Jason Micheli's Blog, page 116

The Gospel is Not…

My friend Scott Jones recently preached on Mark 9, using the famous little book by the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit. Scott’s the smartest guy I know— it pains me to admit it. You should check out his podcast New Persuasive Words in iTunes.

If you get this by email, you can also find the sermon here.

 

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No Ground for Boasting

It’s funny— is our definition of social activism too passive?

I continued our fall sermon series on The Questions God Asks by looking at Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18.1-15 and how the Apostle Paul uses her laughter and Abraham’s shady character in Romans 4.

Did you ever notice how quickly God raised the degree of difficulty in the Bible? Adam, don’t eat the fruit of that tree in the garden. Noah, build me a boat. Abraham, cut off the tip of your….

Uh…can’t I just build you a bigger boat?

I mean, how do you think Sarah reacted when she came home and found Abraham in the shower? 

Why did you do that to yourself?! 

God told me. 

Abraham, if God told you to kill your first born child would you do that too?! 

There’s not a lot of laughter in the Bible. 

There’s jokes we could make about the Bible. 

Jokes like:

Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and said to the Israelites: Look guys, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news— I got him down to 10 Commandments. The bad news— the one about adultery is still there.

Speaking of the 7th Commandmet:

Why is divorce is so expensive?

Because it’s worth it. (My wife came up with that joke.)

There’s not alot of laughter in the Bible; though, there’s jokes we could make about the Bible. 

Jokes like:

Jesus walks in to a bar and says to the bartender: “Give me a wine glass and fill it with water.”

How long did Cain hate his brother?  As long as he was Abel.

Look people, I published a book with the word funny in the title. That’s practically like a comedy diploma. If I say laugh, you say how high.

Adam said to Eve: “Stand back, we don’t know how big this gets.”

Speaking of Eve, you might not know it but there was a midget in the Garden of Eden too. You never hear about him because he got kicked out before the Fall. He kept sticking his nose in Eve’s business.

Jesus came across a woman caught in adultery, surrounded by angry priests and Pharisees. So Jesus said, “Whever is without sin may cast the first stone. And one by one the priests and the Pharisees dropped their rocks and slank away, but then suddenly a stone came sailing through the air and struck the woman upside the head, killing her dead. And Jesus said, “Sometimes you really torque me off, Mother.”

There’s not alot of laughs in the Bible, but there’s things in it that might make us giggle, like the story of the prophet Elisha and the children and the 2 she-bears. 

You know that story? 

Check this out:

  Maybe church folks like you get your reputation for tight-sphinctered humorlessness honest because, while there are stories in the Bible that might make us scratch our heads and chuckle, there’s not alot of laughter in the Bible. In fact, by my reckoning, there’s just two instances of laughter in all of scripture. 

The first place is Matthew 9 where Jesus is called to the home of a ruler of the synagogue and it’s no laughing matter. The ruler’s little girl has just died. Jesus comes to a place of death and the crowds gathered at the man’s home laugh at him. 

They laugh at Jesus. 

What was the punchline? 

The punchline was Jesus’ promise: “Your daughter will live.”

Life from Death. 

Good news in the face of grief.

The Living God shows up and all of us gathered around Death laugh him off. 

The second place is today’s passage in Genesis 18. Her husband entertains God himself unawares while Sarah eavesdrops from the flap of the tent. Her back is bowed. Her hair is thinned. Her hands are palsied and liver-spotted. She’s all gums. She’s got just a few teeth, which is fine because all of her appetites are about gone. She’s closing in on 100 years old. 

Eavesdropping, she overhears God’s promise of redemption through a child— her child— and she laughs. She hears the promise of God as a punchline. God’s redemptive promise sounds to her ridiculous. And why wouldn’t it? This was 4,000 years before the invention of Viagra. 

Where Mary receives her part of this same promise and replies “Let it be with me according to your word,” Sarah laughs. Like the crowds ready to bury the dead girl, Sarah laughs. 

Not “Ha ha!” but “Yeah, right, when Sheol freezes over.” A cynical laugh. An understandable laugh. A laugh we would all likely laugh but a laugh that, nonetheless, is the opposite of faith.

Before we pile on Sarah, I should point out— Sarah laughs at God’s redemptive promise (for you, through her) because she’s hearing God’s redemptive promise for the first time. Old Abraham never told her. Go back to Genesis 12. To undo all that we had done at Babel and before, God first made this promise to Abraham 25 years earlier. 

Abraham sat on this promise of God longer than Diane Feinstein did on the Kavanaugh letter. For almost 3 decades Sarah’s dearly beloved didn’t bother to share with her what God had promised for both of them. 

It’s true that her laugh is a cynical laugh, the opposite of faith, but that’s because her hubbie didn’t believe the promise enough to pass it on to her. 

It’s funny— these are not impressive people. 

By the way, when God first called him, Abraham left behind his home and his family and his belongings and his country in order to go to the land that God would show him. Left it all behind. 

The reason Abraham here has servants whom he can order to grind and knead and bake— the reason Abraham here has not just a calf but a whole herd of cattle from which he can feed his guests— is because, back when she was young and beautiful, Abraham passed Sarah off as his sister and pimped her out to the Pharaoh. 

He lied about her. 

And then, with dollar signs in his eyes, he rented her out for money, which I’m guessing required more than chocolates and roses to reconcile.

The wealth Abraham lavishes on his mysterious guests here in Genesis 18– it was ill-gotten gain. God has been eating and drinking with sinners from the very beginning. 

But before you start feeling sorry for Sarah, remember. 

Turn the page and Sarah is the one who will pitch a jealous fit and demand that her husband forsake their servant-girl and her baby to the wilderness and God only knows what else. 

What a joke!

Of all the people in the world, the God who knows the secret thoughts of all of our hearts chose these two for his redemptive purpose. 

These two: lying, pimping, coveting, conniving, unbelieving— ungodly even— Abraham and Sarah. The two people to whom God gives this promise— they’re not even God’s people. They are literally the ungodly. 

Don’t forget, Abraham and Sarah were from Ur of the Chaldeans, which means Abraham and Sarah were zigarat-attending moon worshippers. According to the Talmud, Father Abraham’s father was an idol maker by trade. When the Living God first encounters Abraham with this promise to redeem the world from its sin through him, Abraham is a pagan. Sarah is a pagan. 

They are sinners— their story in scripture bears that out. 

But even before their story in scripture begins, they are ungodly, both of them.

Abraham and Sarah— their character is as barren as her womb, and their religious potential is as unlikely as him rising to the occassion without the help of one of those little blue pills. 

There’s not a lot of laughter in the Bible, but we could chuckle at the absurdity of God using the likes of these two for his redemptive purpose. 

Not just absurd, it’s offensive. I mean— why would God use two people like this when he’s got good like us to choose?

Of course (Haha!) the joke’s on us. 

God works his redemptive purpose through ungodly people like them; so that, good people like us will realize that we do not contribute anything to God’s promised work of redemption. 

That grates against everything you’ve ever been told so I’m going to say it again:

God works his redemptive purpose through ungodly people like Abraham and Sarah; so that, good people like you will realize that you do not contribute anything to God’s promised work of redemption

The only thing we contribute to our redemption is our resistance. I mean— no sooner has Sarah heard this promise than she’s urging Abraham to hurry its happening by sleeping with their servant, Hagar. Like her we hear the promise and then we refuse to believe its happening isn’t our responsibility. 

Don’t let the cakes or the curds or the fatted calf in today’s feast fool you. When it comes to God’s work of redemption, you and I bring nothing to the table. 

That’s what we’re supposed to take away from this question God asks us: “Why are you laughing? Is anything too hard for God?”

Notice—

He didn’t say:  “Is anything too hard for you when you’re partnered with God.”

He didn’t say:  “Is anything too hard for you when you have God on your side.”

He didn’t say: “Is anything too hard for you if….” If you pray on it. If you have faith. If you commit yourself to the Lord. If he blesses you.

No, and in the Bible it’s the Devil who speaks in if/then.

It’s “Why are you laughing_______? Is anything to hard for God?”

Listen— this is no laughing matter.

When it comes to God’s work to redeem the world from the Powers of Sin and Death— you and I— we bring nothing to the table. 

This is what we’re meant to hear in this question that God asks us today, which is the very same takeaway we’re supposed to see in the scene just before today’s text.

Just before this mysterious visit from God in Genesis 18, God visits Abraham in order to seal God’s promise in the blood of a covenant. 

God orders Abraham to bring him 3 animals and 2 birds. God instructs Abraham to slaughter them, to cut each of them in half, and then to lay out the slaughtered pieces in rows, forming an alley in between. 

The contract’s fine print said that whoever broke it “may the curse fall upon them so that what was done to these animals will be done to them.” 

According to the conditions of the contract, if the two parties sealing the covenant were equals then both of them would pass through the pieces of slaughtered animals, swearing aloud: “Thus let it be done to me.” 

If the two parties were not equals in power, then only the weaker party would walk between them and swear “Thus let it be done to me.”

It’s funny though— that’s not how God ratifies his redemptive promise. 

The weaker one doesn’t pass through the bloody passageway at all. In fact, Abraham doesn’t do anything at all. 

Like the disciples in the garden at Gethsemane, Abraham can’t even stay awake. He instead falls in to a deep sleep, as cooperative as a corpse. 

He’s stirred awake to find that Almighty God— as though God had been made the weaker one, as though God had poured out all of his power— had condescended to him and was now passing through the blood and invoking the curse upon himself. 

“Thus let this death be done to me,” the Living God says.

The joke’s on Abraham— after all that bloody busywork of finding and catching and killing and carrying and cutting, Abraham is a completely passive party to the promise.

The author of Genesis assumes you get the joke. It’s a two-party promise, but other than fetching the ingredients Abraham brings absolutely nothing to the table. 

All he does is fall asleep, as though he’s dead in his sins. 

