James—James was a brother of Jesus and the leader of the church in Jerusalem—he [Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles. Peter, if you remember, has a life-changing dream about a sheet descending from heaven, on which all sorts of animals are spread out, and he hears a voice, telling him to eat what is on the sheet, even the animals that by Jewish law are impure, unkosher. Soon afterward, he receives an invitation to a centurion’s home, where he witnesses with his own eyes the Holy Spirit descend upon the uncircumcised Gentiles. That is the moment when it all clicks for Peter. God’s favor is not achieved through maintaining a set of laws, maintaining a religious or cultural purity. God’s favor is a gift, and it is being given to everyone. Just as his lord had once taught, that God is all-merciful, his care descending upon everyone indiscriminately, like the rain, like the sun. And so Peter begins to eat with Gentiles. Just as people said about Jesus, “This man eats with tax collectors and sinners,” I imagine they began to say about Peter, “This man eats with Gentiles.”

But after they came—that is, the people from James—he [Peter] drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. While the details here are hazy, the bigger picture is clear enough. These visitors from Jerusalem still adhere strictly to the Jewish laws (such as circumcision and the dietary restrictions) and believe that others need to do so also, if they want to join the inner circle of God’s people. To put this a little more bluntly, these visitors from Jerusalem, the “circumcision faction,” believe that to follow Christ means also to become Jewish just as Jesus was Jesus, to submit fully to the Jewish law. But the Gentiles with Paul have not submitted fully to the Jewish law; they have not been circumcised, they do not follow the dietary restrictions. When Peter, who’d previously been eating with everyone, suddenly stops and only eats with fellow Jews, presumably so that the visitors will think well of him, we can only imagine how upset Paul is. For Paul, the table was a powerful symbol of how different people were joined together in the one body of Christ—Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female (cf. Gal 3:28). When Peter separated from the Greeks, the Gentiles, he was tearing this symbol apart and reinstating an old division and an old way of thinking—namely the idea that you had to fulfill certain obligations to earn God’s favor.

¹³ And the other Jews joined him [Peter] in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

¹⁵   We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners—here Paul is clearly addressing himself to the Jewish side of the audience. By using the expression “Gentile sinners,” he is not saying Gentiles are morally deficient but culturally or religiously deficient; he’s referring to a Jewish idea that because Gentiles do not have a covenant with God, they do not know what the right way to live is.

¹⁶ Yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. Many translations have traditionally rendered this “faith in Jesus Christ,” but the simpler, more literal rendering is “the faith of Jesus Christ.” How does this change the meaning? Ultimately, I would like for you to ponder that question for yourself—although I will tip my hat to my own interpretation soon enough.

And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. Paul seems to be acknowledging here that no one is perfect. If the law is how we win God’s favor, we will all of us fall short. There will always be a bit of a scowl on God’s face, because no one will be able to live up to the standard. ¹⁷ But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! In other words, if we live to Christ instead of to the law, but we still sin, does that makes Christ responsible for our sin? Does Christ make us to sin? Paul’s answer is no, of course. For Paul, what Christ eradicates (initially, at least) is not sin but our notion of perfection and meritocracy, our idea that we have to get everything right to receive God’s favor.

Before I go any further, I have to acknowledge these last few verses are very dense. Rather than try to explain everything, I’m going to focus on where I hear the gospel right now in my life.

¹⁸ But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down—that is, if I start following the Jewish law again—then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor—that is, by setting up the law as the standard for living, I make myself necessarily a failure once again. I can’t possibly uphold all the laws all the time! ¹⁹ For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. Paul is signaling here that the law is no longer a priority for him. It only ever made him a failure. It didn’t help in the long run. But something—or rather someone—did help. I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰ and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. We might remember Jesus inviting his followers to take up their cross daily, suggesting that the cross on which he would die is actually symbolic for a fundamental practice. Here, we get Paul’s interpretation of that practice. To take up the cross, to be crucified with Christ, is to relinquish his old life of achievement and self-sufficiency, his old life of trying to be pure and blameless, his old life of trying to earn merit before God.

