The Yes Inside a No (Hosea 1:2-10)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 24, 2016, Proper 12)

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A Confession:

Prophetic Pain and Preacherly Painkillers

Many of us are familiar with the process of surgery. In the grand scheme of things, surgery is a healing process. But it begins with an incision. A wound. Which means that after surgery, there is pain. In most cases, of course, the doctor will prescribe painkiller to soften our suffering.

The prophets in the Bible, like Amos and Hosea, are like surgeons. Ultimately, they hope to heal the people of Israel. But to do so, they must put Israel under the knife. They must deliver a difficult message. The prophet’s words are like a scalpel, cutting open the people of Israel, digging out a disease. The prophet’s words cause a wound. They hurt.

It’s only natural that when we read the prophets, we feel the pain. And so the typical role of the preacher becomes one of supplying a painkiller. Sermons become shots of sedative.

I say all of this as a confession. The last two weeks, we read horrifying prophecies from Amos, who proclaimed doom to the people of Israel. Today, we read the prophecy of one of Amos’ contemporaries, Hosea, who also proclaims a painful experience. And my sermons, I’m afraid, are a bit like oxycodone or percocet. They inevitably try to alleviate the wound of the prophetic words.

And so this confession is also an invitation. Don’t rest easy in any tidy message I can conjure up. I invite you to reread these texts again on your own. Confront the pain of the prophet’s incisive words. They should not be easy. If a prophet’s words are easily understood and accepted, then they’re not cutting us as they should.

Prophetic Complements: Amos and Hosea

The last two weeks, we heard from the prophet Amos. Amos, remember, was a shepherd and farmer. We can imagine that he would have been a practical sort of man. He would have cared about getting things done. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, his prophecy projects a down-to-earth, knitty-gritty outlook on life. He characterizes the people’s sin as social injustice. “Hear this, you who trample the needy,” he shouts, “and bring to ruin the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4).

Hosea, on the other hand, strikes me as the perfect complement to Amos. Whereas Amos would be an outdoors sort of fellow, working with the animals, speaking common sense at the town gate, I would imagine that Hosea’s a bit bookish, that he has a poet’s heart. Whereas Amos cares about deeds, Hosea reflects on the inner heart where deeds are born. While Amos describes the sin of Israel as injustice, Hosea describes it as infidelity. For him, the people’s sin is a wayward heart.

Maybe the Story Is a Little Messier

Today’s scripture gives us a succinct and juicy summary of Hosea’s prophetic career. It all starts when God says to Hosea, “Go, marry a prostitute. Have some kids. Because Israel is playing the prostitute with me” (cf. Hos 1:2).

I must confess. I have my doubts about this account of Hosea’s prophetic career. Was it all that straightforward? Did Hosea just wake up one day and hear the voice of God as clearly as he heard the birds outside, saying, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom?” (1:2)? I certainly wouldn’t want to say what God can or cannot do. But I cannot help but think that maybe the story is a little messier than this.[1]

I have come to appreciate just how real the stories of the Bible can be, how the stories of Abraham and King David and Ruth, the disciples and Peter and Paul, are somehow the stories of our own lives. And so part of me, at least, thinks that what happened to Hosea on that fateful day is something a lot like what happens to us. One day, Hosea invited a friend over for dinner—unsuspectingly, fatefully. That friend brought another friend, Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. Hosea liked Gomer. Simple as that. They courted. Married. Had kids. Then things got complicated—as things tend to do. The details aren’t really that important. All that’s important is that Hosea one day learns of Gomer’s infidelity. And it tears him apart.

Everything suddenly becomes a mirror of his misery. Worst of all, his own children. When he looks into their eyes, he sees his wife, Gomer—which is to say, he sees his own rejection. He feels the bitterness of betrayal. He looks at one child and he asks himself, “Can I ever forgive her?” (cf. 1:6-7). He looks at another and asks, “Was I ever hers? Was she ever mine?” (cf. 1:9).

A Small Dose of Homiletic Hydrocodone

Okay. I think now’s the time for a small dose of homiletic hydrocodone, a brief comedic interlude away from the painful story of Hosea.

I have a good friend, Tim, who played soccer with me growing up. My dad was the coach for a number of years. And Tim gave my dad all sorts of grief. My dad had this habit of literally biting his tongue when he was unhappy…and Tim gave him reason to bite his tongue more than once. Not listening to instructions. Cracking jokes during serious speeches. He was our team clown, I suppose.

Anyway, I recently caught up with Tim, and he shared that he has started coaching a soccer team of his own. He complained, though, about the little goofballs on his team who kept interrupting practice. And then it hit him: “You know, I guess I was a little bit like that when I was a kid. Man, I must have drove your dad crazy!” Music to my dad’s ears.

The Echo of Experience:

Hosea’s and God’s Sorrow

We’ve all probably had realizations like this, where a new experience opens our heart to a more sympathetic understanding of the world. My friends who are new parents, for instance, suddenly reflect on the troubles they may have caused their parents. New teachers, I know, sometimes reflect on what kind of student they may have been. A new experience often enlarges the heart. It invites empathy for others who have shared that experience.

As painful as Hosea’s experience was, I think that somewhere within his heart it sparked a prophetic revelation. Somewhere amid the ashes of his experience, a profound prophetic sympathy was born for God.

In Hosea’s time, Israel was politically promiscuous. They would bat their eyes first in the direction of Assyria, then towards Egypt. In either case, Hosea said, their heart was misplaced. They were putting faith in the power or protection of other people, rather than in the God who had given them life.

Hosea empathizes with God. Somewhere in his prophetic heart, he realizes that his sorrow somehow echoes the sorrow of God.[2] Just as Hosea looks at his children and questions the possibility of forgiveness and reunion, so too he imagines God looking at Israel and, in a moment of anguish, saying, lo-ruhamah, “I will not have pity,” and lo-ammi, “You are not my people” (1:6-9). And just as Hosea must desire somewhere in the depths of his heart, forgiveness and reunion—even if these things never came about in his life—so too he senses a divine desire for these things. And in the end, in the last verse of today’s scripture, Hosea envisions God gathering Israel into God’s arms once more.

The Yes Inside a No:

The Gospel in a Nutshell

The difficulty in reading a prophecy like Hosea’s, a prophecy that is founded on such an intensely personal experience, is that if we ourselves haven’t shared that experience, then we risk missing out on the prophecy’s depth of feeling and its experiential truth.

But we need not have married a prostitute in ancient Israel to know something of what Hosea felt.

Some time back, I wrote these words about a very different sorrowful experience: “It is the most tender pain I know / to feel the yes inside a no.” Reading those words now, I wonder if Hosea didn’t feel something similar. What is sorrow, if not the yes inside a no, the hope for something that is missing? Is this not the sorrow of God that echoed in the sorrow of Hosea? Is this not the sorrow that we all feel? Haven’t we all felt the tender pain of the yes inside a no, where we have sensed a goodness that somehow endures within and beyond an inconsolable sadness?