Let’s give Sarah the benefit of the doubt. 

Maybe that’s why she’s laughing. Maybe she’s laughing because she knows better than anyone but God that, other than the cakes and curds and fatted calf, she and Abraham bring absolutely nothing to the table. For them to be a part of God’s promised work in the world they will have to be made a part of God’s redemptive work in the world.  Abraham and Sarah— they have “no ground for boasting.” That’s how the Apostle Paul speaks of them in Romans. No ground for boasting. 

They brought nothing to the table, Paul says, they simply trusted— eventually— that the Living God is able. They simply had faith that the Almighty is able. They brought nothing. They could only believe— believe that the Living God is powerful to work what his word promises. They simply trusted God’s word and, by their trust— by their faith, the Apostle says— God reckoned to them “righteousness.” As it says just before today’s passage: “Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

 

Righteousness. 

Now the Apostle Paul is no one’s idea of a comedian, but here’s the funny thing and Paul, a Hebrew who wrote in Greek, assumes you’re in on the joke. 

That word “righteouness” (as in, you’re in the right with God) in Hebrew and in Greek (in other words, in the entire Bible) it’s the same word as “justice” (as in, to do right according to God). 

You got it? 

The word “justice” in the Bible is the same word as the word “righteousness.” 

And so at baptism, when we pray over the water “clothe this child in Christ’s righteousness…” we could just as easily pray “clothe this child in Christ’s justice…” 

Or in the Sermon on Mount, you could just as easily hear Jesus preach “Unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you wil not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

And in Paul’s proclamation, it could just as easily read: “God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that you and I might become the right-making of God.”

Except that’s not exactly it either— all of those examples make justice/rightousness sound like nouns, like a quality or an attitude or an idea that we possess or that God possess. 

But, in Hebrew and in Greek, the word for righteousness/justice is a noun that functions with the force of a verb. 

Believe me, I know this sounds like we’re getting lost in the weeds. Just trust me— I mean, half of you are odds with the other half about the place of social justice in church. You need to hear me.

In scripture, justice and righteousness are nouns that function with the force of a verb. And verbs do work. But, remember too, St. Paul says Abraham is the example. What’s true of Sarah is the same for all of us. We bring nothing to the table. 

Verbs do work, but on our own we can only work sin. 

Thefore this noun with the force of a verb— it belongs to God. Rightousness…justice…it’s all God’s work, from beginning to end. We’re the objects of God’s verb.

It’s not we do our best and God does the rest. 

It’s not we do our part after God has done his part. 

It’s not God declares us righteous so that then we can go out and deliver the world from injustice. 

It’s all God’s work— that’s the point Paul makes with Abraham and Sarah. The God who is both sides to his 2-party promise is the subject to both meanings of the verb. 

Put it this way:

By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, God declares you forgiven by the justice of his cross for you. 

 

The God who has done for you in the work of Jesus Christ is the Living God who is able to draft you into his work for your neighbor.

Righteousness. Justice. 

It’s the same word, in Hebrew and in Greek. And in both, it works like a verb. And in both, God is the active agent. God is the subject of the sentence. 

This why the question Isn’t there work we have to do as Christians?— pardon the bluntness— it isn’t a very good question. 

By faith, you’ve been reckoned in the right with God. 
There is therefore  now no condemnation— there’s nothing you have to do. 

But, by faith, God is able to reckon onto your doorstep some part of his right-making work in the world. 

You could say no to it. I know it sounds crazy funny but your status before God won’t suffer one iota for it. But your neighbor may suffer.

 

Here’s a joke:

What do you call a Catholic who practices the rhythm method?

Mom.

Here’s another:

A guy is on his couch and hears the doorbell ring. He goes to the door and sees a snail. Snail says “Hey I got something to talk with you about.” Guy picks the snail up and throws him and says “Get the heck out of here.”  

Three years later the same guy is on the couch. He hears the doorbell. It’s the snail. Snail says “What the hell was that all about?”

I know. They can’t all be pearls. 

Those two jokes are the favorite jokes of one of my best friends, Brian Stolarz. He’s a lawyer here in DC. Let those jokes serve as Exhibits A and B, proof that Brian brings nothing to the table. 

Trust me, he’s not a very impressive person. A Mets fan, Brian still wears Kirkland brand pleated pants and unironically listens to Run DMC. 

An evening out with Brian mainly involves fart jokes, jabs about the measurements of man parts, and pranking the drive-thru worker at Taco Bell. Thurgood Marshall he is not.

He brings nothing to table.

Brian grew up Catholic. He belongs to my previous congregation, and he’ll be our guest here in a few weeks. Brian works at a fancy white-collar firm. 

Because he’d come up as as public defender in NYC and because he had a good BS radar, a few years ago Brian’s firm asked him to head up a death penalty case in Texas, a case his firm had taken pro bono. 

It was one of those bleeding heart cases firms take to make themselves feel good about themselves and use to boast about themselves to their paying clients and prospective hires. 

It was a cop-killing at a cash-checking store in Houston. With no DNA, the DA had prosecuted Dewayne Brown, a mentally handicapped black man with no record whose IQ the state doctors ginned up a few points so the prosecution could notch another win. 

After Brian visited Dewayne for the first time on death row, he walked out into the parking lot, his heart racing, and he threw up on the pavement. 

It hadn’t really ocurred to Brian until meeting Dewayne but meeting Dewayne, Brian realized Dewayne was innocent. 

Dewayne’s free now. 

And Brian will tell you about that part of the story in a few weeks. 

What he might not tell you though, he’s told me. 

Told me how the case almost ruined his marriage. 

How it hurt his career. How it made him a stranger to his young kids.

How if it was up to him and he could do it all over again he wouldn’t. 

If it was up to him, he would not take Dewayne’s case again. 

In the drive-through at Taco Bell one night, making jokes about his man-parts, Brian said to me:

“I’m not a social justice warrior. I grew up Catholic hearing that the death penalty was wrong. And then— out of the blue— it was thrust upon me [pay attention to how he puts it]. It was like God put this good work in front of me to do. Still, I didn’t want to do it. I felt compelled—something compelled me— to do it in spite of what maybe I wanted to do.

Its funny— its like our definitions of activism aren’t passive enough.”

It’s funny. 

I don’t think Brian really thought too much about the title to his book. 

He called it Grace and Justice as though they were one and the same.

The Living God, who declares you in the right in Jesus Christ, is able. 

Able to draft you into his work that is even now rectifying the world.

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Episode #171 – Parker Palmer: “If It’s Good Enough for Jesus”

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Turns out the quote everyone attributes to Parker Palmer was never uttered by Parker Palmer.

Other lessons learned in this episode: Community organizing during social unrest, Thomas Merton saving the bacon, communism working in the monastery, incarnation politics, internal work, being on the brink of everything and getting old, the ambivalence of “meaning,” contemplative time, depression and medication.

For episode #171, I had the honor of talking with Parker Palmer about his new book On The Brink Of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old.

Before the interview…Help support the show! 

Go to Amazon and buy a paperback or e-book of Crackers and Grape Juice’s new book,
I Like Big Buts: Reflections on Paul’s Letter to the Roman. 

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If It’s Embarrassing, It’s Probably True

I’m continuing our fall sermon series this Sunday with the question Yahweh poses to Sarah: “Why are you laughing?” In thinking about Sarah’s laughter I realized that there’s very little mention of anyone laughing in scripture at all. Sarah in Genesis 18 receives the promise of God as a punchline, and the crowds in Matthew laugh off Jesus promising to bring life to a dead girl. That’s about it.

Though there is not a laughter in the bible, there is plenty in the bible about which we can laugh. For example, the Old Testatment story of the prophet Elisha and the she-bears. Here’s one from the vault on that odd, funny passage from my book 100 Foreskins. 

God is not great.

This lightening bolt comes according to Christopher Hitchens, who, along with Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, is one of the self-styled New Atheists. Or, as they like to refer themselves in their enlightened degree: ‘Brights.’

They actually call themselves ‘Brights.’

Christopher Hitchens’ bestselling, National Book Award-nominated diatribe carries the unsubtle, kitchen-sink title God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

The book is a couple of years old now, but I only recently managed to choke it all down. In it, Hitchens scolds ignorant lemmings like you and me that, far from being great, God is instead a malignant pox on human history, human inquiry and human freedom.

It takes 317 self-important pages Hitchens to regurgitate points made long ago by philosophers much smarter than he.

He steals from Freud:

God is not great; God is an illusion. God is the projection of our desire to escape death.

He steals from Ludwig Feuerbach:

God is not great; God is a totem. It is not God who has fashioned us in his image. It is we who have fashioned God in ours.

He steals from Woody Allen:

God is not great.

At best, God is an underachiever, giving us an imperfect world handicapped by violence and poverty and suffering.

He steals from Nietzsche.

How can God be great- better yet, how can God be all-wise- if he is forever choosing the least deserving, least capable, least faithful people to do his work?

He steals from Kant.

God is not great. What we call God’s Word are texts filled with horrors, cruelties and madness, stories that no right-minded person would wish to be true, stories that should provoke squinty-eyed, blush-faced embarrassment not an ‘Amen’ or ‘Thanks be to God.’

Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, then we’ll come clean. And we’ll admit that Hitchens’ book would not be 317 pages long if he were pulling his points out of thin air. His argument is not with out grounds. Maybe some of scripture’s stories are best kept secret.

Take Elisha.

No sooner does Elisha inherit the prophetic mantle from Elijah than Elisha hurls a curse at a crowd of punk kids, calling two she-bears out of the woods to maul them limb from limb. Forty-two of them. All for an adolescent crack about male-pattern baldness.

For those of us who believe that God is great, all the time God is great, how do we explain a scripture like that one?

What do we say about Elisha?

 

Of course if you’ve spent any time with adolescents then you might just say you’re envious that Elisha has such powers at his disposal.

