Sunday with Walter Brueggemann We are not self-invented folks
There is a mistaken notion that we are self-starters, individuals who “possess” capacity and worth. And we can make do and can do, if we try harder. Such a view belongs to American notions of success and progress. But it really doesn’t work. We cannot make it alone. We depend on this other one. We cannot and need not have life on our own terms. Because at the deep levels of our lives, we do not have such capacities. We are mostly a conundrum of fears and unfulfilled hopes.
We are not self-invented folks. We are always creatures of another who speaks to us and calls us by name and calls us into being. In a primary way, we are individual persons because God knows our names, and as with all creation, God calls us into being. We live by God’s faithful call to us. And in a derivative way, we live by the daily call of the neighbor. We wait each day to be called by name, to be cared for, to have someone expect something of us and give something to us. And in the process we learn in many ways that our life is not a property of ours, but it is a gift given daily and we are always amazed and grateful to be called yet again to personhood.
Far from a sleepy end to the summer, the country is reeling from mass shootings that claimed 31 lives in Texas and Ohio, not paying enough attention to an extremely deadly summer of violence in Chicago, having painful and not particularly productive conversations about gun control and about racism, and the government is rounding up undocumented immigrants in a way that leaves their children crying in parking lots on the first day of school. (Zachary B. Wolf, CNN)
Rouse Yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord? Awaken, do not reject us forever! Why do You hide Your face, Ignoring our affliction and distress We lie prostrate in the dust; our body clings to the ground. Arise and help us, redeem us, as befits Your faithfulness.
• Psalm 44:24-27, JPS Tanakh
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And here is one of the saddest stories of the week…
41 year-old Jimmy Al-Daoud was born in Greece and came to the United States as an infant. His parents were Iraqi refugees who fled to Greece, where Al-Daoud was born. Then, when Al-Daoud was 6 months old, his family came to the United States. Though born there, he’d never been to Iraq. He didn’t speak Arabic. He’d been in the U.S. since he was about 6 months old. He had no Iraqi ID. His family never sought American citizenship because they were poor and unable to pay for the expensive process.
And yet Jimmy Al-Daoud was recently deported from Michigan to Iraq.
Al-Daoud did not have any family in Iraq and was Chaldean Catholic by faith, a Christian group that has been persecuted in Iraq in the past. Yet, the deportee was put on a plane to Najaf, the Shia holy city in the south of Iraq. There is a sizeable community of Chaldeans in the Detroit area, and one of their spokespersons, Martin Manna of the Chaldean Community Foundation, said “There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety in the community. Iraq’s not a safe place for many of the people who are being sent back.”
[Insert comment here about the irony of many American leaders protesting Christian persecution.]
Now, you should know that Al-Daoud had problems. He had mental illness — schizophrenia. He had committed felonies, including domestic violence, disorderly conduct, and home invasion. Family and friends have said that it was his mental illness that led to his many legal problems.
Al-Daoud was also a diabetic, and although ICE said they supplied him with medication “to ensure continuity of care,” the deportee, who did not speak the language and had no place to go once in Iraq, took to living on the streets, was unable to access more medicine, and ultimately died this past Tuesday. His deportation was, in essence, a death sentence.
At last report, Iraqi authorities would not release Jimmy’s body to a Catholic priest without extensive documentation from his family members in the U.S.
Seems like in the end, nobody in this world wants him to be at rest.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes are wasted by vexation, my substance and body too. My life is spent in sorrow, my years in groaning; my strength fails because of my iniquity, my limbs waste away. Because of all my foes I am the particular butt of my neighbors, a horror to my friends; those who see me on the street avoid me. I am put out of mind like the dead; I am like an object given up for lost.
This Sept. 15, 2009 file photo shows a deforested area near Novo Progresso in Brazil’s northern state of Para. Imazon, a non-government group that monitors the Amazon rainforest, said Monday that the pace of deforestation has increased by 20 per cent in the past 9 months over the same period in 2018. (Andre Penner/AP)
Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. At the same time, keeping global warming to well below 2ºC can be achieved only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors including land and food, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its latest report on Thursday.
…Climate Change and Land finds that the world is best placed to tackle climate change when there is an overall focus on sustainability.
“Land plays an important role in the climate system,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.
“Agriculture, forestry and other types of land use account for 23% of human greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time natural land processes absorb carbon dioxide equivalent to almost a third of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry,” he said.
The report shows how managing land resources sustainably can help address climate change, said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.
