Jason Micheli's Blog, page 118

God’s Not Angry, But Jesus Is: Charlottesville a Year Later

Friday afternoon a year ago, my oldest son and I milled around downtown Charlottesville in the hours before the tiki-torch bearing scare mob descended from the Rotunda, spouting racist nonsense whose ultimate Author I feel compelled by faith to name as Satan.

“Dad, don’t make any jokes about your being Jewish!” I laughed not sure that I should be laughing.

Had we known how the next day would play out, we wouldn’t have laughed.

We saw the empty Emancipation Park with the barricades up festooned in police tape. We saw the omnipresent homeless looking dazed and curious about the stage craft setting up around them. We saw the lonely looking white men boys we’d later recognize in the Washington Post, their faces illumined by flame and fury.

There’s an elementary school near the park there in Charlottesville. Mostly African American kids. I used to work there in their After School program, M-F, when I was an undergraduate. Summers too.

I thought of Christopher Yates the boy who had no father at home whom I took to Long John Slivers on occasion. Back then, he had no idea there were people in the world who looked like me who hated people like him simply because they looked him.

Loitering in Charlottesville that Friday with my son, who is not white and growing in to an ugly but necessary awareness of that fact, I thought of Christopher.

And I got pi@#$%.

Right after he’s baptized, Jesus goes to Galilee. ‘Galilee’ is Mark’s shorthand way of saying ‘on the other side of the tracks. As soon as he arrives, a leper comes up to Jesus. Gets down on his knees begging. Leprosy assaults your body as your skin rots away. But ‘leprosy also attacks your social network.

It brings you isolation. It makes you unclean. It leaves you socially unacceptable. So not only does leprosy make you sick, it stigmatizes you. Which, if you weren’t already, makes you poor.

And according to the Law, a leper’s ‘uncleanness’ can only be ritually removed by a duly vested priest. This leper obviously knows the rules don’t give Jesus the right to cleanse him. That’s why he gives Jesus an out: “You could declare me clean, if you dare.” And Mark says that ‘moved with anger’ Jesus stretches out his hand and Jesus touches this untouchable leper- touches him before he heals him- and Jesus says: “I do choose. Be made clean!”

And while the leprosy leaves him, Jesus doesn’t say ‘come and follow me’ or ‘your faith has made you well.’
No, Mark says Jesus snorts “with indignation.”
ὀργισθείς

Here’s the money question Mark wants you to puzzle out:
     Why is Jesus so angry?

Because this pushy leper didn’t say the magic word?

Because now all anyone will want from him are miracles?

Because this leper is only interested in a cure not carrying a cross?

Why is Jesus so angry?

     In order to answer that question, you have to ask another one:
     Why does Jesus send this ex-leper to show himself to the priests?

The answer Mark wants you to tease out is that this ex-leper had already gone to the priests and with the same question: ‘Will you declare me clean?’

Jesus is angry. Jesus snorts with indignation. Jesus huffs and puffs because before this leper begged Jesus, he went before the priests.
Just as the Bible instructs.

And they turned him away.

You see, the priests in Jesus’ day charged money for the ritual cleansing. And money, if you were a leper, is something you didn’t have. So not only were lepers marginalized and ostracized, they were victimized too. And that, Mark says, makes for one PO’d Messiah.

What Would Jesus Do?

As often as we ask ourselves that question, ‘Get Torqued Off’ isn’t usually what comes to mind.

Jesus only has 19 verses of actual ministry under his belt here and already he’s righteously mad. And Jesus keeps on getting angry, again and again, in Mark’s Gospel.

When a man with a withered hand approaches Jesus in church and the Pharisees look on in apathy, Jesus gets angry. And when Jesus rides into Jerusalem and sees what’s going on, Jesus gets angry and throws a Temple tantrum. And when Peter brings a sword to protect the Prince of Peace, Jesus gets angry and scolds him.

Martin Luther said that God speaks and God still speaks to us in two words, Law and Gospel. Where the latter offers the unconditional promise of forgiveness, the former primes the pump for that grace by stopping us in our tracks, convicting us of our sin, and compelling us to throw ourselves on God’s mercy. Jesus, who is the One Word of God, offers us the latter word through his body but speaks the first word to us not only in his impossible commandments (lust = adultery) but also his anger.

We tend to think that anger is a bad thing, that it’s something to be stamped out not sought after. Some have even numbered anger a ‘deadly sin.’ But we believe that Jesus was fully human, in him was the full complement of sinless human emotions.

Not only do we believe Jesus was fully human, scripture calls Jesus the 2nd Adam.

Meaning: Jesus wasn’t just truly human; he’s the True Human.

He’s not only fully human; he’s the only human- the only one to ever be as fully alive as God made each of us to be. 

Yet Jesus is angry all the time.  So anger isn’t always or necessarily a bad thing.

Instead of a flaw in our humanity, anger could be a way for us to become more human, as fully human as Jesus. But how do we know the difference? Between anger as a vice and anger as a virtue?

Scripture speaks of sin as ‘missing the mark.’  That is, sin is when our actions or desires are aimed towards something other than what God intends. When you read straight through the Gospels, you notice how Jesus gets angry…all the time. But what Jesus gets angry at is injustice, oppression, poverty; suffering and stigmatization, abuse and apathy. That’s the kind of anger that hits God’s mark.

As a pastor, I run into people all the time who are convinced either that God is angry at them OR that the god of the Bible is an angry god.

So let me just say it plain:

     The love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for us is unconditional.
     Because the love between the Father, Son and Spirit is unceasing.
     God’s love for us is unchanging because GOD IS UNCHANGING.

We cannot earn God’s love, no matter how hard we try. We cannot lose God’s love, no matter how hard we try. God does not change his mind about us. Because God does not change his mind. Because God does not change.

     God IS NOT ANGRY.
     God CANNOT EVER BE ANGRY.
     Because he’s God.

But Jesus, the True Human Person, the 2nd Adam, the Fully Human One, he gets Angry.

And that means…so should we.

A lot of well-meaning white folks counsel on social media against ‘adding fuel to the fire’ by adding their own anger and outrage. I’m as guilty as the next comfortable white guy of commending moderation simply because it’s the medium that best comports with my comfort. So I sympathize.

I also believe in the Gospel which tells me Jesus died not for the saintly social justice warrior (and not only for the oppressed!) but for the ungodly.

I can think of no better image of ungodly than that picture of tiki-torch lit rage on a face like mine in front of a statue of a slave master like Thomas Jefferson from a year ago.

The mystery of our faith is not only that Jesus Christ, who is the immutable God in the flesh, embodies the righteous anger befitting the fulllness of humanity, but also, despite such anger (or, because of it?), dies for the unrighteous and ungodly enemies who provoke his ire.

Perhaps it’s only in that mystery that we’re all, white and black/progressive and not, united.

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

Not a New Moses

Ephesians 3.14-21

The first sermon I ever preached I preached behind bars.

While I was a student at Princeton, before I ever worked in a church, I served as a chaplain at Trenton State, a maximum security prison in New Jersey.

I had no idea what I was doing when I began my ministry there, but by the time I left there I’d learned that the freedom of the Gospel, what St. Paul refers to today as the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ, is a message best heard- maybe, only heard- by those who know they’re in captivity.

———————-

My first sermon-

I’d only been there a couple of weeks. It was a morning service in July, and it was held in a prison gymnasium. For an altar table, I had an old, metal teacher’s desk, and instead of candles on either side of the table there were two rusting electric fans. Greasy strings of dust clung to the blades as they kneaded the thick summer heat.

I counted them as they shuffled into the sanctuary, some bound hand to foot. Out of about 75 worshippers only 3 of the faces were white, and 1 of them was mine.

No one wore their Sunday best in that congregation. The men all had their state—issued beige jumpsuits. “We all look like Winston that worthless Ghostbuster in these,” Barone, one of the inmates who worked in the chaplain’s office, had joked to me when I met him. Barone was a heavyset Italian chef doing time for dealing cocaine out of his kitchen.

Sister Rose, the nun who was the Chaplain Supervisor, wore not a habit but her order’s plain gray pants and plain white shirt. No one wore their Sunday best that morning.

Except me.

I didn’t wear a robe because I wasn’t an official minister yet and, at that point in my life, still had some serious misgivings about ever being one. So I wore a suit with a pink shirt and a flowery pastel purple tie.

Let me just say that again so I’ve set the stage clearly: I was going to preach to prisoners (some in for life, some on death row, all hardened criminals) wearing a pink shirt and pastel purple tie with flowers).

My wife that morning had said I looked “handsome.” When the inmates saw me, they said I looked “pretty.” At least the word “pretty” is how I chose to translate the kissy noises they made.

“Do we have two lady preachers this Sunday?” one of the men asked from the back row.

It went downhill from there.

Sister Rose tried to begin the worship service with singing.

I say tried because the music was played on a cassette player (children, you can ask your parents what those are later) and because Sister Rose was one of those worship leaders who mistakenly believed that adding hand motions to the singing would somehow make the songs more “contemporary.”