Or-

You could refuse to blink and say without equivocation, that this is a story about holiness. That just as the ark carried the covenant given by the Lord, Elisha, as a prophet of the Lord, carries within him the Word of God.

Therefore, to mock Elisha is to mock the Lord. No matter the taste it leaves in our mouths, those boys had it coming to them- when you mock a prophet of the Lord you end up dead.

Or instead-

You could say that what we think is going on in this text is NOT what is actually going on in this text. You could argue that the original plot and meaning have been obscured by time and translation.

For example, you could point out that Bethel, the setting for this story, was also the site of King Jeroboam’s temple to the golden calf. And you could point out that, in Hebrew, ‘little boys’ can also mean ‘subordinates’ as in, assistant priests.

And their jibe ‘go on up’- you could argue that refers to Elijah’s ascension. After all, just twelve verses earlier fiery horses and chariots had taken Elijah on up to heaven. In other words, in shouting ‘go on up’ they’re wishing Elisha dead too, or they’re threatening to make him so.

So you could argue that this isn’t a petty act of revenge. Elisha’s curse is an act of warfare.

Elisha is doing battle against false prophets just as the prophet Elijah had done. Just as Elijah had stood at the edge of Mt Carmel and battled the prophets of Baal, so too does Elisha stand at the edge of the forest and battle the priests of false gods.

Elijah had called down fire from heaven upon God’s enemies, and now Elisha calls bears down from the woods upon his enemies.

You could argue that.

If you did-

Then you could connect this story to the story before it- where Elisha takes the mantle given to him by Elijah, rolls it up so that it resembles a staff. And with it he strikes the banks of the Jordan River and parts the waters in two so his people can pass through.

And then, with two bears, defeats the false worshippers in the land.

In other words, Elisha is a new Moses. Elisha is a new Joshua. He’s enacting a New Exodus and a New Conquest. He’s rescuing his people from the slavery of idolatry and leading them into a new and promising land.

You could argue that.

And you could take it a step further-

And focus on the crowd’s insult: ‘bald-head.’ You could point out that the mantle given to Elisha, a garment not unlike my stole, was made of hair.

So maybe when the crowd taunts Elisha and calls him ‘bald-head’ they’re not meaning the hair on his head. Maybe they’re taunting Elisha because they don’t believe he’s really inherited Elijah’s prophetic mantle. They don’t believe that the power and the word of the Lord have come to rest on him.

You could argue that.

And many have.

The fact is when it comes to the history of biblical interpretation there is no shortage of explanations for why this strange story is about anything other than what it seems to be.

There’s no shortage of scholars doing theological gymnastics to exonerate Elisha because there is so much embarrassment: that a prophet could be so petty, that a prophet could be so temperamental and vindictive, that that’s the sort of person God would call.

Years ago, when I was still discerning a call to ministry and had only just applied to the ordination process, the churchly powers-that-be evaluated me for my ‘fitness for ministry.’

The major part of that evaluation was a battery of psychological assessment tests.

I remember I was given the address of some tiny, out-of-the-way New Jersey church to report to and when I arrived some random pastor handed me a stack of these psychological tests and a #2 pencil. For several hours I sat in that pastor’s outdated, drafty office and filled in multiple choice, scantron bubbles.

The tests had questions with seemingly no right answers, questions like:

Would you rather torture a cat or date your mother?

How often do you think people are following you: always or often?

Would you rather lie to God or lie to your mother?

How often do you lose your temper: frequently or never?

Would you rather kiss a dead person on the lips or kiss your mother?

(Come to think of it, there were an awful lot of questions about my mother.)

The psychological tests took hours and when I was done- or when I thought I was done- I noticed I still had like ten leftover bubbles I hadn’t filled in, even though I’d gone through all the questions, MEANING- all of the questions had answers other than the answers I’d intended.

But at that point I didn’t care. I sighed and shuffled the tests together and turned them in.

After I’d completed the psychological assessments, I had to make an appointment at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care in Richmond to meet with a counselor, who would go through my test results and discuss them with me. I was told ominously and without explanation, that he would be looking for ‘red flags.’

As soon as I walked in to this counselor’s office, I was convinced he was the one who was crazy. All over his office walls he’d hung pictures of himself wearing fatigues, a Harley Davidson dew rag and holding huge machine guns.

Alongside the Rambo photos he’d hung Thomas Kinkade pictures with sappy bible quotes on them and alongside them a bunch of flannel graph peace doves. In the corner of his office was a gurgling granite fountain of water and some sort of Feng Shui, Zen, Christian, Yoga garden.

Dr. Denton was his name. Not only did he have a comic book villain name, he looked like one too. Dr. Denton was completely bald with little round glasses, and that particular morning- but for all I knew every morning- he was dressed completely in burgundy, from head to toe in burgundy: burgundy polyester dress pants, burgundy polyester button down shirt. And to accessorize: an enormous green and white polka dotted bow tie and white cowboy boots.

Needless to say, he was hard to read and I was immediately on the defensive.

After shaking my hand and introducing himself, Dr Denton gestured and had me sit down on this bamboo sort of love seat that was about two inches off the ground; so that, his knees were at my eye level and to anyone walking past I must’ve looked like an overgrown man-child sitting at Santa’s feet.

I sat there for several minutes, staring at his knees, while he pondered my test results, occasionally arching his eyebrow and going ‘HMMM.’

When he finished, he stared at me over his glasses and said: ‘This suggests pretty strongly that you have an argumentative personality.’

‘I don’t think that’s true’ I said, taking the bait. And he scribbled something in his notes.

Then he summarized my psychological test results:

I usually thought I was right and others were wrong.

I typically thought I was the smartest person in the room.

I still had many doubts about my faith.

My family of origin was broken and troubled.

I had a tendency to be contrary and confrontational.

I could be abrasive and short-tempered.

I may have trouble working well with others.

I was often foul-mouthed and vulgar in my language and immature and inappropriate in my humor.

To be honest, at that point in my life, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Because at that point in my life I still wasn’t convinced I was called to do this.

I still didn’t think I was cut out for ministry. I didn’t think I was good enough or holy enough or righteous enough for God to use me.

He told me exactly what I wanted to hear because I wanted him to let me off the hook.

     ‘Well, I guess this means I’m not cut out for ministry.’ 

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied with surprise, ‘God’s used worse people before.’ 

 

Biblical scholars call it the ‘criterion of embarrassment.’

When investigating the authenticity of a scriptural story, the reasoning goes that that which is most embarrassing to believers is probably historically true.

And so, scholars say, Jesus probably did submit to baptism by John. Jesus probably did act the slave and wash his friends’ feet. Jesus probably did die naked and a criminal and on a cross- because no first century believer would make up something so embarrassing about the Messiah.

That which is most embarrassing is most true.

And so Peter probably did deny Jesus three times. Paul really was a persecutor and murderer of the Church. Moses really did kill a man and hide him in the sand. Noah, after the flood, probably did get drunk, pass out naked and disown his son when he woke up.

And the prophet Elisha-

Before he rescued a widow’s children from slavery, before he raised a woman’s little boy from the dead, before he fed multitudes with only twenty loaves of bread, before before he healed a Syrian general of leprosy-

Elisha probably did respond to adolescent mocking with a petty, vindictive, violent curse of his own.

Because if you’re making up your scripture these aren’t the sorts of people you would choose for God to use.

If you were making up your scripture, you would choose heroes.

You would choose people:

who were always strong in their faith

who never wavered in their commitment to God

whose character was pure and spotless

You would choose saints:

who never drank too much

who were never seduced by money or prosperity

who never chose the wrong side

who never made a rash decision

who never forgot their purpose in life

who never lashed out in anger

who never escalated a petty argument

who never broke a promise or a vow.

But God chooses differently. God doesn’t choose holy people. God enlists imperfect people to do holy things.

Biblical scholars call it the ‘criterion of embarrassment.’

But you and I- we call it grace.

I hate Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens’ New Atheist movement is so stale and hackneyed it deserves to be no more than a passing fad.

Hitchens’ best-selling book, God is Not Great, is no better than beach-paperback brain candy. It’s intellectually and morally trivial. That Christopher Hitchens passes for a theological expert in the popular media is embarrassing.

There’s not one new idea in any of his 317 constipated pages. Christopher Hitchens is wantonly incurious. His scholarship is egregiously slapdash. His attempts at philosophical argument make it obvious he’s sailing in uncharted waters. His book is so extraordinarily crowded with errors I gave up counting them.

I can’t stand Christopher Hitchens.

I think he’s shallow, reptilian and obnoxious.

He’s cruel in his sarcastic judgments.

He’s arrogantly dismissive of our faith, and he’s despicable in his mockery of Jesus Christ.

I can’t stand Christopher Hitchens.

And yet I should bite my tongue because he’s exactly the sort of person our God just loves to use.

Isn’t God great?

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Should’ve Stayed in Heaven

Our guest preacher couldn’t make it this Sunday so I continued our fall sermon series by using Mark 10.17-32 and Jesus’ question to the rich young rule: “Why do you call me good?”

 

Stupid kid. I know all our teachers lied to us and told us that there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but…I mean, really? “Good Teacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”

Stupid kid.

Jesus is on his way to the nation’s capital when this rich honor roll student from the suburbs comes up to him with a question. And Jesus doesn’t appear all that interested in the questions of these brown-nosing, hand-raising, helicopter-parented upwardly mobile millenial types. So Jesus just tries to blow him off with a conventional answer about obeying the commandments.  

    ‘Teacher, I’ve kept all the commandments since I was a kid. What else must I do to inherit eternal life?’

And Jesus looks at him. And Jesus asks him: “Why do you call me good?” And then Jesus says: ‘Because I love you…there is one thing you can do…go, sell everything last thing you possess, give it to the poor and then come follow me.’

They watch the rich young man walk away.