“Land already in use could feed the world in a changing climate and provide biomass for renewable energy, but early, far-reaching action across several areas is required” he said. “Also for the conservation and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity.”
I encourage you to read the report. Follow the link above.
He turns the rivers into a wilderness, springs of water into thirsty land, fruitful land into a salt marsh, because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.
• Psalm 107:33-34, JPS Tanakh
• • •
The Pope’s perspectives on nationalism and “sovereignism”…
[In a recent interview, Pope Francis] talked about the dangers of surging nationalism and isolationist sentiments, saying, “I am worried because you hear speeches that resemble those by Hitler in 1934. ‘Us first, We … We ….’ ”
Such thinking, he said, “is frightening.”
The pope’s comments came in an interview posted Aug. 9 by Vatican Insider, the online news supplement to the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Asked about the dangers of “sovereignism” or nationalism, the pope said it represented an attitude of “isolation” and closure.
“A country must be sovereign, but not closed” inside itself, he said.
National sovereignty, he said, “must be defended, but relations with other countries, with the European community, must also be protected and promoted.”
“Sovereignism,” on the other hand, he continued, is something that goes “too far” and “always ends badly — it leads to war.”
When asked about populism, the pope said it was one thing for people to be able to express their concerns, but quite another “to impose a populist attitude on the people.”
“The people are sovereign,” with their own way of thinking, feeling, judging and expressing themselves, he said, “while populism leads to forms of sovereignism. That suffix, ‘-ism,’ is never good.”
Asked about “the right path to take when it comes to migrants,” the pope said, “First and foremost, never neglect the most important right of all: the right to life.”
“Immigrants come above all to escape from war or hunger, from the Middle East and Africa,” he said.
When it comes to war, “we must make an effort and fight for peace” as well as invest in Africa in ways that help the people there “resolve their problems and thus stop the migration flows.”
Concerning immigrants already in one’s home country, certain “criteria must be followed,” he said.
“First, to receive, which is also a Christian, Gospel duty. Doors should be opened, not closed. Second, to accompany. Third, to promote. Fourth, to integrate” the newcomers in the host communities, he said.
“At the same time, governments must think and act prudently, which is a virtue of government. Those in charge are called to think about how many migrants can be taken in.”
If that threshold is reached, “the situation can be resolved through dialogue with other countries” because some countries need people, especially for working in agriculture or for reviving their economy and breathing new life into “half-empty towns” because of low birthrates, he said.
•
God stands in the divine assembly; among the divine beings He pronounces judgment. How long will you judge perversely, showing favor to the wicked? Judge the wretched and the orphan, vindicate the lowly and the poor, rescue the wretched and the needy; save them from the hand of the wicked.
• Psalm 82: 1-4, JPS Tanakh
• • •
Let’s find a bit of respite at the Field of Dreams
Let’s conclude with a bit of feel-good news today, related to one of life’s greatest pastimes and one of my all-time favorite movies. From an MLB press release:
The Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees will play a regular season game in Dyersville, Iowa at the site of the beloved 1989 baseball movie, Field of Dreams, on Thursday, August 13, 2020, Major League Baseball announced today. “MLB at _Field of Dreams_” will mark the first Major League game ever held at the fan-favorite movie location as well as in the State of Iowa.
FOX will provide exclusive national coverage of “MLB at _Field of Dreams_,” airing at 7:00 p.m. (ET)/6:00 p.m. (CT). The event will be considered a White Sox home date, with the Thursday game followed by a Friday off-day before the two Clubs resume their three-game series at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field on Saturday. Information on the limited ticket availability will be announced by MLB in the months ahead. “MLB at _Field of Dreams_” will be presented by GEICO and be a part of the GEICO Summer Series. Later this month, MLB will begin construction on a temporary 8,000-seat ballpark on the Dyersville site. A pathway through a cornfield will take fans to the ballpark, which will overlook the famous movie location. The right field wall will include windows to show the cornfields beyond the ballpark. Aspects of the ballpark’s design will pay homage to Chicago’s Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox from 1910-1990, including the shape of the outfield and bullpens beyond the center field fence.
These chapters are far from abstract theology and are instead pastoral theology for the church at Rome. The questions Paul both asks and addresses are questions Paul has heard time and again in his mission, and the questions are those either of Jewish opponents or more likely of fellow Jewish converts to Jesus. The questions of Romans 2-4 are shaped for the Weak in the churches of Rome.
