Jason Micheli's Blog, page 102

Your Good Works aren’t for God; They’re for your Neighbor

Sunday’s lectionary epistle is from Galatians 5, an oft-misunderstood and frequently misapplied text.

Just to make it clear at the get-go: The fruit of the Spirit are for your neighbor. 

     When you hear Paul’s list as Law, you think that this is prescription for who you must be and what you must do in order to be right before God. But the Gospel is that Christ by his obedience has fulfilled all the righteousness that the Law requires of you. 

     He’s fulfilled the demands of the Law for you. And he bore all your failures to follow the Law upon the cross. Because of Jesus Christ, though you are not, God reckons you as righteous. God credits Christ’s righteousness to you as though it were your own. 

     The Law, Paul has said, no longer has any power to condemn you. 

     There is now, Paul says in Romans, no condemnation for those who are in Christ and to whom his righteousness has been imputed. 

     Your sins are forgiven, once for all. You are fit for heaven just as you are: impatient and unkind, frequently faithless, and often harsh and out of control. You are Christ’s Beloved by faith and all that he has is yours now. 

     Every work of faith has already been done for you. 

     As gift. 

     And its yours by faith not by works. No work you do, no fruit you yield, adds anything to what Christ has already done for you. Everything. He’s done everything already.

     Therefore- 

     God’s not counting. God’s forgotten how to count.

     The God who no longer counts your trespasses isn’t counting your good works either (thank God).
God’s neither a score-keeper nor a fruit counter. 

The Gospel is that you are justified in Christ alone by grace alone through faith. Alone.
Ergo-
The fruit of the Gospel is not for your justification. It’s for your neighbor.

     It’s a community garden the Spirit is growing in you. 

     God doesn’t need your love or your peace or your patience. God certainly doesn’t need your generosity. God doesn’t need any of them, but your neighbor does. 

     I mean, Paul’s repeated it like 100 times thus far: For freedom Christ has set you free. 

     Christ didn’t set you free for fruit. 
Christ freed you for freedom. 
Not for a return on his investment. 
Christ freed you for freedom. 
Not so you can clean yourself up and get your act together. 

     Christ freed you for freedom. 

     Not so you can go out and earn back what he paid for you. 

     And not so you can build a Kingdom only he can bring. 

     Paul’s not blinking and he’s not BS-ing.

     For freedom Christ has set you free. 

     There’s no one else you have to be before God. And there’s nothing else you have to do for God. 

     But for the sake of your neighbor…

     God will yet make you loving and gentle and joyous. 

     You see, the question that the fruit of the Spirit should provoke in you is NOT “What must I do now that God has saved me?” 

     No, the question the fruit of the Spirit should lead you to ask is this one: “What work is God doing in me and through me-in spite of sinful me- for the sake of my neighbor?” And the answer to that question can only come to us by the same route our justification comes: by faith alone. 

      The fruit of the Spirit teach us that not only are you justified by faith apart from your works, very often you’re justified by faith apart from your everyday experience. 

     By faith apart from your feelings.

     Forget Christmas and the resurrection, in no small part, what it means to have faith is to believe about you what your feelings can’t seem to corroborate. 

     The biggest obstacle to faith isn’t science- only an idiot would think that- the biggest obstacle to faith is your mirror. 

     I know it about a whole lot of you. Surely you know it about you too. 

     You’re not always kind or patient or generous. 

     Yet the Gospel promises and the Gospel invites you to believe that the Holy Spirit is at work like a patient Gardener to yield in you and harvest from you kindness and patience and generosity. 

     And that’s an even bigger leap of faith than it sounds because because the word Paul uses for ‘fruit’ in Greek is singular. 

     As in, it’s all one gift: Love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and all the rest.

     God’s working all of it, every one of them, in you. 

     Even though you might feel at best you have only a few of them. 

    God’s working all of them, every one of them, in you. 

     Which makes the Spirit’s work in you is as mysterious and invisible as what the Spirit does to water and wine and bread and the word. 

     The fruit of the Spirit is a matter of faith not feeling. 

     By your baptism in to his death and resurrection, you are in Jesus Christ. 

     You are. 

     No ifs, ands, or buts. Nothing else is necessary. 

     And if you are in Christ, then the Spirit is at work in you. 

     No exceptions. No conditions. No qualifications. 

     No matter what your life looks like

     No matter what you see when you look into the mirror

     No matter how up and down, there and back again, is your faith 

     No matter how bare feel your basket to be.

     If you are in Christ, Christ’s Spirit is in you. 

     And the pardon of God is powerful to produce in you what your eyes cannot see and what your feelings cannot confirm.  

     God works in mysterious ways, we say all the time without realizing each of us who are in Jesus Christ are one of those mysteries. 

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The opposite of our vice is the vine of which we are but the branches

The lectionary epistle reading this coming Sunday is from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, easily one of the most important books of the New Testament. Galatians 5, however, no matter it’s cross-stitched popularity, can prove quite problematic if it’s abstracted from the larger context of the letter.

When we hear Paul’s list in Galatians 5 as telling us who we should be or what we ought to do we replicate the Galatian error. In Paul’s terms, we twist this from Gospel back into Law: As a Christian, you should be generous. As a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, you ought to be patient and kind. Become more gentle and joy-filled!  

     That way of hearing turns this list into the Law. 

     This list is not the Law. 

     It is descriptive; it is not prescriptive. 

     It’s proclamation; it’s not exhortation. 

     They are indicatives. They are not imperatives. 

     Paul says: “The fruit of the Spirit is patience.” 

     Paul does not say: “Become more patient.” 

     To turn the fruit of the Spirit into aspirations or expectations of who you will be or what you will do as a Christian is to stumble back into the Law just like the Galatians.

     As Paul said earlier, if the Law is in any way necessary for us to follow then Jesus Christ died for absolutely no reason. 

     To hear this list as goals or, worse, a code of conduct is to hear it as Law, and the Law, Paul says, always accuses, reminding you of who you’re not, what you’re lacking, how inadequate and imperfect and incomplete you are. As Law, this list just reinforces the message you see and hear in ads 3,000 times a day: You’re not good enough. 

     If it’s Law then this just accuses us because there’s always more money you could’ve left in the plate, there’s always someone for whom you have neither patience nor kindness, there’s always days- if you’re like me, whole weeks even- when you have no joy. 

     But this list is not Law and your lack of joy or gentleness does not make you an incomplete or inauthentic Christian. 

     Because notice- 

     After Paul describes the works of the flesh, the works we do—
Paul doesn’t pivot to our ‘works of faithfulness.’ 
Paul doesn’t say ‘the works of the flesh are these…but the works of faith are these…’ 

     No, he changes the voice completely. 

He shifts from the active voice to a passive image: fruit.

     He says Fruit of the Spirit not Works of Faith. 

     You see, the opposite of our vice isn’t our virtue. The opposite of our vice is the vine of which we are but the branches. 

     When Paul speaks of our life lived in light of the Gospel, he shifts to a passive image. 

     What you do not hear in any vineyard is the sound of anyone’s effort. 

     Except the Gardener. 

     Fruit do not grow themselves; fruit are the byproduct of a plant made healthy. 

     To think that you’re responsible for cultivating joy and kindness in your life now that you’re a Christian is to miss Paul’s entire point- his point that, apart from Christ’s bleeding and dying for you, you are dead in your sins. 

     Apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ you are a dead plant, but by your baptism you have been made alive such that now in you and through you the Holy Spirit can grow fruit. 

