Jason Micheli's Blog, page 124

WDJD?

Easter Sunday – 1 Corinthians 15.1-11

This is my 13th Easter at Aldersgate. I arrived here from a church in Rockbridge, Virginia 13 years ago- right around Dennis’ 60th birthday. It’s true. Dennis Perry been putting the senior in senior pastor longer than Fox News has been obsessed with Hillary Clinton. He’s so old now that whenever he stops moving people start to throw dirt on him.

13 Easters- that’s a lot of years of me making Dennis look like a competent contributor to the staff. I mean, really, Dennis manages to put in less time than a Trump cabinet appointee. 13 Easters- that’s a lot of years of me showing Dennis how to login to his computer. Seriously, he chose his password so you’d think he’d remember that Hasselhoff has 2 f’s at the end.

Our bishop is foisting me on unsuspecting strangers come summer, and to help prepare them, because I’m what Karla Kincannon calls “an acquired taste,” Dennis Perry suggested I take the Enneagram personality assessment- it’s like the Meyers Briggs for naval gazers.

According to Russ Hudson, who is the President of the Enneagram Institute (dot com), the Enneagram:

“is one of the world’s most powerful and insightful tools for understanding ourselves and others. At its core, the Enneagram helps us see ourselves and others at a deeper, more objective level and be of invaluable assistance on our path to self-knowledge.”

After forking over $11.99 for the privilege of looking more deeply and objectively into my innards, I took the Russ Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator test (version 2.5), answering a series of binary questions such as:

Others should do: A) What’s right B) What I tell them

Upon finishing, with the authority of the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts, the RHETI 2.5 told me that out of 9 Enneagram Types I’m an 8.

Why not a 9? I wondered to myself as I clicked open my report.

“The Challenger” it said at the top of my instantaneous report.

Okay, the Challenger, I thought to myself, I like the sound of the Challenger. According to the Enneagram Inventory, 8’s are powerful (obviously), decisive (goes without saying), and self-confident (yep).

This is a good tool, I thought to myself, already starting to cut and paste it to send to Dennis.

Of course, I should’ve known that ever since Sally Ride “The Challenger is something of a bad omen.

I clicked the “Learn More” tab and the next page it called up communicated that as an 8 I’m also willful, confrontational, impatient, sarcastic, and argumentative.

“I am not argumentative,” I shouted at the laptop screen, “This test is stupid.”

No doubt Russ Hudson would roll his eyes and say my response was predictable considering that 8’s allegedly also believe they know better than everyone else, suspect they’re always the smartest person in the room, and where you have opinions I have facts.

After taking RHETI 2.5 5 more times to the total tune of $60.00 and rolling a hard 8 every time, I showed it my wife, Ali, who read the rap sheet of an 8 and replied: “BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”

She actually snorted boogery ice-water out through her nose.

Then she took the laptop from me and read a loud, as if for an audience:

“Don’t flatter an 8. It will only inflate their already large ego. When an 8 curses and uses inappropriate humor just remember that’s the way they are. An 8 doesn’t mean to overwhelm you with bluntness they just get restless when they perceive incompetence.”

Then she patted me on my sulking head, and said “Don’t you see sweetie, this is why so many people think you’re a @#$!@#.”

Which is why for my 13th Ash Wednesday here at Aldersgate, I gave up Ali for Lent and told her she can return to our bed sometime around Arbor Day.

 

After spending $72.00 more dollars and taking the RHTI 2.5 6 more times to no variance in results, I decided to email Russ Hudson and ask if I could get a refund from his fortune-cookie, tarot card reading racket.

“Dear President Hudson,

According to Wikipedia,” I typed, “your scratch-n-sniff personality assessment tool was later disavowed by its original developer. As I write this, the Ides of March are upon us. Perhaps you should expand your little ponzi scheme empire and start selling divining rods too. This might not strike you as a good business venture, but I don’t really care, as an 8, I think you should just do what I tell you to do.

Blessings,

Reverend Jason Micheli.”

