The Journey of the Cross: V. The X-Change

Philippians 2: 1-11

Fifth Sunday in Lent/ 21st March 2010

What does it mean to live a cross-shaped life? That’s the question we’ve been exploring these weeks in Lent. What does it mean for us to live lives formed and informed by the cross of Christ? Jesus was quite explicit about the role of the cross, not only in his life but in the life of everyone who bears his name. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:24-25).”

Last week we saw the link between the depths of Jesus’ compassion that led to his passion on the cross, suffering with and for God’s people. To live a cross-shaped life means that suffering of some kind is never very away. It’s not just any kind of suffering that comes from living in a fallen world. A cross-shaped life is not glorifying in suffering. Instead, it’s the suffering that comes when we are committed to the vision and values of God’s Kingdom; it’s what we’re willing to endure for God when we confront the injustices of the world; it’s the consequence for attempting to resist everything and everyone in the world that is at odds with God’s redemptive vision for humanity. It’s the suffering that comes when God’s Kingdom comes up against all the kingdoms of this world, all the powers and principalities and forces, all the injustice, and sorrow, and evil that tries its best to undo God’s vision. The New Testament calls this force, anti-Christ. The anti-Christ is not the name of a person, but the name given to anything and anyone in the world and, yes, even within the church that is at odds with the redemptive purpose of God’s world. (1) It means being anti-God. Cross-shaped suffering is the kind of suffering that comes when in compassion we see the plight of God’s children and then choose to enter into their suffering, to stand with them, and struggle to alleviate their suffering.

That’s what Jesus did throughout his ministry because it’s God’s way. Jesus is the link between compassion and passion; they cross in him. The more we link the two in our lives the more our lives become cross-shaped. We saw last week that the word for compassion in the Bible (splaghnizomai) does not refer to pity or “feeling sorry” for someone, but it means to be moved to one’s guts, one’s bowels. (2) It’s a deep feeling in the gut. Jesus looked out and saw the suffering of God’s people and it made him sick to his stomach. He suffers with them. To suffer means, literally, to undergo, to receive. He participates in their condition and makes it his own; he shares their pain and makes it his own. And that experience moves him to act, to care, to alleviate their pain and suffering. We begin to see that what Jesus did among the crowds in the Galilee was intensified on the cross, receiving our experience and making it his own, receiving into himself our sin and making it his own, participating in all the suffering and hurt, undergoing the brokenness of our lives and making it his own, sharing our plight, our sin, taking it all into himself. Yes, he takes it all into himself, absorbing it all, every blow. Blow after blow after blow. He bears it all.

But Jesus doesn’t stay there. He just doesn’t sit with our suffering and pain; he participates in it and then gives something of himself to the situation. He acts, he moves us beyond that point either by overcoming it all and offering something new in its place, or taking our suffering and while not removing our pain does something meaningful, something creative with it. He reframes our understanding of suffering. He puts in a new context.

It’s very clear that the early church saw within Jesus something new and different. He showed that suffering can have meaning, for there was meaning in his death. “If the suffering embodied on the cross did not have such a powerful and creative [dimension] to it in love, the eye-witnesses of Jesus would have seen only his pain, misfortune or even his failure, instead of the embodiment of something new about God. Otherwise they would have dismissed it as only another instance of regrettable pain in a tragic hero.” (3) There were thousands crucified by the Romans in Jerusalem. Flavius Josephus (36- c.100) tells us that at one point there were no trees left in Jerusalem for the Romans to construct crosses with. (4) Yet they saw in Jesus’ suffering love and resurrection, the sign that something new has broken into human history.

With compassion Christ participated in human suffering in order to confront it, face it head-on, in order to judge it, redeem it, and offer in its place the healing presence of God. This is what I’m calling the exchange. Receiving one thing into himself, Jesus offers something new in its place. He takes all the sin and brokenness in the world – what the Bible calls death (which is more than just physical death) – absorbs it into himself, suffers through it and extends resurrection. That’s the exchange – and it’s powerfully reflected in the symbol and meaning of the cross itself. It’s actually the cross linked with resurrection, for together they have yielded something new into the world and into our lives through faith.

For people like Paul, for the early Christians, this exchange occurred in the life of Jesus, but it didn’t stop there. It didn’t just happen in his life. Because of the power of the Spirit of Christ at work in us now, this is also a description of the life of one who is, as Paul loved to say, en Christo, “in Christ.” In Jesus we saw how God participated in humanity and how his humanity participated in God. Right from the start followers of Jesus believed this same pattern, this same dynamic, this same “mind of Christ,” as Paul says here in Philippians 2, was available to everyone who is “in Christ.” Because we are “in Christ,” God continues to participate in humanity, in the human condition, in order to bring humanity, the human condition into the very life of God. This is the exchange.

This understanding of the cross as exchange is found in the early centuries of the church. We see it in the words of Irenaeus (2nd century – c. 202), Bishop of Lyons, writing sometime in the second century, “Lord Jesus Christ…did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring us to be even what he is himself.” (5) See the exchange here? Or as Athanasius (c.293-373) said in the fourth century, “God became what we are to make us what [God] is.” (6) This way of viewing the Christian life has always been more prevalent in the Eastern Church. They called it theosis, it means humans become like God. For them, following Jesus meant participating presently in his presence. They believed God was actually at work in them, doing something beautiful with their lives, shaping their lives to reflect more and more the glory of God. It’s why Irenaeus could say, “The glory of God is when a human person is fully alive.” The more a human being comes fully alive by participating in and with God, God’s glory is all the more shown. This approach is still central in Eastern Orthodoxy.

This view never caught on in the Western church, in either the early Roman Catholic Church or later in Protestantism, although you can find it in John Calvin (1509-1564). In the West the emphasis has been upon imitation. Think of Thomas á Kempis’ (c.1380-1471) classic text, The Imitation of Christ from 1418. The title alone sums up how many view what it means to be a Christian. How often do we assume that being a Christian means only imitating Jesus, doing what he did, trying to be good as he was, trying to behave like him. It’s as if we’ve set Jesus up as an ethical ideal or role model and have tried to emulate him, copy him, be like him. This view inevitably sets us up for failure, for who could ever attempt to be like him?

That’s not Paul’s understanding. Contemporary Pauline scholar, Douglas Campbell, argues that Paul’s theology “is no mere imitatio Christi! [imitation of Christ], for “God is not asking [believers]…to imitate Christ – perhaps an impossible task – so much as to inhabit or to indwell him,” to participate in Christ, such that “the Spirit of God is actively reshaping the Christian life into the likeness of Christ.” God is inviting us to participate in God’s life through Christ. For Paul it’s about cultivating the “mind of Christ:” “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

It’s here Paul offers this glorious hymn to Christ. What is the mind or way of Christ? What is the mind or way of God that we discovered in Christ? And what is that mind or way, what does it look like? It looks like a cross. As Jesus revealed with his life, at the very heart of God there has and always will be a cross. If Jesus is the fullest embodiment of God the world has ever experienced, then that means that Jesus on the cross is telling us something of God, of God’s way of being, of serving, God’s way of sharing and participating in human suffering. At the center of Jesus’ life was a cross. At the center, the crossroads of the Christian life stands a cross. Because in the heart of God there has and always will be a cross – the symbol of suffering love, of love that suffers for and with God’s people, the “furthest point which a God of love can go – that is, to the uttermost depth of alienation and estrangement.” (8)

Most translations of the hymn read, “…who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave….” Such readings make it sound like when Jesus was born he gave up part of his divinity, to take up the role of a servant or slave. It sounds like he did something that a God usually doesn’t do. That he chose to condescend to being human. However, as Michael Gorman has recently shown, the text can also be translated, “who, because he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to grasped, but emptied himself….” (9) And it should be noted here, that empty doesn’t mean divestiture or a limiting of divine attributes. It’s really a robust metaphor for total self-abandonment and self-giving. (10) In Jesus, God is shown to be a servant, who pours Godself out in service and compassion for the sake of the people. Why? Because this is who God is. Because God is the One who gives and serves and gives God’s life as a suffering servant, no doubt echoing Isaiah 53. Jesus served because that’s what a God does, serve like a slave. This is a shocking claim, if you think about it.