And Jesus looks at the disciples and says: ‘You know- you just can’t save rich people. It’s hard. It’s impossible even.’

Near as I can tell, this is the only place in the bible where Jesus invites someone to become a disciple and the person refuses.

And, this is only second place where the Gospels say Jesus loved someone, specifically.

He’s the only person Jesus loved, AND he’s the only person who refused to become a disciple.

Well-heeled people like most of us with our first-world problems always get hung up on the last part of this passage- Jesus’ bit about the 1-humped dromedary and the sewing needle.

But really, if we were paying close biblical attention then the only needle we should have heard was the needle scratching off the record when this stupid kid actually claims to have kept all 613 commandments. 

  613!  As in, 603 more than the ten commandments that I’m willing to bet $10 you can’t even remember and recite.

———————-

    It’s just not just the Top Ten:

Thou shall have no other gods but me. Thou shall not make for yourself any idol. Thou shall not invoke with malice the name of the Lord, your God. Thou shall not commit murder. Thou shall not commit adultery.Thou shall not steal.

It’s not just the ones we like to etch in granite and hang in courthouses. Maybe we mishear Jesus’ exchange with this stupid rich kid and maybe we hang the commandments near jury boxes because we don’t understand what Jesus and the Apostle Paul both say about the fundamental function of the Law of Moses.

Turns out, finger-wagging fundamentalists would do well to spend less time defending the bible and more time reading the bible because, according to Jesus and St. Paul, the commandments are not meant to elicit positive, public morality.

That’s not their purpose.

I’m going to say that again so you hear me: according to Jesus and the Apostle Paul, the commandments are not rules to regulate our behavior. They’re not a code of conduct.

They’re not Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. They’re not the means by which we transform the world. The commandments— they’re not a code of conduct. 

 The primary function of the Law, as Jesus says in the Gospel of John chapter 5 and Paul says in the Book of Romans chapter 3, is to do to us what it apparently failed to do that brown-nosing rich kid in Mark 10.

To accuse us.

Lex semper accusat, the Protestant Reformers said as a sort of shorthand. The Law always accuses. 

———————-

The mistake in wanting to post the 10 Commandments in public spaces, the mistake in wanting to make Jesus’ own commands in the Sermon on the Mount instructions for us to follow is that, according to Jesus himself, the primary function of the Law is not civil or moral. 

The primary function of the Law is theological.

It’s primary purpose is to reveal the complete and total righteousness we require to acquire the Kingdom of Heaven and meet a holy God, blameless and justified.

But because we’re self-deceiving sinners, we delude ourselves as much as that sniveling brown-noser to whom Jesus prescribes a camel and needle.

And we rationalize- that because we keep 6 out of the 10 without trying and because we’ve got a little bit of faith and because we sing in the choir or because we took a casserole to the sick lady down the street or because we gave that homeless guy a couple of bucks- we deceive ourselves.

And we tell ourselves that we’re good, that we’re righteous, that we’re in the right with God, that we didn’t do what Les Moonves at CBS did.

To keep us from deceiving ourselves, to keep us from measuring our virtue relative to another’s alleged vice, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does to all of us what Jesus does to this rich young ruler. Jesus recapitulates the 10 Commandments and he cranks them up a notch.

To the 6th Commandment, “Do not commit murder,” Jesus adds: “If   you’ve even had an angry thought toward your brother, then you’re guilty. Of murder.” To the 7th Commandment, “Do not commit adultery,” Jesus attaches: “If you’ve even thought dirty about that Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Supermodel,  then you’ve cheated on your wife.” He didn’t say it exactly like that. I have a friend who put it that way.

And Jesus takes the Greatest Commandment, the Golden Rule- our favorite: “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself,” and Jesus makes it alot less great by trading out neighbor for enemy.  “You have heard it said: ‘You shall love your neighbor.’ But I say to you, you shall love your enemies.”  

Whoever breaks even one of these commandments of the Law, Jesus warns, will be called least in my Kingdom. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will never enter Heaven.

———————-  

Jesus exposes the Law’s true function by moving the Law and its demands from our actions to our intentions.

The righteousness required to acquire heaven, says Jesus, is more than being able to check off the boxes on the code of conduct. Do not commit murder, check. Do not steal, check. Do not covet, check.

I don’t have any girl from high school accusing me of anything, I must be Kingdom material. 

No.

The righteousness required to acquire the Kingdom is more than what you do or do not do. That’s what the brown-nosing kid in Mark 10 doesn’t get: the righteousness required for you to acquire heaven— it’s more than keeping the commandments. It’s who you are behind closed doors. It’s who you were before you were famous. It’s who you are backstage in the dressing room. It’s not who you are when you’re shaking hands and popping tic-tacs; it’s who you are on the Access Hollywood bus when you think the mic is turned off.

It’s what’s in your head and in your heart. It’s your intentions not just your actions. That’s what counts to come in to the Kingdom.That’s the necessary measure of righteousness, Jesus says. And then, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, closes his recapitulation of the Decalogue by telling his hearers exactly what God tells Moses at the end of the giving of the Law in Deuteronomy:

“You must be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”  

Preachers like me just love to wag our fingers at folks like you and exhort you from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, but seldom do we quote from the climax of his sermon:
You must be perfect. 
As perfect as God himself. 
If you break even one of these commandments, the Kingdom of Heaven is closed to you. 
How’s that going for you?

———————-

“Good teacher, I’ve kept all the commandments since my youth.”

Yeah. Right. 

When it comes to the Law, Christ’s point is that we should not measure ourselves according to those around us. “Why are you calling me good?” Jesus asks him, “No one is good but God.”

Christ’s point is that, when it comes to the Law and our righteousness, we must measure ourselves according to God.

There’s no cutting corners. There’s no A for effort. “I tried my best” will not open the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven for you. It doesn’t matter that you’re “better” than him. It doesn’t matter that you never did what she did.

“Nobody’s perfect” isn’t an excuse because the Father and the Son both say that perfection is actually the obligation.  

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will NOT enter heaven. You see, Jesus takes the Law given to Moses at Mt. Sinai and on a different mount Jesus exposes the theological function of the Law: You must be perfect.

You must be as perfect as God. You must be perfect across the board, on all counts- perfect in your head and perfect in your heart and perfect in your life. Again—  How’s that going for you?

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does to all of us what he does to this kid with a camel and a needle. Jesus takes the Law and he ratchets the degree of difficulty all the way up to perfection- it’s not just your public self; an A+ score for your secret self is a Kingdom prerequisite too.

Jesus takes the Law and he cranks its demands all the way up to absolute in order to suck all the self-righteousness out of you. Jesus leaves no leniency in the Law; so that, you and I will understand that before a holy and righteous God, we stand in the dock shoulder-to-shoulder with creeps like Les Moonves and Paul Manafort and, as much as them, we should tremble.

You see, that’s the mistake we make in wanting to post the Law of Moses in courtrooms and public spaces. And it’s the mistake we make in mishearing this passage in Mark 10 as instructions to go and sell everything we own.

Even if we could sell everything we own and gave the money to the poor to follow Jesus—
we’d still fall far short of Jesus’ righteousness.
Even if we could do it, we’d still fall short.

———————-

The primary purpose of the Law isn’t so much what the Law says. The primary purpose of the Law is what the Law does to us.The commandments are not principles by which you live an upright life. The commandments are the means by which God brings you down to your knees.

By telling him to give away all his stuff and then come follow, Jesus is doing to this rich young brown-noser what Jesus does to all of us in his sermon on the mount. Giving us no other out, no other hope, but to throw ourselves on his mercy.

  

You might’ve seen the story in the news this week. After a year in exile, having been accused by the #metoo movement, comedian Louis CK did a surprise comedy set on a small stage last week. His first time before audience since his sin was exposed. 

In his statement to the NY Times, comedian Louis CK said of his own aberrant and sinful behavior toward women:

“…I wielded my power irresponsibly. I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them. And I’ve tried to run away from them. Now I’m aware of the extent of my actions.”

Louis CK’s apology leaves a lot to be desired.

Nonetheless, what he describes (deceiving himself, then running away from the truth about himself, then being made to see what he had done) is the Law.

The theological function of the Law is stop us in our scrambling tracks and to hold a mirror up to our self-deceiving eyes; so that, we’re forced to reckon with who we are and with what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone.

The theological function of the Law is to get you to see yourself with enough clarity that you will ask the question: “How could God love someone like me?” 

I certainly don’t keep all 613 commandments, and I’d sure as hell never sell everything I possess, leave my wife and kids destitute, to follow after Jesus. How could God love someone like me?

When the Law brings you to ask that question, you’re close to breaking through to the Gospel.

———————-

The Protestant Reformation began 501 years ago next month, and one of the distinctives taught by the first Protestant Reformers was that God has spoken to us and God still speaks to us in two different words: Law and Gospel.

And the Reformers taught the necessary art for every Christian to learn is how to distinguish properly between the first word God speaks, Law, and the second word God speaks, Gospel. Learning how to distinguish properly between the Law and the Gospel is what St. Paul describes in scripture as “rightly dividing the word of truth.”  It’s a necessary art for every Christian to learn, the first Protestants said, because if you don’t know how to rightly divide the word, if you don’t know how to distinguish properly between the Law and the Gospel, then you distort the purpose of these two words.

And distorting them- it muddles the Christian message.  

Distorting the Law and the Gospel— it muddles Christianity into a burdensome message (Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor) rather than a message that is a life-giving gift (God in Jesus Christ has given away everything for you). 

Distinguishing properly between these two words God speaks is necessary because without learning this art you will end up emphasizing one of these words at the expense of the other.

You’ll focus only on the Law: Be perfect. Forgive 70 x 7. Love your enemy. Don’t commit adultery. Give away all your possessions. Feed the hungry.

But to focus only on the first word God speaks, Law, takes the flesh off of Christ and wraps him in judge’s robe.