After I clicked send, I read a little more of my report which told me that some of the other Enneagram 8’s in history are Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, the guy from the Dos Equis commercials, and Jesus Christ.

No.

Russ Hudson the personality test president with the porn star name apparently has it out for me. His report told me that among Enneagram 8’s there are names like General George Patton, Richard Nixon, Homer Simpson, Donald Trump and- I’m not joking- St. Paul.

I’m still contesting my RHTI 2.5 results with Russ, but I bet his read on St. Paul is right-on. Paul’s an 8 with a capital E because, when it comes to Easter Paul doesn’t talk about his feelings or his personal experience.

Paul doesn’t tell us a story about the empty tomb he gives us an argument.

“By this Gospel you are saved…for what I received I passed on as of chief importance: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”

And Paul continues for 30 more verses:

“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is a waste of time…for if Christ has not been raised we are all liars and you are still in your sins.”

The oldest sustained Easter account doesn’t come from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John but from St. Paul, and what St. Paul gives us isn’t a story with angels and an empty tomb.

He gives us an argument.

Evidently, you all aren’t the only ones who think Easter is a day for fools because when the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth he doesn’t spin an inspiring story. He doesn’t muddle it with metaphors about butterflies or springtime renewal. He doesn’t contort it into cliches about hope beyond the grave or love being stronger than death.

No, he mounts an argument that the grave really is empty. He marshals evidence that Jesus Christ IN FACT has been raised from the dead.

Maybe it’s because he’s an Enneagram 8, but when it comes to Easter, Paul doesn’t think what you need is spiritual uplift or subjective inspiration. At Easter, Paul doesn’t offer advice. He insists on an argument because Paul believes that what you really need isn’t spiritual uplift or practical advice about how to live your best life now.

What you truly need is a God who is real.

Because if God is real, if Christ is Risen indeed, then nothing else matters- certainly not your problems.
And if God is not real, then nothing matters.

Every year we send out an Easter mailer to the community, and every year we receive a stack of them sent back to us with words like MYTH, FICTION, FAKE NEWS scrawled all over them.

Look, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, by definition, is beyond reason, but belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is NOT unreasonable.

And, for those in the church at Corinth who crossed their fingers and their toes at Easter, the Apostle Paul makes an argument.

Christ was buried, Paul reminds them.

As Paul puts it in the Book of Acts, “these things didn’t happen in a corner.”

In other words, Christ’s empty tomb first was proclaimed to the very people who had seen him die and who could have gone to his grave with a wheel-barrow and brought back for themselves his nail-scarred bones. Had they been there.

Christianity is the only movement in history that began after the death of its leader. Riddle that.

It’s because, Paul tells the Corinthians, after he was raised from the dead, Christ appeared to over 500 people- actually, more than 500 people because, according to Jewish counting custom, Paul only mentions the men.

And among those 500 plus people encountered by the Risen Christ, Paul writes, was James, the half-brother of Jesus who had not been a disciple of Jesus and who thought his brother Jesus was a total nut job while Jesus was alive.

But we know, even from Roman historians, that after Jesus’ death James testified to his resurrection and was eventually condemned by the same chief priests who had condemned his brother.

James was condemned, just like his brother, for confessing that his brother Jesus was the Christ.

The resurrection is beyond reason, but it is NOT unreasonable, Paul argues.

How else do you explain me, Paul says to the Corinthians. After appearing to over 500, finally as to “an aborted fetus” (is how he puts it in the Greek) Christ appeared to me.

Why is the burden of proof always on the believer?

If you’re going to dismiss Easter as a fool’s day, fine, but then you have to explain how it is that, right after the resurrection, an Ivy League fundamentalist about God’s Law, a Pharisee, began to willfully break the first and most important commandment by worshipping a man- a dead man at that- as God.

You also have to account for how else it could’ve happened that Paul was not only forgiven by the first Christians, whom he had persecuted, he was given authority by them. They made him an Apostle. The Apostle Peter even referred to Paul’s writing as scripture, the Word of God.