     This list is not the Law because the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of the Gospel. It’s not fruit you gotta go get or do. It’s passive. It’s not what you do but what the pardon of God produces in you in spite of still sinful you. 

     In quantifying, life-hacking culture of constant self-improvement, this passive image of fruit might be the most counter-cultural part of Christianity. 

     It’s counter to much of Christian culture too. 

     On the Left and the Right, so much of Christianity nowadays is just another version of what’s on your Fitbit.
It’s all about behavior modification. 

     But what Paul is getting at here in his list is not the Law. It’s not about you becoming a better you. Tomato plants do not have agency. It’s not about you becoming a better you. It’s about God making you new. Joy, gentleness, peace and patience- these are not the attributes by which you work your way to heaven. 

     This is the work heaven is doing in you here on earth. 

   

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Scripture and Sexuality Study— Session Four: The Clobber Passages and the (Non-Binary) Creation Story

We’re doing a church-wide Bible study on Scripture and Sexuality in my congregation this summer. In addition to the crowd at church, literally thousands have downloaded the class notes or audio. It’s encouraging to see so many people from so many viewpoints earnestly want to learn.

THE CLOBBER PASSAGES AND CREATION (AKA: “THE GOOD STUFF”)

Where We Are

Last week, having solidified our understanding of Bible reading as a communal enterprise, we started to talk about sexuality through a positive, substantive understanding of marriage and its theological purpose:  to reflect the mutual joy and vulnerability that constitutes the life of the Trinity. 

And Now… the Good Stuff

After three weeks of re-learning how to read scripture, I know you are all anxious to get to the texts in contention. The day has finally arrived.  The “clobber passages” are finally here.  Just by the name, we must note the violence these passages have done, not only to certain LGBT people, but to the Church as a whole.  The “clobber passages” have done harm to the body of Christ called the Church not only because we throw them at each other with such disdain for the other, but because when we do so, we resist and reject the idea that reading the Bible is a Churchwide enterprise for the purpose of discernment, not destruction.

That is, when we read these passages and (1) take them out of context, (2) use them to hurt one another, and (3) refuse to open ourselves to any interpretation other than the one we supposedly conclude on our own, we preclude God from working through the process of discernment.  Like David Fitch told us a few weeks ago, such actions are the simple reiterations of cultural antagonisms.  

Thus, the fact that we have even coined the term “clobber passages” belies our captivity to the ideology of the world, and the need for the freedom Christ’s grace provides.  Before we even begin, then, we need to set out, once again, our communal assumptions.  Doing so provides a consistent reminder that keeps us framed well within both tradition and the concrete world we inhabit.  The interpretation of Holy Scripture is one of the most important tasks assigned to the Church, and in such a tumultuous world, this very activity of discerning the work of the Spirit in scripture and our lives can show the world the alternative that is Christ.  

By the same token, narrow, closed interpretations cannot do justice to the complexity of the issue at hand.  It is inadequate discipleship to approach this issue with a “the Bible says it’s wrong” attitude. Such a closed attitude treats scripture as a dead letter, and it fails to ask what the Holy Spirit might be speaking through the Word of God to the Church today.  

It is also insufficient to respond to this issue with the contrary attitude which says, “Well, I know how I feel about this matter.” Such an individualistic attitude fails to take seriously the testimony of the larger Christian community, both past and present. The Church is a community, and its testimony is predicated not on individual suppositions, but on the community’s work in discerning God’s work.  

With that, allow me one more remark about the nature of what we are doing here. Homosexuality is an issue that strikes at God’s intention for our relationships. Whatever answer one gives to this debate, it is clear that God intends for our conservations and discernment to be marked by mercy, humility and love.  This study, which we are undertaking for the sake of the Church and in the assurance of the Gospel, must be undertaken with the conviction that our world, being a profoundly polarized world, needs a sanctuary, a place where complex issues can be discussed, where God’s will can be discerned, and where such dialogue is guaranteed to happen with a love born of grace and a hospitality tempered by humility.

This conviction necessarily takes every side of the issue with sincerity and with the assumption that each person comes seeking God and what God is doing in the world.  It is inadequate to assume otherwise. If we treat this issue with silence, we do a deep injustice not only to LGBT people in our congregation, but to the Church as a whole. Christ came to forgive all sin, not to keep his people silent.  

With that, let’s remind ourselves of the guiding parameters from the first session: 

1. Yes, homosexuality is given minimal attention in scripture, and where it is mentioned it is most often mentioned in an illustrative fashion. But, where homosexuality is referenced illustratively, it is used as a negative example— usually, as a for instance, of Gentile behavior. 

2. Yes, homosexuality is not a matter that receives attention in Jesus’ preaching and teaching. But, that’s an argument from silence, and Jesus’ teaching explicitly endorses the male/female normativity of marriage.  

3. Yes, Jesus teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman (“from the foundation of the world”), but St. Paul adapts Jesus’ unambiguous teaching on divorce to allow for divorce in the specific cases (”I know Jesus said, but I say to you.”). 

4. Yes, the New Testament Church understands marriage as between a man and a woman. But, marriage is an evolving institution in scripture (Abraham?!)— and, the early Church’s first expectation was for believers to remain single and celibate. Indeed, the celebration of marriage was forced upon the ancient Church by the Roman empire.

5. Yes, it’s true that some of the prohibitions people cite against homosexuality are contained within Old Testament purity codes which have been superceded by the Christian new covenant. But, it’s also true that the early Church at the Council of Jerusalem (Book of Acts) singled out which Levitical codes still bound believers. These include the commandments regarding sexuality.

6. Yes, the Book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit working to expand and open up covenant belonging beyond what the Church deemed permissible from their prior reading of scripture (e.g., Cornelius, Ethiopian eunuch). But, the early Church did not conclude from the Spirit’s inclusive work that their scriptures had been wrong; they realized instead that their reading of their scripture had been wrong— God had always intended the inclusion of Gentiles (Isaiah 60). This same tension is true when it comes to the issues of slavery and women in leadership. The Church concluded they’d misread the dominant themes of scripture in favor of a few verses which supported their prejudice. The Church did not conclude that scripture was wrong about slavery or women.

7. Yes, homosexuality is nowhere affirmed or even condoned in the Bible. But, nowhere in the Bible is what we think of today as monogamous, faithful homosexual relationships even countenanced. 

8. Yes, the Church has historically defined marriage in terms of one man and one woman. But, the Church historically has not demanded immediate agreement about marriage when it has been at odds with the cultural norms of a given mission field. Namely, Christian missionaries have long tolerated polygamy in the mission field in order to advance their mission of proclaiming the Gospel. 

The Good Stuff, Part 1 – Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19.1-29 tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is a familiar, yet little understood passage that many insist is a clear moment of God’s wrathful judgment levied against homosexual activity.  Clergy, laypeople, and theologians often make reference to this story to shore up their accounts of the absolute heterosexual proscription of the Bible.  

In the story, a mob of men from the city bang on Lot’s door. Their apparent intention is to gang-rape Lot’s visitors, whom the reader already knows are really angels. No reason is given in the text for why the men of the city should be so moved. Rather, their threat stands as a sort of symbol in the story for the city’s general wickedness.  That is, the specific intention of the mob is a byproduct of the city’s captivity to sin.  

The angels rescue Lot’s family and later pronounce the city’s destruction. Despite the propensity of some to read this narrative as an anti-homosexual text, no where in the story itself or in the rest of scripture is Sodom’s sin identified as homosexuality. Instead of homosexuality, the prophet Ezekiel identified Sodom’s chief sin to be: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (16.49). In discerning scripture’s will for homosexuality, it is prudent for the Church to look to other texts.