In Jesus’ day this was not the normal way to view the “form of God.” As a matter of fact, scholars have recently shown that this phrase “form of God” was a term used to describe the characteristics of the Roman Emperor, of an Augustus, whether Caesar Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD) or Tiberius Augustus (42 BC – 37 AD), of one worshipped as a god. For the Romans the emperor as form of god was demonstrated with “Piety, War, Victory, and Peace” – a demonstration of brute force and strength, the very opposite way of a slave. In the eastern section of the Empire, “form of God” was language that only applied to the emperor. For Paul and the early Christians to use this phrase in their hymn to Christ sets Christ over against the Roman emperor.”(11)

In fact, this hymn says,
if you want to see the true form of God,
if you want to know what it means to be a true God,
if you want to see how power ought to be used,
then look not at the imperial eagle of Rome,
but to the cross inflicted by Rome
which has now
by God’s grace,
in a surprising turn of events,
been given an exchange of meaning:
a symbol of death becomes of a symbol of power over death,
a cross which symbolizes God’s self-emptying in Jesus who gave in love,
and remained faithful to this love,
to the point of death,
even on a cross.

Let his life, his way of suffering-love and service, his way of compassion, empathy, sympathy, let this way, which is the very way, the mind of God, unfold in you. That’s what Paul is saying. This is not the language of imitation, but the language of participation – spoken directly to the church. Because a community that lives “in Christ” will be shaped by the journey to the cross; our journey of the cross is shaped by the story of Christ narrated here in this hymn. This is the cross-shaped life. Such a community does not simply remember and try to imitate a story. The world today is tired of a church that tries to imitate Jesus – because for the most part we’ve failed miserably at this. People have given up on the church because we have failed to yield what we say we believe. Instead, the world hungers for a church where people participate in the way of suffering-love, an experience of the present activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work in us now, forming and transforming us, sometimes in costly ways, and shaping us into a body that reflects the grace and justice, the glory and love of God.

This is what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to look like and what the world needs. We see glimpses of here and there in the world and now and again in ourselves and in this church. It’s because we’ve seen what God can do through the church that keeps us here, but there’s so much yet to be done. Our journey of the cross never ends. We are called to take it up daily. The vision set before us is shaped by the mind of Christ at work in us, forever enabling us to live lives shaped by his cross.

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Sources:
1. See John 2: 18 & 2: 22, for example. Polycarp (ca. 69 – ca. 155) warned the Philippians that everyone that preached false doctrine was an antichrist.
2. See Matthew 9: 35-38.
3. Hiroshi Obayahi, Agape and History: A Theological Essay on Historical Consciousness (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), 271-271.
4. Josephus in his Jewish War tells us during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, five hundred or more were caught daily venturing outside the city to forage for food. These were crucified until there was no more room for crosses, nor any more wood to build them (5.451).
5. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (c.180), 5.1.
6. Anthanasius, Incarnation of the Word, 54.
7. Douglas Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, cited in Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 71.
8. Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), .
Gorman, 9ff.
Gorman, 21.
9. John Dominic Cross and Jonathan Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’ Apostles Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, cited in Gorman, 18. See also Gorman, 19.

The Journey of the Cross: IV. (Com)passion

Matthew 9: 35-38

Fourth Sunday in Lent/ 14th March 2010

What does it mean to live a cross-shaped life? What does it mean for us to live lives formed by the cross of Christ? When Jesus invited his disciples to join him in the kingdom he said one must first take up a cross and follow. The God’s Kingdom is the way of the cross; the way of the cross is the way of God’s Kingdom. Cross and kingdom cannot be separated. To embrace one is the embrace the other. The way of one is the way of other.

Three weeks ago we saw that one way to approach Jesus’ cross is from the perspective that it was not the inevitable goal of his life, but the consequence of being faithful to his identity as the Son of God, and his commitment to preaching the good news of God’s Empire. Undying commitment to one’s calling will inevitably mean facing considerable temptation to give up, to find an easier way, to deny one’s identity. Commitment to God’s Kingdom inevitably involves some kind of cost, as we saw last week. This is the way of Jesus Christ we find in the gospels. While Jesus’ life and work were unique to him, something of the pattern of his life, of his journey informs and shapes the pattern of lives that seek to be in conformity and relationship with him; his life defines the template of our lives; his journey shapes our cross-like journey.

The word passion is often used to describe Jesus’ journey to and experience of the cross. It’s a term used for the events and the spiritual, mental, and physical anguish Jesus faced in the hours leading up to his crucifixion. The etymology of the word lies in the Greek verb paschō, meaning to suffer. We see it used in Matthew 17:12, “…for the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands,” meaning the chief priests and Pharisees (with parallel passages in Mark and Luke), and in Acts 1:13, “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them….” The Greek paschō was translated into Latin with the word passio, hence passion, meaning “to suffer.”

The implications of this are quite uncomfortably obvious for us. To live a cross-shaped life means suffering of some kind is never very far away. The cross includes passion, an experience of suffering. To suggest otherwise is to try to have Christianity without a cross – and there are far too many expressions of that in the history of the church. This might not sit well with us. As Protestants, we prefer, as my mother described, an “empty cross,” without Jesus. Ours is the cross of resurrection, we like to say, not of Good Friday suffering. This is true. But we need to remember: we don’t get to an experience of resurrection without first dying. The way to the empty tomb is through the suffering of the cross. This is difficult to hear, I know. I don’t really want to preach it. Heck, there are times when I don’t even want to live it. It’s not a popular image. This is not the kind of message that churches generally use to market themselves to gain new members. You don’t see this on church billboards. “Come join us and suffer like Christ!” What kind of impact do you think that would have for the thousands of people who drive past us on Frederick Road? This is not the message of the mega-church or even large churches. This will never be a message embraced by the masses. From the beginning this has always been the subversive message of a minority, when the church was indeed a tiny, struggling minority in the vast Roman Empire. That is before Christianity became the official religion of in 313 AD. Some historians say that’s when Christianity lost its soul. (1)

Now all of this talk about passion and suffering is depressing, I know, but it’s also dangerous when it is divorced from some larger purpose or meaning. Jesus’ passion, his sufferings were never just for the sake of glorifying suffering. This is not some kind of embracing suffering for suffering’s sake. Neither does this mean that in order to be more Christ-like one must suffer more. Jesus didn’t suffer on the cross because he had to. We could say it was his choice. Not because he wanted to suffer, but because the depths of his love for the good news of God’s Kingdom, a worldview that offered true justice and forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, and when – in compassion – he looked out and saw the desperate conditions of the people and how far they were from the Kingdom. Jesus’ love for God and for them led him to his place of passion. That’s what compassion does.

It’s when we make this link between passion and compassion that our lives become more and more cross-shaped. (2) The link is there within Jesus’ life. The passion Jesus underwent in Jerusalem had its origin out among the people, helpless and harassed (no doubt by Rome), who wandered directionless “like sheep without a shepherd.” On his Kingdom of God preaching and teaching tour through the cities and villages of the Galilee Jesus saw the people – the masses, the crowds – he spent time with, lived with, ate with the people, no doubt hearing their stories, hearing their hopes and dreams, their concerns for family, for children. He saw the abject living conditions of the people, he saw the way the Roman occupying forces were brutalizing them, he felt the burden of their lives, weighed down by heavy taxation. He saw the diseases and illness of the people and offered healing. They were helpless.

Matthew tells us, “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them….” Five times in Matthew’s gospel we find Jesus expressing compassion, often for the crowds who were helpless or hungry. Indeed, just before Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we find in Matthew’s gospel an account of Jesus healing two blind men who stand along the road, crying out for mercy. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus said. They said, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” “Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him (Matthew 20:34),” — right into Jerusalem, right into his passion.

So what is this compassion? It’s more than pity. He wasn’t just “feeling sorry” for them either. It’s far more profound that than, its meaning goes much deeper, very deep, actually, down right into one’s gut. The Greek verb Matthew uses here is splagchnizomai, and literally means “to be moved as to one’s bowels.” It refers to our entrails – our vital inner organs, stomach, heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidney. In Jesus’ day the bowels or entrails were thought to be the seat of love and caring. Although we don’t believe this to be biologically true, our language still reflects this understanding. (3) We know what it’s like to live from one’s heart; to hold to a conviction or belief that’s grounded deep within the core of our being. We also know what it’s like to be in turmoil or distress, to feel it in the pit of our stomachs, to become “sick” with worry and concern and feel it within. We know what it means when we hear someone has a “broken heart.” For Jesus, splagchnizomai, compassion, here is a deep feeling in his gut. He looks out and not only sees the suffering of the people he deeply feels the suffering of the people, deep in his gut, tearing up his gut. We could say, becoming sick in his stomach over the plight of God’s people.

