What can we say April 26? Easter 4

    Acts 2:42-47. How do we preach on this (as I will do!) to gritty consumer capitalists? There most clearly is a connection between what they did with their possessions, that their hearts were “glad and generous,” and that the Lord was “adding to their number” new converts. Easy to slide into a useless nag on such things. But really, it’s our attachment to our stuff, and our hankering for more or newer stuff, that pollutes any possible gladness of heart in us, and makes laughable the possibility of new converts. Why should anybody bother with church if the church people live just like everybody outside the church – but with a little smugness?

   There’s eloquence and a glimmer of hope in the way Willie Jennings speaks on this text. First the stinging diagnosis: “Time, talent, and treasures, the trinity of possessions we know so well, would feel the pull of this holy vortex,” namely the new orientation created by the Spirit. And then his pondering of the impracticality, and the human resistance to the very idea of shared goods: “The real questions are not whether this holy communalism, this sacred sociality, could or would be operative, be practical in this ancient world or any world, but what must it have been like to feel the powerful pull of the life of our savior, and what energy did it take to resist the Holy Spirit, to slow down this pull enough to withhold themselves and their possessions from divine desire.” Boom. Naming it takes effort to resist the Spirit, but tucked inside there is a least a holy craving.

   And finally: “What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods and services is a God who dares impose on us divine love. Such love will not play fair. In the moment we think something is ours, that same God will demand we sell it, give it away.”

   Psalm 23 is eminently preachable (although I worry it’s knuckling under to my people whom I wish loved or even knew even one other Psalm!). Check out my prior blog with my best thought and illustrative material; I remain fond of the idea that not only the sheep but also the sheepdog would have a shepherd!

   1 Peter 2:19-25. How odd that verse 18 is lopped off in the lectionary – as what we have in 19ff is the continuation of “Slaves, subordinate yourselves.” Avoiding a touchy subject? Scripture not as socially revolutionary as you’d like? Owning where Scripture was back in the day, and why we’d think differently – not because of personal preference or current political leanings, but because of what we learn elsewhere in Scripture! – is the way to hope.

   Peter (is it the Peter?) suggests (v. 21) that his suffering is the pattern, the hypogrammos, for these young Christians: a vivid image, as hypogrammos was the word for “alphabet,” what children would use to learn the pattern of language, words and eventually meaning. Ours is to “follow in his footsteps” (vestigiae) – so easy to trivialize or assume if I’m being nice and doing a little good I am actually in Jesus’ footsteps. St. Francis of Assisi’s whole life mission, as his first biographers all stressed, was to be in and to be the vestigiae, the vestiges, of Jesus. Jesus touched lepers? Jesus fasted for weeks? Jesus courted criticism and death? For Francis all this became his to-do list day by day. I expended most of my ink on this in my book, Conversations with St. Francis.

   Jesus wound up with nails in his body. Our text picks up on a key Greek term from the Gospel plot of Jesus’ life: he was “handed over,” paradidomi, sometimes rendered “betrayed.” Jesus was active, a man in charge, but increasingly the passive recipient of the acts of others – which cost him everything. St. Francis prayed to feel what Christ felt, to embody as a vestige what Jesus suffered – and so he wound up with his stigmata, bleeding wounds in his hands, side and feet. Do you really want to follow in the path of Jesus?

   On this passage, Joel Green speaks of “performance.” We perform God’s script, requiring some agility and wisdom in “improvisation” (as Sam Wells articulated and popularized it for us). You learn the character, the basic script, and then you make up not random stuff but fitting stuff to continue the act. I recently was stunned by a talk an 18 year old in my church gave at our Moravian Love Feast. Among many wise, marvelous things he said was this: when thinking of God’s will for the rest of his life, he said “I want to show off the way of God in my everyday life, with people I know, and with people I don’t know.” Boom. You can’t unsee that, or dodge it claim and think Nice, but that can’t apply to me.

   John 10:1-10 was my father-in-law’s favorite preaching text. The “abundant life” image pulsated through all of Bishop Tom Stockton's preaching; his car’s license tag was personalized: “Live alive!” I love him, and this – although it’s risky, as this “abundant life” can be confused in Christians’ minds as happiness, or success, or the moral goods the world has to offer. The Greek “abundantly” is perisson, meaning overflowing – perhaps an echo of Psalm 23? I saw a marquis the other day that said “If someone asks if my cup if half full or half empty, I just feel lucky to have a cup.” If there is an overflowing, an abundance, it’s not things or other measurables, but a sense of God’s mercy, an at-homeness with God, a realizing of reconciliation.

   Jesus is the “good” Shepherd. The Greek, kalos, can imply “beautiful.” I love that – although I’ve tended to recoil at pretty paintings of Jesus as this mild shepherd. Real shepherds are rough and tumble guys, hollering at sheep with a switch in hand. The text asks us to imagine a small stone wall enclosure, with a gate, just an opening. If we think of God and gates, the booboo is to think we’re shutting somebody out or protecting ourselves. The gate is an opening to let people in! Are our church gates open? How do we think of the church anyhow? I like what C.S. Lewis did with that wardrobe in his Narnia novels: you step through into another world!

   Raymond Brown reports on the habits of some shepherds who sleep across the entrance to the fold, serving thus as both shepherd and gate! Brown also notes how Palestinian shepherds frequently have pet names for their favorite sheep, like “Long-ears” or “White-nose.” Lamb chop? Jean Vanier ponders this: “To know someone by name implies a growing understanding of a person, of his or her unique gifts and weaknesses, needs and mission in life. That means taking time with the person, listening, creating a mutual relationship of communion, revealing that the person is loved, has value and is precious.” Didn’t Isaiah 49 tell us that God has your name tattooed on the palm of God’s hand?