Further, reading the text in this fashion forces one to draw an analogy between gang-rape and consensual homosexual relations. This is a textual and a logical stretch, at best.  Especially, in light of the work we have done in the past few weeks to resituate our communal understanding of marriage within the life of the Trinity, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah could hardly function as an example of such relationships.  If there is some condemnation of homosexual activity here, it is most certainly not of the kind that concerns the Church.  There is nothing that even remotely resembles the faithful, monogamous kind of nuptial relationships that are under consideration here.  

Bonus Note:

The activity of the mob is, as the text tells us, one unnatural to the human condition. That is, there is nothing about the people in the mob that naturally inclined them to gang-rape. Whether or not you believe being gay is a matter of nature or nurture, gay people are who they are, and that will not change. 

The attribution of the mob’s acts to their nature, and thus the blame of judgment on homosexual activity, does not hold.  After all, the members of the mob had wives.

The Good Stuff Part 2 – The Household Codes

Leviticus 18.22 and 20.13 belong to a portion of Leviticus referred to by scholars as the “Holiness Codes.” If you read them, you will see that they clearly prohibit male [but not female— because the texts are most interested in preventing unclear lines of inheritance] homosexual behavior. They seem straightforward and clear. Case closed, right?  

As clear as these texts are, however, they are not satisfactory texts for many Christians. The Holiness Codes, after all, contain many moral admonitions that have been ignored by Christians since the days of the early Church. These are matters related to food regulations and the ritual necessity of circumcision. Both “Acts” and “Romans” confirm for us that these codes do not apply to the life of the Church.  It is inconsistent with the larger Christian tradition to pull these texts out of Leviticus for the purpose of debate when the communal consensus has been that they belong to a code that is no longer normative for followers of Jesus. In fact, even the biblical literalist would have to acknowledge that while Leviticus prohibits male homosexual behavior, it makes no mention of female homosexual relationships. Indeed, such a jump to the condemnation of all homosexual relationships would be outside the bounds of a strict interpretive lens.  

As interesting and provocative as these passages are, they are not binding to us unless we also do not eat bacon.  

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear Paul’s Gospel announcement that “for freedom [from the Law] Christ has set us free,” I first think of bacon.  

The Good Stuff Part 3 – The New Testament

As we noted in our list of assumptions, the Gospels show Jesus teaching within the bounds of male-female normativity.  That is, Jesus does not denounce homosexuality, but he does not condone it either.  He is strongly within the bounds of male-female relations.  To be fair, Paul does reinterpret some of Jesus’ teachings, but he does not question those bounds.  

Beyond the Gospels, homosexuality and homosexual behavior receives few mentions.  For now, we will leave Romans 1 aside.  We will pick up on that next week.  

For now, 1 Corinthians 6.9-11 and 1 Timothy 1.10. 

The First Letter to the Corinthians is a corrective that Paul issues out of frustration over their illicit actions.  The Corinthians, as bible readers and church-goers will remember, believed that they were already enjoying the exalted resurrection life. They concluded, therefore, that traditional moral conventions no longer applied to them. An aggravated Paul calls the Corinthians “wrong-doers.” To illustrate what he means by wrong-doer, Paul very helpfully provides them with a list of the sorts of people he is including the Corinthians among: “…fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers.” 

For us, as Bible readers, it is important to note two things: 

Sodomy does not equal homosexuality.  Sodomy is a particular sexual act, while homosexuality is a sexual orientation.  The two are not exchangeable, equivocal terms.


Where we find homosexuality, especially in lists like this, it is often serving a rhetorical purpose, more so than being treated as a topic in itself.  

1 Timothy makes a similar move.  Timothy presumes that homosexuality is wrong, but 1 Timothy is not concerned with examining it in its own right. Instead, Timothy provides a list of behaviors and vices that are opposed to the Gospel, such as: “fornicators, sodomites, slave-traders, liars, perjurers.” 

In an earlier lesson, we talked about approaching scripture with a larger hermeneutical frame through which we interpret specific passages.  In passages like these, such a hermeneutic is requisite for proper ecclesial interpretation.  As much as these passages declare homosexuality as inconsistent with the Gospel, the broader theological condition that the New Testament diagnoses is that we are all incompatible with the Gospel.  

That theological conviction aside, the acts described here are, again, not the kind of relationships that concern the Church presently.  While it may seem like I am side-stepping the problem here, it is important to reflect on what kind of questions we want to ask, as a community, when it comes to this issue.  The nuptial vows we take in our wedding do not reflect individualized actions and vices that occur outside the bounds of our relationships, but rather the life and grace of the Trinity that has the possibility of being reflected in our relationships. Such distinctions are important when we interpret passages like this.  

What it is that we are after is a concrete, positive understandings of relationships in the life of the Church – relationships formed in the image of grace.  

Reframing Normativity – Genesis 1

When the “clobber passages” have worn themselves down, the conversation usually turns to Genesis and the account of creation.  Genesis 1 details the story of creation in pairs, and the heteronormative, supposedly binary creation of Adam and Eve, along with their complementarity, is used to support the doctrine of marriage.  

There is no denying the force of the Creation narrative on discussions of relationships, marriage, and human sexuality.  The beauty of the creation story seems bound up in the duality of the pairings.  More negatively, such a binary view necessarily flows into an interpretation that sees non-heterosexual relations and people as a result of the Fall.  

However, the narrative of creation is not primarily about the pairs that mark its ends.  Creation, as St. Gregory of Nyssa argues, is the script of the revelation of God as love.  Insofar as that is true, there must be a relationship of congruence between the Creator and creation.  Along with Christ, creation is the “primary act of God’s self-expression and an important part of God’s self-revelation to us.”  

With this frame, we can posit the creation narrative not as a strict narrative of ontology (a fancy word for the nature and existence of things), but rather,as a broad libretto that delineates the ends of the diversity creation inaugurates.  

Creation, in other words, is “non-binary.”  

The mystery such a conception of creation reveals is the notion that the pairings given in Genesis 1 are each “spectrums within which a variety of expressions occur.”  

Take light, for an example.  

Just as with day and night, light and darkness do not name the only possible options available within God’s creation. It’s not, that is, either light or dark. As I write this essay, it’s dusk.

The first act of creation is the creation of light and, as we know from quantum physics, light is “itself one, but with variety that’s visible when it’s passed through a prism.”  Further, if creation is an expression of the triune Creator, then, of necessity, it cannot be contained by binary sets of parameters.  Creation must reflect the full spectrum of the goodness of God.  

The phrase “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” thus, has force only as a rhetorical insult, with little interpretive basis behind it. The phrase assumes an absolute doublet pairing, lacking the room of diversity reflected in every pairing of the preceding creation narrative.

A non-binary conception of creation, despite how counter-intuitive it might strike us, actually proceeds from the source of creation:  God as Trinity, a unity of oneness that makes room for diversity.  The cosmos mirrors such diverse unity, and the demarcation of creation as such with pairs, indicative, but not wholly descriptive of its inner diversity, opens for us a new way of seeing the pairing of Adam and Eve: descriptive, normative, but not proscriptive, nor exhaustive.  

In Conclusion… Procreation?

You are probably wondering about the command ordered to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.”  This is not an incidental question, for most orthodox Jews even today will name “Be fruitful and multiply” as God’s very first commandment to his creatures. 