And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes about love as the greatest gift of all. And he writes specifically that “love…believes [has faith in] all things.” So when I hear Paul say that he lives now “by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” what I really hear is Paul saying that the new center of gravity in his life is Jesus believing in him. Not because of what he did. Indeed, he had been doing the exact opposite of what Jesus wanted, but even so, Jesus believed in him. And loved him. And gave himself for him.

 ²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God—or gift of God; for Paul, it’s all about the gift. For if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

From Hiss to Purr 

The very first word my cat Etty spoke to me was a hiss. Poe didn’t say a word. He was cowering in the corner of their shared cage at the animal shelter. When Etty gave me her sour greeting, the shelter volunteer reminded me it was nothing personal. They were rescue cats, so it’s possible they were carrying with them a few kitten traumas after having been born into a big, scary world of cars and big birds and unpredictable humans. Now locked up in cages and surrounded by the barking of animals bigger and more boisterous than them, they would have felt intimated and afraid and always on the defensive.

When I think about that first day, I marvel at the transformation of Etty and Poe. I guess they’re still scaredy cats, but Etty’s vocabulary has expanded considerably, and now when she meets someone new, she rarely resorts to her former word choice. Poe will venture out from hiding to sniff a visitor and maybe even give a little head-butt greeting.

If you have pets, I wonder if you can trace a similar arc of transformation.

It strikes me as a powerful metaphor—or even reflection—of the gospel that Paul is proclaiming. What transformed Etty and Poe? From hiss to purr? Ultimately it was that, one day, I walked through the doors. Chose them. Believed in them (which is to say, had faith in their goodness). Loved them. And gave myself to them. It was all grace. A gift. Etty speaks a different language because I had faith in her. My faith changed her.

Those of you who have pets, consider how they live today. Their mannerisms. Their games. Their quirks. Their traits. Consider how much of this has evolved as a direct result of their relationship with you. Consider the possibility that when they run or jump or bring you a toy or snuggle against you, you are a large part of what motivates them. You are what has given them life. If our pets could speak, part of me wonders if they might say something like, “It’s not just I who live, but it is my human who lives in me. … I live because my human believed in me, had faith in me, loved me, and gave themselves for me.”

I’m mindful that this is, in the grand scheme of things, a trivial example. But I can’t help but think that its truth is gospel truth, entirely scaleable to size. We live in a big, uncertain world, where it seems almost natural that we learn a defensive posture and the language of the “hiss.” We might, like the young Paul, seek order and refuge in a world of laws and rules that help to make sense of things, but that doesn’t fundamentally touch our hearts or change us. There still lives in the core of us a frightened child, defensive and ready to curse. What fundamentally changes us—and the world—is not law and order, but love. A gift. What changes us (and others) is having someone else walk through the door and choose us. It is having someone believe in us (have faith in us), love us, and give themselves for us. And that someone, for Paul at least, is Jesus Christ. And this good news becomes Paul’s life mission. To let others know—no matter their religious tradition, no matter their national identity, no matter their race or gender or ideology or anything else in the world—that God believes in them (has faith in them), loves them, and gave God’s very self for them.

Prayer

God who believes in us,
Even when we do or say
What is contrary to your desire,
Contrary to your kingdom—
Lead us with Paul, Peter, and other Christ-followers across the ages
To be transformed by the gift of your love
…
To see the world not through the frightened lens
Of our nation or political party or religion or any other group,
But rather through the trusting lens of your love.
In Christ, who loved us and others and gave himself for us all: Amen.

"Night" (Ps 6 Haiku)

unguarded at night,

ambushed by all I suppress:

do you accept me?

"Nod" (Ps 5 Haiku)

greeting the sunrise

with heart-breaking honesty,

i watch for your Nod.

The Last Scapegoat (Acts 8:26-39)

Singled Out?

Abdullah came to Richmond as a refugee from Somalia. His father had been shot in the leg by an enemy militiaman as a warning of what would happen to him and his family if they did not leave. So they left, spent years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and were very fortunate to receive welcome into our nation as refugees.