   Preachers always remember they are also shepherds. Vanier: “It is not easy to be a good shepherd, to really listen, to accept another’s reality and conflicts. It is not easy to touch our own fears and blocks in relation to people or to love people to love.” But then isn’t it the peril of ministry that we are always holding the door open for people to go in but maybe don’t get in ourselves? Do you know that “I Stand By the Door” by Sam Shoemaker? Every clergyperson should reflect on this at least once a year.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say May 3? 5th Sunday of Easter

   With Mother's Day coming, the 1 Peter text (which I'll preach on myself) makes a fitting notice of the Hallmark holiday by reflecting on being born, born again - which is a Mother's day recollection "for everyone born."

    Acts 7:55-60, the martyrdom of Stephen, has little details rich in homiletical possibility. Saul/Paul is present – so is it a thing that Christians who misunderstand, who approve and participate in judgment, might actually see the light? And instead of me thinking of somebody else when I read that sentence, might I ask this about myself?

   Fascinating: Stephen saw the Son of Man, but they covered their ears. Vision vs. hearing. I recall from seminary days the brilliant Prof. David Steinmetz, explaining Luther’s theological epistemology, saying “The eyes are hard of hearing,” that the ears are the organ of faith, how what we see can be misleading. And yet some have seen the Lord. His foes shut their ears, not wanting to hear what had been seen by others.

   Then we have the quirky textual issue: Stephen, with his dying breath, pleads for forgiveness for his attackers. Was he mimicking Jesus? Or did early copyists of Luke 23 not want Stephen to appear to be more gracious than Jesus, so they placed these words on Jesus’ lips? It’s missing in several early manuscripts of Luke. Alternatively, did some copyist remove the words from Jesus’ lips, as they so loathed the Jews they didn’t want Jesus offering them mercy? Do textual debates ever belong in a sermon? I’d say occasionally. We just have to discern if a worthy theological point can be made. Here it’s possible: could it be that Stephen so profoundly understood all Jesus was about that he sought forgiveness for his killers – without Jesus having verbally done the same? What about the theory of anti-Semitism? Are there those for whom we’d delete Jesus’ mercy?

   1 Peter 2:2-10 slices off the first half of a sentence beginning in verse 1! The spiritual milk business isn’t some sweet spiritual thought, but about the setting aside of evil, deceit, jealousy and slander! Is the point of v. 2 then that infants don’t do these things, that they are learned in a corrupt, fallen world? It’s a riff on Psalm 34:8 (“O taste and see that the Lord is good”). The early Church Fathers allegorized, seeing the milk as coming from the two breasts of the two Testaments. I wonder if, as preachers, we can expand upon what 1 Peter would have known. In my Birth: the Mystery of Being Born book that just came out (just in time for Mother's Day...), I report on the way breastfeeding is surprisingly interactive. The infant’s saliva secretes something into the mother which tells the milk production specific things the infant needs. We spiritual milk-drinkers aren’t merely passive receptacles!

   Ernest Best reminds us that milk is what you need, spiritually. There is no greater milk or food than Christ himself! So there is no spiritual cockiness, as some might imagine they have advanced beyond simple milk to more complex foods. We are always children needing simple milk; didn’t Jesus say we must become like children?

   Might the author of 1 Peter have imagined a literal birth when he wrote in v. 9 “You were called out of darkness into marvelous light, you once were no people, now you are God’s people, now you have received mercy”? Maybe not. But he was “inspired,” and so can surely can. Infants emerge from the womb, the Hebrew word for which also means “mercy,” out of near-total darkness into near-blinding light – and voila! She’s a person who wasn’t before. Of course, the children of Hosea and Gomer whisper in the background, with their bizarre but prophetically suggestive names, Lo-Ruhama (same “womb” word!) and Lo-Ammi. The people’s infidelity, personified in Gomer’s waywardness (Hosea 1), results in a loss of mercy and being the people! – but all that is reversed in the dawning of Christ’s new way.

   My Birth book has a whole chapter on the meaning of being “Born Again” in light of actual, physical birth. To that, I’d add Joel Green’s pithy comment: “Conversion entails autobiographical reconstruction.” From whom and where have I come? Who is my family? St. Francis shed his clothing and lost his father’s affection when he became a friar, literally a “brother” to others in the family of God; at his trial, famously depicted by Giotto, Francis gave it all back to his father and said “No longer if Pietro Bernardone my father, but from now on my father is ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’”

   A few other preachable details: in early Church baptisms, when you emerged from the pool you were given a drink of milk and honey, emblematic of Israel and the Promised Land. Wish we still did that one. Verse 4 has a pun worth playing on: “kindness” is chrestos in Greek, barely a squiggle away from Christ. To be Christlike is quite literally to be chrestos, kind. And you have to love the Bible’s repeated usage of the passive imperative – illogical grammatically. It’s imperative! – that something happens to you. Stones, with no muscles, legs or agility, must be built into a temple. This is an improvement on Paul’s idea that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), which is cool but could feel lonely. All bodies together are stones in the temple of God! And finally the “offense” the Bible regularly perceives in Christ as cornerstone, a stumbling block. I wish more offense were taken at Christ. Today we get lots of yawns and averted gazes.