As the ancient wedding rite makes clear, a willingness for a married couple to welcome children into their life (without condition— this is why Christians are against abortion) is an attribute constituitive of any understanding of Christian (or Jewish) marriage. After the clobber passages are set aside, Christians will often cite the inability of gay Christians to bear biological children as a disqualification of their marriage as Christian marriage. While this point is more constructive than resorting to the clobber passages, it often inappropriately elevates the role of child-rearing as a Christian vocation and, in doing so, dismisses the vocation of single Christians and adoptive Christian parents. Still, the command to create like our Creator is an important one for Christians to address.

I want to conclude by commenting briefly on this and bringing us back into the original frame of our conversation.

The command, so often thought to bear only on Adam and Eve, is really a creative command issued to all of creation for the sake of creation.  That is, the procreative act is a necessary byproduct of creation’s contingency, which is a fancy way of saying that creation, unlike its Creator, does not have itself as its foundation, and thus must have certain procreative capacities to ensure its continuity.  Moreover, the command to procreate comes after the declaration of everything as “very good,” which means that the diversity of the continuum of creation is imputed a goodness in its relation to God prior to any requisite necessities.  

What does that mean? 

It means that the inherent created “very goodness” of those who constitute a Christian marriage is not invalidated or insufficient by marriages which cannot have childrenor choose not to have children. Logically, this would apply to gay Christians every bit as much as it would apply to infertile Christians. 

Christian couples are required to welcome children into their marriage (should children come); they’re not required to have children. 

Further— and this is key for it’s oft forgotten— Christians believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” is now a closed commandment. 

The fullness of creation, in terms of Christian doctrine, is fulfilled in its entirety in the coming of Christ. That is, as Paul declares in Galatians and Romans, Christ fills all commandments, including the procreative command. What’s more, the need to fill the earth is no longer necessary, for, as the Bible declares to us in Ephesians, the Fullness of Christ is a Fullness that already now fills all of creation precisely because it is God condescending into His creation itself.  The Creator enters creation, and in so doing, fills creation to its absolute core.  

The crucified and risen Christ is in all of creation; such that, all of creation is a sacrament, rendering the command in Genesis not just closed but obsolete.

Our discussions of sexuality, keeping within the interpretive frame set out above, must acknowledge the coming of the Creator as the fulfillment of the world, and with it, the final completeness of the creative act.  The love that inaugurated the world, the love that every Christian marriage has the capacity to reflect, was made flesh.  

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Episode #213– David Fitch: The Church of Us vs Them: Freedom from a Faith that Feeds on Making Enemies

Friend of the podcast, the wild and crazy Dr. David Fitch is back to talk about his latest book, “Us vs. Them: “Freedom from a Faith that Feeds on Making Enemies.” Fitch talks with us about how ideological functions to shape our reading of scripture, how we can read scripture locally as community, and how we discern where God is leading us in a way that avoids cultural antagonisms.

Before you listen, help us out! Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and click “Support the Show” to become a patron of the podcast for peanuts!

If you’re getting this by email, click here to find the audio.

 

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(Her)Men*You*tics: Voice

The breath of God, the voice from heaven, wind and fire…baby-momma Dr. Johanna is back and so is (Her)Men*You*tics to talk about our latest stained glass word in the alphabet: “Voice.” That’s right, Johanna had a baby (Elin Lucy) and yours truly is the proud godfather…

Before you listen, go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and click “Support the Show” to help us out and pay it forward.

 

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Those who say “I do” agree to remember to forget (how to count)

Here’s an excerpt from the new book. You can find it here.

We like to be more in control than the free offer of forgiveness affords us. To be in the right with another is to do right by them might put me on somebody’s shit list, but it at least leaves me in the driver’s seat for what will fol- low; whereas, to be in the right with another is to be declared right by them takes away everything from me and leaves me empty- handed. Faith alone in your promise of forgiveness is a disavowal of my own performance to merit it.

If I have to earn your forgiveness, then at least I’ll accrue evi- dence external to either of us to which I can point and justify myself later. If I have to earn your pardon, then I can simultane- ously be on the lookout for anything I can use as leverage against you should you withhold forgiveness. Look at all that I did to make it up to you and still it wasn’t enough, I’ve griped to more than just my wife. But if forgiveness is free, then, like on my wedding day, I’ve got absolutely nothing to hold onto but you. I’ve got nothing to hold on to but my trust in you.

Those who mimic Christ’s unconditional promise by marrying one another in his name take a bigger risk than they realize. Those who say “I do” agree to forget how to count. Bride and groom not only forsake all others from their bed and their hearts, they forsake the calculators we all carry with us and with which we balance the sums and subtractions of our relationships. We’re left on our wedding day with no recourse but to take the other at their word. To trust that you forgive me is to have faith you won’t use my debt later to burn me.

Forgiveness isn’t cheap, Robert Capon says. It isn’t even expensive. It’s free.

Yet the bitter irony that makes every marriage a beautiful risk is that this free forgiveness could cost you everything. More so than the person with whom you share your bed, the graver risk of fidelity in marriage is letting your lover’s promise of forgiveness leave you empty-handed. In marriage you trust that, having been forgiven of it, your wrongdoing won’t boomerang back onto you. You trust your lover won’t wield your wrong later as a weapon against you.

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Scripture and Sexuality— Session Three: Mutual Vulnerability, the Song of Songs, and Marriage as a Parable of Triune Love

We continued our church-wide Bible Study on Scripture and Sexuality by looking the Song of Songs.

SESSION THREE: MUTUAL VULNERABILITY AND DELIGHT— SONG OF SONGS AND MARRIAGE AS A PARABLE OF TRIUNE LOVE

WHERE WE ARE

So far, we’ve done little to deal with the actual portions of the Bible that mention sexuality.  Purposefully, the first two sessions were meant to try and reframe how we approach and think about the Bible.  In the first session, we discussed how the reading of the Bible is a churchwide endeavor.  That is, the Church is the means by which we mediate our understanding of scripture, because it provides the communal frame through which we can interpret the particulars of scripture.  

  In the second session with David Fitch, we doubled-down on the importance and difficulty of reading as a community.  David helped introduce us to notions of ideology and banners, concepts that help us to identify what happens when we start throwing scripture at each other; that is, David helped us see when we turn the grace of God as communicated by scripture into the Law as dictated by the antagonisms society envelops us in.  When antagonisms are the basis of the Church’s (Read: the community’s) use of scripture, the Bible becomes a weapon, an instrument of ideology.  

David left us with the question of how to discern what it is that God is doing on the ground in the Church.  Discernment on our part requires an active participation in the life of Christ by forming our discussions in the same way that Christ forms us through the cross.  Discernment means beginning in a space of brokenness – the only space from which God enters the scene.  It begins, then, with a posture of humility that acknowledges sin and shortcoming, opening up the community to seeing collectively where God is present and where God is working among them and outside of them.  

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Once again, since I want to make sure this sinks in for everyone, I’m going to reiterate the assumptions and premises to help us navigate this question and open ourselves to how God is shaping us through it.  (Notice: the emphasis here is on what God is doing.  We cannot proceed unless we can first get to a point where we acknowledge our need to be led, to be taught, to be humbled in the work of God in this community.)  

1. Yes, homosexuality is given minimal attention in scripture, and where it is mentioned it is most often mentioned in an illustrative fashion. But, where homosexuality is referenced illustratively it is used as a negative example— usually, as a for instance of Gentile behavior. 

2. Yes, homosexuality is not a matter that receives attention in Jesus’ preaching and teaching. But, that’s an argument from silence, and Jesus’ teaching explicitly endorses the male/female normativity of marriage.