Abdullah was around my age, tall, lanky, with the darkest of skin and a toothy grin. I remember meeting him as the new member of my soccer team. There was an air of intrigue around him. Here was someone who had probably played soccer longer than any of us, and in very different conditions. Sure enough, he was an excellent player, a magician with the soccer ball at his feet.

I remember our first game. He had an opportunity to score but saw me out of the corner of his eye and passed the ball instead. I scored as a result, and when I went to thank him, I saw his toothy grin. After the game, he gave me a goodwill offering to seal our friendship: a piece of gum. A little later, he gave me a scrapbook made with pictures from soccer magazines he’d picked up along the way.

Abdullah had a deft and deceptive touch on the ball, which flummoxed defenders and often resulted in him being fouled. His skinny legs would be hacked by frustrated opponents who couldn’t keep up with his tricks. On occasion, when the referee didn’t call a foul and allowed play to continue, Abdullah would retaliate in kind. Then the referee would blow the whistle and sometimes give Abdullah a yellow card, or even on a few occasions, a red card (which meant he was ejected from the game). Now, I know I speak with a pair of biased eyes, but it seemed to me like Abdullah was dealt a cruel hand. The calls against him often seemed not only incommensurate with the deed but also unfair on account of the rough treatment he had first received that had gone unpunished.

Sometimes…sometimes it felt as though there were deeper forces at play than simply the ref calling things as he saw them. Sometimes it felt as though Abdullah were being singled out, made into a sort of lightning rod for the pent-up frustrations of a heated soccer match. Why did the bubbling up of aggravation so often find catharsis in a foul called against Abdullah? Was it his skin? Was it his obvious foreignness or the name we shouted at him that evoked the Islamophobia of the time? Was it his almost presumptuous skill, his making others to look like fools?

The Ethiopian Eunuch’s “Worship” Experience

In our scripture today, God nudges Philip into the wilderness, which is to say, that uninhabited land not yet brought under the rule of any civilization, not yet bearing the flag of this people or that people, that land where God so often meets and transforms biblical characters, like Hagar and Ishmael and Moses and the Israelites and Elijah and Jesus, and so on. It is fair to ask who is transformed more in today’s scripture: the traveler on the road or Philip.

The traveler on the road is an Ethiopian eunuch returning home from a visit to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. I wonder what the Ethiopian eunuch was feeling as he reflected on his experience. As a foreigner, he likely would have only been able to enter the outermost court, known as the “court of the gentiles.” He would have felt his second-class status, as he was excluded from the joy of worship inside the temple where sacrifices were made and prayers were prayed. But as a eunuch, he may have been barred from the temple altogether, on the basis of a law in Deuteronomy that forbids anyone with damaged or altered genitals to enter the temple (Deut 23:1). In this case, the word “worship” becomes almost ironic, an oxymoron, salt in the wound. How could a person worship who could not even enter the temple?

If the Ethiopian eunuch is feeling marginalized or excluded, I wonder what he thinks as he reads in Isaiah about a man who is unjustly put to death, a man often referred to by readers as “the suffering servant”: “Like a sheep he was led to slaughter… . In his humiliation justice was denied him” (Acts 8:32-33; cf. Isa 53:7-8). I imagine that the eunuch identifies in some way with this suffering servant. He knows what it is like to be rejected. He knows what it is like to feel humiliated. So when Philip approaches him and shows familiarity with the scripture he is reading, the Ethiopian eunuch asks him, “Who is this about?” (cf. Acts 8:34). He wants to know more about this guy with whom he feels a special connection. Maybe there’s more he can learn about himself.

The Crucified God

Today is the third Sunday after Easter, and I cannot help but notice that there is a common thread weaving its way through all the scriptures we have read so far. It is, perhaps surprisingly, a thread of suffering. We might call this thread the “crucified God,” because each story identifies God with the victim who suffers.