Look, I’m not an idiot. In fact, as an Enneagram 8, I’m convinced I’m smarter than all of you. I’m not a moron.

I know modern medicine and science cannot explain the resurrection of Jesus, but it’s intellectually dishonest to turn the resurrection message into a metaphor.

You don’t have to believe it.

But you owe it to the first Christians to take their testimony or leave it. 

Do not turn it into something else entirely.

They didn’t believe the resurrection message was a metaphor or a myth.

They didn’t think Easter was really about timeless truths.

They thought it was the truth.

That it actually happened.

In history.

At Jerusalem, under Pontius Pilate, during the reign of Caesar Augustus, on the Sunday morning after the Passover when he died between noon and 3 in 33AD. Around tea time, as Monty Python’s Life of Brian puts it.

All the little details, they’re there to reinforce to you that it happened. In history.

And if it didn’t happen, all the butterflies and sentimentalities in the world can’t mask over the fact that not only are we wasting our time here every Sunday, we are worse than liars.

We’re still in our sins.

According to Russ Hudson, Enneagram 8’s can be blunt and the “How to Get Along with Me” section of my results suggests that you not take my to-the-point-ness personally. So don’t get offended when I tell you that you can chalk up Easter to a fool’s day and be about your brunch and your bunnies, that’s fine.

You don’t have to believe it.

But you do have to understand that the New Testament understands the resurrection of Jesus Christ not as a myth or a metaphor but as an event in history.

You have to understand that the first Christians understood the resurrection of Christ as a happening because only then will you be able to distinguish what Christianity is from what Christianity is not.

And that’s a distinction most people don’t understand. A lot of Christians and a lot of churches even get it muddled.

Christianity is not a worldview. Christianity is not a philosophy. It’s not a social program or a political agenda. Christianity is not advice or a way of life or helpful lessons for your kids. Christianity is not a tradition of teachings or a set of spiritual practices.

     It is not a morality.

It’s news.

It’s news.

That’s why Paul uses the word “Gospel” to describe what is our non-negotiable, chief concern.

In ancient Rome, that word “Gospel” referred to the announcement that Caesar had conquered you and now he was not just your salad he was your god and now you had the privilege of paying taxes to cover the cost of his having colonized you.

     The Gospel was the announcement of what someone done that impacted your life.

Without you having done anything.

     You see, properly understood, Christianity is not a religion.
It’s a report.

It’s not a religion of what we must do for God and others. It’s a report of what God has done for us and others.

Every religion tells you what you must do for God and every religion tells you you should love your neighbor. That’s not unique; that’s moralism.

But only Christianity has the Gospel- this news, this announcement, of what God has done for you despite all your failures to love God or love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

Only Christianity has the Gospel, which means, Christianity is the only religion that is potentially disprovable. Tomorrow if someone finds a thorn-scarred skull buried in Jerusalem somewhere, then we’ll close up shop and we will refund whatever you put in the offering plate. Dennis’ retirement fund be damned.

Only Christianity has this report of a happening in history, the Gospel.

But sometimes it seems like the Gospel is the only thing we don’t want to talk about as Christians.

In the Church-

     You’ll hear people tell you which candidate or what values to vote for- that’s not the Gospel.

You’ll hear how to be a better you or build a better world- that’s not the Gospel.

You’ll hear the latest issue you should advocate- that’s not the Gospel.

You’ll hear people tell you who you’re allowed to love or sleep with- that’s not the Gospel either.

     Scripture says the Gospel, not your politics; the Gospel, not service projects; the Gospel, not your spirituality, is of chief importance.

The Gospel is our most urgent endeavor.

This good news is the one gift, unique to the Church, that God has given us to offer the world.

And it is- good news.

Because of what Jesus did by his cross and resurrection, all your failures to do what Jesus would do are forgiven. One-way, once-for-all forgiveness for you.

That’s what Jesus did.

The tomb is empty so that you will remember that all your sins in his death are forgotten.