3. Yes, Jesus teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman (“from the foundation of the world”), but St. Paul adapts Jesus’ unambiguous teaching on divorce to allow for divorce in the specific cases (I know Jesus said, but I say to you). 

4. Yes, the New Testament Church understands marriage as between a man and a woman. But, marriage is an evolving institution in scripture (Abraham?!)— and, the early Church’s first expectation was for believers to remain single and celibate. Indeed, the celebration of marriages was forced upon the ancient Church by the Roman empire.

5. Yes, it’s true that some of the prohibitions people cite against homosexuality are contained within Old Testament purity codes which have been superceded by the Christian new covenant. But, it’s also true that the early Church at the Council of Jerusalem (Book of Acts) singled out which Levitical codes still bound believers. These include the commandments regarding sexuality.

6. Yes, the Book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit working to expand and open up covenant belonging beyond what the Church deemed permissible from their prior reading of scripture (e.g., Cornelius, Ethiopian eunuch). But, the early Church did not conclude from the Spirit’s inclusive work that their scriptures had been wrong; they realized instead that their reading of their scripture had been wrong— God had always intended the inclusion of Gentiles (Isaiah 60). This same tension is true when it comes to the issues of slavery and women in leadership. The Church concluded they’d misread the dominant themes of scripture in favor of a few verses, which supported their prejudice. The Church did not conclude that scripture was wrong about slavery or women.

7. Yes, homosexuality is nowhere affirmed or even condoned in the Bible. But, nowhere in the Bible is what we think of today as monogamous, faithful homosexual relationships even countenanced. 

8. Yes, the Church has historically defined marriage in terms of one man and one woman. But, the Church historically has not demanded immediate agreement about marriage when it has been at odds with the cultural norms of a given mission field. Namely, Christian missionaries have long tolerated polygamy in the mission field in order to advance their mission of proclaiming the Gospel. 

SONG OF SONGS AND MUTUAL, MATERIAL JOY

First, take a look at the ancient wedding rite as found in the Book of Common Prayer. While the rite obviously assumes the male/female norm, notice what the liturgy names as the first purpose of Christian marriage:

Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of  God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and

this woman in Holy Matrimony. The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and  first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us

the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people.

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture  in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.

In the debate over sexuality, verses are plucked from various and different contexts to corroborate one position (and by the very same token, denigrate the position of another).  Think Leviticus 18 and Romans 1, to name a few.  

The most neglected book of the Bible in this discussion, and perhaps the most neglected book generally in the Church, is the Song of Songs.  Perhaps, this is because it is the most openly erotic book of the Bible.  Perhaps, it is because the love song uses language many of us would never dream of saying in the bedroom (nor would we want to hear it). 

Given the openly amorous language, I wonder why this does not get the attention it ought to receive in debates about sexuality.  

It is a love poem, but a love poem of a different kind, something not found in the whole of scripture.  Ancient Jewish interpreters of this poem understood it to be a love song conveying the relationship between God and Israel.  Reading in that legacy, interpreters in the early Church understood the poem on two levels: on the interior relationship that constitutes the trinity, and the relationship between God and the Church.  For ancient interpreters, rarely was it the case that this scripture was referenced to refer to marriage as we know it.  

The Song of Songs was not a song of human marriage, but of the marriage of the divine, through which human marriage finally became intelligible to early Christians (Paul, famously, advocated chastity and asceticism before marriage).  It should be indicative even from the name of the poem, which takes a superlative, genitive form.  It is the Song from which all other songs proceed, which is to say that the relationship disclosed in the Song of Songs is the primary relationship of focus for those in the Church.  

The Song of Songs shows us that, in the life of the Church, marriage becomes intelligible only on a tertiary level.  The Song of Songs, in primarily disclosing the relationship that constitutes the Trinity, reflects the focus that Christian marriage is meant to reflect: the unmitigated, continuous exchange of grace and love between partners.  The relationship that the Song of Songs most ardently expounds is the relationship of grace that marriages are meant to reflect.  

Marriage, then, is a signifier of the one-way grace and love of God for the world, given in Christ through the power of the Spirit.  

Take this passage from Song of Songs 5: 1-8

I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for
I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

Obvious innuendos aside, the centerpiece of this passage is the opening and closing to the Beloved.  The whole dramatis of this section relies on the climax that occurs in verse 6.  Read as the relationship between the Church and the Lord, this can be identified immediately as a statement begrudging the lustful desire of the Lord’s flock and instead turning her to seek after him properly.  

Beneath this, though, is a deeper meaning.  The theologian Robert Jenson writes in his commentary that what is revealed in the oscillation of open and closed is moreover the laying out of the recurring pattern of Israel’s salvation history.  This history is laid clear by the shifting nature of the love the woman has for the Beloved, shifting from seeking after him, to desiring him, to knowing him properly.  

Deeper still, there is something revealed about the nature of the Trinity here.  The same oscillation between lust and love, between eros and agape, is representative of the continuous exchange of love and grace, and the transformative, active power therein, that makes the Trinity’s inner communion distinct.  

The song, in its ebb and flow, tracks and maps the exchange of love that constitutes the unity of God: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.  

And notice (this next part is important for the rest of what I am going to say):  The kind of love and desire described, the kind of actions used illustratively, they are all embodied acts.  

BABETTE’S FEAST

The cult classic film, Babette’s Feast, is a helpful example in attempting to understand the grace God gives, which is the same grace that makes God, God.  In the film, which takes place in a small town in Sweden, the two female leaders of a struggling congregation that declined after the passing of its founder, find a woman on their steps needing a place to stay.  She was fleeing persecution from the French, who had killed her family.  The women agree to let her stay, and in return she cooks and cleans for them, providing meals for their services and maintaining the church.  One day, she happens to receive the winning ticket of the lottery, worth $10,000.  After notifying the two sisters, she insists that they celebrate her winnings with a large feast, which she offers to prepare.  She leaves for a while to get everything necessary for the feast.  When she returns, a boatload of food arrives with her, and she prepares a full meal in French style, with which the locals are unfamiliar and on first taste, unsatisfied.  But as the feast progresses, the gathering becomes more and more lively, the food tasting better and better with each bite.  

At the end of the feast, the two women, fearing that she will leave since the feast is over, ask the lady what she plans to do.  She replies by saying that she is not leaving, for she spent all her winnings on the feast.  “That is the cost of a meal for friends at Café Anglaise,” she states.  

The story is a story of unmerited grace, where the Christ-figure both upsets and reconciles.  The narrative, which shows a lot more Gospel than cultural criticism will allow us to admit, tells us a several things.  

The human Jesus really was a human, who appears to us in the state of brokenness and need. Therefore, the redemption offered in Christ is one offered through a body.
The price of grace can be paid only by Christ: It is inaccessible without him.


The promise of grace is never revoked, for it promises bodily resurrection and rehabilitation.

TRINITY, THE BODY, AND MARRIAGE

Before we start judging gay people for the supposedly distinctive unrighteousness of their marriages, straight Christians need to first have a positive understanding of what marriage is and what it does.  And for us Christians, that means taking the resurrection seriously.  In fact, taking the resurrection seriously is the only way that the Christian view of marriage makes any sense.

The resurrection, we confess in the creeds, is bodily; the Christ who leaves the grave on Easter morning is not only alive, but he is alive and breathing. The resurrection we profess is embodied, which makes the marriage of two people not simply a sign of invisible grace, but a physical embodiment of the promise God gives in Christ, the only promise that could ever be unconditional.  

As we saw in the Song of Songs, the relationality of the Trinity is what marriage ought to point to.  And insofar as one person of the Trinity is, in fact, a Person (albeit with a capital P), then the relationship expressed in his life, death, and resurrection, provides the necessary centerpiece of the physical bond we call marriage.  