• Reading Romans Backwards, p. 115
• • •
Romans 1-4: An Argument with the Weak (2)
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 is a primary NT theological text about the Lord’s Supper. Philippians 2:5-11, the famous kenosis hymn, expresses some of the highest Christology in the NT. However, in context, neither was included in its respective epistle to teach doctrine. Rather, both passages are explicitly designed to give pastoral instruction to local congregations. The Corinthians passage is part of an exhortation for the members to practice inclusive love, generosity, and hospitality when they eat together as a church family. Paul included the hymn in Philippians to drive home their need to serve one another selflessly in a church that was in danger of schisms. Though both certainly do contain weighty theology, we miss Paul’s real point if we fail to lean into his pastoral intent.
This is the same point Scot McKnight is making about Romans. Long revered as the high water mark of doctrine in the NT, the traditional view of Romans as a systematic presentation of the ordo salutis (the conceptual order of salvation) for the sake of teaching soteriological doctrine misses the real point of the epistle, which is to encourage Roman Christians to “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7).
Furthermore, approaching the text in that way ends up misunderstanding the theology by universalizing it and turning teachings that had a particular focus into principles that are meant to apply to everyone in the same way. In this part of the letter, it is in Romans 3 where we see this happening most specifically.
As Scot observes, Romans 3-4 continues to address the group Paul calls the “Weak” — a group of mostly Jewish believers who were critical of what was happening in the Roman congregations. With the ascendancy of Gentile believers, less and less emphasis was placed on keeping Torah as an essential aspect of following Jesus. In fact, the “Strong” insisted it wasn’t necessary and were critical and unaccepting of their weaker brethren. This was a threat to the very gospel Paul proclaimed, which taught that God’s plan was to graft the Gentiles into the line of Abraham and form both Jews and Gentiles into one new united community in Christ.
In this part of Paul’s argument, he takes great pains to answer questions and objections that must have been raised over and over again, especially by Jewish folks, as he engaged in his mission work among the Gentiles. We won’t take the time to explore all of those arguments, for they are many and detailed. However, in essence, the point of Romans 3-4 is found in these words from the passage which is its epicenter — Romans 3:21-26:
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus… (3:21-24)
Keys to grasping Paul’s message may be found:
at the beginning and at the end of this text: “Apart from the Law…” (21) and “being justified as a gift” (24),
as well as in his repetition of the point that this is “for all” (22-23). This phrase reinforces that “there is no distinction” (22) when it comes to the “justification” and “redemption” Paul is writing about here.
Addressing the Weak, Paul makes the strong point that their right standing before God in the community of faith is “apart from the Law.” In the standard soteriological approach to Romans, this becomes universalized: “We are saved by faith and not by (good, meritorious) works.” Thus, what Paul is teaching here is sola fide and what he is opposing is works-righteousness. We cannot earn our salvation by what we do, we must depend upon what Christ has done.
Which is fine as far as it goes. But it is not really Paul’s message here. He is instructing Jews that their insistence upon Torah-keeping for maintaining one’s good standing before God is not compatible with the gospel. As McKnight writes:
Paul’s “rhetorical focus is not on Jews [in a general sense, who are promoting self-righteousness] but on the Judge [of ch. 2, who represents the views of the Weak in Rome] who claims redemptive privilege and who judges the Strong” (p. 120).
The “works” that Paul is discussing, therefore, in this section, are not general works of self-righteousness, but “works of the Law” — boundary-marking behaviors required by Torah, such as circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food laws. These reinforced the elective privilege of the Jewish people, locating them “within the redeemed people of God and Israel and mark[ing] them off from outsiders” (p. 120).
The message Paul gives in this section, directed particularly toward the Weak, also includes words that the Strong are meant to hear. The emphasis on “all” and “no distinction” is meant to include both groups under sin as well as in Christ. However, it is clear that Paul first and foremost wants his Jewish brothers and sisters among the Weak to grasp that Torah-keeping is not the heart of the matter when it comes to righteousness in Christ.