On the first Sunday after Easter, we heard the travelers on the road to Emmaus lamenting how the cross ended their dreams; they cannot conceive of a crucified God. But then we heard the stranger overturning their interpretation by explaining how in fact the suffering of the cross was necessary for a loving God and how a crucified God explains all the scriptures. On the second Sunday after Easter, we saw Stephen suffer unto his death in the same pattern as the crucified Christ; he forgave the mob who killed him and entrusted his spirit to God. Today, we hear the Ethiopian eunuch reading an ancient prophecy of a man who suffers unjustly, a prophecy that Christians would claim to be a vision of the crucified God.

If a crucified God seems at first like a stumbling block to faith, it soon enough becomes the gateway to faith. Something about the story of the crucified God opens eyes and changes hearts. In today’s scripture, the Ethiopian eunuch moves from bewilderment about this suffering individual to a wholehearted desire to follow him—all in the space of a single sentence. We don’t know what exactly Philip says to him, but I can only imagine the Ethiopian eunuch’s surprise and wonderment when he discovers that this man who suffered unjustly was, in fact, God in the flesh. How he must have suddenly felt not alone but affirmed, known, seen, embraced, included. Part of me wonders, also, if Philip had taken the scroll from the Ethiopian and guided him forward just three chapters, from Isaiah 53 to Isaiah 56, where Isaiah prophesies:

    Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
    “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
    And do not let the eunuch say,
    “I am just a dry tree.”
    For thus says the Lord:
    …
    I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off (Isa 56:3-5).

Scapegoats: Peace Through Violence

Theologian and anthropologist Rene Girard explains that the power of the cross consists in humanity seeing an innocent man suffer. Girard observes that the predominant way of achieving peace in our world is through an act of violence. More specifically, a community identifies a scapegoat—an individual or a minority group who are different—and then the community attributes to this scapegoat blame for all the problems and anxieties and fears that plague the community. We see this on the playground, where a child who looks different gets bullied. We see this in families, where a dog or child or partner is abused for all that’s going wrong. We see this in nations, as when Jewish people were vilified in Germany, or Muslims in Bosnia, or the Tutsi in Rwanda. We see this all over the place. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, we see it in other times and places, but not always in our own. In our own, what we usually see is an “us” and a “them,” and we perceive injustices against “us” but rarely (if ever) against “them.” Our thinking is locked firmly within the scapegoat mindset, where life would just be better if “they” were gone or kept out or made more like “us.” While we might not think in terms of violence, that is always the end of scapegoat thinking. Force may be necessary to achieve peace for “us.”

But what happens in Jesus Christ is we see someone refuse this scapegoat thinking. We see someone who says outlandish things like, “Love your enemies” and “pray for those who persecute you” and “when someone strikes you, turn the other cheek.” We see a man who ends up like the prophetic vision of Isaiah, a lamb who chooses to suffer violence rather than sponsor it. And slowly it dawns on us that, although this man’s way of life throws a wrench in the way our world works, he is not the problem. He is innocent. The cross therefore opens our eyes to see the perversion of our scapegoating, to see the horrors of violence that we inflict on each other, to see that we are the mob and no matter what another person has said or done our violence against them is never pure or justified. It is part of this scapegoating that keeps us locked in a never-ending cycle of violence.

The cross is a divine spoke that gets driven into the wheels of our violent world, wheels that turn one violent revolution after another. The cross is a sacrifice to end all other sacrifices. No longer shall individuals be treated as less than human, written off as an unredeemable “them,” “cut off” from God and the rest of us (cf. Isa 56:5).

No More Scapegoats

In this sense, the gospel that Ethiopian eunuch heard perhaps went something like this, “Jesus was the scapegoat to end scapegoating. He is with you and knows what you have suffered, and he is leading us out of that suffering into a new creation.”

I’m mindful that the discourse in our world often centers on identity conflicts. There are many people who hold grievances, rightly so, based on the ways the people who think or look like they do have suffered. The difficulty is holding all of these grievances together at once, in tension with one another. But I think that is what Christ does on the cross. He does not take one side alone, but rather takes all sides at once, showing us the way forward, showing us what Paul called “one new humanity in place of two” (Eph 2:15).