     Christ didn’t come to improve your life.
Christ came to end it.
End it in him on the cross and raise it to a newness where there is now and forever no condemnation.

That’s what Jesus did.

St. Paul says in another letter that Jesus Christ rose from the dead for your justification. In Christ, you were crucified with him. Your sin and your old self- it’s been left behind. Buried with him in his death. That’s what he did.

And by his resurrection your rap sheet is now as empty as his grave. And instead of your rap sheet, you’ve been handed his righteousness.

His perfect record. His perfect righteousness has become your permanent record. That’s the best news because it means it doesn’t matter if you’re an argumentative 8 like me or a security-seeking 6 or a pretense-keeping 3.

It doesn’t matter- now- you are not who you are or what you do. And you are not what you have done.

Because this Gospel, this report, announces:

You are now who Jesus is.
You are what he has done.
Perfect.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s made you perfect by God’s way of reckoning.

According to the report the Enneagram Institute sent me, as an 8, I’m prone to putting too much pressure on myself.

I’m prone to taking charge and not trusting others to do their part.

So because he won’t refund my sixty bucks, I’m going to prove Russ Hudson and his RHETI 2.5 is a crock.

I’m going to go against type. I’m not going to try and do it all myself today. I’m not going to close this sermon with some awesome, uplifting story. I’m not going to conclude with any irrefutable practical takeaway for your daily life.

No, I’m going to stick it to Russ Hudson.

And I’m going to trust Jesus Christ, who is not dead, to keep his promise that, when we break this bread and drink from this cup, the news of what he has done for us in history gets into us and it changes us from the inside out.

So there, Russ Hudson.

No doing-it-all-on-my-own inspiration.

Just an invitation:

    Come to the table of our Risen Lord.

Eat. Drink. Be merry.

For you have already died.

And tomorrow, you live.

 

 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

Episode #145 – Amy Butler: God & Guns

Until later this night when Christ passes over from Death to Life, God is as silent.

Holy Saturday feels as appropriate as any day of the year to post this latest episode of our podcast, a conversation about God, Guns, and School Shootings with Amy Butler of the famed Riverside Church on the edges of Harlem in NYC.

Follow Pastor Amy on her blog www.talkwiththepreacher.org or on social media @PastorAmyTRC.

If you’re receiving this by email and the player doesn’t come up on your screen, you can find the episode at www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.

Help us reach more people: 
Give us 4 Stars and a good review there in the iTunes store. 

It’ll make it more likely more strangers and pilgrims will happen upon our meager podcast. ‘Like’ our Facebook Page too. You can find it here.

Help support the show! This ain’t free or easy but it’s cheap to pitch in.

Click here to become a patron of the podcasts

Follow @cmsvoteup

Safe in His Death: Good Friday Stations Meditations

For our Good Friday service tonight, I’ll offer these reflections on the traditional Catholic stations of the cross.

Jesus is Condemned to Death 

The Gospels don’t bother tying off loose ends so that Jesus’ cross fits snugly into some cosmic plan that can comfort you by letting you kid yourself that you’d ever choose anyone but the other Jesus son of the Father, Jesus bar-abbas.

Arraigned in purple majesty, crowned in thorns, his spit-upon skin in tatters just like the grief-torn garments of Caiphus who’d cried blasphemy before confessing our original sin “We have no King but the President,”Jesus’ career concludes by collapsing, betrayed by a friend, deserted by the rest, denied by the one who’d always wanted a selfie with him.

It’s the high priest who puts the titles together which the Gospel began: ‘Are you the Christ? The Son of God?’ It’s Pilate who formulates the inscription: ‘The King of the Jews.’ The’ soldiers, not realizing they actually speak the truth, salute Jesus as King, kneeling in mock homage.

The attendance is always light on Good Friday because we’d like to forget-

Judaism was a shining light in the ancient world, offering not only a visible testimony to God who made the heavens and the earth but a way of life that promised order and stability and well-being of the neighbor.