This is a moment of suffering. Jesus is literally suffering here. To suffer means – the literal meaning of the word – is to undergo, to receive. Jesus receives their experience and makes it his own; he participates in their suffering and makes it his own; he shares their pain, shares their condition, and that experience moves him to act, to care, to alleviate their pain and suffering. Here we see the link between compassion and passion. And we begin to have a clearer sense of the cost involved in this way of being. And it begins to dawn on us that what Jesus did there with the crowds is intensified on the cross: receiving our experience and making it his own; receiving our sin into himself and making it his own; participating in all the suffering and hurt of the world and making it his own; undergoing the brokenness of our lives and making it his own; sharing our plight, our condition, experiencing it all – taking it all into himself – in order to bear our pain, to bear our sorrow, to enter into our loss and then acting to move us beyond that point by overcoming it all and offering something new in its place!

Compassion is excruciating – for Jesus, for God, and for us. The use of this word is very intentional, with crux, cross, right at the center of it. This is the way of Jesus. This is the way of the cross. But we have to go even deeper, all the way down into the depths of Jesus, all the way into his guts and find there in him the very heart of God, the stomach of God who is participating and sharing in the depths of the human experience. In the heart and stomach of the Son of God we see the stomach, the heart of God disgusted by the sufferings of God’s people, mourning over their condition, and wanting to save. It’s why Jesus could say, “Blessed is the one who mourns, for he shall be comforted (Matthew 5:4).” What we discover in the way of the cross is the way of God. This is how God chooses to be toward us as the God of compassion and passion. What was true then, is still true today.

When this way fills our way we know why the early church understood love as empathy and sympathy. Em-pathos means to put myself in the skin of one who is suffering, to try to understand it, to feel it, and act, either to alleviate the suffering or at least stand there and try to share it – even if it hurts. It means imaginatively putting oneself in another’s situation in order to apprehend or fathom what it feels like from their perspective, to discover what the world looks like from their perspective, what it’s like to be that other person, and then determine how one might act. And sym-pathos means, “I choose to suffer with you.”

For as the cross has shown us, “there can be no love without suffering.” “For suffering,” if you think about it, “in the widest sense means the capacity to be acted upon, to be changed, moved, transformed by the action of another,” or through relationship with another. (4) To suffer love means to be acted upon. Perhaps this is the greatest threat to love and compassion in the church and the wider world, for to be aware of another’s feelings is to participate in them, to be influenced by them. It’s the sharing of the experience that transforms – and here we see the great cost in living this way, because to live in our guts, to feel with compassion inevitably means we will be changed, we won’t be the same. To take on another’s suffering and pain, to participate in it with them, to stand with them or attempt to share the experience with them means we will inevitably be changed. There’s no way we can go to such depths without it having some kind of impact upon us. And that scares us – rightfully so. When we imaginatively put ourselves in the place of the people of Haiti or Chile and allow their plight to touch us, we act. When we imaginatively think what it’s like to be a child in Nepal and allow their situation to touch us, we act. When we put ourselves in the place of the homeless of Catonsville and Baltimore and allow their plight to touch us, we act. When we care for the neighbor who shares the pew with you, the neighbor who shares this sanctuary space and you allow their lives to touch you; when you reach out to a neighbor or co-worker, a child, parent, older-adult in need, allowing their world to touch yours, we risk being changed. Sometimes it’s all too much; the need is too great, too painful. So we stop reading the newspaper, we don’t watch the news, we don’t pay attention because we can’t, it’s too overwhelming, we don’t have enough energy to care or we don’t want to be hurt or – worse – inconvenienced by all this, we don’t get close, so we remain aloof. And many simply cannot go there or won’t go there without the grace of God. Some know that’s it’s only because of the grace of God and the bottomless depth of love that one is able to endure all things for the sake of the other, believe all things for the sake of the other, hope all things for the sake of the love (1 Corinthians 13: 7).

There’s an old Hasidic tale that tells us how [compassion can] happen. "The pupil comes into the rabbi and asks, 'Why does Torah tell us to "place these words upon your hearts"? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rabbi answers, 'It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words fall in.'"

A cross-shaped life begins again and again in the human heart. In hearts that on a daily basis risk being broken open with compassion toward the crowd, the people. When we risk the depth of feeling for the needs of our neighbors, when we share their plight, when we, as Paul said, suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15), when we undergo what another experiences, to stand, to participate, to share, to suffer, this is the way of the cross. It’s the way of Jesus and his people, because we have seen in Jesus that it’s God way of being in the world. It’s God way of saving the world, with us and for us.
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Photo: Georges Rouault(1871-1958), "Crucifixion"

1. This refers to the Edict of Milan when Emperor Constantine decreed Christianity as the religion of the empire. There is a tradition coming from Pope Sylvester (Pope from 314-335) that, “…at the moment when Constantine bestowed large endowments on the church a voice from heaven was heard to say, ‘Hodie venenum effusum est in Ecclesiam.’ ‘Today is there poison poured upon the Church.” Cited in Douglas John Hall, Thinking Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 202-203.
2. Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: “A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at a time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.” Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972).
3. After the sermon, Jeff Bolognese noted that this way of understanding “bowels” was still common in the nineteenth century and can be found in Charles Dickens (1812-1870), A Christmas Carol (1843). When Scrooge meets Marley's ghost, Dickens writes, "looking through his waistcoat, [Scrooge] could see the two buttons on his coat behind." There's a line right afterward that reads, "Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now."
4. Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (Welwyn: James Nesbit, 1968), 117, cited in Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 170-171.

The Journey of the Cross: III. The Cost

Matthew 20: 17-28

Third Sunday in Lent/ 7th March 2010/ Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper

When we began this journey we saw that one way to understand the cross (and there are many) is to see it less as the goal of Jesus’ life, than as the consequence of him being faithful to his identity as God’s Son and his calling to preach the good news of God’s Kingdom. We saw last week that if the cross is the consequence, the price we pay for being faithful to our God-given identity and calling both as individuals and as the church of Jesus Christ, then don’t be surprised if we’re faced (like Jesus) with the temptation to run the other way, to take the less-painful, less risky, less faithful course.

The focus of this series is Jesus’ cross, but it’s really more about our own journey of the cross. What does it means for us today to bear the cross? What does it means for us to have a cross-shaped, life?

Being faithful to God to who we are as children of God with a God-given calling come with a price. There’s a cost.

This is worth remembering because there is a very powerful propensity in the history of the church to try to have it otherwise; that is, to have Christ, the Kingdom, and the Christian life without the cost. This is what H. Richard Niebuhr (1909-1945) was addressing in his classic text The Kingdom of God in America. Niebuhr, one of the wisest of American theologians, describes the American Protestant church of the late nineteenth, early twentieth-century, influenced by the social gospel movement. Liberal Protestantism at that time believed in the essential goodness of humanity and denied the reality of sin; it rejected anything supernatural about the faith and therefore jettisoned the importance of doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the full divinity and humanity of Christ. It preferred to see Jesus as an exceptional human being, an extraordinary teacher who gave us an ethical ideal that we could achieve on our own, if we just put our hearts and minds to it, because we could do anything. Humanity could actually usher in the kingdom of God. They believed in a God who turned out – surprise, surprise – to be remarkably like themselves. They believed, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” (1) They were so optimistic (some would say arrogant) to assume so much. They wanted to follow Christ into the kingdom, but on their terms. They wanted the kingdom without realizing it comes with a price.