It’s not easy to do something even more white than a pink shirt with a flowery pastel purple tie, but Sister Rose managed to pull it off, insisting that we all do what looked like jazzhands as we mumbled our way through “Trading My Sorrows.”

The Hispanic innmates who all spoke perfect English when bartering cigarettes, snacks, and Playboys all pretended, suddenly, not to know a lick of it.

So, despite being prisoners, they were about the least captivated audience I’ve ever seen at the start of a sermon.

Because Sister Rose was a Shiite Catholic and insisted that I preach from the lectionary, the readings assigned according to the Christian calendar, my passage that summer morning was this morning’s text from Ephesians 3.

I was both a new preacher and a new Christian. I hadn’t yet taken any homiletics classes so I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to talk about the scripture straight away. I hadn’t learned that I was supposed to sneak up on my listeners, slant-wise, with a personal story, disarm them first with humor, and thereby trick them into giving a crap about the text.

So I tried to keep it simple and give it to them straight up. I took it from the top.

———————-

“To understand the reason Paul is praying here, I said, you have to go back to what Paul said before this in chapter 3 and before that even in chapter 2.’

“I thought what you read to us was plenty long already, preacher,” one of the inmates joked.

I could feel my skin blushing a darker shade of pink than my ill-chosen shirt.

What prompts Paul to pray, I doubled down, is what Paul calls the Mystery of Christ.

“Mystery?” a 40-something inmate in the front said, “Speaking of mysteries, what’s this Paul got to say about the mystery of why I’m in here when I’m an innocent man?!”

“Amazing, everybody’s innocent here,” Barone laughed and others followed.

I looked up from my notes and, with the zeal of a recent convert, I said to them: “Actually, Paul does have something to say about it. He said it earlier in chapter 2.

He said that in the supermest of supreme courts not one of us is innocent, and the sentence we all deserve is death.”

And I flipped back in my bible to the chapter prior and read it to them: “You who were dead through in your trespasses and sins…by grace you have been saved.”

Then I turned the page: “You who were once far off from God in your trespasses and sins have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

“Amen!” some of them responded.

“Preach it! Preach it!” some others encouraged me.

“That’s the mystery that makes him pray,” I said. “That’s the mystery: that the Judge has been judged in our place, that the sentence gets served not by us but by a substitute, by the very object of our sin.”

“Come on now,” a few listeners shouted. I was finding my stride.

“The Mystery of Christ is what makes Paul pray. The mystery that by his bleeding and dying the Son has purchased peace between us and the Father.”

“Amen” an elderly inmate covered in faded out tattoos yelled from the back. “Shush!” Sister Rose whispered with a finger over her lips, “Inside voices!”

“The Mystery of Christ is what prompts Paul to pray.

The mystery that we are justified before God not by any good work we do but only by the work of Jesus Christ in our stead- even the best good works done by the very best people do not justify them before God- and this is ours soley through the gifting of God. By grace- alone.”

I noticed then that those who’d refused to show any rhythm at all during the singing were nodding their heads.

“By grace, your rap sheet is Christ’s now and his perfect record is reckoned to you as your own.

By grace, though not one of you is innocent or pure all of you are counted as such on account of Christ.

By grace, you are reckoned in the right by the only Judge that ultimately matters.

All of us, every last one of us, religious or not, it doesn’t matter because God has gone and done it for us entirely apart from religion.

God has gone and done it by the most irreligious means possible, by a cross.”

Some of them were squinting at me now, not sure if they were following me.

“In fact,” I said, “the mystery that makes him pray is that God has gone and done away with religion altogether.

Religion- what we do to get right with God; what we do to our neighbors to get God on our side- God’s gotten rid of all of it. He’s forsaken it in his own forsaken body.”

———————-

I still have the moleskin in which I wrote this sermon all those years ago. In it, I’d double- underlined the next part of my maiden sermon.

“The Mystery of Christ, Paul says, is that God has abolished the very commands God gave to us.”

And then I read to them the money line from Ephesians 2: “Christ has abolished the Law and the commandments that he might create a new humanity in himself.”

“It’s like what Paul tells the Galatians,” I said to them, “If we can be made right with God through good works or commandment-keeping then Christ came and died for absolutely nothing.”

“You shall love God with everything you are, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you shall care for the poor and the stranger among you, forgive 70×7, turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for them…

All of that- Christ has abolished all of it, all of the Commandments, even the commandments he taught us; so that, all those do-good pious types who secretly insist on thinking God will grade them on a curve- they’ll have no where else to turn but to him and his mercy.

Like Jesus tells the rich young ruler, the only works of ours that are truly ‘good’ are the ones that come as a consequence of knowing that not one of those good works is necessary; otherwise, the bible says, even our best deeds are no better than filthy rags.”

I looked around the room at these men more acquainted with their bad deeds than their best deeds.

“That only sounds harsh if you think you’re free,” I said, “but if you know what the bible says about you to be true, that you are a captive to sin, then it’s the very best news you’re ever going to hear.

Because it means the Law is now and forever a rap sheet that the Judge refuses to read because Jesus Christ, by his perfect faithfulness, has fulfilled the Law for you and, by his bruised body, he has born for you your failure under the Law.”

All the Law talk was losing them, I could tell.

So I said-

“Look, this is what it means: everything God commands you to do in scripture has already been done for you by Jesus Christ and every sin you have done has been undone by his death for you.

Christ has set you free from any anxiety or burden you might feel over keeping his commands or following his teachings and if you but trust this news you might be behind bars but, trust me, you are more free than almost everyone outside these walls sitting in churches this morning.

They’re all in cages they can’t see.”

But they looked confused, like I’d just told them the opposite of everything they’d ever heard about Christianity.

So I changed tack.

“Hang on,” I said, “what’s Paul doing praying on his knees? Jews like Paul didn’t pray on their knees.”

“Except, after Job loses everything, he kneels down to pray. He gets down on his knees and, on a heap of ashes, prays.

And Stephen, before he’s executed, he bows down on his knees and prays.

And Jesus, before he’s arrested by the authorities, he gets down on his knees and prays.

Prayer was done standing up except when you were at the end of your rope.

Paul’s on his knees, praying, because he’s behind bars.”

And notice what he prays for in prison- he prays that Christ would dwell in your heart by faith so that you may comprehend the scope of his love.”

I got some amens.

“The Mystery of Christ, your redemption from sin and your reconciliation to God, it’s yours,” I said, “if you just have faith.”

“It’s yours,” I said, “if you have faith.”

“God’s gift of grace. It’s yours,” I said, “if you have faith, if you invite him into your heart.”

———————-

“Hold up, preacher” one of the inmates, Victor, raised both of his hands.

Victor’s wrists were bound together and chained to his ankles. His jumpsuit was starched and unwrinkled and buttoned neatly all the way up to his collar. His long black hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail.

“Um…okay…what?”

“What do you mean if?”

“Um…I don’t follow…”

“You said everything’s already been done by Christ,” Victor said.

I nodded.

“But it sounds like there’s more to be done if I gotta have faith in it.” Now everyone else was nodding, even Sister Rose.

“I mean, Jesus- he said ‘It is finished,’ right? But how is it finished and done if you need faith first?”

“Uh…umm…look, I’m not a real preacher…”

“And you said that Paul says we’re justified by his work of grace not by any good work we do.”

I nodded, nervous knowing that Victor liked brag about representing himself in court.

“Well, if the gift isn’t really mine until I have faith in it doesn’t that make my faith just another good work?”

“Maybe we should sing another song,” Sister Rose suggested.

“No,” this is good, Barone laughed, “Look at the preacher sweating it like a defendant.”

“Say it again,” I said to Victor.

“You said we’re saved by grace, by the gift of God, but how is it a gift if we gotta do something to get it?”

“Yeah,” someone said, “grace isn’t amazing at all if we’ve got to earn it with our faith. And how is that a mystery anyway? There’s nothing mysterious about that. Everything in the world works by earning and deserving.”

I’d lost the room completely. It was distracted chaos, like when Peter preaches here. They all turned away from me and towards the middle to each other, talking out the scripture themselves:

If God doesn’t grade on a curve then why is faith the one test we gotta pass?

If you have faith- that sounds like a plea deal not a promise. And some of them laughed.

Yeah, it sounds like a negotiation not news.

If it has conditions it’s a contract not a gift.

And it ain’t free either because it puts the burden back on us to believe.

“Look at the bible passage,” Barone said, “It doesn’t say Paul’s praying for them to get faith so that they can invite Christ into their hearts.

He puts it the other way around. He prays that Christ will dwell in their hearts and the way Christ will dwell in their hearts is through faith. In other words, faith is what Christ does. We’re not the ones getting faith. Christ gives us faith.”

Someone from the back row jumped in:

“Then that means whatever faith we have, whether it’s a lot or a little…” his voice trailed off, puzzling it out.