In light of all this, my opening illustration might seem rather trivial. But to revisit it briefly, I might recognize that in my feeling a sense of injustice for my friend Abdullah, I was simultaneously beginning to vilify the referee, to make him the new scapegoat, the problem. Why couldn’t he see what he was doing, unfairly picking on the kid who looked and played differently? And so the cycle of violence continued quietly in me.

While on the cross, the crucified God holds us all in his arms and says, “No more.”

Prayer

God who makes peace
Through the cross:
Inspire us today
With the same joy
That overtakes the Ethiopian eunuch
…
Inspire us
To know that you are with us,
All of us, no matter what,
No matter how far off or outside we might feel;
Inspire us to desire the connection
Of living in your family,
To desire the brotherhood and sisterhood
Of strangers and enemies.
In Christ, the lamb that was slain and is seated on the throne: Amen.

"Gladness" (Ps 4 Haiku)

"gladness in my heart"

is not winning or getting

but being with you.

Witnesses, Not Winners (Acts 7:44-60)

“He Fell Asleep”

I was with my parents the other weekend. They were recounting the week’s ups and downs, which included doctor’s visits for them both for their annual checkups. My mom made an observation that perhaps some of you can relate to: “Getting old is no picnic. Every day seems to bring with it a new ailment.” My dad pondered this for a moment before replying, “Well, it beats the alternative.”

Today’s scripture is a serious text, and I struggled to think of a lighthearted introduction. I hope that will suffice. It’s the best I can offer this week!

For Stephen, following Christ brings not only trouble, but also the dreaded “alternative” of which my dad spoke. And that’s where I want to begin. Our English translation reports that after Stephen had said his final words, “he died” (Acts 7:60). But that’s not actually what the Greek says. The Greek says, “He fell asleep.” As though to remind us, we are living now on the other side of the resurrection. Death is not the same as it was before. It is an end, but not the end.

I hesitate to mention any of this, because our culture regularly denies or avoids death as it is. Whether it’s health regimens or cosmetics that make us look younger, or medical remedies that seek to prolong life indefinitely no matter its quality, or an obsession with immortality that manifests equally in technology and religion, we have all sorts of tools at our disposal to deny or avoid death. But the resurrection, which Jesus inaugurated only weeks before Stephen’s stoning, is not an avoidance of death. It is an acceptance of death–as a passage (a crossing, we might say) into an even grander reality. When the book of Acts says that Stephen fell asleep, I do not think it is saying that death no longer exists. I think it is saying that followers of Christ can receive death the same way that we receive sleep every night: by letting go and trusting God. Sleep is not a metaphor to erase the grim, black-and-white figure death, but rather a metaphor to color it in tenderly with surrender and trust.

Centuries later, Saint Francis of Assisi would do something similar, when he referred to death as “Sister Death” and included her with other elements of creation like Brother Wind, Sister Water, and Brother Fire, all good and necessary parts of life. The question is not “How do we avoid this part of life?” but “How do we live with it?”

Stephen’s Posture

What fascinates me in today’s scripture is Stephen’s posture. Not his physical, bodily posture, but his spiritual posture.

He is standing before an adversarial council of powerful religious leaders. He certainly does not mince his words, as he recounts Israel’s history in a prophetic manner, laying particular blame on the powerful, first casting shade on King Solomon for thinking he could domesticate God by putting him in a house and then suggesting that the religious council is no different than the leaders of the past who put the prophets to death. Personally, I find Stephen’s words a little inflammatory. Psychologists remind us that criticizing someone else is generally a counterproductive tactic for stimulating change or growth. A person’s kneejerk reaction to criticism is usually to dig their heels in, to become further entrenched in their viewpoint.

But putting these personal differences aside, I marvel at Stephen’s spiritual posture. I marvel that he speaks not in order to save his life, but to share where he has found life. I marvel that he speaks honestly, knowing that he is powerless to change others and that he will likely die. I marvel even more at the way he dies. Or “falls asleep.”