In reading Romans backwards, we are pressed to keep our eyes on the Weak and the Strong — that is, Jewish and gentile believers, not Jews and gentiles per se. We are pressed to keep in mind the Strong’s insensitivity to their privilege and the Weak’s judgment of the Strong’s moral scruples. This passage destroys the “privilege” of both: the Weak are sinners, and the Strong are sinners; both need redemption; that redemption will not come from Torah observance, and status in the church does not come by way of Torah observance or Torah nonobservance; and it does come from God’s gift — Christ on the cross, who secures atonement for all who believe, Jew or Greek. So, Paul is saying, “apart from works of the law,” to speak not to Jews in general but to the Weak in their particular problems with the Strong in the churches of Rome. (p. 212)
God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey,
Chapter 11 – On Pain and Suffering
We will continue our review of God’s Good Earth: The Case for an Unfallen Creation, by Jon Garvey. Today is Chapter 11 – On Pain and Suffering. In this chapter Jon intends to question the factual basis of the statement “most animals are fated to an agonizing death”. He begins by noting that it is the experience, personal or vicarious, of human suffering that generates concern over sufferings perceived to exist in nature as “evil”. Of course, human pain is the only form about which we can be truly certain, since pain is an irreducibly subjective experience. Yet the subjectivity of pain, he says, can play us false, and we can take for granted neither that our own pain is a reliable indicator of harm, or that other people experience pain the same as we do.
In Jon’s professional career he ran a district National Health Service back pain clinic. He observed that it is commonplace that the effect of mental state on pain was profound. A depressed patient felt pain more severely and an adrenaline surge could virtually obviate pain. Pain is also affected by nonphysical things such as culture — certain social groups and nationalities were unusually sensitive to quite minor sources of pain while other groups, like native hunter-gatherers, would endure what to us would be dreadful torments without exhibiting any signs of pain. So, he concludes, the subjectivity even of the common experience of human pain, confirms the warning of Alfred Russell Wallace (Wallace, The World of Life, p. 377) that:
Our whole tendency to transfer our sensations of pain to all other animals is grossly misleading.
Wallace theorized that specific factors in human evolutionary development made increased pain sensitivity a likely adaptation:
Lengthy period of infancy and childhood
Unprotected skin prone to injury
Use of fire
Increasingly hard and sharp tools and weapons; Wallace said:
… it is this specially developed sensibility that we, most illogically, transfer to the animal world in our wholly exaggerated and often quite mistaken views as to the cruelty of nature (Ibid, p. 379)
Jon then injects a personal note:
But before leaving the human sphere, I want… to question to what extent pain, even in our human experience, is truly an “evil”. There are certainly those whose entire life has been blighted by previous pain (one thinks of torture victims) or other sufferings like the trauma of war, of violent crime, of road accidents, or chronic illness. But for most of us, even quite severe episodes of pain are seen, in retrospect, as part of life. At least they can make us more appreciative of the more prevalent good times, and (despite some philosopher’s claims to the contrary) quite often can be viewed as enriching our life experiences in numerous ways.
Personally, I have (so far) been pretty fortunate in health matters. But apart from the common illnesses I have suffered very painful back injury (ironic, but also valuable, for a back pain practitioner). I have also suffered from periods of depression that, although not anything as severe as those I have treated in others, are not something I would choose to repeat. Most people I know have comparable experiences – the painful childbirth, the acute appendicitis, the crushing coronary artery thrombosis, and so on. But in a majority of cases, when those episodes have passed away they seem, in retrospect, transient and even ephemeral. I have no urge whatsoever to come before God’s throne and demand redress for my past sufferings, even had I done nothing in my life to deserve such troubles… and we must not forget that this book is written on the assumption that humankind lives in painful exile from God because of sin.
Jon then returns to Wallace’s argument that pain is an evolutionary adaption and therefore has evolved as far as, and no further than, it is useful to the survival of organisms. Quoting again from Wallace’s The World of Life:
…it is almost as certain as anything not personally known can be, that all animals which breed very rapidly, which exist in vast numbers, and which are necessarily kept down to their average population by the agency of those that feed upon them, have little sensitiveness, perhaps only a slight discomfort, under the most severe injuries, and that they probably suffer nothing at all when being devoured. For why should they? They exist to be devoured; their enormous powers of increase are for this end; they are subject to no dangerous bodily injury until that time comes for them to be devoured, and therefore they need no guarding against it through the agency of pain.
So in Wallace’s estimation, almost all aquatic animals up to fishes, all insects, probably all mollusks and worms, indeed most invertebrates, feel very little, if any, pain, thus reducing the sphere of pain to a minimum. Among the higher animals, by the same evolutionary argument, therefore, that small birds and mammals are generally less subject to injuries from falls or fighting than us, and so pain is likely to be much less developed in them. That leaves only the larger and heavier animals likely to benefit from (and therefore to suffer because of) well-developed pain sensation. Wallace also notes the evolutionary development of claws and teeth occurred to quickly dispatch the prey with a minimum of struggle, and presumably, pain.