Focus on Law alone yields a God of exhausting exhortations and oppressive expectations.

The Law always accuses- that’s it’s God-given purpose. So Law alone religion produces religious people who are accusatory and angry, stern and self-righteous and judgmental. And because the Law demands perfection, the Law when it’s not properly distinguished, the Law alone without the Gospel, it cannot produce Christians. It can only produce hypocrites. That’s why none of us should’ve been surprised to discover during election season last fall that the 10 Commandments Judge in Alabama was in fact a white-washed tomb.

On the other hand, a lot of Christians and churches avoid the first word, Law, altogether and preach only the second word, Gospel, which vacates it of its depth and meaning.

Without the first word, Law, God’s second word evaporates into sentimentality. “God loves you” becomes a shallow cliche apart from the Law. Christianity becames sentimental without the Law and its accusation that the world is a dark, dark place and the human heart is dimmer still.

———————-

Of course, most of the time, in most churches, from most preachers (and I’m as guilty as the next), you don’t hear one of these words preached to the exclusion of the other.

Nor do you hear them rightly divided.

Most of the time, you instead hear them mashed together into a kind of Glawspel where, yes, Jesus died for you unconditionally but now he’s got so many expectations for you- if you’re honest- it feels like its killing you.

Glawspel takes amazing grace and makes it exhausting. Jesus loves you but here’s what you must do now to show him how much you appreciate his “free” gift. Compared to the Law-alone and Gospel-alone distortions of these two words, Glawspel is the worst because it inoculates you against the message.

Glawspel turns all of us into the rich young ruler in today’s passage, thinking we can get by under the Law with a little bit of help from Jesus.

No.

The point of a Law like “Forgive 70 x 7” is to convince you that you cannot achieve that much forgiveness; so that, you will have no other place to turn but the wounded feet of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness God offers in him.

The point of overwhelming Law like “Love your enemies” is to push you to the grace of him who died for them, his enemies.

The reason it’s necessary to learn how to distinguish properly between these two words God speaks, Law and Gospel, is because the point of the first word is to push you to the second word.

The first word, Law, says “Turn the other cheek” so that you will see just how much you fail to do so and, seeing, hear the promise provided by the second word, Gospel.

The promise of the one who turned the other cheek all the way to a cross.

For you.

The reason it’s so necessary to learn how to divide rightly these words that God speaks is because the point of the Law is to produce not frustration or  exhaustion but recognition. 

The Law is what God uses to provoke repentance in you. The Law is how God drives self-deceiving you to the Gospel. And the Gospel is not Glawspel. The Gospel is not an invitation with strings attached. The Gospel is not a gift with a To Do list written underneath the wrapping paper.If sounds exhausting instead of amazing, it’s not the Gospel of grace. If it asks WWJD?, it’s not the Gospel.  The Gospel simply repeats and celebrates the question: WDJD? What DID Jesus do?

———————-

He did what you cannot do for yourself.

Because the whole point of the Law is that, on our own, we can’t fulfill even a fraction of it much less sell everything we got. Because behind closed doors, When we think the mic is off, In the backstage dressing room of our minds, And in the secret thoughts of our hearts- Each and every one of us is different in degree but not in kind from Les Moonves and Louis CK and the avalanche of all the others. Each and every one of us is more like them than we are like him, like Jesus Christ.

The point of the Law is to drive you to Jesus Christ not as your teacher and not as your example.

If Christ is just your teacher or example, as Martin Luther said, it would’ve been better had he stayed in heaven because, let’s face it— his teachings aren’t all that unique and on their own (if he’s just a Teacher or an Example) his teachings just leave us in our sins. 

If Christ is just your teacher or example, Luther said, it would’ve been better had he stayed in heaven because the whole point of what Jesus did is that he did what you cannot ever hope to do for yourself.

Be perfect. He took that burden off of you.

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He took that fear from you.

He did what you cannot do for yourself. He alone was obedient to the Law. He alone fulfilled its absolute demands. He alone was perfect as his Father in Heaven is perfect.

His righteousness not only exceeds that of the Pharisees, it overflows to you; so that, now you and I can stand before God justified not by our charity or our character or our contributions to the Kingdom but by the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. His perfection, despite your imperfections, is reckoned to you as your own- no matter what you’ve done or left undone, no matter the bombs that voice inside your head throws down, no matter the dark secrets in your heart- that’s what’s more true about you now.

———————-

“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” 

Here’s what you’re supposed to hear in this question Christ poses to us:

Christianity is an exclusive religion.

It excludes all your sin because all your sin is in him and it stayed stuck in the cross when he was nailed to a tree.

Christianity is an exclusive religion.

It excludes all your goodness because in the Gospel you’re free to admit what the Law accuses: you’re not that good.

Christianity is an exclusive religion.

It excludes all your works of righteousness because they’ll never be enough and they’re not necessary.

Christianity is an exclusive religion.

It is inclusive of nothing else but his perfect work.

And you in it.

The stupid kid- the answer to his question is as obvious as it is elementary. What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Nothing. 

You don’t have to do anything. 

Just throw yourself on Christ’s mercy. 

Trust in his doing for you not your own doing for him.

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Episode #170 – Rolf Jacobson: Law vs. Gospel & the Community of Care

I met Dr. Rolf Jacobson at the Festival of Homiletics where, eavesdropping on me preaching, he said I sounded more Protestant than any of his students at Luther Seminary. You can check out his sermon here.

Dr. Jacobson is the author of Crazy Talk and hosts his own lectionary-based podcast as well. In this episode, he and I talk about the distinction between the Law and the Gospel as a particular emphasis of the Protestant Reformation as well as the role of the Psalms in shaping prayer and giving voice to our emotions before God. In particular, we talk about suffering, his own journey with cancer that’s left him withouth his legs, and the church as a community of care.

It’s a good conversation. Enjoy.

Before the interview…Help support the show! 

Go to Amazon and buy a paperback or e-book of Crackers and Grape Juice’s new book,
I Like Big Buts: Reflections on Paul’s Letter to the Roman. 

 

 

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God’s Behind

It’s not one of the scriptures for our fall series, but this week’s Gospel lection is one of the questions God poses to us: “Who do you say that I am?” In short order, Peter screws the pooch over the answer.

Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

– Mark 8

Like Peter, we’ve been determined ever since to get a God by any other means than a cross, a savior who meets us through any other medium than suffering and shame.

“The cross alone is our theology,” Martin Luther wrote in his Heidelberg Disputation. Notice, Luther didn’t say, “The death of Christ alone is our theology.” The distinction determines our theology. To say the cross alone is the core of our God-talk is to make the awful and audacious claim that the glory of God meets us not in our strivings up towards glory but in our suffering and humiliation. The God who condescended to meet us in the crucified Christ never chooses any other avenue by which to meet us than condescension into suffering, or, as Chad Bird writes, “The glory of God is camouflaged by humility, anonymity and even foolishness, for our God likes to hide himself beneath his opposite.” 

If the cross is God’s attack upon sin, as scripture sees it, then the particular sin revealed in Christ’s crucifixion is our dissembling.

The cross outs all our spiritual pretension as a sham.

It’s our affectations at virtue, not our vice, that abandon God.
It’s our “goodness” that pushes him out of the world on a bloody tree.

In the name of godliness we drive nails through his hands and his feet; in homage to wisdom and justice we reason it’s better for this innocent one to die. God hides behind the mask of a cross in order to reveal the masks we wear to play-act the role of a righteous alter ego. Like Jekyl’s Hyde, this alter ego is as much a killer as it is addictive, for if, as St. Paul insists, God’s righteousness has been gifted to us in Christ apart from any of our religious doings, then our goodness itself- or, our pretense at goodness- is the problem Christ kills by his cross. 

Our goodness itself, and it’s attendant self-deceptions of self-sufficiency and shit-togetherness, is the sickness from which we requiring saving. Luther said that Jesus Christ meets us so far down in the muck and mire of our lives that his skin smokes hot; that is, Christ condescends to meet us not as a needless accessory in the pristine parts of our lives in the steaming piles of shit in our lives.

Wherever shit happens, grace does too.

God meets us in our shame and in our suffering because only when we’ve been reduced to nothing do we know our need and you can’t receive a gift in joy if you’re determined it’s unnecessary. It’s why God must kill the patient before he can live again. As Luther continued in thesis 18 of the Disputation: “Man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is ready to receive the grace of Jesus Christ.” Knowing you have nothing to offer is the only way to receive what God has to give. It’s only when shit happens that you see you need a savior.

In his memoir Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, Richard Selzer tells of a young woman, a new wife, from whose face he removed a tumor, cutting a nerve in her cheek in the process and leaving her face smiling in a twisted palsy.

Her young husband stood by the bed as she awoke and appraised her new self: “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.

The surgeon nods and her husband smiles, “I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.”

Selzer goes one to testify to the epiphany he witnesses: 

“All at once, I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with God. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I’m so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

The glory of God always shows forth in Jesus stooping over to kiss the shameful scabs and weeping wounds of lepers like us.

During their sojourn in the desert, still waiting on God to deliver the goods in the milk and honey department, Moses asks God to disclose his glory. No one can see God’s face and live, the Almighty explains to Moses before instructing him to hide in the cleft of a rock. As God passes by the rock, God covers Moses’ eyes, permitting Moses only a glimpse of God’s backside. God is the one who prevents Moses from seeing his glory. Whether from the cleft of a rock or upon a cross, God refuses to be seen in glory. To Moses, God gives only a peek at his behind. To us, God responds to our taunts at glory (“If he’s the Christ let him save himself!) by bleeding and dying. 