There’s something of this attitude in the mother of James and John who asked for a special place of honor for her sons when the kingdom comes. She wants the glory, the status, authority, power for her sons when Jesus takes over Jerusalem, but she doesn’t understand what the kingdom is about and she doesn’t understand the way to the kingdom is difficult and not for the faint of heart. “You do not know what you’re asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” Do you not realize there’s a cost involved? For the Son of Man will be handed over, and condemned to death, then handed over to Rome to be mocked, flogged and crucified. We can’t blame her for not getting it. The disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ message. It was illusive at best. It was a shock to their system (it always is). For the Kingdom has nothing to do with business as usual, it has nothing to do with status, authority and power-politics; it has nothing to do with personal gain and wealth, fame or fortune. God’s Kingdom of justice and grace is the opposite way of the world. It’s the complete undoing, a topsy-turvy, overturning of the values of the world. “For whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” To accept Jesus’ Kingdom way, to live God’s way means giving up our way. The Kingdom is as free as God’s grace, but to accept it will mean giving up our control and an end to life as we know it. That’s the cost.

To follow Christ without a cross, without a cost, is to dally in what Bonhoeffer (1909-1945) famously called “cheap grace.” Indeed, it was cheap grace and its false-optimism of the 19th century that exploded, literally, with the Great War in 1914 on the fields of France and Belgium. So much for sinless humanity. Many of the leading German theologians at the time actually signed a document supporting the Kaiser’s War. That act eventually led Bonhoeffer to write between the wars that “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” (2)

What is cheap grace? Cheap grace is when we turn Jesus and the faith into a set of ideas or beliefs, doctrines, even morals that we “hold,” but do not “hold” us, that we use for our own purposes instead of the purposes of God. Cheap grace is keeping Christ at a distance and not participating in his life. When we’re not personally, existentially committed to him., it doesn’t cost anything. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer said, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, …. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than probably anything else. (3)

In contrast, costly grace, Bonhoeffer wrote, here referring to Jesus’ parables of the kingdom, “is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him….Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it cost a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of [God’s] Son: ‘ye were bought at a price [1 Cor. 6:20],’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.” (4) Bonhoeffer believed this; he also lived it personally, existentially, and became a martyr in 1945, assassinated by the Nazis, thus fulfilling his own prescient statement from 1937, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (5)

Rare is the person called down Bonhoeffer’s path of discipleship. Nevertheless, walking with Christ means living a cross-shaped life. Perhaps for many of us the greatest cost in following him is associated with what we value the most – our egos, our selfish pride, our self-centeredness. How often do we say we want to follow Jesus, but do so on our terms? We say, yes, I want to be Christian, but in our own way, which usually means with as little inconvenience as possible. We say we, yes, we want to be part of the church, but to get from it only what we want when we want it, failing to see what it asks of us.

But to yield to Christ, to drink from his cup, to give our lives in service to God’s kingdom, yes, it comes with a cost, but it’s worth it because we are invited to give our lives over to something larger than ourselves, to something more important than fame or fortune or honor, to something, indeed, someone in whom we will lose ourselves, only to truly find ourselves (Matthew 16:25). The One who invites us to share in the feast of the Kingdom of God, to know him and to be known by him in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35).

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1. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1959[1937]), 193.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Collier Books, 1963[1937]), 45.
3. Bonhoeffer, 47, 59.
4. Bonhoeffer, 47.
5. Bonhoeffer, 99. Bonhoeffer was condemned to death on April 8, 1945, at a drumhead court-martial without witnesses, records of proceedings or a defense in Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was executed there by hanging at dawn on April 9, 1945, just three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

The Journey of the Cross: II. Temptation

Matthew 16: 13-28

Second Sunday in Lent/ 28th February 2010

Last week we wandered with Jesus in the wilderness of Judea as he was confronted by the Tempter. The temptations, indeed the entire experience in the wilderness can be seen in a positive light because it proved to be a time of considerable growth and insight. There Jesus discovered who he was, discerned the calling and purpose of his life, and left the wilderness for the Galilee all the stronger for it. He was born to proclaim the Kingdom of God, to announce God’s revolution of love, justice, and generous grace. He came out of the wilderness on fire with God’s power preaching and teaching and healing.

Because Jesus was faithful to himself and his God, faithful to his calling, he was courageous and had the guts to confess this power in the face of the enormous power and brutality of Caesar’s armies. This is what inevitably led to his death at the hands of the Romans. It’s the Roman Empire that crucified Jesus because it could not tolerate the threat Jesus posed by preaching and embodying with his life the Empire of God.

This is how we left things last week, viewing Jesus’ cross as the consequence of being faithful to his purpose, his work, his calling, his identity. Being faithful to your God-given identity and work comes with a price. The focus of this series is Jesus’ cross, but it’s really more about our own journey of the cross. What does it means for us today to bear the cross? We know something of what it meant for Jesus. But what about us, we who seek to follow him? What does it means for us to have a cross-shaped, cruciform life? (1) For following Jesus inevitably leads to a cross of some kind. It’s right here in the text.

In Matthew 16, we find this classic exchange between Peter and Jesus and these memorable verses 24-26” “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life.”

What does this really mean? First, let’s focus on what it doesn’t mean. The cross isn’t simply a synonym for any difficult task or demanding situation that we might find ourselves in. For example, listen to how Billy Joel uses this expression in one of his songs. Here are the lyrics: “We all have our cross to bear./ We all walk in darkness sometimes./ Though I know it don’t seem fair, /We all have our cross to bear.” (2) It’s become a turn of phrase, an expression basically meaning we have all our difficulties, so grin and bear yours. We all have our challenges. Here’s another example. There is a cartoon of a manager sitting behind his desk talking with a disgruntled employee. The employee is standing in front of the desk with his hands actually nailed to a large cross on his back. To which the manager replies, “Oh come on, we all have our crosses to bear.”
To refer to the cross in this way belittles its meaning and cheapens Jesus’ journey to it. It also depoliticizes Jesus’ death at the hands of the Roman Empire. His cross is not our cross. But there is something of his cross that shapes the way we live when we’re walking with him.

But it’s complicated. In this text there are at least two narratives going on. Matthew wrote his gospel to provide a theological rendering of the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. From our vantage, we tend to view the gospels as a kind of history (although they’re not). We forget that Matthew is also writing as a pastor for his congregation, for his community of believers trying to follow Jesus in an increasingly hostile environment. Embedded in this gospel, in almost every chapter, is the Jewish-Gentile tension prevalent throughout the first century. Do Gentiles have to become Jews before they can worship Jesus and be welcomed into the synagogue? Can Gentiles be welcomed as Gentiles? And how does one worship Jesus as Lord within a larger society that says only Caesar is Lord? How does one serve God’s Kingdom, God’s Empire, as citizens or slaves of another Empire? So that when we read Matthew 16 and hear Jesus talk about taking up a cross, it’s confusing. Is he calling for treason against the state, because only the state crucified people? And how could verses 24-26 have made any sense to the disciples at that time, prior to the crucifixion? What do you mean we have to be crucified? Peter’s resistance to the idea makes perfect sense; Jesus’ harsh critique seems inappropriate. These verses make more sense on the tongue of a preacher writing to his congregation decades after the resurrection. Matthew the preacher is basically saying that Jesus showed us something in and with his life: that to follow him inevitably means suffering and loss for a higher purpose. Therefore, don’t be surprised when people tell you otherwise and try to divert you from your calling. Just say to them, “Get behind me Satan.”

That’s what Peter and the other disciples learned in Caesarea Philippi. Jesus intentionally takes the disciples away from familiar territory, out of their comfort zones, to the edge of the Jewish-Gentile region, to this wild, very un-Jewish place. Caesarea Philippi was settled by Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) in the 3rd century BC, in 20 BC it was annexed to Herod the Great (74-4 BC), later given to Herod’s son, Philip (d. 34 AD), who renamed it in 14 AD in honor of Caesar Augustus (63 BC- 14 AD). It was a Gentile community, full of temples to many gods, including a colossal temple, an Augusteum, not far away, to the divinity of Caesar. During the Jewish Wars (66-70 AD), after Jesus’ life but before the writing of this gospel, Caesarea Philippi was used as the staging area for the Roman troops that attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple in 70 AD. There’s an enormous cave or grotto at the center of Caesarea Philippi that is the birthplace of the god Pan. It’s called the Gate of Hades (not hell, there’s a difference), the entrance into the underworld of the Greek pantheon of deities.