Perhaps a close friend or family member passes away. Death says no to their life among us, but somewhere within that no there is a yes whispered in hope, a yes that affirms that even though they die, they will live (cf. John 11:25).

Perhaps we cannot see eye to eye with a friend, and a relationship is irreparably fractured or lost. Dispute says no to our friendship, but somewhere within that no there is a yes murmured that cannot help but bless the estranged friend, that cannot help but love him or her despite the irreconcilable differences.

I say all this not to reduce the heart of God to our own small hearts. There are certainly extensions of our sorrow that God does not share, like our petty quests for personal satisfaction or revenge. I say all this, rather, in the hope that it might enlarge our heart to the experience of God. If the prophecy of Hosea is any indication, then something of the sorrow that we feel in our personal tragedies is a holy echo of the heart of God. Something of what we feel points us toward the divine yes—the holy mysteries of forgiveness and love, peace and the justice of restoration.

This holy echo of the heart of God is what we see lived in the flesh of Jesus. Jesus felt the full brunt of the world’s “No,” and yet the gospel, the good news is that he persists in saying, “Yes.”

The “yes” inside a “no” is what Hosea felt in his relationship with Homer. It is what God felt in God’s relationship with Israel. It is the very life of Christ. It is the gospel in a nutshell: the good news that our sorrow echoes a divine sorrow, and that within that divine sorrow, echoes the forgiveness and love and peace that is redeeming all sorrow.

Prayer

Loving God,
Who takes on flesh,
Who shares our sorrows and joys—
Enlarge our hearts.
Help us to hear the holy echoes
Of your heart among ours,
Pointing us toward the way of Christ,
The way of the cross,
The yes that is redeeming every no.
Amen.

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[1] The inspiration for this imaginative interpretation comes from Abraham Heschel’s observation that Hosea’s experience would have meant little as a prophetic performance. From the outside, it would be little more than a public spectacle. Its prophetic meaning resides in its experiential truth. Hosea’s experience would have meant most to Hosea. Somewhere in his experience, he encountered a prophetic revelation, and from there were born his words to the people of Israel. Cf. Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial, 2001), 47-75.

[2] Cf. Heschel, The Prophets, 69: “The event stirred and shocked the life of Hosea regardless of its effect upon public opinion. It concerned him personally at the deepest level and had a meaning of the highest significance for his own life. As time went by, Hosea became aware of the fact that his personal fate was a mirror of the divine pathos, that his sorrow echoed the sorrow of God.”

Whose Side Is God on? (Amos 8:1-12)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 17, 2016, Proper 11)

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NFL Theology

If you follow football, or are at least a dedicated Super Bowl viewer, then you are likely familiar with what we might jokingly call NFL theology. According to a survey taken a year ago, around one in four Americans believes that God determines the outcome of the Super Bowl. An even greater percentage—one in two Americans—believes that God rewards faithful athletes with strength and success.[1] According to NFL theology, then, God does in fact take sides. A holy energy hijacks some bodies more than others, propelling them to greater heights and a greater likelihood of victory.

NFL theology creeps into the church from time to time. I’ve never personally heard a prayer in church that solicits supernatural assistance for one team or another. But I know these prayers happen. Jack once told me about a church where the elders would occasionally implore the divine to deliver victory to the hometown team. How that would inspire unity around the Table, I have no idea! I’d imagine it would do just the opposite, at least in a place like our own, where allegiances are split between the Wahoos and the Hokies and a number of others.

I suspect that NFL theology makes a number of us feel a bit queasy. Does God really sport athletic allegiance? To the question, “Whose side is God on?” we might respond, “Hold on! Does God even take sides?” And not without good reason. Just a few weeks back, we marinated our souls in the mind of Paul, who proclaimed that in Christ there is “neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female”; in Christ, we are all one (Gal 3:28). Elsewhere Paul makes the celebrated claim that “God shows no partiality” (Rom 2:11). And Paul himself is only drawing from the more ancient theology that God created all of humanity in God’s image, blessing all of them alike.

Our unease with NFL theology is nothing new. It finds an intriguing echo, in fact, in our country’s history. During the Civil War, countless ministers on both sides of the battle lines invoked a more serious sort of NFL theology; both claimed God’s allegiance to their cause. It was in fact the president, Abraham Lincoln, who voiced qualms with this sectarian theology: “Both [sides],” he said, “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other. … The prayers of…neither [have] been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”[2] For Lincoln, God could not be bought by extra prostrations or extra long prayers. God did not take sides.

A God Who Rushes to the Side of the Hurting

I am sympathetic to Lincoln’s understanding of God. Surely God is disentangled from our personal agendas. Surely God is impartial, above our petty disputes. Surely God blesses everyone and desires the goodness of life for everyone, not just a select few.

And yet…I must also admit that this picture of an impartial God seems incomplete. It lacks soul. It lacks the warmth and compassion of love. This picture of God remains impersonal, a bit like the sun or the moon or the elements of life that nourish us but that also seem at times cold and aloof and uncaring.

And this is where Amos steps in. Amos fleshes this picture of God out. Amos shows us a God with a heartbeat, full of compassion and care and desire. Amos shows us a God who takes sides. Not in a competitive or tribalistic way, not in a way that aligns God with a football team or a political party or a nation. God takes sides in the way that a mother or father rushes to the side of the child who is hurting most, in the way that a shepherd might take leave of the 99 to rush to the side of the one who is lost.

Which Side, Then?

The holy rumbling in Amos’ prophetic heart is for the poor. Twice Amos cries out on behalf of the poor, twice he howls out in support of the needy. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,” you who exploit the poor and needy through high prices and then buy them into slavery for their undeserved debts: “Shall not the land tremble on this account?” (cf. 8:4, 6, 8). Amos is not simply a spoilsport, a prophetic party pooper who delights in proclaiming doom. He is not prescribing a divine punishment for bad behavior. He is pointing out that God is rushing to the side of God’s children who are hurting the most, that at this moment in time God’s heart spills out for them. And he is explaining that the natural consequence of neglecting the poor is social disintegration. Ancient Israel will be undone by its own hand.

Such a prophecy echoes in our own nation’s history, in fact. In a moment of prophetic boldness, Abraham Lincoln once proclaimed, “If destruction be our lot, we [ourselves will] be its author and finisher.”[3] When we neglect one another, when we take up arms against one another, we will hasten our own demise. And all the while, God will be shedding tears over the victims—the poor and the oppressed and the crushed.

God on the Side of the Suffering

During Amos’ time, believe it or not, many Israelites subscribed to a sort of NFL theology. Obviously they didn’t know about the Skins or the Cowboys. But they did know about the Israelites and the Egyptians, and all the other peoples. And they believed that God chose sides just the same way some people believe God supports one team and not another. Isn’t that what the story of the Exodus is all about? God looks out upon the Israelites suffering in Egypt, and God is moved by their cries, and so God delivers them from slavery and then chooses them—and not the Egyptians, not anyone else—to be the people of God.