Modern biological research into animal nervous systems and responses to stimulae confirm Wallace’s observations. Jon notes that the parasitism that so horrified Darwin usually involves the parasitized insects carrying on a normal life as the parasite develops, dying quickly only when the grown parasite bursts out. Regarding the higher vertebrates, Jon says:
These “higher vertebrates” constitute only around 45,000 species, somewhat less than 5 percent of the animals, amongst anything up to 10 million living species in total; it is a much lower percentage than that in terms of number of individuals. Before, we even look at pain amongst the vertebrates, the claim that “most animals suffer an agonizing death” is already completely discredited.
Jon asserts that the proportion of “sentient creatures” i.e. capable of significant pain that actually die in circumstances that would lead to pain is fewer than we’ve been led to think. Wildlife documentaries focus on violent animal death for emotion-stirring ratings reasons. Anthropomorphic scripts, musical manipulation of viewer’s emotions are the common currency. Dispassionate science doesn’t sell films or commercials. Jon makes the following dispassionate arguments:
Total mass of animals at the top of the food pyramid, the secondary carnivores, is far less than the total mass of the animals close to the plant source of food, the herbivores.
Most herbivores are not actually targeted by carnivores at all; most carnivores significantly scavenge to make up their diet.
The prey animals targeted tend to be the weakest, oldest, sickest.
Prey is dispatched relatively quickly with minimal pain and suffering usually.
The fact that the horror now expressed by scientists and other academics at suffering in the natural world, with or without considering evolution is due to a shift in thinking in:
There is a current preference for seeing continuity between animals and ourselves rather than a discontinuity due to our rationality and made-in-the-image-of-God.
Suffering is now seen as an absolute, rather than a relative evil, largely due to the relativizing of a once absolute morality.
Our post-modern age has elevated subjectivity into a primary virtue.
He concludes:
… I hope I have shown that our profound ignorance of what it is like to be an animal makes it supremely arrogant to accuse God of creating a world of extreme cruelty. The evidence does not in any way support it, and as Christians we should surely default to the position that God knew what he was doing when he created the world and called it very good.
An ancient Syriac document, allegedly recounting the instruction of the Apostles, enjoins: “The apostles further appointed: At the conclusion of all the Scriptures let the Gospels be read, as being the seal of all the Scriptures and let the people listen to it standing upon their feet: because it is the Gospel of the redemption of all men.”
Some years ago I suggested in a post that, just as the Jewish people consider the Torah of Moses to be the most important “book” in the Hebrew Bible, so Christians should view “The Gospel of Jesus” according to Matthew, Mark, Luke/Acts, and John to be the most important book of the New Testament.
This five-fold “book” of witnesses is the Gospel, and it is this “book” that is designed to be primarily formative for the Christian believer’s theology, identity, and calling. The NT epistles are secondary, built upon the Story told in these books. They show the outworking of the Gospel in the life of the Church and her mission in the world. The Gospels form the root, the rest of the New Testament is the fruit.
How well do we know the books of the Gospel?
How does the church emphasize their importance and the priority of knowing them and internalizing their message?
Orthodox Jews hear the entire Torah over the course of a year. On Shabbat (Saturday) mornings, a weekly section (“parasha“) is read, selected so that the entire Pentateuch is read consecutively each year. This cycle of readings culminates with a special celebration known as Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in the Torah). Conservative and Reform congregations may use a three-year cycle.
Traditionally, Jewish boys memorized the entire Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) from ages 6-12!
Liturgical Christian churches that follow a lectionary in Sunday worship read passages from the Gospels regularly. However, this is not as systematic or comprehensive as Torah reading in the synagogue.
For example, in the Revised Common Lectionary our church uses, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are emphasized in the triennial cycle: Year A – Matthew, Year B – Mark, Year C – Luke. The Gospel of John is read in part each year during the major seasons of Christmas, Lent, and Easter. The Book of Acts is not traditionally considered a “Gospel” and is therefore read at other times of the year, and only in portions.
While I appreciate hearing passages from the Gospels each Sunday in our worship, especially in the context of the liturgical year, I question sometimes whether we might not strengthen our understanding by helping believers better grasp the big picture of the Gospels as books. I am not sure we always “go deeper” into the unique emphases and messages stressed by each Gospel witness so that we learn and appreciate the Story of Jesus from the various perspectives out of which it is told.
I would like to suggest that churches should make learning the Gospels the primary focus when it comes to the content of their spiritual formation efforts.