That’s where Jesus takes his people to test them, to see inquire after what the people are saying about him, and to challenge them to say, honestly, with their hearts, to answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?” That’s the setting where Jesus wants his people to make their confession. Not in houses of worship — it doesn’t cost us anything to say “Jesus is Lord” here in a sanctuary — not in safe places, but in inhospitable places. It’s here that Peter makes his famous confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Simon…for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” You are Peter, you really are a rock, and upon what you said, I will build my church, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail against.”

But then Peter quickly realizes what Jesus means by being a Messiah, what it means to be the Son of God – it means suffering and loss because people do not welcome the kingdom’s message. He tells his disciples that he must go up to Jerusalem, to undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the their day be raised. That’s when Peter interrupts Jesus and says, “Excuse me, may I have a word with you,” whisks Jesus off to the side and says, “Jesus, I have a question for you. What are you on, DRUGS? What are you talking about? This can’t happen to you. This is not supposed to happen to you. Never. For God’s sake, Jesus, you’re the Messiah!” He turned to Peter, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And that’s when we hear these words about the cross. It’s easy to understand Peter’s astonishment.

But why is Jesus so harsh toward Peter? It seems cruel. To be called “Satan” by the Son of God, one doesn’t easily get over hearing that! These are words that cut. Yet, we have to remember what is at stake here: God’s Kingdom. This is serious business. It’s a matter of life and death, for Jesus and for all those who follow him. Jesus was sent to proclaim God’s Kingdom, which will mean the undoing of every other kingdom that claims to serve God and God’s people. As God’s Son, this is his calling, his purpose, his reason for being. The meaning of his life was not found in his life, per se, but his life placed in service to something, someone larger than himself. And that’s why Peter becomes Satan, literally, “Adversary.” Because Peter’s vision for Jesus’ life would take him away from the vision he knew he had to fulfill. Peter’s understanding of the Messiah, was at odds with his life-purpose. Peter’s hopes and dreams for Jesus are no more than Peter’s projections of his own hopes and dreams for himself. (3) They’re self-centered. They’re not supporting Jesus in his vision, but trying to preempt Jesus’ vision with his own self-serving ends.

Here again, as we saw last week, Jesus is tempted to be something other than himself. Jesus it tempted to fulfill a different calling. Jesus probably struggled with this on a daily basis. When we think about “temptation” (if we think or talk about it), we often view it as being tempted to do something that we either know we shouldn’t do or want to do. We say we’re tempted by chocolate or ice cream, tempted by other cravings or habits that we know are destructive. They’re often temptations of doing. “The devil made me do it.” But there are also temptations of being, which are far more serious, when we are pulled away from being something or someone we’re not. There’s plenty in this world trying to pull us away from our calling, the God-given purpose of our lives. There’s plenty within the human heart and outside it that runs hell-bent away from the glorious vision God has for us and for the world. The Spirit in love draws us into a larger life; the ego, in fear, pulls back, toward diminishment, recoils. Martin Luther (1483-1546) spoke to this tendency when he defined sin as “the heart turned in upon itself (incurvatus se).” There’s plenty within us and without us that resists the difficult path, that resists the struggle, that resists the fight, that resists the hard work of God. (4) There’s plenty within us that does not want to give up control, that seeks after happiness and comfort and security, as if these were kingdom values (and they’re not!), and never tries everything of significance on behalf of God’s kingdom. To listen to the voice and will of God means not listening to the voice of our weak, fearful, narrow-minded ego. It probably means not being lured away by the call of the ego, or the tribe, or community, or the church, or even one’s family, one’s parents, or even one’s spouse. All these voices can pull us away from our calling. To be faithful to our calling means a change of mind, a change of perspective.

Peter’s understanding needs to be crucified, his assumptions about God and the ways of God need to be put to a cross, in other words, they need to die, they need to be given up, for something new, something far more profound and meaningful, something larger than the narrow perspective of the self. “Bearing one’s cross,” is more than just a figure of speech. It means a change of perspective is required, a paradigm shift. It means giving up one way of being in order to yield to something new. Peter has to relinquish his perspective, his assumptions, his life, in order to receive a new perspective, in order to receive a new life.

Peter is not willing to do that (not yet, anyway). Jesus is tempted by Peter to throw it all away, to go the easy route, to give up on the vision, to set his sights on what is reasonable and practical, go after something that has some guarantee of success, not failure. Peter has other plans. But those plans are not Jesus’ plans, not God’s plans. What do we discover here? If our cross is the consequence, the price we pay for being faithful to our God-given purpose, our work, our calling, our identity as individuals and identity as the church of Jesus Christ, then don’t be surprised if we’re faced with the temptation to run from our identity and our task, to take the easy route, to take the less-painful, less risky, less faithful course.

Is this your temptation? Our temptation? Is this the kind of temptation you struggle with? If you answer, Yes, then you’re in good company. If you answer, No. Then, why not?

This leads to a series of question we probably don’t want to answer. I’m not sure I really want to ask them. Since it’s my job to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, let me end with these sobering Lenten questions. And, of course, I implicate myself in these questions. They’re direct at me as much as anyone:
• Are we more susceptible to temptation when we are being faithful to our calling?
• When we’re paying some kind of price for being faithful to our calling?
• When there is a cost?
• When there is cross-bearing occurring around us or within?
• Maybe we’re not tempted because following isn’t costing us anything.
• Has being a Christian really cost us anything?
• When has being a follower of Christ really cost us much of anything?
• Does it cost us anything at all in our age?
• Has there been a cost for you? Perhaps for some.
• For this congregation? Perhaps.
• For the church in North America and Europe? We’re too occupied with survival, with saving membership and our institutions that we don’t want to lose anything, yet in doing so lose touch with what really matters. In trying to save our lives we love, but in losing them we find them.

But some do know cost and some churches do know the cost. For those of us who know the cost, whether individually or together as a church, my guess is we’ve also received a glimpse—if only a glimpse—of the grace and beauty of God’s Kingdom. Maybe we’re willing to make the cost, when we know something of its value.

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Image: The Gates of Hades, Caesarea Philippi, Israel.

Sources:
1. “Cruciform” and “cruciformity” are terms used by Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).
2. Billy Joel, “Cross to Bear,” My Lives, released 2005.
3. Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Murder in the Cathedral.
4. Quotation from bulletin: “To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” e. e. cummings (1894-1962), "A Poet’s Advice to Students."

The Journey of the Cross: I. Identity & Confession

Matthew 4: 1-11

The First Sunday in Lent/ 21st February 2010

This begins a sermon series leading us up to Palm Sunday. I’ve entitled it, Journey of the Cross, not Journey to the Cross. There’s a difference. We will focus upon Jesus’ march toward Jerusalem; we will be attentive to his life. But I want us to be attentive to our lives. During Lent we can remember Jesus’ journey, we can reflect upon what it really means for Jesus to die on a cross. I don’t want to take the focus away from Jesus, of course, but yet I want to take the focus away, to explore what it really means for us. Although Jesus might have asked his followers to take up their cross daily and follow him (Luke 9:23 & Matthew 16: 24), only Jesus was really able to go to the cross, to do what he did through his death. No human being could ever have accomplished what he did. Then what does it really mean for ordinary, sin-bound-yet-redeemed children of God like us to take up a cross and follow Jesus?

This series will be grounded in scripture, but it will have a lot of my own theology and thoughts thrown in (and I welcome your response, your questions, disagreements, or assent). My theology is very incarnational, that is I not only believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection were redemptive for us, but that the entire scope of his life was salvific, from birth to death to beyond death. His entire life becomes the pattern for human life. Discerning how he lived, with an intimate relationship with his Father, we discover that Jesus demonstrated for us what it really means to be authentically human. In his journey to the cross we learn something of our journey of the cross. His journey becomes a pattern for our lives. This leads us to the question, then, what does it mean for us to live a cross-shaped life? Or, to use a term Mike Gorman, professor of New Testament at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute here in Baltimore has coined – cruciform. (1) What does it mean to live a cruciformed life? For Jesus, but not just for Jesus, for us. As the truly human one, our potential humanity is contained in his humanity. He has the power to not only show what it means to live, but equips us through his Spirit with the power to live it.
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We could begin at the manger in Bethlehem, but I want to start where Jesus’ becomes conscious of himself, for knowledge is always rooted in consciousness, and that place is the wilderness of Judea. It is there we first meet Jesus the adult being baptized by John in the River Jordan. Jesus comes up out of the water and hears a voice that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” As we saw several weeks ago looking at this text and as we discussed with the confirmation class here around the baptismal font on Friday evening, baptism it is less about incorporation into the church (it becomes that later) than it is first about identification, one’s identity in God. “This is my Son, the Beloved.”