   John 14:1-14 requires considerable care. Lots of people request some portion of this at funerals due to the “many mansions.” At Christmas, we visited the Biltmore House, which boasts of being the largest privately owned home in America. 58 Christmas trees, massive, elegantly decorated rooms, a warren of servant quarters below. Is that what heaven is like? Seems crass. The Greek, monē, was a night-stop or resting place. The Latin rendered it “mansion,” which back then still meant merely a resting place, which is what “mansion” meant even in Old English. The “many” implies not “lots of them” but rather There’s room for all.

   Maybe instead of thinking I get a fabulous house in heaven, we notice the relationship of monē to the verb menein, which means simply “to remain, stay, abide.” It’s not the place, the nature of the abode, but the abiding, the being with Jesus, not at all Tammy Faye Bakker’s famous “shopping mall in the sky where I have a credit card with no limit.”

   I cringe a little when v. 6 gets included in a funeral, and I cringe more over the way it is interpreted as if Jesus is giving a theological lecture on the relationship of Christianity to World Religions. It’s a somber meal, in shadows, the disciples trembling with anxiety. Jesus reassures them that there is a way. We do not normally use “way” in an exclusive sense anyhow, do we? I speak of “the way to my house” as simply a direction, it’s findable, it’s not barricaded with iron gates. The truth isn’t about intellectual assent or dogmatic assertion on my end; it’s all from God, and about God, it’s the truth about God’s heart. 

I put out this brief video (7 minutes) called “Jesus is THE way?” a few years back with my best take on what John 14:6 is about. I’ve done this with lots of lay people too. It’s all about your tone if you dream of explaining it in a sermon or elsewhere to your people – and yet important for those who’d swiftly judge others, and for those terrified by the deaths of loved ones who weren’t “believers.”

   Philip’s plea, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied” is so preachable. Jesus showed us quite clearly the heart, mind and way of God his Father. And it’s this alone this satisfies, this alone that is enough. How much is enough? We think it’s additive, or novel: If I get more, or the newest, I’ll have enough! But it’s a fiction. When, after all, am I enough? The Jesus who shows us the Father says You are enough already. That includes you, the preacher, no matter what you tell them this Sunday.

   Realizing this, living in sync with this, then resolves the other weirdness in this passage, which is Jesus promising “Anything you ask in my name, I will do it.” People ask Does prayer work? – the wrong question, as if I measured my marriage by saying Yeah, Lisa does a high percentage of stuff I ask her to do for me. It’s a relationship, togetherness, gratitude, sharing, solidarity with God, way better than asking favors. The kicker is “in my name.” It’s not a formula, as if God’s waiting for you to say “in Jesus’ name” and then the wish is granted. “In my name” means being in sync with Jesus and his dreams, loves, projects, visions.

   So Christians need not pray, especially in public, non-worship spaces, “in Jesus’ name” in order for the prayer to be valid. Jesus’ way, after all, brought all paths to God to fulfillment - didn't he? His way was new in that he was one of us, one with us - a brother to all people in all places and in all times.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say May 10? Easter 6

 

   The emotions that are Mother's Day are more complicated than usual. People with elderly moms they can't visit. Moms stressed by working from home while home schooling. I have a woman whose mom died last week without her being able to be there, or organize a funeral due to family with Covid and travel issues. College graduation day for several I know. We name the pains, the joys, the complications, never glibly glorifying motherhood. A strategy of mine always on Mother's Day is to spend some time of adoration for the greatest mother ever, Mary. No moral takeaways, no “lesson,” just pondering her, as she was a ponderer herself. No one has ever complained, and they oddly feel enfranchised even though I’ve never hinted at how marvelous mothers are. I have the advantage (or massive disadvantage!) of having had a mother who wasn’t one to sing and be effusive about. By all means, don’t give in to the church member I had years ago who insisted on standing at the door to hand out a carnation to every mother entering, or my first little parish where they gave an award to the newest mother, the oldest mother, and the mother with the most children – which sparked a heated argument between one who’d borne 4 and another with 5, but 2 were second marriage adoptions… 

   Acts 17:22-31. Fascinating: when Paul showed up in Athens, the Parthenon was already 500 years old; the golden age of Socrates and Pericles long past. And yet the city was (and is still) a marvel.

   Willie Jennings reminds us, so easily dazzled by the glories of ancient Athens, that the real dazzler here is Paul. His sermon makes it clear: “God desires those who desire idols. This speech is driven by the irrepressible longing of God to embrace wayward creatures by every means possible.” Idols aren’t foolishness so much as a fantasy of control. The gods (and we have plenty of our own!) are bogus; “yet Paul will not turn Gentile ignorance toward God’s condemnation, but toward God’s condescension.”

   By the warren of marble temples to pagan divinities, Paul was mortified - but the citizens of Athens must have been puzzled by his mood. They had countless gods, but weren't all that serious about any of them (except perhaps Dionysus, the god of wine and parties!). What was strange about Paul was not that he was a religious person; Athenians could prove their religiosity by simply pointing to the urban landscape. But Paul was zealous, daring to say his God was the lone true god, and all the others were fakes, zeroes. Theirs was a civil religion that accommodated everyone and offended no one - except Paul!

   Paul’s tone? No condemnation. He connects. He “argues” – and the Greek is identical to our word “dialogue.” He establishes common ground what he can about their culture while luring them into something richer and more noble. Can today’s preacher achieve the same?