Hundreds of years before Stephen, there is a similar incident that takes place in the temple. A priest, Zechariah, receives the spirit of God and prophesies against the king. But the king and his followers do not like this. They stone Zechariah to death in the temple. As Zechariah lay dying, he said this: “May the Lord see and avenge!” (2 Chron 24:22). But when Stephen dies at the hands of his adversaries in a strikingly similar circumstance, he says something strikingly different, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). This is remarkable evidence of spiritual change, spiritual growth. Stephen could say this only because he had learned it somewhere else first. His teacher, Jesus, had taught this lesson, not only in word but also in deed. As we saw just a few weeks back, Jesus put this teaching into practice toward the very people who’d put him on the cross.

The Church on Trial?

We live in a very different world than Stephen’s world. I know a lot of Christians feel like the church is on trial or being persecuted, but I do not believe that is the case. I believe it is closer to the opposite, actually. That is to say, the church has long since assumed the mantle of the religious council in today’s story. For centuries, the church has held immense influence and power, often rubbing shoulders with emperors and kings and presidents. It is no coincidence that for many years the Bible has been sworn on in courts of law, that prayers to a Christian God have been made in the halls of power, that the motto “In God we trust” has been printed on coins and state flags and seals. The church in the western world has stood nowhere near where Stephen stood, except in the case of minority denominations (such as the Baptists in early Virginia, some of whom were actually jailed for preaching without a license). Much of the time, the church has stood closer to the powers doing the persecuting than to the people being persecuted. On occasion, the very text that we read today, in which Stephen refers to the Jewish leaders as “betrayers and murderers of Jesus” (Acts 7:52), has been used as justification for the destruction of synagogues and slaughter of the Jewish people.

But there is a strong sentiment on the wind that Christians here are being persecuted, when in fact it is simply the case that Christianity is losing its cultural power. Some Christians fear that they will no longer be able to set the terms by which society lives. A few years ago, a group of disgruntled people, some of whom were animated by this fear, descended on the nation’s capital. Of the defiant cries shouted among these people, one in particular caught my attention: “Christ is king!”

I want to respond to that sentiment—and that sentiment only—because I find it not only erroneous but deceptive. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. No. Christ is not your king, if you’re seeking the halls of power. No. Christ is not your king, if you’re seeking vengeance. No. Christ is not your king, if you are armed to get your way.

To be clear, I see this wolf in sheep’s clothing not only among people who resolve to fight for what they believe is rightfully theirs, but also among people who have turned politics into a battleground and have enlisted Jesus as their guide. Jesus does not want to command armies. Jesus does not want to enforce laws with arms and imprisonment. Jesus invites us to put down the sword, not to pick it up; to make enemies into friends, not neighbors into enemies; to bless not to curse. Jesus invites us to live in a different kingdom with different values and a different way of being. The resurrection is not the promise of immortality, but the transformation of this world into a new creation where God’s love reigns. Theologians Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw suggest that where the church feels like it is “losing ground,” it has confused its aims with national or cultural aims. They explain, “We are seeing more and more that the church has fallen in love with the state and that this love affair is killing the church’s imagination. The powerful benefits and temptations of running the world’s largest superpower have bent the church’s identity. Having power at its fingertips, the church often finds ‘guiding the course of history’ a more alluring goal than following the crucified Christ. Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual values of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love.”^[1]

“If my kingdom were from this world,” Jesus said, “my followers would be fighting….But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36).

Our Witness to Another World

Father Greg Boyle, who oversees the world’s largest gang rehabilitation program (i.e., ministry), says he is sometimes asked, “Aren’t you worried that some gang members will take advantage of your kindness?” His response is, “How can anyone ‘take’ my advantage? I’m giving them my advantage.” I think similarly when I consider the situation of the church today. There is nothing to “take back.” We are a people of the gift.

What gets Stephen into the mess he finds himself in, is not some culture war offensive. Rather, it is his witness. He is serving widows in need (Acts 6:1). He is “waiting on tables” (Acts 6:2). And apparently God’s grace shines so brightly through him, as he does “great wonders and signs” among the people, that some Jewish company men begin to take notice and feel threatened (Acts 6:9). They whisper rumors and bring charges and finally deliver him up to the religious council.