And then, almost immediately, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights, to the point of exhaustion. He was famished. Weak. Two things, at least, we need to note here. First, it is the Spirit of God who leads Jesus into the wilderness, not the Tempter. Second, the words of the Tempter, or the devil, are actually part of God’s larger purpose or plan for Jesus; kind of the most outward of outward bound experiences. The devil or the tempter has often been seen as personified evil that attempts to thwart God’s will. As a person or force that is at odds with God, battling with and against God. Leaving us with the question, will God win or Satan? But the Bible is never in any doubt, especially after the resurrection, that God is in control. Even Satan is at the mercy of God. We have to be careful we don’t project images of the devil that emerged much later, in the Middle Ages or from Dante Alighieri’s (c. 1265-1321) Inferno back upon this word in scripture. The Satan (literally, Ha-Satan in Hebrew) for example, in the story of Job, literally means “adversary,” and is actually part of the heavenly throne (see Job 1:6). In other words, Satan is actually on God’s payroll.

Yes, Jesus is confronted by the Tempter. We know about the temptations. But the temptations serve a purpose. Indeed, the entire setting for Jesus’ struggle and exchange with the Tempter serve a purpose. It’s in the wilderness, the desert, the wild places where the call of Yahweh is often heard. It’s the place where one is confronted with the question of identity.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is intentionally portrayed as the New Moses who will lead God’s people through the wilderness to a new promised land, to offer an-old-yet-new teaching. Where did Moses learn the name of God? On Mt. Horeb in the wilderness of Sinai. Where did Moses, the murderer, running from his life in the middle of no place, running from the law, stuck tending his father-in-law’s sheep, discover the true work and purpose of his life? In the wilderness. Actually, Exodus 3: 1-3, tells us Moses went even beyond the wilderness to the mountain of God. Once Moses and the Israelites made it out of Egypt, how did they get to the Promised Land? Through the wilderness. And how long did they wander? Forty years. In fact, God intentionally sends Israel on the long way home (see Exodus 13: 17ff). There was a direct road along the coast, built by the Egyptians. But God said go through the wilderness. For it was through the long journey through the wilderness that Israel learned to trust, absolutely, upon God to provide for their every need. (2) And, at the same time, the experience in the wilderness forged them into being a people. It forced them to a new consciousness of themselves that they would never have had apart from the wilderness. In fact, the parallel is so clear that every occasion the Israelites failed in their wilderness journey – hunger, putting God to the test; false worship – Jesus is faithful. Temptations deal with hunger, one’s ability to trust in God, wrestling with false worship. In each place, Jesus is faithful against the tempter’s power. (3) Jesus survives the struggle. Jesus is faithful. But we can go deeper.

The temptations serve a purpose. But so does the location: wilderness, the desert. There is a strong connection between the presence and voice of Yahweh and fierce landscapes, whether it’s Sinai or the Judean wilderness (which is a desert), or the wilderness of the human heart, or the wilderness of Golgotha. Yahweh seems to dwell and be revealed in these dangerous, potentially life-threatening, limiting kinds of places. “The desert will lead you to your heart where I will speak,” says Yahweh (Hosea 2:14).” It’s a place of desolation. It’s beyond the norm, beyond civilization, the opposite of home. Writing from the around the fifth century, Saint Jerome (c. 347-420), who knew a thing or two about deserts and wilderness said, “Nudo amat eremos.” The desert loves to strip bare. Actually, the desert is indifferent to human concerns. It simply doesn’t care about you or me. It’s in different. It takes you out of the center of your world. It means you’re not the focus of everything, because the wilderness really doesn’t care about you. In his book, Desert Solitaire, the American naturalist Edward Abbey (1927-1989) writes about his many years living in the deserts of the American Southwest. “The desert says nothing,” he writes. “Completely passive, acted upon but never acting, the desert lies there like the bare skeleton of Being, spare, sparse, austere, utterly worthless, inviting not love but contemplation.” (4) Contemplation.

When we are knocked off center, when we are brought to the edge of existence, when we are forced to contemplate our lives and the world from a completely new perspective, when we are taken out of our comfort zones, when we are taken out of the noise of our lives and forced to silence all the chatter that fills our ears and our hearts, then – and probably only then – can we begin to hear another voice, a deeper, stiller voice who calls out in love.(5) It’s then in the gracious threat of silence we are confronted with ourselves – and not ourselves alone (although that might be a deep fear, that we really are all alone). But deeper than that fear we are confronted with ourselves and ourselves in the presence of the Wholly Other, who waits in the silence and speaks from the silence. It’s from hearing that voice and living into what it means, that we come to see who we really are.

The Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness for him to ask the question, Who am I?, to come through the wilderness with an answer. What does the Tempter say first? “If you are the Son of God…” If you are…. It’s here in the wilderness that Jesus’ identity is to put to the test. Will he be faithful to who is and what God is calling him to be, or will he take the easy route? The wilderness is the place where we discern the call, the vocatus, our vocation, discover a voice and what we have to say. It’s where we discover who we are and therefore what we are called to do.

In his commentary on Matthew, Tom Long, is really insightful to see that the three temptations Jesus faced were not temptations of doing (that is, doing one thing versus another), but temptations of being – that is in each temptation he is tempted to be someone other than the person God has called him to be. These are temptations that try to pull him away from the voice, to deny the voice, the voice that told him, “You are my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.” Each temptation is trying to get him to deny who he is, to settle for someone less than who he is, to settle for less than the purpose of his life. (6) It’s a temptation to do gospel-lite.

Indeed, the Tempter is trying to beguile Jesus into making the nature of his life and his work too small, limiting the scope and impact of what he can do. In this way, the temptations Jesus faced are not any different than the ones all of us face on a daily basis. There are so many forces that prevent us from hearing the voice of our calling, that block the Spirit’s whisper, so many times the tempter wants us to deny or forget who we are, to deny we are all, right now, children of God. So many times we are tempted to set our sights too low, to settle for gospel-lite, so many times when we personally or collectively as a church risk losing sight of the breadth and height and depth of our calling, when we’re tempted to be “realistic,” or “practical,” or that most American of traits, “pragmatic.” (A nineteenth-century philosophy, pragmatism, that had its origins here in the United States, as the nation woke up for the nightmare of the Civil War and came to grips with the devastation and loss.)

Identity leads to action. Remember who you are, then even the gates of hell cannot prevail against you (Matthew 16:18). That’s what Jesus discovered in the wilderness. It’s probably why, for us, we find the wilderness so threatening and why we try to tame it with “civilization,” because we just might come out from it completely changed.

There Jesus discovered who he was and sought to be faithful to his calling. Jesus left the desert, went back to Galilee, and got to work, confessing, proclaiming the Kingdom of God. It’s Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom that stands at the heart of his message and ministry, a vision of God’s gracious intent for the well-being and healing of God’s people, a radical, disruptive vision of grace and love, of acceptance, forgiveness, and welcome; a radical, disruptive vision of the limitless generosity of God who loves to be generous; a radical, disruptive vision of God that places at the center of the kingdom a child, a child who, in Jesus’ time, was worth no more than a slave, with no status or power, completely vulnerable, who places at the center of the Kingdom all those without status or power or privilege or wealth and gives them a seat of honor at the joyful feast of the people of God. A radical and disruptive vision because it comes with judgment, God’s judgment and assault upon everyone and everything in this universe that attempts to thwart the Kingdom, that harms and destroys “the least of these,” everything in our lives that causes us to forget who are and what we are to do with our lives. This and so much more Jesus came out of the wilderness preaching. And because he was faithful to himself and his God, faithful to his calling, he was courageous and bold and had the guts to confess God’s power in the face of the enormous power and brutality of the armies of Caesar. This is what inevitably led to his death at the hands of the Romans. It’s the Roman Empire that crucified Jesus because it could not tolerate the threat Jesus posed by preaching and embodying with his life the gracious Empire of God.