In spiritual formation (also known as “discipleship”), our main way of shaping Christian identity, theology, and calling should reflect the emphasis and structure of the Bible itself. Since the Gospels/Acts are the primary narrative of the Gospel, we Christians should be immersed in them to the point that they become our Story. Our goals should be to help one another…
Learn the Story.
Learn how each Gospel writer tells the Story.
Learn the distinctive emphases each Gospel witness brings out of the Story.
Learn how the different Gospels show that Jesus fulfilled the Story of Israel as told in the Hebrew Bible.
Learn to know the Person who is at the heart of the Story and the different portraits of him that are given.
Learn to know how the Gospels proclaim “the gospel.”
Learn how the Gospels are designed to shape the community that bears Jesus’ name and continues to proclaim his Gospel throughout the world.
In my experience, which has largely been in non-denominational evangelicalism to this point, this has not been an emphasis in our spiritual formation. Our “soterian” Gospel (which sets forth a “plan of salvation” for individuals) has focused much more on doctrine, propositional principles, practical paraenesis (instruction for living), devotional piety, and evangelism. We have not been, by and large, people of the Story but rather people with a statement of faith, and a moral and missionary agenda.
Now that I have been part of a historic, liturgical Protestant tradition for some years, I observe the value of a more Story-shaped life and community. Observing the Christian Year (built around the Gospels and the main events in Jesus’ life) has a lot to do with that. This observance can only be strengthened by a deeper and fuller immersion in the Gospel texts themselves, so that the Story becomes the very atmosphere and ethos of our lives as individuals, families, and church communities.
Jesus-shaped Christianity will grow out of the soil of a Story-shaped Gospel.
The more we immerse ourselves in the Story and get to know the Gospels, the greater the impact the Gospel of King Jesus will have in and through us.
When I thought of the Incarnation, I have always thought about how God took on flesh. He could not be harmed and He could feel neither cold nor hunger, but He chose to become subject to all those miseries when He humbled Himself and showed up here, on this earth, as a tiny baby in the arms of a young holy virgin. When I thought of the Incarnation, I thought of Christ’s human body.
But in the Holy Land, I began to understand that the Incarnation means more than that. It means that Christ entered into time and space. Yes, He sanctified the waters of the Jordan when He was baptized, but He also sanctified these lands when He walked on them, when He suffered and bled on them.
God didn’t have to take on a body. He didn’t need one. We needed Him to take on a body — to stand with us on this actual earth, to speak with us, to enter into Hades and break open the gates of Paradise for us.
We need a Holy Land too. We need holy places. It’s not that God needs to occupy to specific points on this earth, but it’s that we need to make our offering of pilgrimage. We need to see and to touch. We need to travel to our churches on Sunday mornings, and to go visit monasteries and to venerate myrrh-streaming icons. We need to make an effort, to engage in a struggle, so that we can feel ourselves coming towards God on this human journey. Our journey is not just spiritual — it’s physical too; it happens in time and space. We benefit from the action of making a pilgrimage. We need it.
So many of the holy places preserved in Israel and Palestine are in caves, and it struck me that God wisely chose a land built on rock, so that holy places would be dug down and carved into stone. He chose a place where even after waves of conquerors and invaders, after the buildings and the churches were destroyed and in ruins, the caves would remain so that we would have holy places to visit. He knew.
On my final day in the Holy Land, I venerated the Anointing Stone at the Holy Sepulchre, saying goodbye as it were to God’s holy places. I thanked Him for the fullness of His Incarnation, for leaving us these places and being so present in them, so that we could pursue our spiritual journey in such a tangible way. And as I arrived home, I thanked Him for being here too, ever-present and filling all things.
“Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.”
• Martin Luther
It’s been a very interesting day. I can’t tell you much about it, but I can tell you something.
When a discussion starts about God, the Christian is not faced with the same choices as other people.
Most people can go wherever they want in the discussion. They can talk about “God as I understand him” or “my higher power” or “my church says that God….” and so on. Really, the choices are practically infinite.
The Christian, on the other hand, must immediately think about Jesus. Jesus from the pages of scripture. Jesus the light, the revealer, the image of the invisible. Jesus in his own words, in the Gospels and in the totality of scripture.
Jesus reveals God, and from there, the discussion can go on.
You can explore the Bible, or you can place Jesus into a moral issue or various cultural settings. You can apply what you know of Jesus to what you don’t know of God. You can pray, sing, preach. There are plenty of roads open NOW. But only after we come to Jesus.