Where he simply continues to witness, unto his death. Which is remarkably similar to the pattern of Jesus’ life. The suggestion seems clear to me. This is how Christ-followers live. We are not winners in this world, people who get their way. We are witnesses, ambassadors for a different world, a different way.

The book of Acts tells us that in Stephen’s final moments, he looks into the sky and sees “the son of man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). In other words, he sees Christ the king. Stephen is a man for whom Christ truly is king. When we serve others rather than seek to subjugate them, when we forgive rather than seek revenge, when we arm ourselves with cooking utensils and garden tools rather than weapons of war—then Christ is king indeed. Then we shall see the son of man standing at the right hand of God. Not only that, but then we shall be standing with him in the kingdom of God. It is, we believe, a better place to be.

Prayer

Loving God,
Whose witness in Christ
Reveals a new creation,
A new way of living
…
Draw us out of the fear and bitterness
That our world preaches,
And into the peaceful, open-handed posture
Of our Lord, and Stephen, and countless other witnesses.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.

 

---

[1] Michael L. Budde, The Borders of Baptism: Identities, Allegiances, and the Church (Theopolitical Visions; Eugene: Cascade, 2011), 104.

"Helper" (Ps 3 Haiku; cf. Matt 5:39)

cheek-turner protects

me from nothing, sustains me

in all. my helper.

"Control" (Ps 2 Haiku)

trying to control

is to be controlled, and worse.

just let go and smile.

"Planted" (Ps 1 Haiku)

planted here, drawing

nutrients from: where I live

and move and am: God.

"Was It Not Necessary?" (Luke 24:13-35)

A Broken Messiah

The two disciples who are walking the road to Emmaus are broken down. When the stranger approaches them, Luke tells us that “they [are standing] still, looking sad” (Luke 24:17). What has broken them? They share with the stranger that their expectations have met a bitter end. Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had hoped was the messiah, the one who would “redeem Israel,” the one who would make Israel great again, had been crucified (24:19-21). In their mind, the crucifixion settled the matter. No messiah of God would suffer such a fate. The messiah would be a victor, not a victim.

But the stranger has the strangest of responses. “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, was it not necessary that the messiah be the victim rather than the victor?

This one question turns the entire scriptures upside down for the two disciples. In their mind, Yahweh is a conquering God, the one who had defeated the Egyptians and the Canaanites and all who opposed the faithful of Israel. A broken messiah makes no sense. Yet, for this stranger, a broken messiah makes sense of everything. It is the interpretive key. Luke says that this stranger goes on to show how a broken messiah breaks open “all the scriptures” (24:27).

A Different Kind of God

It might be worth sitting with that for a moment. How often do we hear that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament? That the Old Testament God is angry and vengeful and violent? And no doubt, there are depictions of such a God in the Old Testament. But this is not the God whom the stranger sees in the Old Testament. I can’t know for certain, but I think that this stranger (who is Jesus, of course!) must appreciate that however inspired scripture is, it is also always a human enterprise. Which means that sometimes it shows us the culture of its human authors as much as it shows us the character of the divine God. Sometimes it shows us violence and patriarchy and slavery. And sometimes, through these dark clouds, a divine light shines through. Sometimes through this noise, a divine heartbeat can be heard. So, as this stranger on the road shows us, interpretation is crucial. It is like holding a stethoscope to the scripture and listening for God’s heartbeat. And it’s clear where this stranger hears God’s heartbeat in the Old Testament. Not in the depictions of violence and vengeance, but in the repeated declaration that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex 34:6; cf. Num 14:18; Neh 9:17: Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2). This declaration is almost the creed or confession of the Old Testament, so often is it repeated.