“If he’s the Christ let him save himself” echoes an ancient addiction. From Adam onwards, we are addicted to the “glory story;” that is, we’re hard-wired by sin to imagine that God is far off in heaven, up in glory, doling out rewards for every faithful step we take up towards him and doling out chastisements for our every slip-up along the way. It’s the glory story that produces cliches like “God never gives you more than you can handle” and “Everything happens for a reason.” It’s the glory story that provokes questions like “Where is God in the midst of my suffering?” The glory story prompts those kinds of questions and cliches because it gets God’s directionality backwards.

The Gospel is a one-way story that goes down.

The story of the Cross is not the story of our journey up to God but God’s journey down to us. The story of the Cross is a story of God’s condescension to us not our ascension up to God. Addicted to the glory story, we’re reliably liable to point our mouths in the wrong direction when we cry out to God for help. Up into glory rather than down in to the darkness we’re in and out into the nothing and shadows that surround us. 

How preachers like me so often speak of the cross is insufficient. In the suffering Christ, God does more than identify with those who suffer, the poor and the oppressed.

By his suffering, God in Christ does more than give us an example in order to exhort us into rolling up our sleeves and serving those who suffer.

No, God is to be found in our suffering.

God refuses to be seen in any other way in our world than in how he appears when Pontius Pilate declares of him, crowned with thorns and his cloths and skin in tatters: “Ecce Homo.” Behold, the man. Behold the man reduced to nothing; so that, man will know this man is to be found in our nothing. Gerard Manley Hopkins got it half-wrong: God only plays in ten thousand places if those ten thousand places are places of suffering and humiliation, crosses and conjugal beds. If the sin revealed by the cross is our spiritual pretension, then when the dying Christ declares

“It is finished” he ends any of our self-congratulatory projects that would have God be seen in any other way but in our need and by any other means than the cross.

While we so often wonder where God is in our suffering, St. Paul indicts as “enemies of the cross” any who insist that God isn’t in suffering. Where we assume God’s absence amidst suffering, Paul implies that not to know Christ is not to know that in your suffering God is hidden, present, there. Suffering isn’t a sign that God’s asleep at the wheel. Suffering is the vehicle in which God drives you to his grace. “Where is God in my suffering?” just may be exactly the worst question to ask- even if it is an unavoidably natural cry- because the God who shows his ass to Moses shows himself no more clearly than in our suffering. 

     

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Search History

I kicked off our fall sermon series, “The Questions God Asks,” by looking at the first question God asks us in scripture: “Adam, where are you?” In Genesis 3.

Let’s not dicker around. 

Let’s get right to the heart of the matter. 

Let me give to you the gospel, distilled and straight up:

As a called and ordained preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ, and therefore by Christ’s authority and Christ’s authority alone, I declare unto you— every last one of you— the entire forgiveness, the full and complete remission, the entire forgiveness of all your sins.

Every last one of them.

You are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

There you go. 

Everything else I could say is just a footnote to the gospel. 

From beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, everything in the word is about God finding us and forgiving us of our sins because the one Word of God, the Word God speaks to us, is Jesus Christ. 

He’s the Word of God, who came declaring the forgiveness of sins and who confirmed that announcement of our atonement by his cross. 

So then, having given you the gospel, here’s my question: Why are you hiding?

———————-

Why are you hiding?

Everything has already been done; all your sins are forgiven. 

So why are you hiding?

Whereas Adam and Eve hide from God behind some trees in the garden (not real smart), we hide everywhere (even dumber). From the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Lord who knows the secrets of all our hearts, we hide all the time. Pretty stupid.

Some of you— maybe all of you— are hiding right now, here. 

Just as Bruce Wayne is really Batman’s costume, we hide behind the selves we project in public. Just as Bruce Banner is never not angry, we’re never not hiding in plain sight. 

Our true selves— they’re the ones we tell Google. 

In an article from the Guardian last month entitled “Everybody Lies,” U.S. data analyst Seth Stevens writes about what our Google search history reveals about us, about who we are when we think no one is looking. Google may not be God (yet), but Google knows to be true what we discover about ourselves in Genesis 3. 

As Seth Stevens begins his essay: 

“Everybody lies. Everybody’s hiding. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when they’re not. They say they’ll be in touch when they won’t. They say it’s not about you when it is. They say they love you when they don’t. They say they like women when they really like men. People lie to friends. They lie to bosses. They lie to kids. They lie to parents. They lie to doctors. They lie to husbands. They lie to wives. They lie to themselves. And they damn sure lie to surveys.

Many people will underreport embarrassing, shameful behaviors or thoughts on a survey— even an anonymous survey— it’s called social desirability bias. We want to look good; we want to be counted good. So if we think someone is looking at us, we hide. We lie.”

And so, for example, in one survey Seth Stevens conducted 40% of a company’s engineers reported that were in the top 5%. And in another survey, 90% of college professors say they do above average work. It’s not just professors and engineers. We learn to lie and hide young. You might say it’s original to us. Over one-quarter of high school students, for example, will say when surveyed that they are in the top 1% of their class. I mean, I was…(but was I?). 

Whenever we think someone sees us, Seth Stevens writes, we hide. 

We lie. 

The only way to truly see someone— to see their true self— is to see them when they think no one sees them. In this regard, Stevens writes, Google’s search engine serves as a sort of “digital truth serum.” It’s online. It’s alone. And no one will see what you search (you think). 

Says Stevens:

“The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else. Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, but it turns out the trail our search history leaves behind our reveals more about us. Our search history reveals the disturbing truth about our desires and insecurities, our fears and our prejudices.”

For example, the word that most commonly completes the googled question “Is my husband…?” is gay. In second place, cheating. Cheating is 8 times more common a search than the third most searched question: alcoholic. And alcoholic is 10 times more common than the next most common, depressed. 

Proving the point about our private and our pretend selves, the most popular hashtag on social media using the very same words is the hashtag #myhusbandisthebest. 

Is my husband cheating?

#myhusbandisthebest

We filter out the truth from the self we post in public.

But Google knows us better than Facebook. 

For example, Google knows that no matter how many fitdad #s you use on Instagram, odds are you’re worried about your Dad Bod. 42% of all online searches about beauty or fitness come from men. One-third of all weight loss seaches on Google come from men. 

This will surprise you if that doesn’t: one-quarter of all Google searches about breasts (calm down) come from men wanting to get rid of their man-boobs— and only 200 of those searches were from me.

We hide everywhere except the place that isn’t anywhere, the internet. Google’s search engine knows our true selves, and survey says: we’re sinners.

For example, one of the most common questions we ask Google— brace yourselves, it’s not pretty— “Why are black people so rude?” 

And the words most often used in searches about Muslims: 

Stupid

Evil

Kill.

In fact, according to Google’s seach history:
The phrase “Kill Muslims” is searched by Americans with the same frequency as “Migraine Symptons” and “Martini Recipes.”
I’ve got a headache and need a drink just trying to digest that ugly fact. 

It gets worse. 

Every year— evey flipping year— 7 million of us (that’s 7 MILLION OF US, 7 million AMERICANS) search “nigger” in Google. Not counting rap or hip hop lyrics, 7 million searches. The Google searches are highest whenever African Americans are in the news, spiking with President Obama’s first election and Hurricane Katrina. 

Says Seth Stevens in his essay:

“Google’s data would suggest the real problem in America for African Americans is not the implicit, unintended racism of well-intentioned people but it is the fact that millions of Americans every year continue to do things like search for nigger jokes.” 

It’s not just our prejudice we hide. 

Stevens notes how after President Trump’s election the most frequent comments on social media in liberal parts of the country were about how anxious progressives felt about immigrants, refugees, and global warming. On the contrary, the Google search history in those same parts of the country suggests progressives aren’t at all as anxious about immigrants, refugees, or global warming as they want their peers to think. Survey says they’re more worried about their jobs, their health, and their relationships.

Survey says we’re sinners. 

We lie. 

And we hide. 

In 2015 after President Obama’s speech about inclusion and islamaphobia following the San Bernandino shooting in which 2 Muslims killed 14 of their coworkers, searches about how to help Muslim refugees plummeted almost by half. Meanwhile, negative searches about Muslims rose over 60%. 

Obama telling Americans what they ought to do better elicited the opposite effect. 

In an interview about his work and essay, Seth Stevens says: 

“I had a dark view of human nature to begin with. Working with the Google data, it’s gotten even darker. I think the degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking; therefore [pay attention now], we can’t fight the darkness by turning to ourselves. We’re the problem.

We can only fight the darkness by looking outside of ourselves.” 

———————-

And that brings me to my first point. 

I know, I haven’t preached any 3-point sermons here yet, but we’ve been dating long enough for me to get to second base with you.

So, my first point: we are lost. 

If your search history doesn’t indict you (and odds are it does), then scripture does indict you. If Google doesn’t confirm it for you, God already did in the garden by that first question he asked us: “Adam, where are you?”

Where— God’s question is about location. 

Meaning, our problem is about lostness. 

Notice, the Almighty doesn’t ask what any of us would ask. God doesn’t start off by asking any what, why, how, or who questions.

Who are you?! I thought I knew you, Adam!?

How could you have betrayed me, Adam?!

What did you do?!

Why did you do the one thing I asked you not to do?!

God asks: Where are you?

God doesn’t ask what they did or why they did it or how come they did it. God doesn’t ask about the sin; God asks where they are, which means our lostness isn’t about guilt. It’s about shame.  Guilt is when you’ve done something wrong. Shame is when you believe that you are the wrong you’ve done.  And so you hide.

That’s why “love the sinner, hate the sin” is a crappy cliche because from Adam on down we sinners think we are our sins. We can make no distinction between who we are and what we’ve done. We are lost in shame. 

And notice what our shame produces. No sooner has he swallowed the fruit than Adam goes from declaring breathlessly of Eve “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh…” to grumbling to God: “This woman you gave me…” Adam manages to blame both Eve and God in a single sentence. Meanwhile, Eve tries to explain herself with a long run-on sentence of 55 words. In other words, our shame begets blame and self-justification. 