“It’s Jesus’ work in us; it’s not our own,” Barone finished, “That’s how it fits in with what Jason was saying before he messed it all up. From beginning to end, it’s Jesus’ work- that’s what Paul means by height and length and breadth and depth. Every bit of it is Jesus. Faith doesn’t change anything but our perception. Faith is just what Christ gives us so we can see what’s already true.”

———————-

“Is that right, preacher?” the inmate named Victor asked me. He sat up straight in his metal chair and put his chained hands on his lap, suddenly serious. “Is that true?”

“Um, well, yes.”

“So, if there’s nothing we need to do for this to be true for us, then if someone asked you what they had to do to become a Christian…what’s the answer?”

I thought about it. I thought about how to put it without using any ifs. “I guess I’d tell them just to enjoy the gift.”

“Enjoy the gift?” Victor said, “How do you start doing that?”

“Well, I guess you’d start by receiving baptism.”

“Ok,” he said, “That, I want that. I want to be baptized.”

“Alright,” I said, “Sister Rose and I can talk and look at the calendar and talk to a pastor…”

“I want it now,” Victor said.

“Well, I’m not really supposed to do that sort of thing,” I said. “I’m just a student. I don’t have the proper credentials. I could get in trouble.”

“Your bishop would never even know,” Sister Rose giggled. “Besides, you just said Jesus freed us from the Law.”

“Um, okay,” I said.

“You know how, right?” Victor asked.

“Sure. I mean, I’ve seen it done.”

“You’ll need water,” Sister Rose pointed out.

“Right, water- can you get us some water?” I asked one of the guards.

“And a bowl,” Sister Rose said.

The guard was gone for a moment or two and then came back with a big clear bowl from the staff salad bar and a dripping water pitcher.

Sister Rose pulled an old donated worship book off the wheeled cart of worn bibles and, as Victor shuffled forward, his chains clinking quietly, Sister Rose turned to the baptismal prayer.

Sister Rose handed me the prayer book. I didn’t ask him any questions.

I just poured the water into the bowl like the italicized directions told me, and I read the prayer on the water wrinkled page: “Pour out your Holy Spirit to bless this gift of water and Victor who receives it to clothe him in Christ’s righteousness that, having died and been raised with Christ, he may share in Christ’s victory.”

After the amen, I used my hands and I poured the water over his pony-tailed head.

The congregation all hooted and hollered.

“I never got baptized before because I didn’t think I could live the Christian life,” Victor said. “I didn’t think I could have that much faith, and I knew I wasn’t very faithful.”

“Dude, didn’t you comprehend anything we just said?” Barone laughed:

“There’s no such thing as the Christian life.
There’s just getting used to the mystery that his life has been credited to you.
Gratis.”

And Victor beamed and Barone laughed some more, one of them in chains but both of them free.

———————-

I never got to finish that first sermon of mine.

It got interrupted by a question and then a baptism, and by the time Victor had shuffled back to his seat Sister Rose had started the cassette player for a closing song.

It was all for the better.

The conclusion I’d written- I’ve still got it in a moleskin; it’s as embarrassing as an old yearbook photo- It was all about you coming to Christ by having faith. But that just made faith another work. And it turned the Gospel back into the Law. Or, at best, it muddled the Gospel and the Law into a kind of Glawspel.

The Gospel is not exhortative: here’s what you must do to come to God- have faith, give to the poor, stand against injustice, serve the church.

The Gospel is declarative: here’s what God has done to come to you in Jesus Christ.

And God comes to us not with a prescription of what we must do for him- that’s Law (which Christ has abolished).

God comes to us with the promise of what he has done for us.

Christ is not a New Moses, I would’ve said if I’d gotten the chance. Christ is not just an example, teacher, or law-giver. If Christ is just another Moses then his life is no different than the saints. His life is his life, and your life is still in its sins.

Thinking of Jesus as your example or your teacher or law-giver, in the end, will just make you a hypocrite not a Christian because only he can fulfill the Law and live up to its demands.

Before Christ is your example or your teacher or your law-giver, he must be your gift.

He’s not a New Moses.

He gives himself for all your failures to obey Moses and with his perfect love he fulfills the Law of Moses and that fullness of his love is poured out on you at your baptism and it’s fed to you in wine and bread.

I never got to finish that sermon, but it’s just as well. I was just a student. I didn’t  have the authority to end the sermon the way I should’ve ended it: with an invitation.

Come to the Table.

Come and receive the One who has come to you.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Episode #164 – Mark Galli: Karl Barth for Frightened Newbies

I first heard about a theologian named Karl Barth when, having been a Christian for just more than a year, I was a freshman at the University of Virginia. I dumped a class on Chaucer and added something called ‘Elements of Christian Thought’ taught by David Bentley Hart. DBH and, through him, KB changed my life just as profoundly as Woodlake UMC had in the time leading up to college.

For the uninitiated, Karl Barth is inarguably the most consequential theologian of the 2oth century- at least the 20th century. His theology, starting with his commentary on Romans, declared NEIN to the modern liberal theolgy in which he’d been schooled and in which most Protestant denominations today still exist. He synthethized Luther and Calvin in a way that bypassed the evangelical fundamentalism of his day and ours. He resisted Nazism not through political means but through insistence on Jesus Christ as Lord and as the One Word which God speaks. All the wihle, his personal life personified his insistence on the primacy of grace over law.

Barth reframed sanctifcation as ‘vocation’ in a way, I believe, that allows those in the Wesleyan tradition to reclaim their place in the Protestant family.

I think you’ll enjoy the conversation I had with Mark Galli about KB. Mark is the Editor of Christianity Today, the most read Christian magazine. Also an author, Mark recently wrote an introdcutory biography about Karl Barth for evangelicals. You should know, evangelicals have always cast a suspicious eye towards Barth, who was neither a biblical literlalist nor an unabashed subscriber to a penal substitionary understanding of the atonement. Barth’s marriage (you’ll hear in the podcast) was but another reason to dismiss him. Still, Barth has exercised enornous influence over pastors and theologians of recent decades so, by default, he’s influenced congregations as well.

Barth’s massive work is the long form of, a pupil, Stanley Hauerwas’ maxim:

Jesus is Lord, and everything else is bullshit.

Check out Mark’s Author Page. 

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. 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

The Gay Debate: The Gospel IS at Stake

 

Starting in a new congregation in a denomination that stands at the precipice of schism, I sense a lot of anxiety from the laity I meet. EVERYONE wants to know what their new pastor thinks about homosexuality, the Church’s ‘position’ on gay Christians, and what I view as the “Way Forward” through this ecclessial impasse.

In all our arguing about the way forward, I can’t help but wonder if what the Church needs most is to go backward. St. Paul writes to Timothy about the urgent need for interpreters of scripture to be able to divide rightly the Word of God, and the Protestant movement began 500 years ago largely as a preaching movement that had at its core the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. Echoing the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther said there is no other higher art than making that distinction between the two words with which God has spoken and still speaks to us.

When it comes to the debate about sexuality in the Church, not only do I not hear alot of nuance I don’t hear much distinction being drawn between God’s two words. Instead, what I hear from both conservative and progressive sides is a lot of Gospel-flavored Law laying the net result of which is a muddled message, Glawspel, rather than the grace-centric proclamation that is our reason d’etre as Protestant Christians. Anything goes in this debate, the stakes are so high, because, as advocates on both sides often insist “the Gospel is at stake.” For conversatives, the Gospel is at stake in the sense that the authority of scripture is up for grabs. For progressives, the Gospel is at stake in that the inclusion of LGBTQ Christians is a justice issue.

The Gospel is at stake, I think.

Just not in the way either side imagines.

Look-

I understand those Christians who advocate for a traditional view of sexuality and marriage. I empathize with those who critique the nihilistic sexual ethics of our culture, worry about its cheapening of sex and the objectification of bodies, and its devaluing of tradition, especially the traditional authority of scripture in the life of the Church. Such traditionalists are correct to insist that the male-female union is the normative relationship espoused by the Church’s scripture and confession. They’re right to remind us that neither scripture nor tradition in any way condones homosexual relationships.

I don’t disagree with them that in a Church which took centuries to codify what we meant by ‘Trinity’ or ‘Jesus as the God-Man,’ it’s a bit narcissistic to insist the Church rush headlong into upending millennia of teaching on sexuality and personhood. I sympathize with their critique that, in many ways and places, the Church has substituted the mantra of inclusivity for the kerygma about Christ and him crucified. And I concur with them that if, as progressives like to say, “God is still speaking…,” then whatever God is saying must conform to what God has already said to us in the One Word of God, Jesus Christ. In the 500th anniversary year of the Reformation, I too want to hold onto sola scriptura and secure the Bible’s role as sole arbiter in matters of belief.

I’m just aware that a growing number of people (read: potential converts to Christ) see such conservatism not as a reverence for scripture but as a rejection of them.

On the other side of the debate, frankly it makes no sense to me to baptize babies if the Church is not prepared for them to exercise their Christian vocation once they’re grown, and ordained ministry and marriage are but two forms that Christian vocation takes. If we’re not prepared for gay Christians to live into their baptism as adutls we shouldn’t be baptizing them as babies, which means we shouldn’t be baptizing any babies.