This might be a new or different way of viewing Jesus’ death. It goes like this: the cross was the consequence of being faithful to his purpose; the cross was the consequence of Jesus being faithful to his work; the cross was the consequence of Jesus being faithful to his calling; the cross the consequence of Jesus being faithful to his identity. Being faithful to your God-given identity and work comes with a price. To follow him today means something of the same today. Our cross is the consequence of being faithful to our God-given purpose, our work, our calling; our cross is the consequence of being faithful to our God-given identity, both as individuals and as the church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps this is what it means to have a cross-shaped, cruciform life, we who bear the name of Christ.

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Image: Piedra Lumbre, Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico. Photo by K. Kovacs.


1. Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
2.Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43.
3. Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 35-39.
4. Cited in Lane, 23.
5. Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: With the drawing of this Love/ and the voice of this/ Calling/ We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.” T. S. Eliot (1888-1975), “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets.
6. Long, 35-39.

Enough

Matthew 14: 13-21

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 14th February 2010

There’s a deep logic in this text, a deep pattern. It’s a fundamental, even foundational insight into the laws of God’s economy. Sure, we’ve heard this story countless times. It’s one of Jesus’ most famous miracles. All four gospels include an account of this event. That’s how central it was to the early church. We can try to wrap our minds around how something like this could take place: thousands fed with five loaves of bread, two fish. There was so much food left over of broken pieces of bread it filled twelve baskets full. We can try to figure this out, but we would probably end up with a really nasty headache. There’s actually more than mathematics going on here; it’s more than a miracle story.

Pay attention to the verbs describing Jesus’ actions. After he ordered them to sit down (in order to allow them to be served, because Jesus has become a gracious host), Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed, and broke, and then gave them to the crowds. He focused upon God and then he blessed, broke, and gave. And then all were fed. Blessed-broke-gave. That’s the deep logic, the deep pattern, the archetypal undergirding of God’s kingdom. Blessed-broke-gave. This is the fundamental, even foundational law of God’s economy. I’m being very intentional here in the use of the word economy, as it’s rooted in the Greek word oikonomia, meaning, not high finance, but literally, “household.” It’s a word found throughout the New Testament. In God’s oikonomia, in God’s household, in the ordering of God’s people under the dome of God’s kingdom this is the way the world works, this is the way Christians live, this is the way church organizes itself: blessing-breaking-giving.

This is how it works. We bless, that is we give thanks to God for all that we have received, all the blessings, something so simple as fish and a piece of bread. We bless or thank God for what we have received. And because what we have received does not belong to us, it’s not ours, and because we have a responsibility for our neighbor, we take what God has given us and we break it – we fracture it, we break it up into two or three pieces or more, and then we then give it away. We share it. We pass it on. Then someone else, your neighbor or a stranger, finds himself/herself on the receiving end of a gift, that which you have shared. Thus giving that person occasion to bless God for what was received. And then after the blessing, they, he or she gets to break it, and give it away. And so the cycle continues. This is how God’s household, God’s economy is arranged. It all centers around thanksgiving. It all centers around eucharisteo, the Greek word for “thanksgiving,” or what Presbyterians call Communion or the Lord’s Supper. That’s what going on here at the Table of the Lord – it’s a sign, a witness of God’s Kingdom economy. We bless-break-share.

And when we live this way we soon discover there’s enough to go around for everyone. Thousands are fed. Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourner’s community in DC, an evangelical Christian who, because he is an evangelical, is passionately concerned about social justice, is really a modern-day prophet. He’s calling the church and the nation to give an account for the way it lives its life. In his newest book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall St., Main Street, and Your Street, he makes this very simple point. This is what life is like and can be like in God’s kingdom. “God’s economy, [God’s household] has two basic points: 1. There is enough; 2. If we share it.” (1)

Unless we share what we have, then there’s never enough for any one, which is precisely the point of this story in Matthew. Jesus wants his people to live from a sense of abundance, not from a sense of scarcity. Believing there’s enough and then sharing what we have, we find there’s more than enough to go around. It allows everyone to be fed. This is why the church has a rich history of being extremely generous – and why the church of Jesus Christ, I believe, should be one of the most generous institutions on the face of the earth. Because we know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of God’s blessings, of God’s love profoundly given in Jesus Christ. I/we are extremely grateful for the generosity expressed by this congregation to support Haiti relief, of the support for our programs and ministry, of the extraordinary way we finished up 2009, of the way we’re confident facing 2010. The more we’re aware of how much we have received, the more we risk breaking it and then giving it away, the more blessing abounds in and through the church.

And yet, overall, did you know that giving in and to the church nationwide is on the decline? I was surprised to learn this in Wallis’ book, even as the overall wealth of Americans has escalated over the decades, particularly since World War II. In fact, the highest percentage of giving to the church and its mission, with numbers adjusted for inflation, was back in 1933 – in the midst of the Great Depression. And we haven’t seen those numbers since.

This story in Matthew, which is really more of a parable, is designed to remind us, to teach us, to inspire, and equip us, to remember how God’s world is ordered – or should be. Jesus wants his people to live from abundance, not scarcity. There’s enough if we share it.

M. Douglas Meeks put it so well in his extraordinary text, God the Economist. “If the righteousness of God is present, there is always enough to go around.” (2) I lift up this quote because righteousness is at the heart of Matthew’s gospel; the meaning of this word stands behind the message of this text, it grounds the meaning of the parable. Meeks puts it clearly. The “economy of God…is the distribution of God’s righteousness.” Biblically understood, righteousness is not a moral term, nor is it a human characteristic. Righteousness refers to God, “the righteous one,” the One who does “steadfast love, justice, righteousness in the earth.” It’s an expression of God’s being, what God does. It can be translated as “God’s power for life.”(3)

If God’s righteousness – God’s power for life – is present in our lives, in the church, in the world, then this power will bring people alive, it will seek to secure one’s livelihood, one’s ability to live, it means the hungry are fed and the homeless given shelter, it means reconciliation and peace are known because that’s when human life can flourish, not in times of alienation or war. When this power for life is manifest within our hearts, within our families, within our communities and churches, we’ll know it because people will be given an opportunity to live, to thrive, to flourish. “There’s always enough to go around” because God’s intent is that everyone be fed.

This is the truth we affirm every time we gather around the Lord’s Table. Come eat. Be fed. Be filled. This meal is more than just a memorial meal, remembering what took place long ago. It is the shining presence of God’s promise to be with us and provide for us, which is why John Calvin (1509-1564) wanted the Lord’s Supper included in every Sunday worship service. It informs, shapes our ministry and mission. For example, I love the fact that we’ll go from here into fellowship hall for the Souper Bowl of Caring Luncheon, where we will break bread together around tables in Fellowship Hall, beautifully linking the meal in the Fellowship Hall with the meal we will share around the Lord’s table.

And Communion is appropriate on this Sunday as we ordain and install officers. I have a question for all the new officers to consider, as you make your way to the table. Indeed, let us all consider this question as we approach the feast. What gift, what resource, what blessing which you have received, do you need to break, to share, and then give away that someone might have a glimpse of God’s kingdom, thus giving someone occasion to give thanks to God?

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Sources:

Image: “Feeding of 5000,” Painting by Justino Magalona.

1. Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values: On Wall St., Main Street, and Your Street (Howard Books, 2010), 120.
2. M. Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 12.
3. Meeks, 94. “The oikos [house] of God is a gracious gift of God’s righteousness, God’s power for life. God’s gracious goodness gives enough, more than enough, for everyone in the household to live abundantly. The question of economics, will everyone in the household get what it takes to live? is referenced not to scarcity but to the righteousness of God which makes possible the sharing of the household’s store. In any case the work of God the Holy Spirit is to subvert any oikonomia based on scarcity. The reason for this is that scarcity as a starting point will always produce an oikos in which some are excluded from the means of life.”

Love Is All We Need

1 Corinthians 13

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 31st January 2010

At the risk of sounding like I’m channeling the Beatles or even contemporary artist Mary J. Blige in her recent hit single: All we need is love…for love is all we need. Burt Bacharach’s, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love,” is also running through my head. (1) In many ways, it’s really that simple and that complex. All we need is love, for love is all we need. We both desire love and fear it, sometimes at the same time.