Now, this belief contains within it a scandalous truth. God undeniably took the side of the Israelites in Egypt. But whereas the Israelites interpreted this to mean, “God chose us, God chose the Israelites”—which is a sort of NFL theology—Amos proclaims otherwise. Amos effectively says, “God does take sides, yes. But back there in Egypt, God wasn’t taking the side of the Israelites only and forever. God was taking the side of the suffering, which back then happened to be us Israelites.” To prove his point in shocking fashion, Amos later prophesies that Israel is nothing special; it has no special claim to divine privilege. Because, in fact, God has delivered other nations just like Israel. It’s what God has always been doing: saving the suffering. This hidden gem in the Bible is one worth remembering. Amos 9:7-8. “Did I not bring up…the Philistines from Caphtor,” Amos says for God, “and the Arameans from Kir?” (9:7). Even the Philistines, Amos says. God has rushed to the side of even the Philistines.

The Gospel as It Always Has Been

The gospel has never changed. God is always rushing to the side of the marginalized and the victimized, the vulnerable and the helpless. In Egypt, God heard the cries of the Israelites in slavery and delivered them. At some point in history, God saw the suffering Philistines and rushed to their side. In Amos, God cries out on behalf of the lowly and left-out. Just a few weeks ago, we read Paul proclaim blessing on the marginalized of his day, the Gentiles. And of course, this gospel takes on flesh and bones in the person of Jesus Christ, who identifies himself with the hungry and the naked and the imprisoned and the stranger, who proclaims that poor, of all people, are blessed.

Consider what good news this gospel is! A child who is hurting doesn’t need a mother or father who says, abstractly, theoretically, “I love everyone.” A child who is hurting needs a mother or father who will rush to his side, or her side, and say, “I love you.” And that is the gospel: the gospel of Israel, the gospel of Amos, the gospel of Paul, and the gospel embodied by Jesus.

And that gospel is what gives a heart to a heartless world. It is the heartbeat of the body of Christ. It is the lifeblood of the church. It is the passion in which we live and move and have our being. We rush to the side of the lowly and the left-out, the people pushed to the margins of society, the folks who are of little account to a world that prizes the richest and the most powerful, because this is where we will encounter God. Through CARITAS and our drives for school and food supplies, we rush to the side of the poor; through our hula ministry, we rush to the side the elderly; through D.D.’s Bears, we rush to the side of the sick; through Church World Service’s refugee resettlement program, we rush to the side of the stranger.

A Politics of Love;

Or, the Many Faces of Christ in Our World

I don’t say these ministries in order to check off a box on our ministry task list or to give us a gold star sticker, but rather to remind us of the many faces of Christ in our world. And there are many more. Recently I read a report that there were more acts of violence and vandalism against Muslims in the United States in the last year than in any year since the September 11 attack. In this past month alone, during the Muslims’ holy time of Ramadan, there were numerous reports of abuse and threats against mosques and their worshippers.

The temptation today is to get caught up in this world’s politics of force, which seeks security at the expense of people who look different and who pose the possibility of a threat. But the gospel that we read today, which is a gospel we read all over the Bible, proclaims instead a politics of love, a politics that rushes to the side of the lowly and the left-out, that takes the side of the weak and the vulnerable.

The question, “Whose side is God on?” inevitably leads to the question, “Whose side are we on?” Are we seeking to secure our own life by siding with people whom we know and like, which is just to say, by siding with ourselves, or are we rushing to the sides of the strangers who are hurting? Because it is with them—according to Amos and Israel, Paul and Jesus—that we encounter the life-changing God.

Prayer

God of the poor and needy,
The Philistines and the Arameans;
Christ of the hungry and the sick,
The imprisoned and the stranger and the Muslim—
You are reconciling all people
By the wonder of Your love.
Enlist us in Your cause.
Touch us with Your grace,
And take us to the sides
Where You are rushing.
Amen.

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[1] Amy Schaeffer, “God Determines Who Wins the Superbowl,” http://www.inquisitr.com/1799215/god-determines-who-wins-super-bowl-27-percent-of-americans-think-so-study/, accessed July 14, 2016.

[2] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html, accessed July 14, 2016.

[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address.”

A Treasonous Faith (Amos 7:7-17)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 10, 2016, Proper 10)

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Unbearable Words at the Center of Power

The first thing you need to know about Amos is that he’s a country bumpkin of a prophet. He’s a shepherd and farmer from the south, but today we find him prophesying in the north. In ancient Israel, there was a north-south divide, comparable in fact to the north-south divide that we have in our own nation. And so the situation in which Amos finds himself would be a little bit like if a good old boy from Texas moseyed up to D. C. or New York, and once he got there, proclaimed that God was unhappy with the way they were living. What kind of response would he get? Honestly, probably not much of a response at all. Amidst the hustle and bustle of a city consumed in its own business, the words of a street preacher are more or less tolerated, ignored, or even viewed as a form of entertainment.

Reading through Amos, I get the sense that he has received a response similar to the one that our country boy from Texas would have received. Up until today (chapter 7), there is no mention of anyone around him responding.

But today Amos touches a nerve. Today his dark prophecies become “unbearable” (cf. 7:10). Today they turn treasonous, for his words today threaten the downfall of the establishment, both religious and political. First he proclaims: “The high places…shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste” (7:9). This would be like our cowboy from Texas declaring that all the churches in the north would bite the dust. Next, Amos speaks for God, saying, “I will rise against the house of [the king] Jeroboam with the sword” (7:9). This would be like our country boy promising that the White House and all its close associates, including Wall Street, would fall.

Speak like that, and people will take notice. Speak like that, and there might be whispers and rumors that you’re a terrorist. That seems to be the case for Amos, because immediately after he makes these dark prophecies, a priest sends a message to the king Jeroboam, accusing Amos of treason, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel” (7:10). We aren’t told how the king responds, but we can imagine it’s not too favorably. The priest tells Amos to “flee,” to leave quickly, which suggests perhaps that the priest is having a bit of mercy, that he’s telling Amos to save his own skin while he still has time.

And the priest tacks on a final warning, and this perhaps speaks loudest of all in our scripture today. He says, “Never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary” (7:13). The place name Bethel means “house of God” in the Hebrew. And so there is a scandalous irony in the priest’s words. Really, he is saying, “Don’t you ever dare speak these words of God again in the house of God. It is the king’s sanctuary.” Regardless of what the priest meant, his words reflect the reality that God is no longer the leader of this people. God is now the servant of the king. The word of God is only acceptable if it performs the purposes of the powers-that-be.

Elvis Versus the Television

But that was a very different day and a very different place. Do Amos’ words still speak to us where we are now? Are there any modern day prophets who speak for the country bumpkin of Judah, who transpose his prophecy to our day and age?

I have one playful suggestion—and all I ask is that you humor me long enough to get the point across: the king himself, Elvis Presley.