Nonetheless, I think progressive Christians who insist that their fellow Christians see this as exclusively as a justice issue make the same mistake their conservative counterparts make.

Namely, they tie our righteousness as Christians to being ‘right’ on this issue.

It’s in this sense that I believe the Gospel is at stake in this debate because, thus far, the debate has obscured our core message that our righteousness comes entirely from outside of us by grace alone through faith alone. Put another way:

You would never come to the conclusion from how both sides engage this debate that grace gives us the right to be wrong. 
To the extent that is obscured, the Gospel is at stake in this debate.

The good news that Jesus Christ has done for you what you were unable to do for yourself: live a righteous life before a holy God who demands perfection.

In all our arguing about getting it right on this issue-
I worry that we’ve obscured the Gospel good news:
everything has already been done in Jesus Christ.

I know what scripture (ie, the Law) says about sex; however, the Gospel frees us from the Law.

The Gospel frees us from the burden of living a sinless, perfect-score sex life. Having a “pure” sex life justifies us before God not at all.

The Gospel also frees us, interestingly enough, from finding the perfect interpretation of what scripture says about sex.

Having the right reading of scripture on sex doesn’t improve our standing before God nor does having the wrong reading jeopardize our justification. Almost by definition then, it’s a stupid issue with which to obsess. The Gospel, as Jesus freaking says, is good news. It’s for sinners not saints. It’s for the sick not the show-offs. As with any family on the brink of divorce, I worry that the family’s core story has gotten muddled in the midst of our fighting.

As much as I worry with my conservative friends about the status of sola scriptura in the Church and as much as I concur with them that any culture that produces Snapchat and Tinder, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, shouldn’t be trusted in matters of sex, I worry more that in fighting so much over the “right” position on sexuality we’ve turned having the right position (either on the issue or in the bedroom) into a work of righteousness by which (we think) we merit God’s favor.

In fighting over who has the righteous position, I worry our positions about sexuality have become the very sort of works righteousness that prompted Luther’s protest 500 years ago.

I care about the proclamation of the Gospel more than I do protecting the Law. And let’s be clear, all those stipulations in scripture- they’re the Law. The Law, which the Apostle Paul says, was given by God as a placeholder for Jesus Christ, who is the End of the Law. The point of the Law, for St. Paul, is to convict of us our sin, making us realize how far we ALL fall short such that we throw ourselves on God’s mercy in Christ.

I don’t get the sense that’s how the Law functions for us in these sex debates. Instead the Law functions for us to do the pointing out of how far the other has fallen short.

I care about scripture and tradition, sure.
But I care more about ordinary sin-sick people, gay and straight, knowing that God loves them so much as to die for them.

I care more about them knowing the only access they require to this eternal get of jail free card is not their pretense of ‘righteousness’ but their trust in his perfect righteousness.

I care more about them knowing that any of us measuring our vice and virtue relative to each other is to miss the freaking huge point that our collective situation is such that God had to get down from his throne, throw off his robe, put on skin, and come down to rescue us on a cursed tree.

Every last one of us.

More than the ‘right’ position on sex, I care more about people knowing that God gave himself for them in spite of them; therefore, God literally doesn’t give a @#$ about the content or the character of their lives. God’s grace, as Robert Capon said, isn’t cheap. It isn’t even expensive. It’s free.

I fear our fighting over sexuality conveys the same message the sale of indulgences did on the eve of the Reformation: that God’s grace isn’t costly. It’s expensive, paid in the tender of your right-living and right-believing. Maybe the way forward is the backward.

 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

Digression to Doxology

I continued our summer sermon series through Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians by preaching on Ephesians 3.1-13.

     You might’ve seen the story in the Washington Post yesterday. 

     About Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, and the allegations against him. 

     Cardinal McCarrick is yet another cause for shame in the Catholic Church’s clergy scandal. 

     Ever since November before last, opinion writers in the press have given evangelical Christians (or, at least a certain percentage of them) grief. 

     But it’s not really fair to single out conservative evangelicals as a cause for embarrassment because, as Christians, we already have ample reasons to be ashamed. As Christians,we already have plenty of reasons to be embarrassed over being Christian. 

     Christians, after all, are the ones responsible for the trite, saccharine Jesus-is-my-boyfriend pop odes to the Almighty all over the 91.1 airwaves. 

     Christians are the ones who revived Kirk Cameron’s post Growing Pains career with the straight-to-video Left Behind movies, and Christians are the ones who bailed Nick Cage out of his back taxes by watching his theatrical reboot of the same crappy film. 

     Speaking of Left Behind, did you know former disgraced televangelist Jim Baker is not only back on TV but he’s hawking 100lb flood buckets filled with freeze-dried food so that you can weather the apocalypse without cutting calories. 

     Nose around long enough and you’ll find a reason to be embarrassed about being a Christian. 

     Don’t believe me?

     Go to the Barnes and Noble over by Springfield Mall after church today and look at the shelves underneath the sign labeled “Christian Literature.” 

     On cover after cover Joel Osteen’s pearly whites and vacant botoxed eyes pull you in, like the tractor beam on the Death Star, into becoming a better you and living your best life now. 

     And next to them, 63- I counted them this week- Amish romance novels. Amish romance novels. And no they weren’t 63 copies of the Harrison Ford-Kelly HotGillis film Witness. They were 63 different Amish romance novels with titles like Game of Love, Let Go and Let God, the Brave and the Shunned, and- my personal favorite, The Amish Mail Order Bride.

     If anyone here likes to read Amish romance novels, I’m not judging you. Actually, that’s not true but my point is…we have plenty of reasons to be ashamed of being Christian. 

     From climate change deniers to thanking the Almighty for every touchdown and goal-line stop to the #Blessed license plate I saw on a Tesla yesterday to Red and Blue Jesuses in the social media scrum- we have plenty of reasons to be ashamed of being Christian. 

     Christians executed Galileo. 

     Christians excommunicated Graham Greene. 

     Christians excuse Franklin Graham. 

     The reason so many insist on protesting that Black Lives Matter is because Christians for centuries pimped out their bibles to join in the chorus of those who said they don’t. 

     Matter. 

     We should be ashamed. 

     Christians have made bedfellows with colonizers and conquistadors. In whichever nation in whatever era Christians have found themselves they’ve never missed an opportunity to bless every power grab, baptize every war, perpetuate every prejudice. 

     We Christians have plenty of reasons to be ashamed. 

     Survey says we’re the ones who want to keep our neighbors in the closet, keep death row open for business, keep a wary eye on Muslims, and keep our communities closed to strangers.

     Don’t even get me started on 19 Kids and Counting.

     We have ample reasons to be ashamed. 

     But I digress.

—————————-

     I digress. 

     So does Paul.

     If you were paying attention to today’s passage, you may have noticed that the Apostle Paul loses his train of thought right here at the top of chapter 3: “This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles dash”

     Check your bibles if you don’t believe me. The dash is really there. 

      Paul gets sidetracked at the start of his first sentence: This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles dash

     And notice, that dash is 13 verses long. 

     The whole passage today is a parenthetical comment. 

     In Greek, it’s called an anacoluthon; meaning, it’s an interuppted sentence that consequently lacks a verb to complete it. Paul doesn’t finish his first sentence until he gets to verse 14. Paul doesn’t get around to putting a verb on verse 1 until he gets to next Sunday’s passage where he writes about bowing his knees in worship. 

     Next week, verse 14 begins a doxology, 7 verses of praise over the height and depth and breadth and length of the love of God revealed to us as for us in Jesus Christ. But that long doxology in the second half of Ephesians 3 is preceded by an even longer digression. 

      This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles dash…

      And then St. Paul digresses for 13 verses about the grace of God and the mystery of Christ and how that grace for them has made him a prisoner. 

     And not only a prisoner, a doulos Paul calls himself- a word your bibles translate as servant. 

     It means slave.

     The doxolgy to follow is preceded by a digression about how- why- Paul is a prisoner. 

     A slave. 

     A digression which ends with his plea to them not to lose heart over his suffering. 

     Do not be ashamed of my suffering, Paul writes. 

     In other words, what provokes this long digression is what prompts his epistle to the Ephesians in the first place. Paul knows that, in a place like Ephesus, a ministry pockmarked by suffering and shame undermined his message of salvation.  

     As St. Luke reports in the Book of Acts, the Christians in Ephesus worshipped in the shadow of the temple of Artemis Ephesia. The temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the world. At 70 x 130 meters square, it was 4 times larger than the Parthenon in Athens. It was made of marble, latticed with 127 columns. Outside in front of the temple was a horseshoe shaped altar with a statue of Artemis at its center where worshippers would offer sacrifices to petition Artemis to intercede on their behalf, to rescue them from whatever suffering had befallen them. 