   He goes to them, in the agora, the marketplace, the shopping mall of Athens. Can the preacher get out to prepare the sermon, maybe after conversation with random people in a shopping mall? To continue the conversation, Paul’s critics walk with him uphill to the Areopagus, Mars Hill, the stone court where generals decided whether to go to war or not. Paul comes peacefully, and suggests his God isn't limited to Athens or any other place or vested interest, but is for all people, everywhere, in every age.

   Acts 17 seems to ask and answer whether Christianity is intellectually respectable, as Paul makes his case before the most educated, cultured, philosophically sophisticated people in the world. Paul does his best, but knows he will never win the day on reason alone. Christianity is not unreasonable, but the Gospel embraces far more than reason can begin to grasp. Reason is faith’s greatest block, isn’t it? Paul proudly admits that the Christian message is “folly to the wisdom of the world” (1 Corinthians 1:19): a poor peasant, executed but coming back to life? No wonder in the philosophical mecca of Athens Paul was mocked as a “babbler” (Acts 17:18).

   A few Athenians converted, others couldn't accept the Gospel message; but notice the word of hope from many of the unconverted: “We will hear you again about this” (verse 32). Can we be faithful, can we articulate the hope that is in us, but with perseverance and patience, and in a way that even skeptics might want to hear us again?

   John 14:15-21 is, for David Ford in his new commentary, “a simple, practical summary of the ongoing life of prayer and action, both deepening and daring, inspired by who Jesus is, by what he does and says, and by love for him.”

   I’ve never slowed down enough to ponder Jesus’ promise: although we fixate on the maybe-not-true “I’ll do whatever you ask,” I am moved now by “I will ask the Father.” It’s not that prayer works (or doesn’t) – but the risen Lord, through the Spirit, actually asks God his and our Father for us. What love! And how would this reality change what we actually ask for?

   The whole passage teases out what agape love is all about. “If you love… you keep commandments” sounds conditional. But let’s be clear: Love has its conditions; love has its rules. Love isn’t a mood you feel or don’t. If I love my wife, I know the rules that bear witness to that love. We aren’t saved because we’re fastidious rule-keepers.

   And John’s rumination on the coming gift of the Spirit after Jesus’ departure is just astonishing. No systematic theologies to consult, Jesus was barely gone, and John writes with such tender wisdom about the mystery of this Spirit. Clearly, it’s not some emotional titillation, which many American Christians would pervert the Spirit into being. Ford’s phrasing is striking: “The most straightforward way of understanding the Spirit is as the shared, distributed, indwelling presence of the crucified and risen Jesus.” Distributed! It’s not just that you get the Spirit, or it’s there for you to access. It is distributed – reminding me that God bestows a variety of gifts on the members of the Body, and we need one another to get closer to the reality of God! To shut out voices that seem different or strange is to choke that distributed Spirit.

   The Spirit is your Advocate – and you’ll need a good one. And the Spirit is all about Truth – which is entirely up for grabs or viewed as nonexistent nowadays in our culture of warring political ideologies. There is Truth. There are facts. And not just facts but the deeper Truth that is the way things really are with God and God’s world. To get at this, I like to quote the popular historian David McCullough: “You can have all the facts imaginable and miss the truth, just as you can have facts missing or some wrong, and reach the larger truth. ‘I hear all the notes, but I hear no music,’ is the old piano teacher’s complaint. There has to be music. The work of history calls for mind and heart.”

   In my Birth: The Mystery of Being Born, I have a chapter on Adoption. We might fixate on the nuclear family, but the Bible is obsessed with language and images of foundlings, orphans, adoption. Check out this blog I posted (scroll down to the bottom half!) during Pentecost for a quick summation of how all this plays out, relying much on the insights of Kelley Nikondeha in her terrific book, Adopted.

   1 Peter 3:13-22 reveals how tough things were on early Christians, and thereby how the life of faith today is a walk in the park, eliciting more yawns than harsh critique. So how does our text’s counsel apply? Maybe you can say those who dare to live a radical faith have their troubles, or you can grandstand or confuse people by pointing to how mad people get over your political ideology. Let’s linger over a few intriguing items here.

   “Harm” has become a big word, from “First do no harm,” to the controversial but crucial “harm reduction” in substance abuse treatment, and then the “Reduce Harm” movement in Methodism – all 3 inviting people to courageous action to minimize harm to others. 1 Peter’s question: “Who will harm you if you are eager to do good?” I’m tempted to answer “Lots of people,” especially in this realm of the defense of the harmed. So today, doing good, not being a believer per se, can stir up trouble. Joel Green comments: “It is precisely by doing good that the righteous attract unwanted attention.”

   Maybe this text is a way to talk about issues that matter to you without nagging or condemning. So you simply observe that those who are trying to do good, sheltering immigrants, advocating for gun control, lobbying against abortion, striving for racial reconciliation, whatever it may be (and if you do a list, zigzag left and then right as I just did to avoid people thinking you’re just pasting faith on top of your agenda) do bear some misery – although you have to own that in the biblical world you could be imprisoned, beaten, or shut out of work, whereas today you’re more likely to get blasted on Facebook. The text reminds us of Jesus’ suffering, and this solidarity ennobles suffering and induces the strength to bear it.

   The RSV invites us to “sanctify” Christ. He’s already holy, of course… The verb, hagiasate, a quote from Isaiah 8:13, and the same word as “Hallowed be thy name,” means to reverence, to treat as holy. Live in a way that doesn’t embarrass Christ; tempt him to take pride in you. The “Be ready to make your defense” envisions being on trial, or pressured to renounce your faith. For us, is this finding yourself in awkward conversation where a neighbor make a chilling racist comment, or someone blasts a Mexican yard worker?