And what’s the Hebrew word for blame?

Satan. 

Our shame turns us into a kind of satan, blaming others and justifying ourselves. 

Our lostness— our shame— it turns God into a kind of satan too. Ashamed, we run and hide from the God whose given absolutely no reason for fear. And we’ve been hiding in the bushes ever since. 

Shame and fear are our chronic condition. Where Adam and Eve had a choice to trust and obey God, we do not. As St. Augstine said, the choice available to Adam and Eve is no longer open to us. 

This is why it’s incredibly dumb to debate whether or not this story literally happened in history. It doesn’t matter where on a timeline Adam and Eve may or may not fall because the point is that they are us. 

As the 39 Articles of John Wesley’s prayerbook puts it: “The condition of humankind after the Fall of Adam is such that we cannot turn and prepare ourselves by our own natural strength to God.”

We are lost and our lostness is such that we cannot turn to find God (or even seek God) on our own. When it comes to faith and the things of God, Wesley’s prayerbook says, our wills our bound. We require help from outside of us: “Adam, where are you?” 

We are lost in our shame— shame that produces blame and self-justification. We require an external word. For us, this external word is the gospel. It’s the word from outside of us that God gives to us through the Word, through water, and through wine and bread. 

You see, God is a loquacious God. 
The God who spoke creation into being is a God who is constantly interrupting our creation, searching us out with his gospel word. 

This is why people need the Church. This is why people need a Risen Lord. Because without the Church, without Christ using the Church for his word, people are lost. They’re hiding in the bushes, dead in their sins. So forgot that nonsense attributed to St. Francis: “Preach the gospel. If necessary use words.” Even if St. Francis had said that (he didn’t) it’s wrong.  Just as St. Paul says, what was true of Adam and Eve is true today for all of us. We’re lost so faith— salvation— it comes by no other means but words. Salvation comes from what is heard: “Adam, where are you?”

————————

     And that brings me to my second point. What God’s first question reveals about you is that you are sought. 

I know some of you think I’m obsessed with grammar but that way of putting it is important: you are sought. 

You are not the subject of the sentence.  God is not the object of your seeking. I know lots of churches like to have what are called “seeker services,” but let’s get real. We’re hiding in the bushes. 

Go to Google if you find Genesis hard to swallow. On our own, left to our own devices, whatever is at the end of our searching might be a little-g god but it will not be God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. 

You are sought. 

We do not seek out God. We seek out a hiding place from him. We do not search for God. God searches for us. 

And this is important, this distinction between seeking and being sought, because it shapes how you read scripture. 

Every other religion in the world is about you seeking after God (and doing what you ought to do to get closer to him), but the strange new world of the Bible, Karl Barth says, is that it tells, from beginning to end, of God’s search for us. 

If you’re looking to the Bible for insights into history or politics, Karl Barth says, you’d do better to turn to the newspaper because those are not questions the Bible tries to answer. If you’re looking for teachings on morality, ethics, justice, virtue, or just everyday practical advice, good luck with that, Karl Barth says, because you’ll find large swaths of scripture useless and Jesus Christ has absolutely no interest in your everyday practical life. 

If you go to the Bible searching for how you can find God, you’re only going to walk away frustrated, Barth says.

Because—

The Bible does not tell us what to think about God; it tells us what God thinks of us The Bible does not teach us what we should say about God; it teaches us what God says about us. The Bible does not show us how to seek God; it shows us this God who searches us out those who will not come to him.

The Bible, says Barth, is God’s search history not ours. 

———————-

  And that brings me to my final point. 

“Adam, where are you?” God’s first question to you reveals to you that you are found. 

Barth again— Karl Barth says that Adam and Eve aren’t just the first humans, they’re the first Christians. They’re the first Christians, for they are the first ones to receive the gospel promise of the forgiveness of sins. 

And what this question from God conveyed to them, it conveys to you: the entire forgiveness of your sins. Because remember— God’s word works; that is, God’s word in scripture always accomplishes what it says. 

For you nerds, you can put it this way:

There is no ontological distance between what God says and what God does. 

God says “Let there be light” and there’s light.

God says “It is very good” and it is. 

God in Jesus Christ says “Your sins are forgiven” and therefore, as surely as his word hung the stars in the sky, you are forgiven.

God’s word works. It accomplishes what it says.

So, to have God ask you “______, where are you?” is to already be found. 

To have God search for you is to already be found. Even though you’re still hiding in plain sight, still estranged in shame and sin, still you are found. 

———————-

Back to my original question— Why are you still hiding?

Or, instead of why maybe the better question is how: How do we come out of hiding? How do we who have been found already no longer linger in our lostness? 

In his essay in the Guardian, Seth Stevens notes how there was one manner of speech in President Obama’s addresses about islamaphobia that had a measurable effect on driving down American’s sinful Google searches. 

Recall Stevens’ findings that President Obama’s San Bernadino speech about how we ought not fear Muslims had the opposite effect. The more Obama argued that we ought to do better about being more loving and respectful of Muslims, the more the people he was trying to reach became enraged. 

The Google data confirms it, Stevens writes, the more you lecture angry people the more you fan the flames of their fury. The more you exhort them about their prejudice the more their prejudice will persist.

But one form of words worked–

According to the Google search history, what reduced people’s rage and racism, Stevens notes— what reduced their sin was whenever Obama spoke about Muslims being our neighbors. And what had an even greater change on people was when Obama spoke of Muslim neighbors who served in the military and what had the greatest change upon people was when Obama spoke of Muslim American soldiers who gave their lives as a sacrifice for us, who died for us.

In other words, to put it in St. Paul’s words, the survey says the way to get sinners to change— it isn’t the Law. It’s the Gospel. 

The way to get sinners to change isn’t by admonishing them about what they ought to do. 

It’s by telling them what has already been done, for them. 

God’s gospel word works.

In other words, the gospel isn’t a word about something that God did. 

The gospel is the word by which God does. 

That’s why everything we do here—and especially in here— needs to be surrounded by and bookended by the gospel because it is the power God works in the world, says St. Paul. 

The way we come out of hiding is by hearing not the Law (what we ought to do) but by hearing the Gospel (what has been done). 

We change not by hearing what Adam and Eve did wrong that we must do better. We change by hearing how God sought out Adam and Eve and found them in their naked shame and— what did God do?

God gave them animal skins to wear. 

Medieval paintings always show Adam and Eve leaving the garden naked and in tears, but that’s not what happens in the story. God clothes them in animal skins. 

Where God created from nothing, their forgiveness costs God something. 

Their forgiveness costs God a part of his creation. God sacrifices for their sake.

And then one day, in the fullness of time, your forgiveness cost God too.

God became your neighbor. 

God sacrificed. 

God gave himself for you. 

In order to clothe you— once, for all— with his Son.

God clothes you with Christ’s righteouness. 

Though the survey says you lie and hide like the First Adam, you don’t need to— no matter what you’re searching online— because the Father has dressed you in the righteousness of the Second Adam. 

He searches you out, and when he finds you, he chooses to see not your sin or your shame but his Son.

The search history that defines you is not the search history that shows up on your screen.

The search history that defines you is the search history that begins here.  With “Adam, where are you?” Given what Google says about you and me, that’s good news. It’s news that faith alone— only faith— can corraborate.

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Episode #169 – Johanna Hartelius: Preaching from the Pew

What does preaching sound like from the pew? What do listeners think of a preacher’s preaching?

Not only is Johanna Hartelius my best friend, she is the host of our sister podcast (Her)Men*You*tics. Johanna is also a professor of rhetoric and communication at the University of Texas, Austin. An expert, she offer’s here 3 Do’s and Don’ts for preaching for preachers to consider and for lay people to expect of their preachers.

Before the interview…Help support the show! 

Go to Amazon and buy a paperback or e-book of Crackers and Grape Juice’s new book,
I Like Big Buts: Reflections on Paul’s Letter to the Roman. 

 

 











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Why You Can Trust the Jesus Story: The Dirty Word on Jesus’ Lips

Read it again. The lectionary Gospel for this coming Sunday in Mark 7.

Jesus doesn’t just call her a dirty word.

At first, in Matthew’s version, he ignores her completely, like she’s worse than a dog, like she’s not even there.

And then, after the disciples try to get rid of her, Jesus basically says there’s nothing I can do for SOMEONE LIKE YOU. I don’t have any spare miracles for SOMEONE LIKE YOU.

For SOMEONE LIKE YOU I’m all tapped out.

And when she doesn’t go away, Jesus calls her a dog.

The bread (of life) is meant for the children (of God). For the righteous. For believers. For the right kind of people like me.

It’s not meant for DOGS LIKE YOU.

Jesus, the incarnate love of God, says to her.

And you can be sure that in Greek to her ears ‘dog’ sounded exactly like ‘witch’ with a capital B.

Just like in 1 Samuel 17.43 when Goliath taunts David with that word.

Just like in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus preaches that you ‘never give holy things to dogs nor pearls to swine.’

Now, like a pig, Jesus refuses to give anything holy to this woman and then calls her a dog.

Don’t you just love passages like this!

I do.

It’s because of passages like this one that you know the Jesus story is true.

has to be true. It’s too messed up not to be true.

Think about it- if the Gospels were just made up fictions, then this passage today would never have made it into the Bible.

Just imagine how that conversation would’ve gone.

Just imagine the pitch among the writers:

Hey, I’ve got this new idea for the story- whole new angle.

I was thinking we do a change of scenery, put the hero in Gentile territory, have him rub elbows with the undesirable type.

And then we have this woman come to him looking for his help. Just like the woman with the hemorrhage in the first part of the script.

But I was thinking…what if we go the other way with it? You remember how we had that first woman grab at the hem of his garment for her miracle?

And how he looks around for who touched him so he can reward her faith- because that’s how compassionate he is.