If you go to Graceland and peruse the relics of the hip-swiveling king of rock and roll, one of the items you’ll see is a television that’s been shot right down the middle. There is a legend, accordingly, that Elvis shot his television. And as with any legend, there are several unverified versions of the story that try to explain just what motivated the event. Perhaps this television is just a testament to Elvis’ unorthodox method of appliance repair. (I’m sure a number of us can identify with this method in theory, if not in practice.) One Graceland spokesman implied this idea with his statement of regret that this television is “the only surviving…appliance that Elvis shot out.”[1]

But the version that fascinates me speculates on an entirely different motivation. According to this thread of the legend, the king was actually reading his Bible in front of the TV. Upon reading 1 Corinthians 13, that beautiful chapter on love—“love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”—Elvis had a “light-bulb” moment, an “ah-hah” flash of clarity. And without a second’s hesitation, he grabbed a gun and shot at the seductive images invading his home.[2]

Despite my deep misgivings over the place of guns in our society, this legendary event captivates me. It’s a mystifying act, rich in symbolic possibility. What exactly was Elvis shooting at? I would suggest that in a very profound sense, he was shooting at the heart of a nation. I would suggest that, like Amos, he was conspiring against the nation, against the very center of its power. Because these days—and I imagine that even in Elvis’ time, it wasn’t too different—the television along with its social media cousins is the ultimate authority. It is the center of power and money and fame. Seekers and holders of public office must buy their way onto its airwaves in order to gain our recognition and approval. It is the shopping window of our nation. It is the stage of make-or-break for celebrities.

The Television and Its Polarizing Power

One of the early presidents of CBS News, Fred Friendly, had high aspirations for TV journalism. He believed that the television could be an influential instrument for positive social change. In his words, the job of the journalist should be “to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can only escape it by thinking.” He envisioned the day when television would capture those rare and enlightening moments when people changed their minds or conceded a point in conversation.[3]

I imagine that Fred Friendly would be appalled with social media these days. In the wake of this past week’s tragedies—Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas—television and all of social media have greedily consumed the stories and then pitched them back to us in a collage of foregone conclusions, a hodgepodge of polarizing sound bites and divisive talking points. In doing so, they polarize us. The beacons of power and money and fame in our world—those glowing screens that sit in our living rooms and bedrooms and flash across our telephones—they seduce us with the false gospel of certainty and taking sides and winning arguments and feeling safe and secure behind slogans and battle cries. They reduce life to a combat zone of mutually exclusive and competing interests. They weave us a story of war and arm us to the teeth with uncompromising sound bites and catchphrases and watchwords.

The Hidden Gospel of Amos:

Living the Answer

The gospel that I hear hidden in Amos’ prophecy, a gospel that speaks to us today, is two-sided. On the one side, it is good news that sounds nothing like good news. It sounds like difficult news. Faith must waltz into the very center of power—the very heart of how things are done—and proclaim treasonous words. Like Elvis ridding himself of the television glowing in his living room, or like Amos proclaiming the social injustices of Israel and the catastrophic consequences that would naturally result, faith must renounce the ruling way of the day, and set foot on a completely different way.

And it’s here, on this different way, that the good news starts to sound like good news. The gospel underneath all of Amos’ proclamations of doom, is a gospel that hopes for change. It is the good news that the answer is not something we can know or possess or claim for our own—it’s not a slogan or a battle cry or a position. The answer is something that we live. It’s a face-to-face, flesh-and-blood way of life. It’s a love that really does believe and bear all things—even the feelings and desires of others with whom we might feel aggrieved.

I recently read a short story that embodies this gospel. An African-American mother of two young children had a holy conviction that the tragedies repeatedly trumpeted on the news would never cease or change unless people went beyond the polarizing sound bites and divisive battle cries, unless they actually lived the answer themselves. And so one day at the supermarket, when she saw a police car idling in the parking lot, she gathered up her courage and moseyed on up to the officer. She greeted him. Told him her two kids were terrified of police and she didn’t know how to change that. They carried on in a good-natured conversation for half an hour, and at the end, the officer gave two badges to her kids. As she was pulling out of the parking lot, one of her kids reflected, “He was actually a nice guy.”

We Are Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

I know—that’s only one heartwarming story. How can it stand up to the enormous power of polarization and conflict streaming through the screens all around us?

But the real question, I think, is how will this present age ever change if we do not allow the kingdom of God to take hold of our own lives?

A martyr dear to my heart, Salvadoran Oscar Romero, says it better than I ever could:

“The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. … Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom”—this act of treason in which faith conscripts us—“always lies beyond us. … [What we do] may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. … We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Prayer

God of a kingdom
That will one day
Eclipse our wildest dreams
And redeem and reconcile us all—
Embolden us to conspire against
The ruling powers
That polarize the world.
Inspire us to forge
Flesh-and-blood relationships
Of kingdom-love and -peace.
Amen.

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[1] Associated Press, “Nighttime Elvis on Display,” http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/22/entertainment/et-quick22.1, accessed July 6, 2016.

[2] David Dark, The Gospel according to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 10.

[3] Dark, The Gospel according to America, 27-28.

An Unruly Rule (Gal 6:7-16)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 3, 2016, Proper 9)

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“Paul Takes on the Law”

Some stories in the Bible lend themselves to the big screen. The story of Joseph and his brothers, as we have seen in the wonderfully animated The Prince of Egypt. Moses and the great exodus, as we have sees in the now-timeless classic, The Ten Commandments. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus, as we have seen in countless renditions.

Galatians, on the other hand, does very little to suggest that it could ever make the big screen. But if a producer were ever to get the idea—and that’s a huge “if”—then the first thing she would need to do is to settle on a much more riveting movie title than Galatians. If it were up to me, I’d suggest something simple and concise, something that communicates the letter’s drama in a single sentence. Something like Paul Takes on the Law.

Because for nearly the entire letter, Paul takes the law to task. The law has us under an inescapable “curse,” he says (3:10-13). He charges the law with keeping us “imprisoned” (3:23). The law, he warns us, ultimately means death (cf. 2:19).

For Paul, what gives us life is not a bunch of “do’s” and “don’t’s.” What gives us life is God in Christ. If you ask a theologian what the letter to the Galatians is really about, he would probably answer you in stately theological language. “Galatians,” he would say, “is all about the doctrine of justification by faith alone.” Which is really just a fancy way of saying, Galatians is about life: not the life we can make for ourselves, not the life that results from following the rules like a robot follows its programmed maneuvers—but the life that is inspired by Jesus. For Paul, what gives us life is God in Christ, who says, “I believe in you, I have faith in you—in fact, I’m declaring you righteous right now” (cf. 2:16, 20).[1]

Consider for a moment a teacher or a parent who was or has been a particular inspiration for you. What was most inspiring about them? Was it the rules they imposed on you, or a program of reward and punishment? Or was it simply the fact that beyond all of that, they believed in you; they hoped the best for you; they trusted in their heart of hearts that you really would do great things?

Take that belief, that trust, and amplify it to a divine level, and you will have what Paul is talking about in Galatians. The faith of Christ is nothing other than this divine declaration that we are good and righteous and that God wants the world for us. That is what gives us life. Not the law.

What Rule, Paul?