   Does this entail the simple skill of being able to give testimony to why and what you believe? I worry I’ve not helped my people enough to be able to articulate the simple basics of why and what they believe – and my church people who are glib and eloquent on this are too often the smug types who have all the answers and are all too eager to download their spiritual genius into others. I think of Lillian Daniel’s Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony or Tom Long’s Testimony as wise explorations of this, important for our people even if it’s only a quick mention in this Sunday’s sermon.

   I remind my people periodically that the Creed matters because it was devised to give people simple ways to talk about their faith. Every Sunday’s recitation is a little practice session. And this “defense” 1 Peter prepares us for isn’t dogma so much as a personal naming of to whom we cling; it’s not propositional but “the hope that is in you.” The average Christian needs to be able to say without being shrill or sappy, “My hope is in God” or “I believe Christ is with me.” And that “in you”: 1 Peter’s Greek is en humin, plural, really then “the hope that is in y’all.” We have good company as we believe, defend, bear witness and make testimony. We’re good listeners; we stand with others. And it’s always “with gentleness and reverence,” not cockiness or judgment!

   Speaking of the creed: verse 19 poses huge challenges with its mystifying talk of Jesus preaching to “spirits in prison… who disobeyed in the days of Noah.” Pseudepigraphical books like Enoch dwell on bound “fallen angels,” reminding us that even back in the first century, Christians believed some very curious things. Over time, the belief that Christ “descended into Hell” emerged, and has survived in many creeds. I included a chapter on this in my book The Life We Claim: The Apostles’ Creed for Preaching, Teaching and Worship. This descent is lovely to explore, raising questions about death and mercy, and the fate of those we spoke of in last week’s blog who don’t believe in Jesus as the way. Peter Jackson’s depiction of Tolkien’s allusion to this, when Gandalf plummeted into the abyss while battling Balrog, is unforgettable: “You Shall Not Pass!!!” – which can be an intriguing entrée to people otherwise baffled or uninterested.

 ** Here’s an excerpt from The Life We Claim, my little book on preaching the Apostles’ Creed, if you’re interested in the Descent Into Hell:

   The Creeds devised by the Church cannot seem to make up their minds:  should “He descended into Hell” be included? or not? The 1 Peter passage seems tantalizingly to suggest that between his burial late in the day on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday, Jesus went down into the underworld to save those awaiting judgment. Many New Testament scholars construe the 1 Peter passage differently: if we sort through Genesis 6:1-4, Isaiah 24:21, Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4, and 1 Peter 3:19-20, we glimpse a belief held by first century Jews, that disobedient angels were thrown into a pit and locked up – and that Jesus’ preaching mission was to these evil powers. Still, the Church has historically taught that Jesus “descended into Hell” – a doctrine that “need not be explicitly grounded upon specific biblical texts; rather, it must rely upon a reading of Scripture as a whole.”

   Hell, we know, is not a fiery cavern down in the earth patrolled by red men with pitchforks. Jesus’ journey there is symbolic, intimating that all people, in this life and even beyond this life, are offered the love of God.  Even the grave does not silence God’s call. “What is to happen to the multitude who lived before Jesus’ ministry? And what will become of the many who never came into contact with the Christian message? What is to happen to the people who have certainly heard the message of Christ but who – perhaps through the fault of those very Christians who have been charged with its proclamation – have never come face to face with its truth? Are all these delivered to damnation? Do they remain forever shut out? The Christian faith can say ‘no’ to this urgent question. What took place for mankind in Jesus also applies to the people who either never came into contact with Jesus and his message, or who have never really caught sight of the truth of his person and story” (Wolfhart Pannenberg). God is relentless, unfazed by time, space, or death itself. Even the pit of Hell is owned by the unquenchable love of Christ; the abyss is not bottomless, but has an opening to heaven. Or so many thinkers have argued, unable to make sense of the idea that God could love everyone with infinite power and wind up losing even one. Perhaps Christ’s descent into hell opens a window for those who have never heard of Christ, or have heard it from terrible people.

   “In view of what Jesus had seen the last few days of his life, maybe the transition to Hell wasn’t as hard as you might think (Buechner).” Many theologians have claimed that Christ descended into hell the moment he cried “My God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross; “No more terrible abyss can be conceived than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God, and when you call upon him, not to be heard (John Calvin).” Jürgen Moltmann thought it really began in Gethsemane when Jesus’ request that the cup be removed was denied. Whichever side of the grave your Hell may be on, “there is no depth, no darkness, no unraveling of reality, which God’s Son has not shared” (Nicholas Lash). No matter what Hell I go through, God is in the teeth of it with me, descending into whatever abyss I have fallen. And, if Jesus descended into Hell, then I as a follower of Christ, and we as the Church of Christ, must follow, and seek out those whose Hell is palpable and devastating, and we become the embodied love of Christ for those who think they are totally sealed off from God.

   In The Great Divorce, Lewis imagined Hell as a dingy, dark place, the weather always overcast. People mull about, hanging their heads, depressed in this bureaucratic nightmare of a place. Curiously, they can leave as any time, but they prefer to stay in Hell. Accustomed to the place, they stay, relishing Hell’s activities calendar, including theological discussion groups where they talk about questions like what happens to people in Mongolia… Lewis provides us with some short quotations from Hell’s residents: “I don’t what any help. I want to be left alone. I’m in charge of my own life” – common sentiments in Hell. As Lewis surmises, “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There’s always something they prefer to joy. There are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, ‘They will be done.’ And those to whom God says, ‘They will be done.’ And all that are in hell chose it.”