In fact, without that piece, marriage is simple a soluble spiritual bond that cannot sustain itself, and that will inevitably not take seriously the importance of the body.  That is, without the resurrection, Christian marriage becomes unintelligible, because the body becomes meaningful. 

In the ancient world, between the 1st and 4th centuries, a proto-religion called Gnosticism came out of the early Christian tradition. You’ve probably heard the name before.  In fact, you’ve probably been a practicing gnostic before (don’t feel bad about it; its America’s religion, really).  There were two central things, thematically speaking, that made Gnosticism different from the early Christians: their conception of the body, and their notion of salvation.  The latter, for Gnostics, informed the former.  They thought of the body as encumbering the soul, the freedom of which is the ultimate salvation.  

We may not want to admit it, but we (as a society) are much more prone to thinking of bodies in this way, in this negative light that ties the body to a negative materiality.  For Gnostics, salvation ultimately ended in the release from the body and the ascent of the pure soul.  

Despite its ravaging popularity, even to the point of being a distinct part of our philosophical inheritance, the Gnostic notion of the body is utterly different from the one offered in Christ and in our marriage to Him.  

The marriage rites, which quote from Genesis (something we will talk about next week), tell us that the couple “cleaves” to each other.  The couple, that is, literally physically attach to each other (yes, that means what you think it means).  The resurrection and the ascension, the moments in which God raises both Christ and humanity with Him, are bodily acts, and in that vein give our bodies a substantive meaning – a positive meaning.  

Further, the ascension, which is the visible sign of the unity of the Trinity in which all of humanity is invited to participate, actually makes our material lives good.  The goodness of the body of Christ, raised into active participation in the unity of love and grace, raises our bodies into that goodness as well.  When Christ returns from the dead in the physical body that was nailed to the cross, the bodies we have were given a good meaning. 

The resurrection, assured in the ascension, makes the bodies we have important conduits of grace.  Grace comes not in a disembodied, vaporous form, but in the substantive body of Christ. That body was made naked and vulnerable to us, such that we might “see the Father” (John 14:9).  The vulnerability of Christ’s body is a sign to us of the goodness of our own vulnerability.  And remember, the body the disciples see after the resurrection – it’s still vulnerable.  Jesus urges Thomas to “put your finger here; see my pierced hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side” (John 20:27).  

Nowhere is the vulnerability of our bodies more evident than in marriage.  

Thus, all the acts of marriage, and especially sex, are the truly parabolic moments that signify a couple’s reflection of the Trinity.  We have to remember that the Trinity, whose love we attempt to reflect in marriage, is the constant self-disclosure and love and grace to itself, which requires of it an absolute vulnerability.  Each of the members of the Trinity is always already open and vulnerable to the others.  

When we open ourselves to others (literally and metaphorically) and become vulnerable, our three-way relationship with us, our partner, and God becomes intelligible.  Our nakedness takes on a theological meaning, because it reflects the same nakedness that binds the Trinity together.  

Thus, marriage is not only an outward sign of an inward grace, but a physical sign of a bodily grace.  God, who is all in all through Christ in the unity of the Spirit, cannot help but raise our bodies, too.  It is only from that stance that we can begin to evaluate, in a Christian sense, the goodness, or not, of nuptial unity.  That is, if we are to evaluate marriages as a church, then this positive understanding of the goodness of our bodies and the reflection of the Trinity that is a centerpiece of the sanctifying function that marriages serve for the community called the Church.  

That grace, moreover, is the means by which marriages become sanctifying bonds given as a gift to the Church for its edification.  More on that next week.  To end, I want to offer you a “Charge for a Wedding,” written by Eugene F. Rogers, a theologian who was my first teacher at UVA, which does not depend on male-female normativity for the coherence of Christian marriage:  

“Dearly beloved: we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of these God’s human creatures, [x and y], in Holy Matrimony.  Marriage signifies the mystery of the love that God bears for human beings, in that God desires, befriends, and keeps faith with us.  That love is mysterious to us in that, unlike us, God just is love, an interior community, never lonely, already rich.  That love is open to us in that God desires, befriends, and keeps faith in God’s very self, as these two desire, befriend, and keep faith with each other.  And God’s Spirit internally witnesses and blesses and keeps faith with the love in God as today we externally witness and bless the love of these two human creatures in God’s image.  Today the celebration, blessing, and witnessing of this wedding catch us up into a parable of the inner love and life of God.” 

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God Gone Wild

Our summer sermon series through the parables continued with Jesus’ macabre little drama in Matthew 22.1-14

Last week, some of your lay leaders and I were emailing each other back and forth regarding what we should do about a homeless, undocumented man who’s been sleeping outside near the trash bins at our mission center on Heritage Drive. 

“You should see how he’s dressed— the custodians are creeped out by him.”

And so we exchanged emails, weighing the merits of shelters and county services against our concerns about safety and liability on the one hand and the police and ICE on the other hand. 

At some point during the Reply All email thread, Eldon Hillenbrandt, who— if you don’t know him— is a wonderful, earnest, sincere man without a sarcastic or cynical bone in his body (in other words, he’s everything I’m not) replied with a wonderfully earnest and sincere question. He asked us: “What do you think Jesus would do?” 

WWJD— what would Jesus do?

Totally sincere question, not cynical or sarcastic in any way. 

And probably Eldon had in mind a parable like the sheep and the goats. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. What would Jesus do about the stranger sleeping against the dumpster in his stinking, shabby clothes? 

And because I’m the way my Maker made me, when it came to Eldon’s completely earnest and sincere question I couldn’t help myself. 

Like those salmon who swim upstream in order to mate even though doing the deed will be the death of them, I couldn’t help myself. 

Just as some artists work in oil or watercolors, I work in saracasm and middle school boy bathroom humor. 

I couldn’t resist typing in reply: “WWJD? Cuff him! Hand and foot! Torture him! Kill him! Throw him in Hell!” 

Fortunately, as I gazed upon my computer screen, the cursor still blinking at the end of my adolescent quip, I suddenly had what alcoholics describe as a moment of clarity and thought better about sending it.

In case you haven’t met her, I call that moment of clarity, Ali. 

So I deleted the comment and instead sent out some prosaic pastor-speak.

But the problem is— 

We can’t backspace our way away from the Jesus who tells this parable today.

———————-

As liberal mainline Protestants, we’ve all been conditioned into believing that Christianity boils down to being nice and doing nice; therefore, if we have any religious convictions at all it’s that God is nice too. And maybe at first you thought that’s where Jesus’ story was headed. 

An evite goes out for a great extravagant party, but those in the VIP queue— the fat cats and country club set, the season ticket holders and the keto dieters, the cronies of the rich man— mark the invitation read and forget all about it. 

So the rich man says, “Hey, I’ve already paid the photographer. I’ve got a Costco’s worth of beef tenderloin under the broiler, and the DJ’s already started playing the Electric Slide. Go out beyond the suburbs and bring in the folks from the Halfway House— and don’t forget those guys who loiter around the 7-Eleven too. Let them come into my party. The 1% don’t deserve my generosity.” 

Probably as Jesus’ story was being read at first you thought you liked it. You like the idea of God going out like Bernie Sanders to the marginalized and the poor and the dispossessed and inviting them to a fine china, cloth napkin, open bar party. 

It’s a nice thought.

And it would be nice if Jesus just left it alone right there, which is sort of the way Jesus tells it in Luke’s Gospel.

But Matthew? 