     Artemis’ power was such that Ephesus was the one city in the Greco-Roman world without any imperial cult, without any statues or altars to the Emperor. You see, even Caesar showed deference to Artemis Ephesia. She was a god who delivered the goods. 

     And then here’s Paul, in prison- again, writing to a tiny church worshipping in the shadow of a god against whom not even Caesar will step.

     Paul doesn’t appear to have been on the receiving end of any divine intercessions.

     He’s no better off than a slave. 

     His God hasn’t delivered him from suffering- Artemis’ forte.

     His God has delivered him into suffering. 

     And where Artemis was symbolized by raw, visceral power- those aren’t breasts on that statue, those are bull…nevermind, you can look it up when you get home- the Christ that Paul proclaimed had none, had been emptied of power. 

     The Christ that Paul proclaimed had only a cross. 

      It wasn’t just his ministry, pockmarked as it was by suffering and shame, that Paul had to double-back on, digress and explain. 

     It was his message. 

     It was his message of the cross.

     Just -pas we have plenty of reasons to be embarrassed about being Christian, St. Paul assumed it was obvious why his hearers in Ephesus (and elsewhere) would be ashamed of the Gospel. 

     Paul digresses on his way to doxology because Paul knows that what is shameful and embarrassing about his Gospel of the crucified Jesus is the crucified Jesus.

     I’m going to say that again in case I lost you in all my digressions:

What is shameful and embarrassing about the Gospel of the crucified Jesus is the crucified Jesus..

—————————-

      To Jews and to Romans alike, our testimony about the crucifixion was shameful. 

      A disgrace. 

     Do not be ashamed of my suffering for the cross, Paul essentially says here in his letter to the Ephesians. Do not be ashamed of this shame, Paul says in his letter to Timothy. Do not be ashamed of the Gospel, Paul says in his letter to the Romans. 

     He has to say it again and again, in different ways and digressions, because to the Romans, crucifixion was shameful- so shameful that until Christianity converted the heart of the empire, nearly 300 years after Paul, the word “crux” was the Latin equivalent of the F-bomb. 

     Crucifixion was so degrading and dehumanizing- designed to be so- you weren’t permitted to speak of it, or use the word ‘cross’ even, in polite society. 

     But to the Jews, crucifixion was an altogether different sort of shame, for the Jews’ own scripture proscribed it as the ultimate degradation and abandonment. According to one of the commandments God gives to Moses on Sinai: “…Anyone convicted and hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” 

      That’s the commandment Paul wrestles with in his Letter to the Galatians. In the entire Torah, only the cross- being nailed to a tree- do the commandments specifically identify as being a godforsaken death.

     Paul digresses here in Ephesians 3 over the words that mark his ministry, words like prisoner and slave and suffering, because of the one word at the heart of his message.

     Crucifixion.

     Paul must command his churches again and again not to be ashamed of our testimony about the Cross, not to be ashamed of his suffering for the message of the Cross, because that manner of death specifically marked Jesus out under God as accursed. 

      That’s why Christ’s disciples flee from him in the end. 

     It isn’t because they believe his mission ended in failure. 

     No, they flee from him because they believe his mission ended in godforsakenness. 

     They abandon Jesus because they believe God had abandoned him. 

     They flee not only Jesus but the curse they believe God had put on him. 

     To Jews and Romans alike, Paul’s Gospel about a crucified God was a tougher sell than Facebook stock. No one in Israel expected a crucified Messiah and nothing in Caesar’s empire prepared Romans to pledge allegiance to a man who had met a death so shameful they dare not speak of it.

     Paul’s message and his ministry in service to it were scandalously and profanely counter-intuitive. 

     By any standards, Jewish or Roman, you would’ve had to be insane to worship a crucified man, much less suffer yourself for one. 

     Which- pay attention- I believe remains the strongest argument for the truth of the Gospel. 

——————————

     Sigmund Freud famously argued that human religion is constructed out of wish fulfillment. 

     Religion, Freud critiqued, is but the projection of humanity’s hopes and desires.     

     Religion is the product of our deep (and maybe insecure) longing for a loving Father Figure. 

     The human heart, Freud didn’t say but would concur with Calvin, is an idol factory. We need religion. We create religion because we need our wishes to come true. 

     My wife tells me Freud was wrong about penis envy, and I’ve only thought about my mother in Freud’s way a few times (just kidding), but, by and large, I think Freud was right. 

     About religion. 

     I know the Apostle Paul would agree with him. Religion is man-made. We make God in our image, not vice versa, and then we project all our aspirations, assumptions, and prejudices on to him. 

     That’s why so often God sounds like an almighty version of ourselves. 

     That’s why so much of the “Christianity” out there in the ether shames and embarrasses us. The plastic pop songs and the Christian kitsch; the Self-Help and the Civil Religion and the Red and Blue hued Jesuses. 

     It’s all what Freud and Paul call ‘religion.’ It’s all just a means of helping us endure life and advance through it. 

     Plenty of other religions have stories about God taking human form. On those counts Christianity isn’t unique. It’s a religion like so many others. 

     And every religion has the Law. 

     Every religion tells you what you ought to do for God. 

     Every religon tells you what you must do for your neighbor. Every religion has the Golden Rule.

     But only Christianity has as its focus the shameful suffering and degradation of God. 

     The Gospel, our testimony about the crucified Jesus, is not religious at all. It’s irreligious, Paul writes to the Corinthians. 

     It’s a disgrace. 

     It’s so shameful that Paul calls it a stumbling block for religious people.  Freud was right about religion, but he didn’t understand that Paul’s Gospel is something else entirely. 

     It’s not religion at all.
It’s news. 

      No one would have projected their hopes on to an accursed crucified man. 

      Crucifixion is not the invention of wish fulfillment. 
Maybe that’s the only real argument for the Gospel. 

      Maybe that’s the only real safeguard we have against our suspicions that it’s all so much embarrassing fantasy and nonsense. 

      Maybe that’s the only hope we have that we’re not deluding ourselves with our faith.

—————————-

      If you read my blog, then you already know that I spent my final day in my last congregation burying a boy the same age as my youngest son, Gabriel. 

     He was the fifth child I’d buried in that parish. 

     And his was the third five foot long coffin I’d buried because of suicide. 

     Peter, Jackson, Neil. 

     I wish I could forget their names.

     Since I’m new here, you should know: I hate my job sometimes. 

     And since I’m new here, you should know too, just as often, I doubt the existence of the One from whom my vocation supposedly comes. To be honest, I don’t take seriously the atheism of anyone who has not thrown dirt on a child’s casket. 

     And you should know, I do respect the atheism of anyone who has.

     Peter. 

     The boy last month- his name was- is- Peter. 

      Peter had been fighting with his mom about doing his homework. 

      He was dyslexic and ADD and homework had always been hard. 

      Peter was fighting with his mom about doing his homework, the kind of fight I’ve had with my own kids a thousand times. The kind of fight, I’m sure, you’ve had with your kids. 

     Just go do your goddamned homework, Lisa had yelled at him. 

     Fuck you, Mom, Peter shouted back already climbing the stairs, I’m going to go and kill myself instead. 

     And, he did. 

     A panic rushed over his mom a few moments later. She screamed at her oldest daughter to check on him, but it was littlest sister who found him and, too late, tried to untie his belt.

     Maybe he meant to do it. 

     Maybe it was an impulsive way from an impulsive kid to win an argument. 

     Maybe he was standing on the chair waiting for his mom to rush in through the door and he just lost his balance. 

      His mom, Lisa, was stoic when I met with her, as strong and self-possessed as a statue, until she told me how she used to write letters to Peter whenever he was about to go on a trip. She’d write it and then hide it in his bag for him to discover later. 

     Her Artemis-like artifice fell apart in front of me as she sobbed: “Now he’s gone on a trip to God and he’s never coming back AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE TO HIM!”

     Watching her powerful facade crack in my lap, I felt righteously PO’d. 

     Your heart would have to be made of stone to hear a mother’s spleen-deep sobs and not feel furious.

      At God. 

      Or, 

      Feel foolish for believing in the first place. 

      It’s the nature of ministry that the doing of it thrusts upon you plenty of moments where you feel like a fool for your faith and you consider quitting not just your job, though that, but quitting this whole Christian thing too. 

      And I don’t know how to say this with the force with which I feel it (maybe that’s why Paul digresses so often and for so long) but every time- those moments where I despair that Freud’s right and we’re all just deluding ourselves; those days where I feel the faith is as unconvincing as Paul preaching in the shadow of the Temple of Artemis- it’s the shame of the cross that saves me from unbelief. 

      The disgrace of our Gospel saves me from my unbelief. 

——————————-

       The disgrace of our Gospel, that which prods Paul to digress before his doxology, it’s my hedge against unbelief. 

      The shame of the Cross, the embarassment that prompts Paul’s digression, at the end of the day I am persuaded it’s the only thing that makes doxology- praise, possible. 

     Flip the channels, thumb through your paper, scroll down your Facebook feed; fact is, you have plenty of reasons to be embarrassed and ashamed about being Christian. We’ve got hucksters like Joel Osteen and Jim Baker. We’ve got hypocrites like Cardinal McCarrick and Franklin Graham. 