And in a world threatened by anarchy and barbarism, the Roman empire brought peace and unity to a frightening and chaotic world.

The people who did away with Jesus- Pilate and his soldiers, the chief priests and the Passover pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem- they were all from the best of society not the worst. And they were all doing what they were appointed to do. What they thought they had to do. What they thought was necessary for the public good.

The chief priests’ reasoning: “It’s better for one man to die than for all to die…” is correct. It’s a perfectly rational position. It’s how we’ve arranged our world.

So we let the theologians and preachers console us with theories and, worse, explanations, but what the Gospels give us is the bitter pill that Jesus had to die because that’s the only possible conclusion to God taking flesh and coming among people like us.

Deep down, we prefer a God up in glory who watches down from a safe, comfortable distance.

Christmas could come again and again and every time we would choose the other Jesus bar-abbas, every time we would shout “Crucify him, and every time some other Pilate will wash his hands of it and push God out of the world on a cross.

Jesus is Made to Bear the Cross

     “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. The mystery with which the New Testament wrestles is not the fact of Jesus’ death but the manner of that death. It’s the way in which Christ died, on a cross, that proved foolishness to the irreligious and a stumbling block to the religious. The point of the cross isn’t the pain Christ suffered- that’s why the Gospels say so little about it. The point of the cross is the shame Christ suffered.

The shame is the point.

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 bears a cross and hides behind suffering.

God refuses to be seen in any other way in our world than in how he appears when Pontius Pilate declares of him: “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. Later, when the dying Christ declares “It is finished,” he’s ending 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 a bloody tree.

Jesus Falls the First Time 

He stumbles because he’s scared.

Sometime last night or early this morning, the Gospels tell us, “Jesus began to be horror-stricken and desperately depressed.”

In the second century, a famous pagan named Celcus wrote a diatribe against Christianity, one of his chief points of attack being: “How could someone who claimed to be the divine Son of God mourn and lament and pray to escape the fear of death?”

And stumble on his way to death.

St. Paul says that “For our sake God made Jesus to be Sin who knew no Sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

If sin is separation from God, then Jesus stumbles because he’s stepping closer to the edge of the only literal abyss where there is only the deafening lonely sound of God’s absence.

Jesus Meets his Mother

She’d taken her boy to Jerusalem every year for years to celebrate the meal which remembers God’s rescue of them.

But now, the sacrifice is her son. The mother’s boy is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. And she has to watch as we put those sins on him.

Standing amidst an angry mob, her lips trembling and tears welling up in her eyes, as she watches her boy outrage the chief priests and elders for the last time, watching on as he stands with torn clothes and a bloody face and tells Pilate that he’s actually the One with power and wisdom and authority. I bet Mary will wish she never taught her boy that song:

“He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones/and lifted up the lowly.”

Simon Carries Christ’s Cross

Is it a brave, noble deed?

Or is Simon just getting the condemned man off his sidewalk?

St. Paul says we’re a mystery to ourselves. Our sin deceives us; such that, what we want to do we leave undone and what we want not to do we do.

Sin, St. Paul says, seizes an opportunity in us and elicits the opposite of what we intend. If so and if our sin is in Christ, then who’s to say whether Simon helps to carry Christ’s cross out of simple charity or out of sin? As an act compassion or as an act of cowardice, wanting to get the whole mess over with as quickly as possible and far away from him?

Simon couldn’t be sure about Simon’s motives any better than we can assess Simon’s motives. The truth of himself is in the cross he helps to carry. The cross to which Christ is condemned is the cross from which Simon is freed from no longer pretending he’s anything other than a sinner in need of the righteousness that God will credit to him from Christ’s account alone.

Veronica Wipes Jesus’ Face 

It’s a wasted gesture, wiping his bloody face when very soon it will be flowing from his hands and his feet and his side. The word “lose” is the same word in Greek for “waste.”

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” Jesus had said. “For those who want to save their life will waste it, and those who waste their life for my sake will find it.”