So this time I thought we could change it up. Have him ignore the woman completely. Pretend like she’s not even there.

But get this: we don’t stop there. I was thinking that after she refuses to go away- because she’s just so wretched and pathetic and everything- we can have him call her a b@!$%.

Yeah, a b@#$%.

Isn’t that a grabber? Keep the audience guessing. He’s unpredictable. Is he going to respond with the love and mercy tack, or will he turn a cold shoulder and throw down an f-bomb?

You see- that would never happen!

You know the Gospel is true because if it were just made up, this story- along with the cross- would’ve been left on the cutting room floor.

It never would’ve made it in the Bible.

There’s no better explanation: Jesus really treated this woman like she wasn’t even there, not worth his time, and then called her a dog.

So if he really did do it, then why? Why did he do it?

How do we explain Jesus acting in a way that doesn’t sound like Jesus?

It’s true that Jesus is truly, fully God, but it’s also true, as the creed says, that Jesus was fully, truly, 100% human.

So maybe that’s the explanation.

Maybe this Canaanite woman caught Jesus with his compassion down.

He’s human. It happens to all of us.

And it’s understandable given the week he’s had. Just before this, he was rejected by his family and his hometown friends in Nazareth. That’s rough. And right after that John the Baptist gets murdered. And everywhere he’s gone lately crowds chase him more interested in miracles than messiahs.

So maybe this Canaanite woman catches Jesus in a bad mood, with a little compassion fatigue. Sue him. He’s human.

Except the way Jesus draws a line between us and them, the way he dismisses her desperation and then drops a dirty word on her- it sounds human alright. All too human.

As in, it sounds like something someone who is less than fully human would do.

So how do we explain it?

You could say- as some have- that Jesus isn’t really being the mean, insensitive, offensive, manstrating jerk wad he seems to be here in this passage.

No, you could say, this is Jesus testing her.

He’s testing her to see how long she’ll kneel at his feet, to see how long she’ll

call him ‘Lord,’ to see how long she’ll beg and plead for his mercy.

He’s just testing her faith. You could say (and many have).

But if that’s the case, then Jesus doesn’t just call her a dog. He treats her like one too and he’s even more of jerk than he seemed initially.

WWJD? Humiliate her in order to test her? Somehow I don’t think so.

Of course, you could suggest that she deserves the treatment Jesus gives her, that she has it coming to her for the rude and offensive way she first treats Jesus.

After all, she comes to him- alone- a Gentile woman to a Jewish rabbi, violating his holiness codes and asking him to do the same for her.

Just expecting him to take on sin. For her.

So she gets what she has coming to her for bursting in on his closed doors; alone, approaching a man who’s not her husband, breaching the ethnic and religious and gender barriers between them and then rudely expecting him to do the same. If he’s rude to her, then you could argue that she deserves it for treating him so offensively first. And it’s true that her approaching him violates social convention.

It’s true: she not only asks for healing, she asks him to transgress the religious law that defines him.

All true.

But that doesn’t explain why NOW of all times Jesus acts so out of character. It doesn’t explain why NOW and not before he’s suddenly sensitive about breaking the Jewish law for mercy’s sake.

So, no, I don’t buy it.

Jesus ignores her.

Tells her there’s nothing he can do for SOMEONE LIKE HER. And then he calls her a dog.

A contemporary take on this text is to say that this is an instance of Jesus maturing, coming to an awareness that maybe his mission was to the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike. That without this fortuitous run-in with a persistent Canaanite woman Jesus might have kept on believing he was a circumscribed Messiah only. That she helps Jesus enlarge his vision and his heart.

I guess, maybe. But that doesn’t really get around the insult here.

Jews didn’t even keep dogs as pets- that’s how harsh this is. Dogs were unclean, scavenging in the streets, eating trash, and sleeping in filth.

And in Jesus’ day, ‘dog’ was a racist, derogatory term for Canaanites, unwashed unbelievers who just happened to be Israel’s original and oldest enemy.

Even if she helped him change his mind that doesn’t explain away his mouth. What’s a word like that doing in Jesus’ mouth?

How do we explain Jesus acting in a way that doesn’t sound like Jesus at all but sounds a lot more like us instead?

Of course, that’s it.

This is Jesus acting just like us.

To understand this passage, to understand Jesus acting the way he does, you have to go back to the scene right before it where Jesus has a throw down with the scribes and the Pharisees who’ve just arrived from Jerusalem to check him out.

Rather than attacking Jesus directly, they go after the company Jesus keeps. They take one look at the losers Jesus has assembled around him- low class fishermen, bottom feeding tax collectors and worse- and they ask Jesus the loaded question:

Why would a rabbi’s disciples ignore scripture?

Why would they eat with unclean hands (and unclean people)?

Their pointing out how Jesus’ disciples were the wrong kind of people was but a way of pointing out how they were the right kind of people.

Good people. Law-abiding people. Convention-respecting, morality-keeping, Bible-believing people.

And Jesus responds with a scripture smack-down of his own, saying that it’s not obeying the rules that makes you holy. It’s not believing the bible that makes you holy. It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles you, Jesus says. It’s what comes out of the mouth.

And whether or not what comes out of your mouth is the truth about what’s in your heart. That’s what makes you holy, Jesus says.

Pretty straightforward, right?

Except the disciples don’t get it. They think Jesus is just telling a parable, turning the tables on the Pharisees to show how they’ve got it all backwards; it’s Jesus’ disciples who are the right kind of people and the Pharisees who are the wrong kind.

The disciples don’t get that Jesus’ whole point is that putting people into ‘kinds of people’ in order to justify ourselves is exactly the problem.

The scene starts with the scribes asserting their superiority and the scene ends with the disciples assuming their superiority.

Turn the page. What does Jesus do next? To drive his point home?

He takes the disciples on a field trip across the tracks. Into Canaanite territory, a place populated by people so unclean the disciples are guaranteed to feel holier than thou. And there this woman approaches them, asking for mercy.

She’s a Canaanite. She’s an enemy. She’s unclean. She’s an unbeliever. She’s all kinds the wrong kind of person.

But on her mouth, coming out of her mouth, is this confession: ‘Son of David.’

Which is another title for ‘Messiah.’

Which according to Jesus should tell you a bit about what’s in her heart.

But the disciples don’t even notice. The’ve already forgotten about what Jesus said about the mouth and the heart.

So what does Jesus do?

He acts out what’s in their hearts.

He ignores her because that’s what’s in their hearts.

He tells her there’s nothing I can do for SOMEONE LIKE YOU because that’s

what’s in their hearts.

And because that’s what’s in their hearts, he calls her a dog.

What comes out of his mouth is what’s in their hearts: I’m better than you. I’m superior to you. I’m holier than you.

Speaking of hearts-

That word on Jesus’ mouth is so distractingly shocking to us, we almost miss that she doesn’t even push back on it.

She owns it. And then she doubles down on her request for mercy:

‘Yeah, Jesus, I am a dog. I am a witch with a capital B. I am worthless. I am a loser. I am undeserving. I am a sinner. I am the wrong kind of person in all kinds of ways, but- hey- have mercy on me…’

Is how it reads in the New Revised Jason Version.

She embodies what Jesus says in Luke’s more white-bread Gospel, when Jesus says:

‘Who is justified before God? The religious person who prays thank you, God, I am not like that sinner, or the person prays Lord Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

You see-

That’s what Jesus points out by play-acting, what he wants the disciples to see, what he wants us to see when he praises her ‘great faith.’

She doesn’t put up any pretense.

She doesn’t try to justify herself over and against any one else.

She doesn’t pretend that her heart’s so pure or her life is so put together that

she doesn’t even need Jesus all that much.

No, she says: ‘Yeah, I am about the worst thing you could call me. Have mercy on me.’

After the scribes and the Pharisees have not gotten it and thought that it’s their fidelity to scripture that justifies them.

And after the disciples have not gotten it and just flipped the categories and thought that it’s their association with Jesus that makes them superior.

And after Jesus so plainly says that what makes us holy is whether or not what comes out of our mouth is the truth about what’s in our heart.

She tells the truth about her pock-marked heart and she boldly owns up to her need.

And Jesus calls that ‘great faith.’

‘I’m about the worst thing any one could call me, but Jesus Christ, Son of David, mercy on me.’

If that’s great faith, then what it means to be a community of faith is to be a place for sinners.

So the good news is-

If you’re not fine but feel like everyone else is If you’re selfish or petty or stingy

If you yell at your kids too much

Or cheat on your spouse

Or disappoint your parents

If you lie to your friends or stare at a loser in the mirror If you gossip about your neighbors

Or think the worst about people you barely know

If you drink too much, care too little, fail at your job

If you think any one who votes for the other party is an idiot

If you’re a racist or an agist or a homophobe

If you’re a barely tamed cynic who thinks you’re smarter than everyone else

just about all the time

If your beliefs are so shaky you’re not even sure you belong here

If you think the insides of your heart would make others throw up in their

mouths

If you think you’re worthless, the wrong kind of person in all kinds of ways,

that the worst thing someone might say about you would stick…

Then the good news is: this is the place for you.

Because Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

He came to heal the sick and open the eyes of the blind.

He came to take our pock-marked hearts and fill them with his own righteousness. To make us holy.

But he can’t do that until what’s on our mouths confesses what’s actually in our hearts.

‘I’m about the worst thing any one could call me, but Jesus Christ, Son of David, mercy on me.’

If this is what great faith looks like, then the good news is that to be a community of faith means that this is not a place where we put up pretenses, hide behind piety, pretend that we’re pure of heart, use our beliefs to justify ourselves over and against someone else.

If this is what great faith looks like, then the good news is that to be a community of faith means this is not a place to act self-righteous or judgmental or superior or intolerant or in any way at all that suggests we think we’re the right kind of people.

Of course the bad news is-

That’s about the last thing people think of when they hear the word ‘Christian.’

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