Sunday Sermonettes: Romans 10:8b-13

Sunday Sermonettes: In which I attempt to not completely waste my seminary education and reflect on a text from this week’s liturgy.

“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: ⁹ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. ¹¹ As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”¹² For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, ¹³ for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

[Romans 10:8b-13 Text available at biblegateway.com]

I was talking recently with a friend who had become atheist after growing up in a small, conservative faith community. We discussed the emphasis in our childhood on “being saved,” how the mechanics of it were discussed, the concern with “assurance” and the peculiar mechanics of “choosing” to believe a thing, the anxieties over eternal punishment.

In that context these passages took on an axiomatic role:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

There it is. This has become the whole “gospel.” Everything else for many has been marginalized out. All one is left with then are the questions: “have you confessed? (I was six) and “do you believe?”

This drives so much of the western expression of modern Christian faith inward. It’s a breathtakingly cognitive affair. The most pristine example of this approach being the Puritans with their endless self-examination and the persistent question “do you really believe?” With no small irony being that the shift to the cognitive still demands some outward sign and so the supposed historical novelty of having “faith” and “belief” be the “work of salvation” is absorbed by a rather complex system of using the right kinds of words or being diligently hard working (and of course the sign for this is financial self-reliance if not outright wealth of varying degrees–a la Weber).

These are all interesting (or not) questions. But they are not the point of the passage. Given the boundary maintenance impulses of second temple Judaism, the point seems to be that what marks the people of God is now housed in something everyone has access too (a heart, capacity to belief) and the persistent outward distinctions that divide us (Jew/Greek, etc.) must not. The “marker” then is not one’s ability to manage and deploy a particular vocabulary or demonstrate a sufficient amount of concern for the “real-ness” of one’s belief as a sign of sincerity. Rather one’s disrespect for these rather insistent boundaries is the marker.

In an age of resurgent olde timey racism and ever increasing distance between rich and poor perhaps the time has come to stop cognitive navel gazing (which is exhausting and boring) and seek to enact the fierce iconoclasm of boundary transgression. A Lenten season unconcerned with chocolate and Facebook but rather to abandon the social, political, racial/ethnic boundaries that keep us from one another might be truly transformative.

Sunday Sermonettes: Luke 9:28-36

Sunday Sermonettes: In which I attempt to not completely waste my seminary education and reflect on a text from this week’s liturgy.

²⁸ About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. ²⁹ As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. ³⁰ Two men, Moses and Elijah, ³¹ appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. ³² Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. ³³ As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

³⁴ While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. ³⁵ A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” ³⁶ When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

(Luke 9:28-36, TNIV available here at Bible Gateway)

“Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” The older I get, the more humor I find in the Bible. This moment makes me laugh. Confronted with the mystical and mysterious, Peter suggests they all settle down and live there.

But his comment is not totally absurd. The event’s inclusion in the gospel narrative is, I suspect, to situate Jesus life and work in relation to what had gone before. Jesus stands between the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) and the voice (the Father) insists that everyone listen to the one in the middle.

The Barthian Christian in me takes this as a clear indication that Jesus is the mode of interpreting the Law and Prophets (and not the other way around). One reads the rest of Scripture (New Testament or “Old”) “through” Jesus as it were.

Peter is “reading” Jesus through the Law and Prophets. And taken as the Jewish historical memory was (rightly so) with the Exodus and with the “tabernacling” of YHWH in their midst in the wilderness and then again in Jerusalem, preoccupation with divine domesticity was understandable. It also preoccupied the minds of the Second Temple community to the point of being socially and spiritually determinate.

Peter, confronted with the wonder of the Transfiguration, wants to enact that prior domesticity again. He is not rebuked by the voice (only by Luke who gently insists he just didn’t know what he was saying). There is only the reminder that Jesus is normative. He is the one to be “listened to.”

Jesus will insist that the temple is now in his very body and then that his body is diffused (by the Spirit) into the people of God (the church).

Lest we be too hard on Peter, this impulse to domestication persists into the Christian era. I propose that we do so in at least two ways. One, we reduce him to a candidate for God, requiring an up or down vote. The trick is to “mean it” when you vote and show it to everyone else by engaging in the appropriate manner of “God talk” at the appropriate time and embody some variation of appropriate, bourgeoisie, middle-american values.

The second way is quite literally one of domestication in that we continue to fuss about with a “house” for God, or at least his people. Some variation on a building that absorbs energy, funds, creativity in the hopes that something authentic will happen.