It truly breaks my heart to hear, see or read anyone who is a Christian approaching the subject of God, God’s will, God’s guidance, God’s message—without going to Jesus and camping right there with no intention to move or be impressed with anything else.
There are dozens, hundreds of ways to avoid Jesus when talking about God. There are dozens, hundreds of ways to manipulate Jesus to a less than defining place.
Many of these are fun. Some have the approval of important and powerful people. Some are wrapped in scripture verses. Many are surrounded by books or endorsed by ministers.
But at bottom, Jesus isn’t defining the God conversation. So the conversation is on the wrong foot and making a wrong turn. It may not be worthless, but it isn’t reliable.
You can dress your opinions about God up in whatever language you want. You can validate it with experiences, signs and wonders. You can claim miracles, voices and confirmations in the mystical realm.
When the smoke clears, you’ve explored your own imagination or otherwise missed Jesus.
If you are going to think about God, go to Jesus and start there, stay there and end there.
This simple rule is too simple for the religious, the worldly wise, the power seeking and the proud.
It is infuriating to those who want to manipulate for money or distract for some personal agenda.
Jesus will break our idols, complicate our assumptions, overturn our tables and put himself squarely in the center of every question. He is the way, the truth, the life. He is the answer. He is the one way we think about, know, love, worship and relate to God.
Sunday with Walter Brueggemann On Telling Jesus Stories
The church must endlessly tell its Jesus stories, because in these Jesus stories, we behold the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth. The imposition of holiness does not happen in large, grand, religious, magnificent ways. It happens where a son is welcomed home, where a neighbor is honored and cared for, where a whore is loved, where a leper is touched and cleansed, where a crowd is fed, where a guilty man is forgiven, where a crippled woman stands up straight and laughs and dances. The claim about the glory of God in the life of Jesus is not mystical, supernatural voodoo, but it is the confidence of the church that in the life of Jesus, we see all that God intends and wants and acts and asks of us. It is so daily, so concrete, so engaged with hurt, so self-giving. It is the face of this one that dazzles with life-giving light and power.
A former pastor who wrote a bestselling book on traditional relationships has confirmed the end of his marriage, apologized for opposing LGBTQ rights and announced he is no longer a Christian.
Joshua Harris’ book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” which railed against sex before marriage and homosexuality, sold over 1 million copies and became a fixture in Christian youth groups after coming out 22 years ago.
But Harris now says the 1997 work “contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry,” and that he has “undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.”
Writing on Instagram, he added: “By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”
“I have lived in repentance for the past several years — repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few,” Harris wrote in the post.
When fundamentalists fall, they can fall hard.
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Questions of the Week
What does an invasion of locusts look like?
A man tries to catch locusts as they swarm over rooftops in Sanaa, Yemen. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
If comb jellies evolved before sponges, above, it would mean sponges had given up their nervous systems and more complex digestion. (F. Schneider/picture-alliance/dpa, via AP)
With a font made out of preposterously drawn congressional districts, of course!
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Another Question: Who’s in John Dillinger’s Grave?
This week I did a funeral in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Crown Hill is the resting place of many famous and infamous people, including Mooresville, Indiana native, Depression era bank robber, and Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger.
Dillinger, born in Indianapolis in 1903, became famous for a string of 1933 bank robberies as well as several high-profile escapes from police custody.
But his bank-robbing career came to an end when police and federal agents ambushed him outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. Chicago FBI Chief Melvin Purvis told reporters Dillinger turned to run while officers surrounded him.
Dillinger took three bullets. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
However, in the 85 years since, historians and enthusiasts have debated whether it was Dillinger or a doppelganger, citing inconsistencies between Dillinger’s physical appearance and the body in the morgue.
And now, Dillinger’s family wants to finally know for sure. In June, they obtained a permit to exhume John Dillinger’s body. The exhumation will also be part of a forthcoming documentary on the History Channel. Retrieving the body will be a chore, since the crypt contains two and a half tons of concrete in order to prevent grave robbers from snatching it. No exact date has been given.
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Love baseball, hot dogs, and ice cream. Not sure about this.
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This day in music…
On August 3, 1973, the incomparable Stevie Wonder released his masterpiece album, Innervisions, which Rolling Stone called “the peak of his Seventies apotheosis.” The BBC said of this record:
Remarkably, Innervisions is Stevie Wonder’s 16th studio album. It is the album that best celebrates his musical maturity and completes the transition from Little Stevie Wonder to the grown-up artist with an active imagination and burning social conscience. Coming just nine months after Talking Book, Innervisions is Wonder at the absolute peak of his powers, a 23-year-old man with the world at his fingertips.