     The truth of the matter is- we’ve got plenty of reasons to doubt and think Freud was right that it’s all so much fantasy.

     But in the amazing dis-grace that is the cross we have one reason to believe.

     And I believe that one reason is the only reason you require to believe. 

     Look, you know as well as I do that there’s more people not here this morning than are here. Don’t lie and tell me you’ve never wondered if maybe they’re all right and we’re wrong.

      So, here it is, just so you know we’re not all deluding ourselves:

 #1- 

The shame of the cross is such that no one- no one, certainly not a Pharisee like Paul; certainly not a Roman citizen like Paul- would’ve projected their religious wishes upon a crucified Jesus.

And, #2 –

The Judaism to which Jesus belonged did not have as a central part of its beliefs any hope in the resurrection from the dead. 

Take those two together and I am convinced that we never would’ve heard of Jesus Christ crucified for our sin and raised from the dead for our justification unless it really happened. 

      The Sunday before last when I preached I told you that I believe here in the Church the main thing needs always to be the main thing. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified for your sin and raised for your justification, can never be assumed, I said. It needs always to be our main message and it must always be at the heart of our every ministry. 

      I said.

      And I said it for a reason. 

      Maybe this is a lowkey note with which to end, but if it’s enough to warrant Paul’s long digression then it’s worth me putting it plain today. We can save the doxologies for another day. 

     Here it is:      

      I don’t believe the Gospel is a guarrantee to make your life happier. 

      I don’t believe the Gospel is necessarily helpful- either for you or our society. 

      But I do believe it’s true.

I do believe it’s true.

Follow @cmsvoteup

This Black Life Matters

Because for years, it didn’t.

Brian Stolarz is one of my best friends. I’d do anything for him and he’d take a bullet for me. Brian worked for years to free Alfred Dewayne Brown, also a friend now, from death row in Texas after Dewayne was falsely accused of a cop-killing, his IQ test ginned up, and exculpatory evidence withhold by the prosecution and police. You can read Brian’s story in his book Grace and Justice.

Brian recently preached a sermon on Ephesians 2 based on his experience. Here it is:

Thank you for giving me the amazing opportunity to be here today.  I’m honored.

I’m also not a professional pastor so please excuse me if I mess up. Just know that my heart is in the right place! You are blessed to have a guy like David here. He is a true rising star.

I love this church and all it stands for. I love it so much that I slept on the small couch in the office  last winter during hypothermia season and it was the best night sleep I’ve had in a long time because I felt the love from this place.

So I’m here today to tell you about a personal story that showed me what God’s grace is all about and what today’s sermon is all about.  I’ll also let you in on a secret.

So I’m a criminal defense lawyer.  I used to be a public defender.  I’ve defended hundreds if not thousands of people charged with crimes from stealing a pack of gum from a store to murder.  Some were innocent some were guilty and I learned some very important lessons – no one is as bad as their worst act and and everyone is worthy of redemption and a second chance.  And everyone is entitled to a strong defense.

Let me tell you about one of my favorite clients – Bike.  I was hooked from that day on.

I left the public defenders office and worked for a large firm in dc.  I got a call one day from a senior partner asking me to handle a death penalty case pro bono.  I jumped at the chance.  And I met the client who changed my life, Alfred Dewayne Brown.

Dewayne was convicted of capital murder of a Houston police officer and was sentenced to death.  He professed his innocence the first day I met him and despite the fact that most of my clients lie to me I believed him.  I felt it way deep down. A truth I felt deeply.

I want to say out front that I’m against the death penalty.  One of my personal heroes is Sister Helen Prejean. She taught me that every life is sacred even those on the Row.  I am glad that the Pope has taken a strong stance against the death penalty.  It’s not for the state to kill a person.

Not only am I opposed to the death penalty for religious reasons but also for legal ones.  I didn’t see a lot of wealthy white people on death row or that many white people for that matter.   Most were minorities and didn’t have the funds to pay for counsel.  Sister Helen says those without the capital get the capital punishment.

Many are wrongfully convicted like Dewayne.  Some have died at the hands of the state and later found to be innocent.  It is a disgrace.

Today’s scripture says that we were dead by our trespasses.  And the death penalty is one of those trespasses.  Those who support the death penalty are supporting a system that is unfair and unjust and against the teaching of Jesus to forgive 70×7 and to forgive those who trespass against us.  Killing someone to say that killing isn’t right would make Jesus shake his head.

Fortunately after 8 years of work and 12 years and 62 days of Dewayne being confined he was released.  And how was he released? The prosecutor and the police officer in the case hid exculpatory evidence which was found in all places in the homicide detectives home garage.  Not kidding.  He walked out a free man on June 8 2015. One of the best days of my life after the day I met my wife and the birth of my kids

I wrote a book about it.  Entitled Grace and Justice on Death Row.  For those who have the means you can buy it.  For those who don’t I’m donating a copy to the church for anyone to read and experience.


The case changed not only Dewayne’s life but it changed mine.

 Folks say I saved his life but he saved mine.   He showed me Gods grace. He forgave his captors.  He forgave his trespassers.  He said on the courthouse steps that he has no hate in his heart for what the state did to him.  He is moving forward in his life and doing great.  He taught me so much by this.

He also taught me the value of perseverance even when times are hard.  I was not sure I was going to be able to get him out and I worried I would watch him die.  The testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Dewayne wrote in the book I’m donating to the church – keep going when times get hard.  How beautiful of a lesson is that?

 Galatians 6 says “let us not grow weary of doing good.  For in due season we will reap if we do not give up.”  I didn’t give up.  He didn’t give up.

And here’s he secret I was telling you about.  And turns out the secret has to do with roller coasters.

I love theme parks.  My wife thinks I’m dumb but put me at Busch Gardens or Hershey Park and I feel like a kid again. And last year when I took my middle kid we bought a “fast pass” so that we could cut all the lines. It was awesome.  We rode the log flume 6 times.

You see I thought growing up that I thought I had to store up a bunch of good deeds so when I walked into the pearly gates of heaven I could show my good deed resume and would be a shoo in for the eternal life in heaven.  I even had that thought when Dewayne was released.

I was so wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong actually.  I have and you have already been saved.  We all have a fast pass to heaven already.  We are saved by grace through faith. And the good works we all do or aspire to do? We don’t do them to get into heaven or get God to like us. We are already in his favor-we are as the reading says Gods handy work.  Created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Which God prepared in advance for us to do. He set the stage for us to do good works.

I read recently that grace isn’t grace if its earned. Grace is always free.  Always.

So do good works. Answer the call to do good when the call comes.  Not to get into heaven but to what god has made each and everyone to do and to praise his glory. And preservere when times get hard because grace wins every time.

So it turns out I already I have my fast pass to heaven.   I pray that you do too.

I just hope heaven has cool roller coasters.

May God Bless you today and always.

Brian

Follow @cmsvoteup

A Syllogism for Saturday

”There ought to be a streak of antinomianism in every Pauline soul.” 

– Gerhard Forde

For those of you scratching your heads at the stained glass lingo:

an·ti·no·mi·an

ˌan(t)ēˈnōmēən

adjective

relating to the view that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law.

Now that you’ve got the defintion under your belt, Forde’s point about the stress in Paul about the radical and absolute nature of grace (“If righteousness can be attained through the Law then Christ died for nothing.”) led me to a syllogism of sorts.

Premise:

Authentic New Testament Christian Faith is close to antinomianism- it’s why, for example, Paul must repeatedly deny and demonstrate how he’s not nullifying the Law entirely.

Premise:

Most contemporary Christianity is not in any way close to antinomianism.

Conclusion:

Much contemporary Christianity is not authentic New Testament Christianity.

Sometimes, as Flannery O’ Connor wrote, you’ve got to exaggerate the point to point out the problem.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Episode #162: The Thing NO ONE Wants to Talk About

What happens when an entire denomination struggles with language regarding human sexuality and three pastors try to ask questions? Teer, Taylor, and I grabbed a spot in the hotel lobby at Annual Conference recently to talk about the sexuality debate in the United Methodist Church.

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. 
All proceeds go to support the podcast.

Follow @cmsvoteup

I Like Big Buts: There is No Distinction

 My podcast, Crackers and Grape Juice, has released an ebook, available in paperback too, as a fundraiser to cover the costs of the show. Below is a little teaser from a reflection I wrote on Romans 3.

You can listen to a podcast the guys did about the book with out me below.

Go to Amazon and get the book. Even better, leave us a review there. It’ll help people find the book.

As many of you know, I do a lot of my work at Starbucks.  I have my reasons. For one thing, I get more accomplished without Dennis pestering me to show him how his computer works. But to be honest, the main reason I go to Starbucks…is because I like to eavesdrop. It’s true. What ice cream and cheesecake were to the Golden Girls eavesdropping is to me. 