I mean— all this festival of death needs to be more terrifying are creepy twin girls, an elevator full of blood, and Jesus with a hatchet saying “Here’s Johnny.” 

And maybe a ginger kid too— a ginger would make it scarier. 

What gets you about Jesus’ story in Matthew is not the graciousness of the King esteeming the lowly onto his guest list, as in Luke. 

What gets you is this King’s totally inappropriate and excessive behavior. 

“Oh, the A-Listers couldn’t be bothered to open the Paperless Post? Some clicked ‘Maybe?’ Really? Well then, I’ll tell you what, Alfred. I want you get some of the hired help and I want you to cross them off the guest list permanently, if you know what I mean. No, that’s right, you heard me correctly, hand and foot. Send them to a place worse than Cleveland! They’ll regret sending their regrets when I get through with them!”

Then, as if the body count wasn’t already high enough, in a flourish only House Lanister could love, there’s Jesus’ finale. Among the good and bad gathered into the King’s party, this panhandling vagrant off Braddock Road makes it past the maitre’d only to get himself shipped off to one of Dick Cheney’s black sites allbecause of the way he’s dressed. 

“You there— yeah you.” 

Actually, the word the King uses in Greek is hetaire, which means, basically, “Buster.” 

“Hey how’d you get in here dressed like that? We’ve got beluga on ice and Chateau Branaire-Ducru uncorked. This party is black tie and tails only, buster.”

“Well, sir, I was sleeping outside next to the Mission Center trash bins only an hour ago, and they don’t stock formal wear in the church’s coat closet.” 

And the “gracious” King responds: “Really? Well then…Bind him, hand and foot! Throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

———————-

Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible…

———————-

I know you—

It really bothers you that the formerly sweet baby Jesus in golden fleece diapers would tell a story like this to nice, well-mannered people like you. It bothers you to hear the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world roaring like a lion at…

At what exactly? 

Failure to RSVP? 

A party foul?

What gives?

Admit it—

We all want a God who says of our flagged but unopened evites, “Oh, your kids have a soccer game? You were up late last night? You can catch it online? That’s okay, I know you’re busy. We’ll miss you at the party but no biggie. Raincheck?”

We want a God who is as cool and dispassionate about us as we are about him.

We don’t want this irrational, incongruous God. 

We don’t want this God gone wild. 

We don’t want this King who is ferociously determined to celebrate his free party. 

No matter the costs. 

I mean— that much is obvious, right? 

As much as it tightens our sphincters and gives nice types like us acid reflux, for his macabe little drama Jesus rudely casts his Heavenly Father as this bezerk, damn-the-torpedoes, party-or-bust King. 

Which puts us where in the story?

———————-

Who are we supposed to be at this party?

The A-list?

Does Jesus mean for you to identify with those at the top of the King’s guest list? The ones who for whatever reason (or none at all) don’t accept the King’s invitation? Actually, the Greek in verse three isn’t as neutral as it sounds. The word is amelsantes, and it means literally, “They didn’t give a damn.”

“The King sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the party, but they didn’t give a rip,” Jesus says.

Maybe that is who Jesus means us to be in the story because he conjugates the VIPs’ apathy in the imperfect tense. 

It’s: “They were not giving a rip…” 

That is, these A-Listers’ snubbing of the King’s call is an ongoing rejection; as if to say, the world will always be full of idiots who refuse to trust and enjoy a good thing when they hear it. 

Free grace, dying love, unqualified acceptance, and unconditional forgiveness for you— it might as well be a prostrate exam given the way some of us respond to it. 

Is that us?

Obviously, you all give a rip. 

You wouldn’t have dragged yourself out of bed, showered, and shown up this morning for a subpar sermon if you didn’t care. 

But maybe like that first group of invitees, you make your way in life assuming that God’s good, gracious nature means you’re free to ignore his call upon your life until after you’re finished with all your better plans. 

Maybe that’s why Jesus repeats the word call every other verse, from the top of his story to the bottom. 

As though the King’s call is a countdown. 

Going once. 

Going twice…tick tock.

What about that second batch of evites? 

The King sends out his servants a second time to those on the guest list. And they deliver the message: Look this party is off the hook! The oxen and the fatted calves (plural!) have been in the smoker since last night. The keg is tapped. Come on already! 

Notice—

It’s not that those guests can’t be bothered. 

It’s that they’re too busy. 

Some, Jesus says, are too busy with their farms to celebrate the King’s party. 

Others, Jesus says, are too tied up at the office to join the King’s party. 

It’s not that they don’t give a rip. 

It’s that they give too many. 

Farming, business— those are vocations, good works God gives to us for our neighbors.

These guests are so wrapped up in the good work God has given them to do for others that they ignore the King’s individual invitation to them. 

They’re so focused on doing good works for their neighbor that they’ve neglected, and thus put at risk, their personal relationship with the King— the very relationship to which their good works were meant to be a sign not a substitute. 

Their busyness lulled them into forgetting that their personal yes to the King’s invitation is an urgent eternal matter of life and death. We can be so bent over busy in our religious, deed-doing lives that we lose them. 

And maybe they don’t answer the King’s invite because they assume they can get past the bouncers at a date they name later, on the merits of all their hard work and not on the King’s gratuity. 

Perhaps that’s who Jesus means us to be in the story. 

Or what about that poor bastard who’s caught without a cumberbund and patent leather shoes? Does Jesus mean for us to be the guy dragged off by the King’s SWAT team because of a wardrobe malfunction? I mean, even Janet Jackson got a second chance. 

Is that who we are in the story?

Are you supposed to hear this parable and worry?

Worry that, yes, all are invited to the party of salvation, gratis, but if you don’t meet the dress code? It’s outer darkness for you. 

In other words: yes, yes grace, but…

Yes, salvation is by grace. 

But, your faith better bring something to show for it when you get to the party. 

Yes, all are invited, gratis.

But, only some get to stay. You better show up wearing your three-piece suit of obedience, your gem-covered gown of holiness, or your mink of compassion. 

Yes, yes grace, but…

Nevermind for a moment the not minor point that as soon as you attach a but to grace, it’s no longer grace, such a worrisome takeaway ignores the fact that whatever fancy duds these riffraff at the party are wearing, they’re clothes the King has given to them. 

Free of charge. 

Upon arrival not prior to departure.

So their ability to remain at the party is not conditioned upon the presence or absence of anything they brought with them— not their closet full of loving works and not their suitcase holy living.

The King gave them their garments upon arrival. So for whatever reason, this eyesoar who’s still in his streetclothes and bound for darkness, he didn’t put on the bow tie and tux given out to all the other guests who got there on the same free ticket as him. 

This guy didn’t change his clothes. 

He refused to change. 

Is that it?

If he’s who Jesus means us to be, then is the takeaway for us that, yes, we’re invited but once there we better change and get our act together?

That might be one way to interpret Jesus’ story if Jesus’ story were told by someone other than Jesus, and if Jesus told this story at some point other than three days before he died not to improve the improveable or reform the reformable but to raise the dead in their sins. 

And the only thing the dead do is stink. 

So the takeaway today can’t be that we need first to apply deodorant before we’re allowed onto the dance floor. 

The Cross is Exhibit A.

Jesus saves us in our failures not just in spite of them. 

“The gifts and invitation of God,” the Apostle Paul says, “are irrevocable.”

And the word Paul uses there is repentance. 

The gifts and invitiation of God are without repentance.

Therefore, the moral of this parable is not that God invites us to the party called salvation but we better shape up or we’ll get shipped off. 