We will only be free of this impulse if we listen to Christ as the father insists to Peter, and Go. Out into the world. Doing good. Healing. Preaching good news.

Sunday Sermonettes: Luke 4:21-30

Sunday Sermonettes: In which I attempt to not completely waste my seminary education and reflect on a text from this week’s liturgy.

²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

²² All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³ Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴ “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “prophets are not accepted in their hometowns. ²⁵ I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.²⁷ And there were many in Israel with leprosy^[a] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

(Text available at Bible Gateway here.)

The sharp shift in sentiment here is jarring: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. . . . All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. ²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town . . . in order to throw him off the cliff.“

It’s not immediately clear to the casual reader what’s quite cheesed everyone right off.

But I think the answer to the question is incredibly important to understanding Luke, perhaps the gospel itself.

Jesus doesn’t really cultivate everyone’s good feelings toward him. In the way the text is constructed, he challenges those sentiments immediately (“Surely you will quote this proverb to me.”) He’ll do this throughout Luke (to comedic effect in at least one place . . .)

But at what particular point is he challenging them? Why stick your thumb in the eye of people who like you? Before I get to that I do want to make what I think is an important point.

[Pulls out soapbox, dusts it slightly, steps up, grasps coat lapel in left hand, wags right finger dramatically:]

Jesus doesn’t get aggressive with people in a general way over general things. Too often today I hear people attempting to ape Christ’s “prophetic tone.” But it always seems to come out as a generalized, spiritualized aggression usually over the most controversial notions (the existence of hell, the uniqueness of Christ, etc.) themselves generalized and distilled out of their specific context as if such aggression were the point in and of itself. The cumulative effect of this is that modern Christians come across as hacked off (in a weird, defensive, siege mentality sort of way) over general notions and propositions which seem to simply demand some kind of “faith beyond reason” or commitment to faith even if it isn’t “cool” (and it’s hip to be square amIright?!). In the bigger picture though, this produces what has been called quite rightly an “empty politic.” It also derails any genuine knowledge creation and cultivates an apologetic stance which can never really do more than maintain already “known” boundaries.

[Steps down, puts soapbox away.]

So what did Jesus say exactly to hack of his new fans? Jesus’s ministry persistently challenges people to think about what it means to be “the people of God,” to be defined as such. For second temple Jews this was largely shaped by ethnicity and a distinct set of practices known as “the Law.”

Maintaining this identity wasn’t like being a part of the rotary. Or even a modern political party. There was something desperate and rebellious and tenuous about it. Living as a subjugated people beneath Roman imperialism, identity was a messy, violent thing to secure. And there were a number of groups attempting to carve out a mode of being in the midst of this mess. The Sadducees sought to make their peace with Rome, preserving a modicum of wealth and power. The Essenes had fled to the desert and decided they would just go there and be pure ’til fire rained from heaven. There were the terroristic zealots willing to bring about violent confrontations. The Pharisees were the complicated bunch attempting to live between all these groups, maintaining ritual purity while staying present with the Temple. The people, the generalized population, lived in the midst of this, eking out a living, surviving, and moving between these groups. They listened to them, debated their relative merits, followed one, then the other.

But the maintenance and affirmation of the boundaries of their identity as the People of God was the uncontested pursuit.

And Jesus confronts it: “there were many widows in Israel . . .Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. . . . there were many in Israel with leprosy . . .  yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” The point being: “salvation had come outside the boundaries of ‘our’ people . . .” (implication: “and so it will again”)

What boundaries do we seek to maintain? Whose salvation would anger us were Jesus to assert it? Race/ethnicity is still a salient boundary. The sheer unwillingness to accept the current President’s Christian faith in many corners is an example of this kind of thinking. Obviously political boundaries persist. Gender still causes quite a rift. Sexuality creates a sharp boundary whose limits many rigorously police.

If full participation in the People of God has come to these, do we rejoice? Or try to fling the messenger over a cliff?

Sunday Sermonettes: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Sunday Sermonettes: In which I attempt to not completely waste my seminary education and reflect on a text from this week’s liturgy.

[NOTE: I jumped the gun last week. The Luke 4 passage was in this week’s readings. But instead of wimping out and just re-running last week’s post, I will address another of the texts. My apologies . . .]

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

¹⁵ Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹ If they were all one part, where would the body be?²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ²² On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴ while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵ so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. ²⁸ And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. ²⁹ Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰ Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹ Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

(1 Corinthians 12:12-31a. Text available at BibleGateway.com here.)

Historically, in my little corner of the world, the concern in this passage is: are “the gifts” still in operation? Should we be trying to determine if someone really has “the gift of tongues” or should we say that these have ceased and that if someone is claiming a gift they are mistaken? If the gifts are still in operation, what is my gift? I took a number of inventories when I was younger.