     At Starbucks I’m like a fly on the wall with a moleskin notebook under his wing. I’ve been dropping eaves at coffee shops for as long as I’ve been a pastor and, until this week at least, I’ve never been caught. 

     This week I sat down at a little round table and started to sketch out a funeral sermon. At the table to my left was a 20-something guy with ear phones in and an iPad out and a man-purse slung across his shoulder. At the table to my right were two middle-aged women. They had a bible and a couple of Beth Moore books on the table between them. And a copy of the Mt Vernon Gazette. 

     The first thing I noticed though was their perfume. It was strong I could taste it in my coffee. 

     Now, in my defense I don’t think I could properly be accused of eavesdropping considering just how loud the two women were talking. Like they wanted to be heard. Their ‘bible study’ or whatever it had been was apparently over because the woman by the window closed the bible and then commented out loud: 

‘I really do need to get a new bible. This one’s worn out completely. I’ve just read it so much.’

     Not to be outdone, the woman across from her, parried, saying just as loudly: 

‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t spend time in the Word every day. 

I don’t know what people do without the Lord.’ 

     “They do whatever they want” her friend by the window said. 

     And I said- to myself- ‘Geez, I’ve sat next to two Flannery O’Connor characters.’

     I assumed that since they were actually reading the bible there was no way they attended this church, but just to make sure I gave them a double-take. They had perfectly permed hair flecked with frosted highlights. And they had nails in which I could see the reflection of their large, costume jewelry. 

     “Baptists” I thought to myself. 

     They continued chatting over their lattes as the woman by the window flipped through the Mt Vernon Gazette. She stopped at a page and shook her head in disapproval.  

     Whether she actually said ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ or I imagined it I can’t be sure. 

     The other woman looked down at the paper and said: ‘Oh, I heard about that. He was only 31.’ 

     ‘Did you hear it was an overdose?’ the woman by the window said like a kid on Christmas morning. 

     And that’s when I knew who they were gossiping about. I knew because I was sitting next to them writing that young man’s funeral sermon. 

     ‘Did he know the Lord?’ the woman asked. 

     ‘Probably not considering the lifestyle’ the woman by the window said without pause. 

     They went on gossiping from there.  They used words like ‘shameful.’ They did not, I noticed, use words like ‘sad’ or ‘tragic’ or ‘unfortunate.’ 

     It wasn’t long before the circumference of their conversation spun its way to encompass things like ‘society and what’s wrong with it,’ how parents need to pray their kids into the straight and narrow, and how this is what happens when our culture turns its back on God.’ 

     After a while they came to a lull in their conversation and the woman opposite the window, the one with the gaudy bedazzled cross on her neck, gazed down at the Mt Vernon Gazette and wondered out loud: 

    ‘What do you say at a funeral like that?’ 

     And without even looking at them, and with a volume that surprised me, I said: ‘The same damn thing that’ll be said at your funeral.’ 

     They didn’t even blush. But they did look at me awkwardly. 

     ‘I hardly think so’ the woman by the window said, sizing me up and not looking very impressed with the sum of what she saw. 

     And so I laid my cards down: ‘Well, I probably won’t be preaching your funeral, but I will be preaching his.’ 

     And then I pointed at her theatrically worn bible, the one resting on top of her copy of A Heart Like His by Beth Moore, and I said: ‘If you actually took that seriously you’d shut up right now.’

     “No one is righteous, not one,” St. Paul indicts us all in Romans 3.

   Go get the book now!

    

     ‘. 

   

          

Follow @cmsvoteup

Not Cheap, Free

     This Sunday the Sonshine Choir from Brentwood UMC in Nashville were our musical guests. Given the Nashville theme, I couldn’t help but weave two Nashville denizens into my sermon on Ephesians 2.1-10: Carrie Underwood and Carl Sr.

Here it is:

     I barely need to preach today. 

     I certainly don’t need to wile you with any pop culture references, funny videos, or moving personal stories. I know what you all started to think about as soon as you heard our text read this morning. 

     I know what’s on your mind.      

     That’s right, “Jesus Take the Wheel.” 

     Don’t lie. You’re singing it in your head right now. 

     So you probably already know: “Jesus Take the Wheel” was the first single released on Carrie Underwood’s debut album Some Hearts. It was Billboard’s #1 hit for 6 straight weeks. It reached #20 on the Pop charts. It won the former American Idol star 2 Grammys, one for Best Female Vocal Performance and another for Best Country Song. It won her 4 trophies at the Country Music Awards. 

     And– 

     It was a cross-over hit on Christian radio. It climbed all the way to #4 on the Contemporary Christian Music charts. It took home trophies at the CCM awards too. 

      Which is odd- 

     It’s odd that it would be a hit on Christian radio because the chorus to Carrie Underwood’s single (“Jesus take the wheel, take it from my hands ‘cause I can’t do this on my own…”) is not the Gospel. 

      It is not the Gospel as the Apostle Paul gives it to us this morning. 

     I’m sorry, Peter, I know how much you love Carrie Underwood and how if Carrie were Korean she’d already be Mrs. Kwon, but, as Gospel, Carrie’s song is about as on point as that other hit single from 2005: Snoop Dog’s “Drop It Like Its Hot.”

     Despite how far up the Christian charts Carrie Underwood took the 2005 Brett James-penned country single, the Apostle Paul tells us today that our condition before Almighty God is both more helpless and more hopeless than our requiring a co-pilot who takes over when times get tough. 

———————-

     “Jesus take the wheel, take it from my hands ‘cause I can’t do this on my own…”

     Translation: I was doing life on my own, Jesus, but now I need some help.   

          No. 

     We don’t need help. That’s Americianity. That’s not Christianity. That’s not the Gospel. According to the Apostle Paul, we don’t need help. We need an embalmer. We don’t need an instructor. We need an undertaker. 

     Or– 

     We need someone who can raise the dead. 

     The Gospel does not begin with us already behind the wheel, on our own, with Jesus, like a genie in a lamp, ready to tag-in whenever life gets tricky. 

     The Gospel is not that Jesus will do the rest if or after you’ve done your best. No, that’s an ancient heresy called Pelagianism, and, while it might be the most popular religion in America, it is not the Gospel. 

     You do your best and Christ will do the rest. 

     No. 

     A corpse can’t cooperate with God. 
     A stiff can’t set out to improve itself. 
With rigor mortis, you can’t even repent.

         Apart from the unmerited, uninitiated, one-way work of Jesus Christ for you upon you- applied to you at your baptism- you are dead in your sins. 

     The Gospel begins not with you behind the wheel of life.

     The Gospel begins with you dead in the grave. 

     Carrie Underwood is the product of Oklahoma Public Eduction so maybe it’s not her fault. Still, you’d think it would’ve occurred to at least some of those Christians who shot her single up the CCM charts that, according to the Gospel, we’re not behind the wheel, with Jesus ready to help. 

    We’re rolled up inside a rug, a dead body, in the back of the car. Jesus doesn’t help us steer our lives. Jesus takes our sin-dead corpses out of the trunk of the car, and he makes us alive again. That’s the Gospel. 

     He makes us alive for him. He makes us alive for good works, Paul says. 

     But notice- not good works that we choose. Christ makes us alive for good works he has chosen from beforehand. We do not pursue good works for God. God places us into good works for himself. 

     So that- 

     From beginning to end, the Gospel is not about what we do but about what God has done and is doing. By grace, Paul says, you have been saved. 

     G.R.A.C.E: God’s redemption at Christ’s expense. 

     By grace you have been saved. 

     Not- 

     By grace you have been helped. 

     Not by grace you have been enlightened or encouraged or improved. 

     Not by grace you have been made a better, happier, or holier you. 

     We are not the servants he inspires or the enlistees he exhorts. We are the sinners he saves, the dead he drags out of the grave back into life. 

     By grace you have been saved.

     Note the tense. 

     Paul puts it in the perfect. 

     Meaning, it’s once for all. It’s a past act with endless effects into the present so you don’t ever have to worry about your future. Because- pay attention- it’s only when you’re un-anxious about your future with God that you’re truly free to serve your neighbor in the present. 

     By grace you have been saved, and this is not your doing, Paul says. 

     Despite the popularity of the expression-
the Gospel is not something you can do. 

     The Gospel is not something the Church can be. 

     The Gospel is not something we can put hands and feet to. 

     It’s a gift, Paul says.

     And a gift can only be received, celebrated, shared. 

     The Gospel is not your doing, Paul says, nor is it reducible to the good works you do.

     And just so you don’t miss this, Paul structures his sentence in Ephesians 2 to make his point obtrusive and unavoidable. 

     Where Ephesians 1 contains the longest sentence in the New Testament, Ephesians 2 contains the densest sentence in the New Testament.  

     Paul arranges the rhetoric of his sentence to emphasize his argument. He begins, in the Greek, with you and me in verse 1. Actually he begins with the word “dead.” We’re there at the top of the sentence, dead in our trespasses. 

     And there Paul leaves us, in the grave. 