And that is also why today’s scripture initially puzzled me. As Paul is concluding his case against the law and his proclamation of life through the faith of Christ, he writes these words: “As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy” (6:16). “This rule”? What rule, Paul? Forgive me if I’ve misheard, but aren’t rules the very thing you’ve been railing against this entire letter? I thought you were against the law, not for it. I thought you said that living by rules alone sucks the life out of life.

If Paul could respond to my question, I imagine he would impatiently shake his head and point me back a verse, where he writes, “A new creation is everything.” I imagine he would excitedly exclaim to me, “This is a different kind of a rule. It is an unruly rule, a lawless law.”

Beyond a Paint-by-Numbers World

I’ve heard it said by someone here in our congregation that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. And I think that’s a perfect summary of how Paul views the law and order of this world. The law is like a paint-by-numbers picture. If you do it perfectly, you’ll have a pretty picture. But if that’s all you ever do, then that generic, paint-by-numbers picture is all you’ll ever get.

And Paul has his heart set on something much greater than a paint-by-numbers picture of the world. Paul knows full well the story of creation—how everything was good. But when he looks out on the best that the law and order of his day can do, he sees a creation that is not always good: sick bodies, broken relationships, oppressive social systems. Rules will not fix this. Merely coloring inside the lines will not fix this. Only new life can renew creation. And Paul is so excited because he’s felt this new life, he’s been inspired by no doing of his own, and all through Christ. For Paul, the way of Christ is a way beyond the law. It is the way of new creation.

And indeed, the way of Christ is no simple paint-by-numbers picture. Painting-by-numbers will only get the world what it’s always got, and Jesus wants more, so much more. The rule of new creation that he embodies is a rule that sometimes goes outside the lines. It is a rule that stands up to the rules of the world in hope of renewing the world. Jesus continually challenges the social, religious, and political authorities of his day. He does not obey the social order that puts men above women, masters above slaves, or Jews above Samaritans and Gentiles. He confronts the religious order, calling it to task for knowing the law so well and yet so rarely living it out. He even upsets the order of the ruling empire. He baffles the Romans with the proclamation of a kingdom where Caesar is not Lord, a kingdom that operates in an entirely different way, where somehow the other is more important than the self. Whereas the Roman empire would say, “If you want peace, get ready for war,” Jesus would say things like, “Turn the other cheek,” and, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:39, 44).

New Creation by Way of the Cross

If Paul had to summarize the unruly rule of new creation that Christ lives for us, he would choose one word, as he does in today’s scripture: “May I never boast of anything except the cross” (6:14). The cross. The word does not sound so strange to us today, for whom the cross is as casual as a sports player’s gesture or an item of jewelry. But in the time of Jesus and Paul, the cross was an unspeakable thing. Literally. Cicero once wrote: Let “the very word ‘cross’….be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears.”[2] For Paul to keep saying the word—much less for him to claim that the cross is the very thing that will heal our broken world—was absolutely ludicrous in his time. Baptist minister Clarence Jordan, who lived much of his life seeking racial reconciliation in the South, tried to recapture the craziness of a gospel of the cross. In his mind, here’s what Paul would have said had he grown up in the American South: “God forbid that I should ever take pride in anything, except the lynching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[3]

And the crazy thing is, the lynching tree of our Lord does not mean death but life. It means “a new creation.” The lynching tree is the unruly rule of God’s love, which colors outside the lines, which cares not for our world’s conventions and classifications but for justice and mercy, forgiveness and hope, for everything that blesses and renews a broken world. The lynching tree of our Lord shows just how far this unruly rule of God’s love will go. No law can stand in its way.

The unruly rule of our Lord’s love, which we see in its fullest form on the lynching tree, restores every broken thing in creation. It does not color by number, which is to say, it is not deterred by the boundaries of law and order, threat and punishment, preconception and prejudice. Instead, it is doing something very different than what we’ve been doing, and getting us far more than we’ve got. It embraces every enemy, it lifts up the least and the littlest, it welcomes every stranger, it forgives every offense, it sanctifies every sorrow and suffering, it reconciles every division.

By the unruly rule of love, everything becomes a new creation. And in the ecstatic words of Paul, “A new creation is everything!”

Prayer 

Christ of the cross,
Lord of the lynching tree—
Lead us beyond the law,
Beyond expectations and judgments,
Beyond prejudice and preconception
That keep getting us what we’ve got.
May we live into your love,
Where all things are being made new.
Amen.

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[1] This imagined declaration is based on the more literal translation of pistis christou as “faith of Christ.” This little phrase, in other words, centers faith not on us, not on something we do—which would ultimately subsume faith under the law—but rather on what Christ does for us. Christ has faith in us, even as we are, and so inspires in us a life of which it can be said, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

[2] Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postump 16.

[3] Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel: Paul’s Epistles (repr.; Macon, GA: Smith & Helwys, 2004), 101.

Gentile Lives Matter (Gal 3:23-29)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 26, 2016, Proper 8)

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The Task of Reforming Paul’s Image

Jesus is an almost universally applauded figure. Even among non-Christians, he is well liked and respected.

Paul, on the other hand, draws a tepid applause from among his readers. Not everyone likes Paul. These days especially, he gets a bad rap. Some see Paul as a fiery preacher of predestination and a disciplinarian more concerned with “don’ts” than “do’s.” Others see him as a bureaucrat concerned with church hierarchy or—and this is a very common image of Paul—a sexist patriarch.

These pictures of Paul are understandable. But they’re also unfortunate. Because they’re uninformed impressions, like the impression you might get of a stranger if you happened to have a single snapshot of him but knew none of his story. Part of what I hope to do today is to help reform Paul’s image, just a bit. Because I think that once we appreciate Paul’s story and the world he lives in, we will find that he is actually nothing like those unfortunate pictures. He is instead a most incredible character, a man after Jesus’ heart, which is to say, a man with a heart for others.

Unlikely Allies: Today’s Philosophers

Curiously enough, some of Paul’s staunchest defenders today are not theologians but philosophers. In the last several decades, these philosophers have snatched Paul out from under the nose of the church and turned him into their poster boy for “universalism”—meaning that truth is universal, it’s for everyone. For these philosophers, Paul completely rewrites the story of his day, liberating truth and beauty and goodness from the grasp of a privileged few.[1]

At the time of Paul, the story according to the world is that some people are better than others, that some folks stand closer to the truth. There is a prayer among Paul’s own people that says, “Blessed are you, God, who has not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” Among the Greeks and the Romans, there is a similar prayer attributed to Socrates that thanks the God of Fortune for being born a human and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian.[2]

Everyone around Paul believes in this natural order of better and worse people, superior and inferior. But Paul stands up, shakes his head, and says, “You’ve got it all wrong.” In just a few words, he crosses out the entire story of the world and writes a new one. In just a couple of lines, he topples the distinctions that both the Jewish people and the Roman people were making: “There is no longer Jew or Gentile….slave or free…male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). For Paul, the truth and beauty and goodness of life are not the privilege of a few; they are not the natural property of certain groups. They are universally on offer. The truth and beauty and goodness of life are on tap at your local diner, wherever you are.