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say May 17? Easter 7

   Acts 1:1-14 has the virtue of serving as Easter 7’s reading, but also the lection for Ascension Day (May 18). Were I to hold a Thursday Ascension service, the attendance would be fewer than the handful of disciples who witnessed it live! I preached on this 3 years ago, if you'd like to watch. Skeptics hoot over the idea of Jesus defying gravity (Wicked, anyone? or John Mayer? anyone else?) and floating up into heaven. Art images are hokey – of course. Own the hokey. God put it there for us. What better time to say to the skeptic, the intellectuals, the doubters, that yes, there's room in church for you too.

   If we recall that Jesus was raised with a “spiritual body” (as we will be too) – a body, but a transformed kind of body that appears and disappears…  Gravity may just lose its hold on us, along with a great many other limitations. Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest, March 28) asks if we are loyal, first to my intellect and only then to Jesus? “Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is a deliberate commitment to a Person.” How can we entertain solid science questions with candor, grace, and flat out interest, and yet stay committed to whatever is at the heart of the story of the Ascension - which shows up in our creed every week? As a young man, I heard a preacher tackle the Ascension with quibbles, but then said “All I can figure is that this story gets Jesus back home where he belongs, with his Father in heaven.” Note to self: use this one day.

   What commitments does this Person ask of us here? Jesus departs, leaving the disciples alone – as Gandalf did to the hobbits in Lord of the Rings. Without him, they face horrific difficulties, requiring courage and hope; they need one another; they have to stick together. Gandalf shows up again at the climax, but then bids them farewell once more. Wasn’t Tolkien mirroring the Bible’s plot in some way? Jesus dazzles – then leaves. He trusts them, the little, unlikely ones. And he trusts us, we unlikely ones. Instead of dominating them, or creating codependency, he entrusts his future to them. We are Jesus here, now. 

   “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ is to look out on a hurting world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless now” (attributed to Teresa of Avila). My first book, Yours are the Hands of Christ, spent 100 pages explicating this.

   Notice verse 1: “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.” Luke is what Jesus began; Acts is how his people continued what he began. So we’re all about continuities. WWJD indeed! It’s never mere niceness, or judgmental attitudes, but sharing property, touching untouchables, and more. Does the church today – does my church today – continue what Jesus began, and what the first disciples continued?

 

    I adore that Easter-morning-like query from the white-robed-guys: “Why do you stand looking up into heaven?” Is it a rebuke? Of course we’re gawking! He just defied gravity. Aren’t we who follow him supposed to do lots of looking up? Maybe it’s a commission: don’t just linger over who Jesus was, but go, get moving out into those rippling circles that define our mission field: Jerusalem, then Judea/Samaria, then the ends of the earth. Do we do mission in our back yard or abroad? Yes.

   How lovely and worth naming, with no takeaway, the reality of verses 13-14. A room, with people, with names. Including women! And how tender: Jesus’ mother, Mary. And astonishing: Jesus’ brothers. If you want proof that Jesus was the one, look no further. His brothers, who would be the first to fall prey to sibling rivalry, who could say He cheated at marbles! Or He stole my toy! Or He at the last piece of cake! They are there, risking life and limb with everybody else, worshipping the guy they shared a bed and toilet with. Their oneness, and our failure at oneness, draw our attention to…

   John 17:1-11. At the end of the very long Last Supper, there’s a long pause – and Jesus prays, in such a moment, as if anticipating our awful history to come, for the unity of his people. To any who would split the church, be very sure Jesus has a different purpose for his church – that we be one.

   David Ford’s new commentary on this text is especially eloquent – or maybe wise, the wisdom framed in lovely verbiage. “Is there any chapter in the Bible richer in meaning than this?” “There is an extraordinary combination of definitive ultimacy and intimacy, together with the invitation into an infinitely capacious abundance of meaning and life… Could any desire be more daring than this desire of Jesus for those for whom he prays? Here the inner dynamic of believing and trusting in Jesus is shown to be the desire for union in love.” “The desire of Jesus is for the intimacy and intensity of God’s own life to be opened up for wholehearted, trusting participation through the ongoing drama of being loved and loving. And the desire of Jesus amounts to a promise.”

   Ford calls all this “the summit of love” – a place to look back and see paths of meaning converging, and to look forward. I love his grappling with whether this is a literal prayer or not, as he quotes Lesslie Newbigin: “The prayer is not a free invention of the evangelist; nor is it a tape recording of the words of Jesus.” Ford declares, “It is testimony distilled and enriched by the Spirit.” He encourages an intertext reading with the Lord’s prayer – and there are so many parallels and deeper understandings! Try it.

    There is a lot in Jesus' prayer about the disciples being in but not of the world - a pregnant, memorable framing of what our life is like, we whose citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). And then Jesus' culminating plea is that, just as Jesus has consecrated himself, his mission is that they may be consecrated - and verse 19 adds "in truth." We could use some of this consecration-in-truth, in our day of cynicism and ideology where nothing is what it appears to be and truth is negotiable and ideological slant more than a real, trustworthy thing.

   Jesus’ prayer about glorification: in John, it’s not a titanic win, some shining, towering victory. It’s the Cross. It’s the nails and thorny crown, the blood, the lance in the side. This is how the Father glorifies the Son. If there is any single point clergy will struggle to communicate, or even to “get” themselves, it is this. It’s not the rush to the empty tomb, it’s not the soaring or the shedding of agony. It’s in the agony, it’s at the heart of the God-forsakenness where the glory is glory.