     Then Paul fills the rest of his long, complicated sentence with compounds and clauses about what God has done in Jesus Christ.   

     He starts with us not behind the wheel of life but dead in our sins, and then he fills his sentence with God’s doings for us. Only at the end, after clause after clause after clause, after 9 1/2 verses, in the last and tiniest clause of the sentence, is there any positive mention at all of our doing for God. 

     The construction of the sentence echoes the content of it. The rhetoric reinforces the point. Paul summarizes the Gospel with this massive sentence about God’s doing for us in Jesus Christ and only at the end is there this little mention of me and my doing for God.

     The medium here is the message:

Christianity is not about what you do. 

For God. 

Or your neighbor. 

It’s about God becoming your neighbor in Jesus Christ and, just as he did with his neighbor Lazarus, making you, who were stinking and dead in your sins, alive again. 

———————-

     Martin Luther said that the Gospel of salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith- not good works- alone condemns everything that we think is right and good in the world. 

     The Gospel of grace, which begins with us in the grave, offends our high anthropology, our high assessment of our goodness and abilities. 

     The Gospel of grace enrages us who are addicted to doing and using our doings as a way to elbow ourselves a notch or two above our neighbors. 

     The Gospel of grace upends the comforting system of merit and demerit by which we arrange our lives, navigate our relationships, and make sense of the world. 

     Think about it. 

     The Gospel of grace means you’ve been handed Christ’s own permanent perfect score, which makes all of our scorecards obsolete, which is offensive if you think you’ve earned a high score all on your own. 

     And it’s even more worse if you’re convinced someone deserves a low score because of what they’ve done to you. 

     Since most of us don’t really believe we’re sinners- We don’t really believe we’re greedy. We don’t really believe we’re unforgiving or inhospitable. We don’t really believe we’re racist or prejudiced or liars and hypocrites (even though Chenda keeps telling me I am).

Since we don’t really believe we’re sinners, the Gospel message that you are not what you do is rude. It’s rude if you’re proud of the good you do. 

     As Robert Capon said:  

 God’s grace in Jesus Christ isn’t cheap. It’s not even expensive. It’s free.

Now that’s offensive to any of us who measure ourselves according to merit. It’s offensive to us who define ourselves by what we do. 

     And so it’s no surprise then that the future Mrs. Kwon and her chart-topping 2005 single is just one example of how we invert Paul’s Gospel. We shift the weight in his sentence. We tell Jesus to scoot on over, and we put ourselves in the driver’s seat. 

    Here’s the thing- 

     When we unroll ourselves from the rug in the trunk of the car

     When we put our sin-dead bodies behind the wheel

     When we invert the Gospel

     When we make our Christianity mostly about the good works that we do for others

     When we shove and squeeze the work God has done in Jesus Christ into the tiniest clause at the end of the sentence almost as an afterthought- or as something we think we can assume- the Church, what Karl Barth called “the herald of the Gospel,” becomes like Carl’s Jr.  

———————-

     In case that’s not self-explanatory, roll the video:

 

If you’re getting this by email and the video doesn’t pop up, here’s the link:

———————-

     A little context:

     In the early 2000’s Carl’s Jr began a marketing campaign featuring supermodels like Kate Upton in swimsuits and lingerie eating greasy, juicy hamburgers while riding on mechanical bulls, washing muscle cars, and sitting in a hot tub. Picture Bill Clinton and Donald Trump going out for burgers and a night on the town and you have an idea what those commercials contained. 

     They gave the expression “food porn” a reference point it had been missing since George Constanza tried to combine his afternoon delight with deli meats. For you kids, that’s a Seinfeld reference. 

     On the face of it, you might assume a barely-clad Padma Lakshmi eating a bacon cheeseburger would be a brilliant advertising strategy to reach the purient, adolescent minds of men between the ages of 13 and, oh let’s say, 97.  

     But actually, Carl’s Jr’s business declined, precipitously so, even among horny teenage boys and dirty old men. 

     They stopped making the main thing the main thing. 

     They stopped making the main thing the main thing. 
     And their business suffered. 

     They stopped making the main thing the main thing, and the number of repeat regulars and first-time customers coming in through their doors dwindled. 

     According to a Harvard Business Review article, after Carl’s Jr. launched that advertising campaign back in the early 2000’s their corporation suffered internally too. Members and share holders became beset by division and factions. 

     They stopped making the main thing the main thing, and they got stuck. 

     In conflict. 

     You don’t really need me to connect the dots for you, do you? Well, maybe Peter does, but not the rest of you, right? 

     For Pete’s sake- I’ll do it anyway. 

     Much of what passes for and is practiced as Christianity today bears no resemblance to the Gospel of grace as Paul weights it and orders it here in Ephesians. 

     A lot of churches are like Carl’s Jr of the early aughts. They’ve made something other than the main thing the main thing. 

     They’ve made their main thing something other than the Gospel, salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone.   

     A lot of Christianity is like Carl’s Jr. 

     It doesn’t have a half-naked Kate Upton eating a messy pile of meat (though that would make for a surprising church flyer), but it does package and sell Christianity in terms of its utility (practical advice, spiritual practices to relieve stress, biblical principals for daily living, how to be a Christian parent, how to have a happy Christian marriage). 

     There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, per se. 

     They’re just not the main thing. 

     A lot of Christianity is like Carl’s Jr. 

     It makes tradition and custom the main thing so every church becomes afraid of change and repeats at every occasion “We’ve always…done it this way.” 

      A lot of Christianity is like Carl’s Jr. 

     It makes partisan politics the main thing. 

     Rather than the Gospel news that though you are unrighteous, dead in your sins in fact, God has reckoned Christ’s righteousness to you as your own- rather than that Grade A, All-Beef Gospel a lot of Christianity out there wants you to prove your righteousness based on where you stand on a particular political issue. 

     A lot of Christianity is like Carl’s Jr. 

     It makes social justice the main thing. 

     It makes community building the main thing.

     It makes serving the needy and the neighbor the main thing. 

     Again, not that social justice isn’t worthy and urgent. Not that building community isn’t part of the church community’s task. Not that serving the needy and loving our neighbor aren’t works that God puts before us and places us into. 

     They’re just not the main thing. 

     The Gospel is not a blank screen on to which we can project whatever Jesus-flavored thing we wish. 

     You were dead in your trespasses. By grace you have been saved. It’s all Christ’s doing such that there’s nothing now you must do- just receive it in trust. 

     That’s the Gospel. 

     It’s our Carl Sr. 

     And everything else is Jr. 

     In that Harvard Business Review article, an executive from Carl’s Jr. offered a “post-mortem” on their advertising campaign from the early aughts. 

     “We realized,” he said, “that if you’re looking for sex and sensationalism then you’ve got plenty of other options out there; we have one unique product to offer.”

     Do I need to connect the dots?!

     Look- 

 If most of what we do as a Church could be done (and done better) by most other secular programs, self-help groups, counseling centers, social justice agencies, political activists, music programs, or TED Talks, then some of you all might as well strap on a bikini and start riding a mechanical bull because we’ve forgotten we’re in the Grade-A, All Beef Gospel business.  

————————

     Heads up, mood change: 

     

     A couple of years ago, I spent the year on medical leave following emergency surgery and 8 rounds of stage-serious chemo for a rare, incurable cancer with which I’d been diagnosed. A cancer- you should know- that afflicts me still. While I’m still more fit than your average United Methodist pastor, I’ll never be in remission and I still do maintenance chemo a day a month. Like the text today says, we’re all dead men walking but me a little bit more than most of you.  

     Anyways, at the end of my medical leave my oncologist asked me if I wanted to return to work, to ministry. “If you want,” he said, “I can make it so you never have to work again.” I considered it, sure. Turns out, not only do I like my job, I believe in our job. 

     I’m not here because it’s a career move. I’m not here for a salary. Whatever you pay me, it’ll never be more than my medical bills. Fact is, I don’t have to be here. I don’t need to put up with Peter much less Chenda. I don’t have to put up with any of you.

I’m not here to be the concierge of a club. I’m not here to be a social worker or community organizer. I’m not here to maintain a denomination. I’m not here to opine on politics.

     I’m here because I believe in the Gospel, and I believe in the power of the Gospel to change the world by changing lives (lives like mine) a life at a time. 

     I’m here because I believe the main thing should be the main thing. 

     Not to be melodramatic but I live with my death. I know firsthand the difference between the Church as Carl Sr. and the Church as Carl Jr. 

     The Church is not a social program. It’s not a charity. It’s not a fellowship group. 

     It can include all of those things, but the Church, as Paul tells the Corinthians, is an embassy of the Gospel. We’re the only business, the only institution on earth given the authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins. And we do so by our worship. We do so in wine and bread. We do so in bible study with our children. We do so by serving our needy neighbors. Work that isn’t “help.” Work where we are ambassadors for the Gospel.

     It’s not that all the other good we can do isn’t. 

     Isn’t good. 

     It’s that none of it can make the dead live. 

     

Follow @cmsvoteup