Paul and the Biggest of Bear Hugs

This is a far cry from the less-than-flattering pictures of Paul we sometimes see. This is not a picture of Paul the taskmaster, Paul the bureaucrat, or Paul the patriarch. This is a picture of Paul with his arms open wide for the biggest of bear hugs. This is a snapshot of Paul gathering everyone in for a universal embrace. This is an image of Paul that, if we’re not wearing our glasses or contact lenses, almost looks like a picture of Jesus, the Jesus who would hang out around Samaritans and centurions, children and women, tax collectors and other less-than-reputable types.

And so it’s tempting to stop reading right here, to preserve the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from Paul’s declaration of God’s universal welcome, from Paul’s “all means all.” Because isn’t that what church is all about? Welcoming everyone, red and yellow, black and white, Jew and Greek, male and female?

When All Doesn’t Mean All

Welcoming everyone is what our own tradition, the Disciples of Christ, has been about ever since it emerged in the 1800s. The early leaders of the Disciples, Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, both opposed slavery. Even before the Civil War, our tradition could boast mixed race congregations. “No longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free…”

And yet, that is the history of our church told from the perspective of the church leaders, who happened to be white. Listen now to the voice of another early Disciple, Samuel Robert Cassius, who happened to be black: “Let [‘the colored man’] presume to know something beyond an occasional prayer or a short talk at some mid-week social…meeting, and he soon finds out that he is a Negro, and a relic of an inferior race, and that his presence can only be tolerated as long as he is willing to keep still.”[3] Cassius complains that although black folks could step inside the church door, they could never receive the full blessing of their fellow members. In fact, it was quite common that they were forced to sit either in the balcony or in the back pews.

We have come a long way since then. I look out on a church full of people sitting wherever they want—which, most of the time, is the same exact seat! Our bulletin proclaims, “Gayton Road Christian Church—Where everyone is welcome!” And I have trouble imagining the person whose hand Carl would not shake.

And yet…I know the story is much more complicated than this. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s in the world, even today, others who do not feel the full embrace of God’s universal love when they step inside the church doors. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s today who feel that they must segregate their own personhood, their own self, that they must keep part of themselves silent or absent, in order that they might receive the full embrace of a church. I was recently told the story of a young woman who had attended church all her life, loved it like she loved her family, and yet as she became aware of her homosexual identity, she also became aware that this integral part of who she was would never be accepted inside her church’s doors. Like Samuel Cassius’ skin color, it might be tolerated if she kept quiet. But it would never be embraced.

Universalism with a Particularist Twist

The philosophers, I believe, are onto something when they point out Paul’s universalism. But we as readers of the Bible must take it one step further. Because Paul isn’t making the simple claim that we are all the same. He is making the claim that we in our many colorful differences are all loved the same by God in Christ. And he is taking this message specifically to the people who have experienced rejection, who have never received the full embrace of fellowship.

In my mind, the most important point of today’s scripture isn’t what’s in the words themselves but what’s around them. The most important point to remember is that Paul isn’t writing these words of universal welcome to the universe. He’s writing these words to a group of Gentiles, telling them that God loves and blesses them as they are, begging them not to forfeit their freedom in Christ, not to cut off a part of themselves in order to please the people around them.

Paul, remember, identifies himself not as the apostle to everyone, but as the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Gal 1:16; 2:8; Rom 1:5; 11:13; 1 Tim 2:7). He is a universalist, yes, but he is also a particularist. He preaches particularly to the people who need the message most, the people who have been told that their lives don’t matter. God loves everyone, Paul knows that, but Paul also sees the reality that Gentiles are still treated like second-class believers. When they go to the Temple, they are restricted to the outer chambers. When they want to join with other Christ-followers, they are told that they have to change themselves; that they have to make their body like a Jewish body, circumcised and nourished by a Jewish diet.

Paul’s brand of universalism is neither passive nor apolitical. It’s not a kum-ba-ya universalism that says “everybody’s good” in order to deflect difficult questions and avoid controversy. If anything, it’s the opposite. Paul’s universalism is passionate and political. It points fingers and names names. It believes that all lives matter, yes, but it proclaims a particular gospel to the people who feel like their lives don’t matter. It says a blessing especially for them. Not the standard blessing, “Thank God I’m not a Gentile,” but the opposite: “Gentile lives matter.” It is the cause of Christianity’s first great controversy. It is the reason that Peter and James and all the leaders of the movement convene in Jerusalem for the first “General Assembly,” if you will, to figure out what they are going to do about the Gentiles.

The Heart of Paul

And this is where I love Paul the most. Despite his patriarchal blind spots, despite his occasionally heavy-handed manner, he has a heart full of love for the least and the last and the left-out, just like Jesus. He has a heart for the people whose entire history is one of toleration at best, rejection at worst. And so he dedicates his entire life to naming them and blessing them. Just a few verses earlier, he quotes scripture from Genesis that says, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed…” (3:8; cf. Gen 12:3). And then in today’s scripture he calls them “children of God” (3:26).

Paul had a heart for the Gentiles. I’m not here to proclaim whom you have a heart for. I’m only here to point out that there are people who have been marginalized their entire lives, who have grown up with the message that their lives are not as important as others; people who do not feel or know the blessing of God’s love and welcome in their lives, who would quake with fear and worry to walk through the doors of a church—perhaps people who are sitting here today. I’m only here to point out that there are still folks who need an apostle like Paul, a messenger who will name them and bless them and tell them that God loves them.

Gayton Road is a wonderfully open and friendly and diverse church. Just look around at the different ages and energy levels and colors and life backgrounds. May the heart of faith that beats among us, continue to beat and inspire us to proclaim God’s universal love to the particular people who need it most.

Prayer

God whose embrace
We know most fully in Christ,
Who embraces us all:
Make us apostles of your love,
Messengers of your mercy,
To the people who need it most.
Amen.

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[1] For more on this move among contemporary philosophers, see St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

[2] Yehudah Mirsky, “Three Blessings,” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/three-blessings/#, accessed June 24, 2016.

[3] Douglas A. Foster, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 204), 619.

The Gospel of What Is Unaccountable (Gal 2:15-21)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 12, 2016, Proper 6)

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Two Sides of the Same Coin

Recently I finished reading Cannery Row, a novel by John Steinbeck, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. With many books, I have trouble getting past the first fifty pages. Not with Steinbeck. He paints the setting of his stories with broad, colorful strokes, filling the canvas with contradictions, with a rich diversity of compelling characters. Over here, he introduces us to the rich and well-to-do. And opposite to them, he makes our acquaintance with the bums and the beggars. Next he leads us to the darker corners of town, where we find the local “sporting house” and other less-than-reputable places. And then afterward, he shines a light on the households of virtue and stability. Rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy, good and bad—Steinbeck fills his story with characters from both sides of life.

Many readers have remarked that Steinbeck had a better sense than most what it means to be American. And I have to agree. Drive through just about any town and you’re bound to see contradictions sitting side-by-side: a tobacco shop right next to a yoga studio, a fitness center right across from a fast food chain where you can super-size any item. Find me an adult bookstore, and within a block or two I’ll find you a church.