No, the parable doesn’t have a moral because it’s a parable. 

It’s not about you. 

It’s about God— that’s why the King and his staff get all the verbs in the story. 

Notice— no one else in the story even speaks.

You can’t ask of a parable, “WWJD?”

You can only ask, “Who is this God who does to us in Jesus Christ?”

But that still doesn’t answer where are we in this parable?

———————-

Last week the Atlantic Magazine published an article entitled Parents Gone Wild: Drama Inside D.C.’s Most Elite Private School. The story’s about Sidwell Friends School, the Harvard of DC private schools whose Quaker motto is “Let the light shine out from all.” 

Bright lights sometimes illuminate the worst in people. The article details the shocking and over-the-top behavior of some of the school’s parents, which has led to 2/3 of the school’s counselors leaving their jobs. Attempting to help their children get a leg up in the college admissions competition, parents at Sidwell Friends School have engaged in what the school’s headmaster calls “offensive conduct.” 

Among the excessive behaviors, parents have verbally assaulted school employees, secretly recorded conversations with teachers, made badgering phone calls to counselors from blocked phone numbers. Some parents have even circulated damaging rumors about other parents’ children in order to give their own children an advantage over their peers. 

As one college dean of admissions explained it: 

“When you’re talking about the love a parent has for their son or daughter, the plan they have for their child and all the work they’ve done towards that plan— it can lead to some pretty wild and inappropriate behavior. You could choose to focus in on the crazy behavior, or you could choose to see the parent’s love behind it all. Either way, if you get in the way of that kind of love, if you get in the way of what a parent has planned for the child they love without condition, watch out.”

———————-

If you get in the way of what the Father has planned for the Son…

That’s it. 

You and I— the baptized— we’re not in this parable. 

We’re not.

We’re so hard-wired to turn the good news of grace into the grim pills of religion that we go to Jesus’ parables asking what we must do, or we leave Jesus’ parables worrying about we’re not doing. In doing so, we turn the Gospel into the Law; such that we miss completely the fact that, according to Jesus himself, we’re not in the parable. 

Yet. 

We’re not in the parable— yet. 

Jesus told us at the top of the story. In response to the chief priests and the Pharisees who begrudge his relationship with the Father— his relationship with the Father— Jesus says the Kingdom of God is like…what? 

The Kingdom of God is like a King who gave not just a party but a wedding banquet. 

A wedding feast for his Son. 

His Son to be married to whom?

We’re not in the parable— yet. 

You and I, and all baptized believers, we’re still waiting in the wings, offstage. 

We’re not in the parable. 

We’re in the parlor. 

A friend’s putting a finishing gloss on our fingernails while the curling iron gets hot and the string quartet warms up and the photographer shoots some candids of everyone getting ready and the white dress hangs uncovered from the curtain rod. 

This isn’t a horror story about what God will do to you if you don’t get your act together and get your ass to his party. 

No, for you— this is an absurd romantic comedy about the wildly excessive, inapprorpriate lengths the Loving Father will go to have every last detail of the party perfect, every seat filled, and everyone dressed to the nines with the custom-tailored clothes he’s given away to every undeserving guest to celebrate his Son’s marriage. 

To you.

All are invited, but not all will accept the invitation— the whole world is invited to celebrate at Chez Yahweh, celebrate the Father’s Son’s marriage.

To you. 

No wonder he acts so bezerk. 

This parent has planned this party for his Son since before the foundation of the world, the Bible says. 

Watch out if you frustrate this Father’s feast-going. 

He’s not going to let anything get in the way of a five star celebration for his Son’s marriage to you. 

Jesus left it assumed and unsaid in this story because he’s already said it. 

I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and take you to myself so that where I am you will be also, Jesus already promised. That’s wedding language.

In my Father’s house there are many mansions, Jesus promises. That’s wedding language.

I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me— that’s wedding language too. 

Not to mention, the word Jesus uses today for wedding banquet, gamos, guess the other place in the New Testaments it gets used— the freaking climax of the Bible, at the very end of the Book of Revelation where the angel declares “the marriage supper of the Lamb has been made ready” and Christ comes back to his Church who is prepared for him as what?

As a bride for her bridegroom.

———————-

So Eldon, I don’t know if you’re here today or not, but What Would Jesus Do?

Welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry— that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. 

Because Jesus the Bridegroom would take his hand and pick him up and carry him across the threshold and say “My Beloved, let’s dance.”

———————-

Hear the good news—

You’re not the one who blows off the party. 

You’re not the do-gooder who’s too busy to attend the party

You’re not the eyesore who wears the wrong garment to the party. 

Though at times you might resemble all of the above, you’re not any of them.

Because the party’s for you. 

By your baptism—

A promise signed by the Father and sealed in the Son’s blood and delivered to you by water through the Holy Spirit, you are the betrothed. 

You are free to do the things that Jesus did and you are free not to worry about how little you’re doing or how much you’re leaving undone. 

Because what God has joined together no one— not even you in your pathetic every day run-of-the-mills sins— can tear asunder. 

No, you are his. 

And with all that he is and all that he has, for better, for worse, no matter if your faith feels rich or if it is poor, he will cherish you. 

This is his solemn vow.

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Episode #212 — Joshua Retterer— Grace is for Losers: A Conversation about Robert Farrar Capon

Jason and Taylor sat down with Joshua Retterer to talk about the late Robert Farrar Capon and his work. Their conversation touches on a number of subjects including eschatological nerve, an affair with a happy ending, laughing in church, and being overwhelmed with morality.

Before you listen, head over to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com. Click “Support the Show” and become a patron of the podcast for peanuts.

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“I Do” is not “I Can”

My new book, Living in Sin: Making Marriage Work Between I Do and Death, just released. You can order it here.

Here’s an excerpt from it, on the house:

Strike what I said earlier against advice-giving because here’s some. But this isn’t just marriage advice, it’s Christian advice, advice on how to see other humans in light of the gospel. Here it goes: seeing others as Ali sees me, as bound and unfree, is the easiest way to find patience and empathy for others. It’s when you mistakenly think people are free that you get pissed off at them. When you see people as active agents of everything in their lives, choosing the crap decisions they make, you can confuse what they do for who they are.

And I know this: you’re just like me. You have your own Angelinas, your own jars of pickles, and your own bags of Cheetos you can’t stay away from. You’re not an enigma, but you have plenty of them in your life. Every spouse knows it already. The only consistent thing about you is your inconsistency. You’re just like me.

The only fix for what ails us in our life with another is our willingness to receive and reciprocate a mercy that is as unmerited as it is unexpected, which means often it will stick in your craw, striking you as somewhere between uncomfortable and offensive.

When you vow “I do” to another, you are not promising “I can.” You’re not asserting an ability innate to you. Instead of the tit for tats that come so naturally to us, by your “I do” you’re pledging your willingness to volley and serve a grace that comes so unnaturally to us that it first had to come to us as God in the flesh.

The love that can make marriage work between “I do” and death, in other words, is the love with which Christ loved us—a love that died for us while we yet sucked.

Marriage is a means of God’s grace. God gets to us with his grace through the grace our beloved gives us. Forget what all the be-fruitful-and-multiply-family-values people vomit onto your TV screen, for my money this is the only Christian foundation to any formulation like Christian marriage. Like John the Baptist pointing his long, bony finger away from himself and onto Jesus, the forgiveness offered to you by your lover is a sacrament of that permanent forgiveness provided by Jesus’s passion. And just as I say with bread and wine at the altar table every week, the promise of his passion is that it delivers us from captivity to our propensity to screw things up.

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