According to the stranger, the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same: a crucified God. That may be hard to imagine. It certainly was for the disciples on the road. But it is a curious thought-experiment with surprising results. When I read the Old Testament looking for a crucified God, I begin to see him everywhere. In the suffering of the ancestral family, who must live for generations as sojourners in a foreign land. In the suffering of the Hebrews under Pharaoh in Egypt. In the suffering of the poor Israelites in the land, who are enslaved by their own kings (like King Solomon) and exploited by the rich (as the prophets richly detail). I see the crucified God in the suffering of the psalmist, whose prayers regularly recount trouble. And in the suffering of the exiled Israelites, who lose their temple and their family and their friends and must live in a foreign land. The Old Testament is a history of Israel’s deliverance, but it also a history of their suffering. Yes, God is a deliverer, but God is also a sufferer. Those two things are not contradictions, but counterparts of a single reality. A God who loves is a God who suffers, because love does not get its own way through force. It forgives, it is patient, it declares peace, it welcomes, it heals. Love does all the things Jesus did, and with the same results. Suffering.

“Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” the stranger asks. From his point of view, God has been suffering from the start, because God has been loving humanity from the start. It is only natural this would happen to God’s messiah.

“Broken Down” or “Broken Open”?

The stranger’s interpretation of God is indeed strange in a world that idolizes power and control. But what also strikes me as strange is that the stranger (who is Jesus, of course) bears no grievance toward the people who put him on the cross, toward the temple leaders or the Roman authorities. He breathes no resentments or threats against them. It is natural to feel owed something when you are wronged. (Just think about the last time your insurance didn’t pay for something under its coverage.) Yet this man was wronged in an extraordinary way, and his response is basically, “This is the way it had to happen.” “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things…?”

On the one hand, we could hear the man saying this with a sigh of resignation, as though love always loses. To love is to suffer, and that is the end of it.

On the other hand, the stranger does not seem to see suffering as the miserable end point of love. His full question is, “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, to bear the suffering of love is somehow connected with entering into a glorious new reality. Which is consistent with the message of the messiah Jesus himself, who said to bear the cross daily is somehow to save your life (cf. Luke 9:23-24).

Today’s passage concludes with the stranger “breaking” bread, and then the disciples’ eyes being “opened” as they reconsider the stranger who “opened” the scriptures for them on the road. These two words—“break” and “open”—jump off the page at me. Typically, I think of brokenness as an undesirable thing. I would rather avoid it, ignore it, pretend it’s not there. For me, “broken” means “broken down.” It is the end of things. But in this passage, “broken” means something else. The broken bread “opens” the disciples’ eyes to see the risen Christ (24:31). The idea of a broken messiah and a suffering God “opens” the scriptures to the disciples (24:32).  Here, “broken” means not “broken down” but “broken open.” “Broken” is not the end, but the beginning. It indicates not a falling apart but the inbreaking of something new. Indeed, our scripture ends with the two travelers—who were previously broken down—now broken open with enthusiasm and hope. Their hearts are “burning,” they say (Luke 24:32). They rush back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples about it.

As Leonard Cohen put it, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” What Jesus shows the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is not only that the God of love suffers, but also that this suffering is not a dead end or a cul-de-sac but precisely the crack through which the light—the love of God—gets in. If the messiah came with force, throwing his weight around, he might command fear and respect and a groveling sort of gratitude. But his strong-arming would preclude love, which “does not insist on its own way,” which “bears…and endures all things” (1 Cor 13:5, 7). His coercion would rob us of our humanity, our freedom to choose and to create. Instead, the messiah suffers, and his suffering reveals just how much he loves us, how deep and how wide is his love—as far as the heavens are above the earth (a metaphor that comes from the Old Testament, for anyone who’s interested; cf. Ps 103:11). His suffering reveals that there is no end to his love, that it is indeed stronger than death and endures forever.

To some, the idea of a crucified messiah or a weak God seems like utter foolishness. But for me, it is honest-to-goodness good news. It means not only that God’s love knows no bounds, that there’s no suffering God won’t bear just to be with us, but also that God’s love is indeed stronger than any force and can redeem any wrong or wound. And that because of his love, what seems “broken down” is in fact “broken open” with possibilities for new life.

Prayer

Holy God,
The scars you bear
Show us the depth of your love for us
…
May the good news
Of your broken messiah
Change the way we see our world
And the way we live in it.
May it kindle within our hearts—
As it did for those travelers on the road to Emmaus—
A burning hope.
In Christ, whose cross is how the light gets in: Amen.