It’s tempting to see these many opposites as competitors. But as Steinbeck skillfully illustrates over the course of his novels, these contradictory people and places are often two sides of the same coin. The one side is necessary for the other; the one keeps the other in business. What appeal would fitness centers and yoga studios have if there were no establishments promoting the sedentary life? What else is a church for, but to clean up the folks who have slipped into less reputable habits?

The “Law”: Sin vs. Virtue 

In his own way, Steinbeck is addressing what Paul addresses in today’s scripture. When Steinbeck shows us virtuous characters and sinful characters, honorable places and places of ill repute, he is showing us a pattern of life that Paul, I think, is protesting.

Of course, Paul writes with very different words than Steinbeck. In Paul’s language, the pattern of life that he is protesting is “the law.” In today’s scripture, Paul addresses a group of Christ-followers who believe that in order to follow Christ, you must also follow “the law.” In other words, these Christ-followers believe that following Christ means doing virtuous things. For them, the world is an arena where good fights evil, and the law oversees this ethical competition.

But Paul sees things differently. Yes, he believes that the law identifies what is good and holy and from God;[1] and yes, he believes that the law distinguishes virtue from sin. But he also believes that virtue and sin are two sides of the same coin, that they turn life into nothing more than a marketplace where virtue and sin are always keeping each other in business. And for Paul, the gospel of Christ is revolutionary because it does not trade in the coin of virtue and sin. It does not live by the law. It does not find life in the law.

The Law of Our Lives

It's worth taking a moment to untangle just what “the law” is. On the surface, it would appear that Paul is talking about the Jewish law. That’s probably what the Galatians would have heard. But Paul, I think, means much more than just a single set of laws. When he refers to the law, we might imagine him referring to it as the Uppercase “L” Law. He is talking about a capital “L” Law that extends across all parts of life: economy, politics, religion, relationships. He is talking about the Law that accounts for every little thing in life. If someone borrows money from you, then they must pay you back. If someone commits a crime, then they must endure a proportionate punishment.[2] If someone treats you rudely, then there must be a reason: perhaps they underslept; perhaps they were upset by something you said.

The Law determines the order of life. It balances the accounts; it accounts for every decision, every consequence. It is the “ought” or the “should” that directs the traffic of life, whether that “ought” or “should” comes from the government or your parents or your teacher or your pride. If you think about it like a computer program, the Law is the code that ensures life will run smoothly.

Or if you think about it like a game, such as baseball or Monopoly, the Law is the rules to the game. The rules, of course, are essential to the game. Without rules, you wouldn’t have teams or time limits or out-of-bounds or goals or fouls. Without rules, there wouldn’t be a game. Just as without code, there wouldn’t be a computer program. So, without the Law, there wouldn’t be life.

But here’s where Paul jumps in so passionately. The Law may be essential for life, but according to Paul, it is also insufficient for life. To live by the Law is to miss out on life. If Paul lived today, I imagine that he would say, to live by the Law is to be nothing more than a robot. In order to live, one must actually, as Paul says, “die to the law” (2:19).

If Paul lived in the twenty-first century and had a working knowledge of modern-day sports and board games, I imagine that he would put it like this. Can you remember the last time you really enjoyed a game? When you laughed? When you forgot about the world around you because you were having so much fun? At that moment of supreme joy, you were not thinking about the rules. You were not accounting for what was what in the game. Sure, you were playing by the rules—you were taking turns, heeding the boundaries—but you were not thinking about the rules. There’s only one person on a playing field always thinking about the rules, always accounting for every move of the game, and that’s the referee or the umpire. And while these officials may enjoy what they do, it’s a safe bet that they never experience the full joy of the game. They do not know the breathless wonder of sinking a last-second shot or flawlessly executing an overhead kick. They do not know the miracle of making a move that even you didn’t know you would make before you made it.

The Unaccountable Faith of Christ

The joy of a game, the wonder and the miracle and the breathless laughter—that, Paul says, does not come about because of the Law. It comes about, rather, by “the faith of Christ” (2:16; cf. 2:20). Our translation today still reads “faith in Christ,” which implies that faith begins with us, with our trusting Christ…but the original Greek literally reads “faith of Christ,” which means that it is actually Christ’s trust in us and his affirmation of us that gives us life.

We all know the difference between prescribed, law-determined kindness and unaccountable kindness, between someone treating us nicely because they “ought” to and someone who does it unaccountably, for no other reason than us ourselves. A good deed is a good deed, and yet unaccountable goodness breathes new life into us whereas prescribed goodness leaves us feeling like an object or an opportunity for someone else. I think this is what Paul is getting at when he says that real life comes through “the faith of the son of God who loved [us] and gave himself for [us].” When someone else loves us unaccountably and gives themselves unaccountably for us, we are inspired to live in an infinitely more colorful and joyful way than the Law could ever imagine. This unaccountable love of Christ is the heart of a heartless world, the flesh and blood that invites us out of our automatic, robotic, law-determined lives into a new and strange and different life.[3]

From Law to Life

Not long ago, I was checking out at the supermarket. Even now, at an age that must surely qualify as “adult,” I still feel a tinge of anxiety when I check out. Forced into a face-to-face encounter with plenty of dead time, I debate the length of eye contact to make with this complete stranger, whether or not to venture a conversational word—and if so, what could I possibly say beyond the weather? Anyway, on this occasion, I took a survey of my cashier’s face and saw a frosty distance. Deciding to keep quiet, I looked this way and that. Checked my phone. But then when I looked up to receive my receipt, I was inexplicably confronted with a pair of eyes looking into mine, a genuine smile, and a warm, “Take it easy.”

I know that such a moment probably seems inconsequential. But I count it as something divinely unaccountable. It confounded all reason and expectation. It was a glitch that the code of life could not account for, a moment of life that the Law could not explain. It was a tiny moment, a mustard-seed moment of grace. In it I encountered the faith of Christ, the love and self-giving of Christ.

It was but a “fleeting and fragile” moment.[4] And yet, the gospel that Paul proclaims is the good news that moments such as this one, moments of love that are unaccountable by any law, are what lead us into newness and strangeness and difference—which are all words for a much simpler gospel word: Life.

Prayer

God of grace,
Incognito Christ,
Still walking in the world,
Loving us and giving yourself for us—
Point us beyond our lifeless account of the world,
Beyond debt and payment, crime and punishment, cause and effect;
Live within us;
Inspire us to a love
That is unaccountable and real and alive.
Amen.

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[1] John D. Caputo, “Postcards from Paul: Subtraction versus Grafting,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 5.

[2] Shame and guilt are an important part of the Law, because they are signals that the Law has been transgressed and that something must be made right.

[3] The inspiration behind the figure of “what is unaccountable” comes from Caputo’s essay, “Postcards from Paul,” which reviews Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek’s appropriation of Paul as a revolutionary. Both Badiou and Žižek treat Paul as someone who points us beyond the negative prohibitions of the law, which keep us mired within a false self, to love, which is the life-giving affirmation of the other.