   Take special note in preaching of verse 3. Jesus prays for them and us: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus whom you have sent.” Better rewind. Could this be? Eternal life – isn’t it all the fun, acing every hole playing golf, festive parties, reunions with lost loved ones, eating bonbons and not gaining an ounce, basking in the brightness of heaven and the endless music of angelic choirs? Eternal life isn’t God saying You get to keep on keeping on. It’s not the infinite extension of the best life you’ve enjoyed thus far. 

   1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11. I’m not fond of what I tend to view as a vapid Christian habit – the lifting up of a single Bible verse as an amulet of protection, or a medicinal dose of comfort. But 1 Peter 5:7 is quite good, something I text out now and then to my mass text distribution – and people love it, as they should. “Cast your cares upon the Lord, for he cares for you.” {I'm not as fond of "Cast your anxieties on him," as it begins to feel more about me and my inner self than "cares," which are usually real things out there... but it's not awful.} 

   I wonder about a sermon that just settles around that invitation, reflecting on how much we need this, how it’s not a quick fix or a blithe assumption that God will do what I demand, that it’s the sharing of our anxieties, our darkness, whatever we care about, with the assurance that God cares. That’s as much as we really want from the people we love: my wife can’t fix my trouble, but she cares; my best friend might be clueless about my work situation, but he cares.

   It’s not a forsaking of responsibility or even asking God to make up the little deficit of what you can’t manage for yourself. I think about Henri Nouwen’s (best?) book he wrote during his own darkest days: “You so much want to heal yourself, fight your temptations, stay in control. But you cannot do it yourself. Every time you try, you are more discouraged. So you must acknowledge your powerlessness. You have to say Yes fully to your powerlessness in order to let God heal you.” He notes how addiction recovery begins, continues and ends on just this assumption: you are powerless. And all our troubles are addictive, aren’t they?

   And then there’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s marvelous little book on the Psalms, which are as good a primer in how to pray as I’ve ever known: “The Psalms cast every difficulty and agony on God: ‘We can no longer bear it, take it from us, and bear it yourself, you alone can handle suffering.’” After all, verse 7, the little golden nugget, hinges on what Peter just said in verse 6: “Humble yourselves.” The humble know they aren’t masters of the universe, and that the grit of free will might just spiral you into ever worsening maladies.

   At the same time, verses 6 and 7 keep some rigorous company, don’t they? Verse 7 is followed by counsel to be disciplined, and to keep alert. If you’re in a pickle, and you cast your cares upon the Lord, and there is some lightening of the burden, you’ll be right back where you were in a few hours without the discipline of new habits, avoiding perilous places and people. Sam Wells wittily wrote that “Ethics is not about being clever in a crisis, but about forming a character that does not realize it has been in a crisis until the ‘crisis’ is over.”

   Hence not merely how to cope with but how to grow from or even avert the “fiery ordeal.” Sounds like flaming torment – but the Greek, peirasmos, is the same word used for Jesus being “tested” in the wilderness, with the connotation of test, trial, discipline. The worst of combating difficulty is feeling alone; 1 Peter offers good company: we “share” (the Greek is koinonia!) in Jesus’ sufferings!

   This might be a word for clergy more than it’s a word for clergy to preach to the people. And the sneaky peril is this: I suffer in my ministry – so can I safely conclude it’s because I’m so in fellowship with Jesus? Or is it because I’ve been a dufus and have miscalculated my emotional capital or what my people can bear in love?

    ** I’ll add here that I like to seed a sermon by texting all my people with a question. A question I ask them, apart from sermon preparation, is simply “How can I pray with you?” I get like a zillion replies, and reading them breaks your heart. For this Sunday, if I’m preaching 1 Peter’s “cares” or the Gospel we’re about to consider, asking our people “What are your cares, what are you suffering?” This prepares them for worship (and life with God), creates solidarity within the Body – and also provides me with something to ponder or even use in my sermon. If I’m preaching 1 Peter, I may just read a sampling. Then their hearts break too – and maybe break open to new life in Christ.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say May 24? The Day of Pentecost

   For lots of our folks it's not the Day of Pentecost, but Memorial Day. How to give a nod to the day without it overwhelming the Gospel? I've found that a mere mention of someone who died in World War II or some allusion of visiting a military cemetery covers things well enough?

    Acts 2:1-21. I’ve echoed what many have said - that Pentecost is the “reversal of Babel.” But do I then imply diversity is a problem to be fixed? At Pentecost, the miracle is understanding, not sameness. God delights in diversity and understanding. A far cry from the dominant ones saying “You must speak our language here.”

   Willie Jennings has dubbed Acts 2 “the epicenter of the revolution,” “the revolution of the intimate.” God breaks everybody open so they can be a radical new, welcoming, fully engaged community. Notice it was no grand strategy on the disciples’ part. God just did this. It was uncontrollable – like the wind, with immense if unseen power. 

 Jennings wisely notes they may well have asked for the Holy Spirit. But not this! This is real, “untamed” grace. Is it like Mary learning the Spirit has overshadowed her?