After the release of Talking Book, Wonder said: “We as a people are not interested in ‘baby, baby’ songs any more, there’s more to life than that.” As a result, Innervisions is like a snapshot of America in 1973, seen through Wonder’s mind’s eye.
Today, enjoy this live performance of “Living for the City,” from this amazing collection of music.
Paul’s polemic in Romans 1-4 with the Judge/Weak arises only because the Weak believe the path to moral transformation for the Strong can be achieved only by adopting and observing the Torah. Romans 1-8 occur then in two blocks: the argument against Torah observance as the path to moral transformation, and an argument in favor of union with Christ and Spirit-indwelling as the true path to moral transformation.
• Reading Romans Backwards, p. 106
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Romans 1-4: An Argument with the Weak (1)
Reading Romans “backwards” sheds a different light on its beginning. If Romans is a universal theological outline of salvation, then chapters 1-4 might look something like this — as indeed they do in common traditional interpretations:
1:1-16. Introduction with thesis statement: the power of the gospel to save everyone
1:18-3:20. The whole world guilty before God
1:18-32. The Gentiles guilty before God
2:1-3:8. The Jews guilty before God
3:9-20. The whole world guilty before God
3:21-29. The whole world saved the same way — in Christ by grace through faith
4:1-25. Examples of how faith, and not works, saves
One more way of saying this is that he presents bad news (1:18-3:20), the good news (3:21-26), and how to get it (3:27-4:25). This standard reading has a clear agenda: it universalizes the soteriology of Paul. It also removes the message from the social context sketched in Romans 12-16.
What Paul has in mind in Romans 2 might not be as clear as the universalizing approach thinks, but reading Romans backwards sheds light on the sweep from Romans 1:18 through the end of chapter 4. In fact, our approach leads to a more rhetorical reading of Romans 1-4 that unlocks the door to reading the whole of Romans more pastorally. (p. 101)
So, how does Scot McKnight understand these first chapters of Romans?
First, Romans 1:18-32 is not a universal condemnation of sinfulness. Rather, the text shows every evidence of being a stereotypical Jewish prophetic condemnation of the most notorious sins of the Gentiles. As other commentators have noted, the language here is strikingly similar to Wisdom of Solomon 13-14 and its condemnation of immoral pagan idolaters. This is not an indictment of all Gentiles, or of all humanity, but of the worst excesses of pagan Gentile nations. Note that in 2:7-11, Paul can speak of other Gentiles who have taken a much different path.
Second, the rhetorical bombshell that goes off at the beginning of chapter 2 indicates that Paul included the previous condemnation as a way of turning the tables on a person who does, in fact, condemn the pagan world in such terms. In chapter 2 Paul does not speak to the Jews in general, but to a certain Jewish “Judge” who dismisses Gentiles simply as immoral pagan idolators. This “Judge” claims the privilege of having been elected by God and he believes that good standing with God means a life of keeping Torah.
This “Judge” represents the “Weak,” whom Paul addresses pastorally later in the epistle. (see this PREVIOUS POST.)
In other words, Paul cites a stereotypical Jewish condemnation of pagan idolatry and immorality NOT in order to prove the point that Gentiles as a whole are guilty before God, but rather to set up an argument with the Weak in Rome, who are condemning (primarily) Gentile believers because they do not practice Torah or think they need to do so. Without Torah observance, the Weak say, people will inevitably take the path of destruction outlined in 1:18-32.
Throughout chapter 2, Paul undercuts these condemning attitudes of the Weak as personified in this “Judge.”
He suggests that the Judge is hypocritical, just as sinful as the Gentiles he condemns (2:1-5).
He teaches that God is a truly impartial judge and that the goal is not having the Torah, but living in the ways that the Torah commends, something you can see, by the way, in both Jewish and Gentile people (2:6-16).
He even goes so far as to relativize the Jewish covenant sign of circumcision, the rite of all rites that separated Jews from Gentiles. Once again, Paul states that having the outward rite is of little value if it is not matched by inner integrity (2:17-29).
This is the beginning of Paul’s argument.
He is not interested primarily in building a case that both Gentiles and Jews are guilty before God in order to provide a universal teaching about how both may be “saved.”
His main concern involves theologically dismantling the conflict between the Weak and the Strong in the Roman churches.
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