[4] Caputo, “Postcards from Paul,” 11.

A Faith Untaught: The "Apocalypse" of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:11-24)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 5, 2016, Proper 5)

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A Faith That Jumps off the Page

When I was little, I spent a great deal of time with our neighbors across the street. They were a friendly family. And also a little bit odd. I think the kind way to put it, would be to say that their heads were in the clouds much of the time. I would regularly come home from their house with pocketfuls of coins, which concerned my parents. But I could hardly help it; loose change was practically growing on their couches and floors. I remember dinner with them one night. We had pizza, and it was piping hot. Their son, who was my age——I’ll call him Christopher—simply could not wait for it to cool off a little. And so what other choice did he have? Without a second’s hesitation, he emptied his glass of milk on his slice. And then happily began eating.

Christopher grew up with many of the same stories that I did. His parents had read him the Narnia series as well as The Hobbit. He had seen the Star Wars trilogy. And so quite naturally, when we played together, our imaginations would run wild in tandem. Sometimes we would be hobbits or elves or talking creatures fighting the White Witch. Sometimes we would create our own stories. In either case, we would take on the lead roles in a living story of universal significance, in a story that would decide the very fate of the world.

When Jesus said that the kingdom of God belonged to children and people like them, I think that part of what he was saying was that faith jumps off the page. It is not confined to what lies between two hardbound covers. It is not merely something that is taught, or something that is memorized and recited, like a multiplication table or the Declaration of Independence. It is a living story—one that we are caught up in, one that we are written into, one that we are writing.

From a Faith of the Word to a Faith of the Event

Paul, the man who writes today’s scripture, had lived almost his entire life thinking that faith was a closed book. He had treated faith like a final word. For him, faith had been the kind of thing that could be taught and passed on from generation to generation. Faith was what he had memorized and recited as a student of famous rabbis. It was the security and certainty of a word that never changes.

But then one day, Paul says, he has a “revelation” of Jesus Christ. In the Greek, he has “an apokalupsis of Jesus Christ,” or as we would say today, “apocalypse.” The word itself means unveiling or uncovering. For many of us it conjures up a dramatic event, an event of earthquakes and fires and floods. And that’s what the “apocalypse” of Jesus Christ is for Paul. Not fire or flood—but a moment of great change, a moment when everything he had read jumped off the page. Suddenly the closed hardbound covers of his faith were wrenched open. Suddenly all the words he had been taught, all the words he had memorized and recited—they were caught up in a live event, an encounter with the living God, a new twist in the story.

And so there’s this delicious irony: the Paul who grew up thinking that faith was a closed book, is the same Paul who writes another page in that very book. His letters have become a crucial part of the Bible, a book dear to our faith.

Repeating Paul’s Mistake

Of course, Paul didn’t know that his words would become a part of our scripture. At the time, his only interest was defending himself from certain opponents. Remember, he is facing criticism for suggesting that some of the old laws no longer apply to following Christ, laws like circumcision and the dietary restrictions. His defense is revolutionary. Rather than searching for justification in the precedent of scripture or what Jesus had said, he simply shares his personal experience. His defense is to say that faith is not a word but an event, not an account of God but an encounter with God, not a teaching of Christ but an “apocalypse” of the living Christ.

In the end, Paul’s words won the day. Faith was freed from its hardcover binding; it jumped off the page once more. But ironically enough, today when we read Paul’s words—words that point toward an event of faith, a personal “apocalypse”—we are tempted to shut them away between two covers of their own, to turn them into a new closed canon of faith. To do so is to make the exact mistake that Paul’s words warn against, the mistake that he had made earlier in his life. It is to treat faith as a final word rather than as a living event, as what is memorizable and recitable rather than as the “apocalypse” that reveals something new and different. Like Paul before his encounter with Christ, we treat faith as a finished story rather than as a story that jumps off the page.

The Apocalypse of Christ: 

Not a Learned Word but a Lived Event

Consider your own faith. What is its substance? If you’re like me, if you’ve grown up in the church, then it is tempting to say that our faith is what we learned, what was taught to us in Sunday School and church camps and countless sermons (like this one!). But listen again to what Paul says about his newfound faith: “I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it”!

I think we’re all a little bit like Paul. We have grown up in a tradition of faith. We have often confined our faith to the safe and secure space between the hardcover binding of a closed book. We have often confused our faith with what is familiar, so that sometimes “faith” is actually code for my understanding and my desires, what I want God to do, how I think God should act.

But the good and unsettling news of today’s message is that faith is never a closed book; it is always jumping off the page. We encounter Christ not merely in words but in the flesh of our lives. Paul’s life is a perfect example of this. He grew up thinking faith was a final word, one that conveniently matched his own understanding—and who among us has not thought the same at one time or another? But then one day his world was turned upside down. He had an apocalypse, a revelation, of Jesus Christ. Faith was no longer a learned word but a lived event, an event that changed things, complicated things, kept things alive.

In this way, faith bears a close resemblance to the inspired play of children, for whom the story does not end at the end of a book. The good and scary news of today’s scripture is that whether we grow up in the Jewish tradition like Paul, or the Christian tradition, or any other tradition, the event—the apocalypse—of God in our lives will break open the closed book of faith and invite us to write ourselves into it.

“You Have Heard, No Doubt, of My Earlier Life in Christianity…”

Bearing that gospel in mind, I invite us to explore our own lives, to listen to them, in order to discover the event—the apocalypse of Christ—that inspires our faith. With the help of Paul’s words in today’s scripture, I share with you now my own faith, which is not a word that I was taught word-for-word but rather an event. I share with you the apocalypse of Christ in my life:

“For I want you to know, sisters and brothers, that the gospel that is proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Christianity. I was going to church every Sunday and Wednesday, memorizing scripture, reading books by inspired Christian thinkers, learning how to speak the Christian language. I advanced in Christianity and gained the recognition of my peers and the approval of my elders, for I was dedicated to their traditions.

“But when I encountered Christ, it was not through my own understanding or even through the understanding of the church, but rather through an apocalypse; through the grace of God that practically threw itself at me, that uncovered Christ in the world, often in unexpected people and unfamiliar places. Christ was uncovered for me in a Burmese refugee boy in whom I heard Jesus call out to me, ‘I’m lonely, don’t leave’; Christ was revealed to me through my parents and my brother—not through their ‘Christian’ words or deeds, but through their sacrificial gifts of love that inspired me to love; and Christ showed himself to me in an unlikely, ragtag group of housemates who lifted me out of loneliness and unwittingly demonstrated a Christ-like belief in the goodness of this world and the holiness of life.”

That is part of the apocalypse of Christ in my own life. And it is my faith that such apocalypses are breaking open the closed bindings and writing a fresh faith in all our lives, in all our stories.

Prayer

Christ of apocalypse,
Who breaks open closed books of faith,
Who flusters final words of faith,
Who encounters us in the flesh:
Be known among us today
Beyond the words we learn;
Jump off the page
And sweep us into God’s living story of love.
Amen.