   We love the idea of Pentecost – and yet, as mainline Protestants, don’t we suffer s kind of reticence about the Holy Spirit? Which isn’t wrongheaded: I’ve heard so much sappy chatter in my lifetime about who’s got the Spirit (and thus who doesn’t), where the Spirit is (and thus isn’t), powerful emotional experiences that feel to me to be more about intuition and native-born gushing than a movement of the Spirit – so then, perhaps in the way Protestants have barely spoken of Mary in order not to be Catholic, I’ve shied away so as not to be confused with the emotivism that dominates so much of American religiosity. 

   I love Mark Noll’s summary of how Christianity spreads to other, different places: “Christianity appears more and more as an essentially pluralistic and cross-cultural faith. It appeared first in Asia, then Africa and Europe. Immediately those who turned to Christ in these ‘new’ regions were at home in the faith. When they became believers, Christianity itself became Asian, European and African. Once Christianity is rooted in someplace new, the faith itself also takes on something from that new place. It also challenges, reforms and humanizes the cultural values of that place. The Gospel comes to each person and to all peoples exactly where they are. You do not have to stop being American, Japanese, German, or Terra del Fuegian in order to become a Christian. Instead, they all find rich resources in Christianity that are perfectly fitted for their own cultural situations. It is by its nature a religion of nearly infinite flexibility because it has been revealed in a person of absolutely infinite love.”

   Maybe Pentecost isn’t talking so much as listening. Thomas Merton: “The mystery of speech and silence is resolved in Acts. Pentecost is the solution. The problem of language is the problem of sin. The problem of silence is also a problem of love. How can one really know whether to speak or not, and whether words and silence are for good or for evil, unless one understands the 2 divisions of tongues – Babel and Pentecost. Acts is a book full of speech. The apostles down downstairs and out into the street like an avalanche… Before the sun had set, they had baptized 3000 souls out of Babel into the One Body of Christ.”

   When rethinking Pentecost, it’s worth recalling that, in Judaism, Pentecost is the day that commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. And don’t be tempted to say We have the Spirit, the law is kaput. The Spirit enables the fulfillment of the law; have you read Matthew 5??  The Spirit doesn’t unleash a burst of emotion; the Spirit plants and grows holiness in us. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5). He/she is the “Spirit of Holiness” (Rom. 1:4).

   Growing things? Pentecost was also the celebration of a harvest. The Spirit, when you were sleeping, caused things to grow – and we humbly give thanks to God for the fruit of the earth. Do you garden? Or do you know someone who farms? Tell your people about the Spirit moving over the fields.

   1 Corinthians 12:3b-13. I see churches dubbing Pentecost “the birthday of the Church,” as if it were a party for a 4^th grader. If it’s a birthday celebration, it’s way more sober, almost tragicomic or ironically sad, as if the church is at some advanced age and in very poor health.

   We have squashed what we named earlier: that God loves understanding but not sameness. We church folk have tried for “agreement” to pathetic excess. If we form little clubs of semi-Christians with whom we agree, we get narcissistic, or incestuous spiritually. We forget we are all foolish in various ways – which is why we need one another, and why God gave us one another.

   And our witness? Francis Schaeffer, the godfather of modern evangelicalism, wrote powerfully in The Mark of the Christian that Jesus : “made clear what will be the distinguishing mark of the Christian: ‘Love one another.’” “It is possible to be a Christians without showing this mark, but if we expect non-Christians to know that we are Christians, we must show the mark.” He calls this “the final apologetic.” He adds this that should make us shudder: “In our present dying culture, Jesus is giving a right to the world: upon his authority, he gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born-again Christians on the basis of our observable love toward all Christians.” Wow. And spot on.

  I also admire Ephraim Radner’s thoughts in A Brutal Unity. Assessing theological strife in the Middle Ages, ferocious but never dividing the church, he suggests that “What they achieve is not so much agreement, but rather a path that allows members to be joined to the figure of Christ.”  “It was when Jesus was walking around with his disciples – and yet they were confused, mistaken, and Jesus quite deliberately included Judas, and even washed his feet and ate and drank at table with him.  The thief was already thieving, and the greed was already growing, and the disappointment in Jesus’ claims was already gnawing.  This was always a part of their unity.”  Such inept, broken people managed to succeed as God’s laborers, not so much because they were right and proved others wrong.  Tertullian noted how foes of Christianity had to admit, “See how they love.” Have we relegated Paul to weddings, when he was speaking of the church? “Love does not insist on its own way.”

   And then this, from Hans Urs von Balthasar (and notice that, by citing Schaeffer, Radner and von Balthasar, I could hardly find 3 theologians more divergent from one another – yet one on this theme of the church being one!), in Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him? “We cannot find the dimensions of Christ’s love other than in the community of the church, where the vocations and charisms distributed by the Spirit are shared: each person must tell the others what special knowledge of the Lord has been shown to him.  For no one can tread simultaneously all the paths of the love given to the saints: while one explores the heights, another experiences the depths and a third the breadth.  No one is alone under the banner of the Spirit, the Son and the Father; only the whole Church is the Bride of Christ, and that only as a vessel shaped by him to receive his fullness.”

   John 20:19-23 was covered pretty thoroughly, with good illustrative stuff, in this blog just one month ago (April 16). To those thoughts I would just add, since it’s Pentecost, I always wonder if there should be a colon instead of a period after Jesus says “Receive the Holy Spirit” – since he then illustrates what that implies, what impact it will have on them, nothing emotional, but something harder: “If you forgive…” Mind you, the church doesn’t feel they hold such “keys” any longer. But I wonder. When we condemn or ostracize, isn’t that a mis-use of that key, or a loud witness that the Holy Spirit is not in us at all?

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.