Paul turned to love as the remedy for the many divisions facing First Church, Corinth. As we’ve seen over the last two week moving through this portion of Paul’s epistle, the congregation was plagued with all kind of divisions, disturbed by an assortment of moral and dogmatic sins. The place was a mess. There was a group in the church who believed they were specially gifted with particular gifts of the Spirit. And so there was this competition or struggle among them over gifts, who had them, which ones counted more than others, how to get them. It was really, looking back on it, very childish. But it almost tore the church apart.

In this larger discussion about spiritual gifts, Paul takes a breather, pauses, and then launches into one of the most beautiful and well-known poems in the Bible. He offers a hymn to love that continues to be sung across the ages, even by people who aren’t Christian. Paul says to the Christians in Corinth, all you need is love because love is all you need. Love is lifted up as the solution to the conflict. But if it were really that simple, then the church throughout its long history would be a far more accepting, understanding, and loving place. As with most things pertaining to the gospel, it’s complicated, complex.

Part of the problem is the way Christians have come to think of love. Perhaps the first thing we should do is retrieve this entire love chapter back from public domain. It’s our text and not the domain of the greeting card industry, for example. I wish there was a way to copyright the text, to make it the domain of the church, prohibit its use as tattoos, on posters, plaques, coffee mugs, or any other form of Christian kitsch, or on greeting cards particularly cards celebrating marriage or Valentine’s Day. That’s what we most often associate with this text, with romantic love. And of course it’s been read at countless weddings across the ages, maybe even at your wedding or someone you know. One of my good friends, Tom Sheffield, a Presbyterian minister who served in New Jersey with me said that after one wedding in which he read 1 Corinthians, a guest going out the door said, “That was really beautiful. Did you write it yourself?”

In some ways, it makes the perfect text for a wedding, the way it shapes what a marriage should and can be like. Yet, it’s overused. Plus, this isn’t a marriage text; Paul had no vision of it being used in a wedding ceremony, and he certainly did not understand all of his references to love as having anything to do with what we might call romantic love. Right after Paul finishes this poem he continues to talk about spiritual gifts. So, we have to be careful not to decontextualize the text and make it into something it’s not.

So what is Paul trying to say to his church? Of course, the answer is contained in the Greek, which has three words for the one English word for love. There was philos – love of friendship; there was eros – sexual love, or better desire; and there was agape – a rarely used word adopted by the early church to summarize Christian living because it means selfless or sacrificial kind of love. This is not to say that a Christian only loves agapeically (Yes, this is a word, a theological word. Theologians love to make up words.), with no place for desire, sexual love, or friendship. All three matter. Every time love is mentioned to this church in conflict, the Greek reads agape.

It’s the experience of agape that Paul turns to as the remedy for the problems facing Corinth. Because while eros and philos are important, it is agape that actually forms the church of Jesus Christ. It’s agape that forms the body of Christ. Because Jesus was the fullest embodiment of agape, agape emanates from the body of Christ the church. It’s the heart-beat of the congregation, it’s what sets the pulse and rhythm of this living, breathing body we call the church.

What is agape? First, it’s not all about feelings, the way romantic love is. In some ways, feelings have very little to do with it. This kind of love is a choice, not necessarily based on how one feels on a given day. But a choice to do what? Yes, it’s selfless love – choosing to putting others first over your own needs and wishes. Yes, it’s sacrificial love, making sacrifices for the sake of the other. There are plenty of people who are really good at putting the needs of others first, who make all kind of sacrifices for the other (sometimes for the wrong reasons). These people might be celebrated for the sacrifices and even selflessness they embody, but it’s not necessarily love. There is a dimension of love here. But is there anything distinctively Christian about it? There are plenty of Muslim mothers in the world who makes all kinds of sacrifices for their children, who put their family’s needs ahead of her own.

We have to go a little deeper and remember something one would think would be very obvious to us, but, I think, has been sadly neglected when we talk about Christian love. If Christian love is the kind of love Jesus embodied in his life and calls his followers to embody, then we must say at some level Christian love means choosing to suffer for the sake of the other. I’m not talking about some kind of masochistic obsession. It’s not intentional self-flagellation (which has a long history on the church). Jesus demonstrated with his life that: “there can be no love without suffering.” Contemporary Paul Fiddes offers this powerful summary of love and suffering. “[For] suffering in the widest sense means the capacity to be acted upon, to be changed, moved, transformed by the action of, or the reality of another.” (2)

To suffer means, literally, to undergo, to bear, to permit, to allow. It means, at some level, to be moved, to be acted upon by the experiences of the other. Love means a sharing of experience and when we risk the sharing of another’s experience we also risk being changed, moved, impacted in our own lives. It bears all things experienced by another, it believes all things believed by another, hopes all things hoped by another, endures all things endured by another. We suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice (1 Corinthian 12:26). And when we choose to put ourselves in the lives of others, when we risk empathically putting ourselves in the lives of those around us, when we wonder what it must feel like for them, when we risk that kind of imaginative wondering of what it’s like to be another, something happens – we are acted upon by their experience and in a moment or slowly over a lifetime, we are changed, we are moved, and maybe even transformed by what we share and experience together.

This is a different kind of love – when we choose, risk getting close to another, undergo another’s experience, to care for their needs, to share hopes and sorrows, we are acted upon and there’s always the possibility that we will be changed. And because we resist change, there’s a part of us that doesn’t want to be acted upon, which means we withhold love. We resist love because we don’t want to be change. And sometimes that fear is so great that we don’t get close to another human being, we build and maintain walls that keep us far apart.

But once you start wondering what it’s like for another human being to exist – particularly if that person scares you or what she represents, if that person raises all kinds of fears and anxieties in you, even if it’s someone you really despise, or if that person is homeless and really smells, makes you uncomfortable, whether it’s an orphaned child in Haiti, a couple going through a rough patch or on the verge of divorce, the lost, the confused, the sick, the dying – then there’s the possibility that such a consideration will change you. For once we allow ourselves to be acted upon, literally or imaginatively participating in the experience of another, then inevitably our actions change. If we stay with this posture long enough we just might find ourselves become more accepting or forgiving. We just might find ourselves suddenly becoming more patient (1 Cor. 13:4), maybe even kind (1 Cor. 13:4). We might suddenly find ourselves holding back our agenda or opinions and not insisting on our own way (1 Cor. 13:5). May we stop being irritable or irritating to others and give up being resentful and jealous and maybe even fearful (1 Cor. 13:5). We stop competing with each other – in Paul’s context, you stop worrying about gifts and focus on the other – we find in the other a fellow-member of the body of Christ.

Do you see how agape – unlike philos or eros – builds up the church? Because through it we build community, it draws people together. Through it we build one another up – and then the concrete actions a particular community makes are reflective of this deeper desire to really love one another, to get close enough to each other that we really know the suffering of another, be touched by it, and may be so moved to do something about it, if only to just dwell with the suffering of another so she, so he know they’re not alone. Or to get close enough to each other that we really know another’s joy, learn what makes us tick, what we’re passionate about, and share in making sure these joys and hopes and passions are honored and protected.

As you read over the reports to the Annual Meeting this morning, just revel in how much we have and are accomplishing together as a church. Christ’s love is in this place, our capacity to suffer with and for one another and for the world, are reflected in the concrete actions we have taken this past year. Love is a choice. These reports reflect our choices. Pay attention to all of the verbs in the report. All of the activity rotates around the desire to be a church that embodies Christ’s love.

It’s all there in our actions: in mission, in outreach, in worship, in our care and improvement of the facilities, in education for all ages, our counseling center, in acts of peace and justice, in tangible and intangible ways, a unique kind of love permeates all that we do. It’s there, especially in the deacons work: 221 visits; 215 phone calls; 684 cards/notes. And all of our financial resources and gifts, all of our various income streams allow us to do this amazing work, even in an enormously challenging economy. The work of the Vision Task Force will, no doubt, celebrate who are and help us deepen our ability to risk the kind of love that even more reflects Christ’s presence in us and among us – because this is what the world really needs from us.

This, Paul tells us, is what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ. It’s this simple and this complex. It’s the vision and work entrusted to us. It’s what we’re called to. It’s about love in action.

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Sources:
1. Beatles, “All You Need is Love,” (1967), written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney; Mary J. Blige, “Love Is All We Need,” (2004). Burt Bacharach, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love,” (1965).
2. Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 171.