"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.