At the moment, that particular question thoroughly bores me.

But I also don’t think it’s the point of the passage. Paul is always assuming things we don’t assume and it’s very difficult to get at whether things he assumed should continue to impact us. And I’m noticing more and more too that the things Paul assumes, that give us fits, are rarely the real point of the text. And paying attention to the real point often mitigates the anxiety about whatever it is we find foreign or weird about a passage.

This passage about living and working well together as a group of people whose organizing reality was the person and work of Jesus Christ, who were trying to live out a new “kingdom” in the shadow of an enormous empire.

What stands out to me these days is the comment “whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free” at the outset. The whole passage is about organizing different people. And the categories of difference the church (or any group) needs to organize across. These, I think, are the two most basic categories: racial/ethnic and socio-economic.

And Paul is not simply telling people to “play nice” across these differences. The body metaphor seems to serve two functions. One, it insists upon inter-connectedness. The “society” of the kingdom is not a “collection of individuals” though it is that (the gifts individuate) but we don’t get to disengage as individuals (“I don’t need you”). Two, it reverses hierarchies. What is valued “naturally” or “inherently” is not simply “equalized” with what is not, rather the structure is one that gives “greater honor to the parts that lacked it.”

This I think is the “content” of the organization of the church, the point being less about “gifts” only that they exist and are valued naturally one way and should be valued and organized another way.

In the end, this should inform the action and orientation of people who are “in Christ” it should inform their orientation to one another and those outside.

And the whole passage is further relativized by the next section (1 Cor. 13) in that “the most excellent way” is love, which I take to mean that any expression of the gift or organization of the gifts for that matter outside of love is a waste of time.

The great challenge for the church will always be practicing this concretely and not nominally both internally and in it’s political engagement with the world. Handing plaques to nursery workers every now and again simply isn’t going to cut it . . .

Sunday Sermonettes: Luke 4:14-21

Sunday Sermonettes: In which I attempt to not completely waste my seminary education and reflect on a text from this week’s liturgy.

¹⁴ Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵ He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

(Luke 4:14-21, TNIV Available at Bible Gateway: here.)

Luke, rather quickly, has become my favorite gospel. This favor coincides, I suppose, with my relatively new found awareness of issues of class and race. A fundamental concern with the structures that confine and constrain, define and detain us. And so I look to see if Jesus cares as much as I do about the structural.

One doesn’t necessarily find it in this text. What you do find in Luke which isn’t always highlighted in the other texts is the concern for the material. I remember thinking that, yes of course Christ gives sight to the blind and “sets the oppressed free,” but what really matters is the “spiritual” those metaphysical abstractions that can only be seen by faith and if they can’t be seen they need to be blindly followed “by faith.” I was always quick to privilege Matthew by inserting “in spirit” after “poor.” Because we all know the poor being poor is their own damn fault and that Jesus was not a communist.

But LUKE, oh Luke is constantly drawing attention to the material conditions people find themselves in, the ways in which the material is used and structured to oppress and blind. And the clarion call of Christ at the outset of his ministry is that it is this world he has come to engage, this material context, these particular constraining structures. And our following Christ must be in this world. It cannot abandon this world in his name.

I’ve grown tired of abstraction and what feels like a fundamentally “euphemistic” faith. One finds in Luke that Jesus seems uninterested in it as well. It comforts me that others are tired of this as well:

What I am saying is that the Christian life is not a blank slate, upon which we need to discern how to fill it all up. Instead, the Christian life  is defined by a concrete lifestyle and ethics which demands following. We follow the life of Christ. Jesus is never on route to the American Dream (or the Imperial Throne of Rome), but to the cross. In fact, to choose to not live a life of the cross is to choose to no longer be Christ’s follower (Luke 14:27).

(D.G. Hart, “The Will of God: More Abstractions So We Can Avoid Following Jesus“)

Whatever it means to follow Christ, it will require concrete action, in the real world. We have to address issues of economics, class, race, violence, governance and so on. It cannot simply flee to an internal, intellectualism in dealing with the world. We cannot persist with the notion that if we just got everyone thinking right all will be well. If we could get them to have some mystical experience everything would start to turn around. We have to attend to structures. We have to name “sin” (as opposed to simply euphemistically referring to it is a way of deferring action on their or our parts).

I certainly would prefer to remain in the realm of the intellectual, the mystical, the spiritual. It’s safer. But it’s also not the gospel.