Matthew uses that same word ‘waste’ when Jesus visits the house of Simon the Leper. Two nights before he dies, Jesus goes to Simon’s house for dinner. They’re eating dessert and drinking coffee when in walks a woman.

She doesn’t have a name but she does have a crystal jar filled with expensive oil- about $35,000 worth. This woman, she break the jar and she pours the oil over Jesus’ head and body and his face. She anoints him.

And Jesus, he praises her for not holding back, for sparing no cost in pouring out her love on him, for her waste of a gesture. Meanwhile the disciples look on in anger, and all they can do is grumble over all the ‘good’ they could have done with that much money. They estimate the number of hungry that could’ve been fed, the count the naked who could’ve been clothed, the poor they could’ve served. If she hadn’t wasted it.

Yet it’s her faith that Jesus praises.

The disciples look at her and they get angry at the ‘waste.’ Jesus looks at her and sees a holy waste, an example of how we too should pour ourselves out in love for one another. With Jesus all the ‘good’ we can do isn’t the point. It’s not an End in itself. It’s just what happens when we pour ourselves out completely, when we waste everything we have, for someone else.

Jesus Falls Again 

St. Paul says that in Christ God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

And in Gethsemane early this morning, Christ emptied himself even of that,

pours all of himself out such that Martin Luther says there’s nothing left of Jesus now. There’s nothing left of his humanity.

Jesus isn’t just a substitute. He doesn’t become a sinner or any sinner. He becomes the greatest and the gravest of sinners.

It isn’t that Jesus will die an innocent among thieves. He will die as the worst sinner among them. The worst thief, the worst adulterer, the worst liar, the worst wife beater, the worst child abuser, the worst murderer, the worst war criminal.

He is every Pilate and Pharaoh. He is every Herod and Hitler and Assad.

He is every Caesar and every Judas.

Every racist, every civilian casualty, every act of terror and gun violence.

He is everything we scream at each with signs.

He has become all of it.

He has become Sin.

     St. Anselm argued that those who dispute Christ’s substitutionary death in our place “fail to consider the weight of sin.”

It’s the weight of sin, all of our every sins, upon him that causes Christ’s knees to buckle a second time.

Jesus Consoles the Women of Israel 

     The Book of Revelation calls Jesus ‘the lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.’ According to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ cross makes visible ‘what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.’ The blood of Jesus, says Luke, ‘makes up for the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world.’

And St Peter, in his first letter, writes that we are ransomed by the blood of Christ and all of this was ‘destined since before the foundation of the world.’ St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that everything that unfolds in Christ from cradle to cross is “in accordance with the scriptures.” The New Testament is unanimous: there is nothing impromptu or ad hoc about what happens on the cross. When we arrive at the foot of the cross, the Gospels want to confront you with the claim that all of this was planned before the foundation of the world. The comfort Christ offers his mother and the women of Israel, whilst bleeding and dying, is the comfort longed for by the prophet Isaiah. Finally, God is comforting his comfortless people. Only, it’s the cold comfort of the cross. Only a death paid in our place by the Son who is the suffering servant will ransom captive Israel.

Jesus Falls a Third Time

Once for every time we deny him, Jesus falls carrying his cross where he’ll die nailed up like a scarecrow. He falls whilst we deny him to the tune of the cock’s crowing, hiding like Adam behind a fig leaf with fruit stuck in his teeth.

In falling with the cross religion and justice have handed him, Jesus makes clear the Fall need not refer to Eve and Adam in a garden. To believe that Jesus is God is to believe that, in rejecting him, we make the most ultimate kind of rejection, the final contradiction of ourselves. The crucifixion is not just one more case of a particular people revealing their inhumanity to man. It is the whole human race showing its rejection of itself.

The cross is our fall.

The cross is our original sin.

Jesus is Stripped

Like the lovers in the Song of Songs, Jesus is naked, absolutely vulnerable before us. The Church has always read that erotic Old Testament poem as a parable for Christ’s love for his Bride, the Church, the people joined to his body by their baptism into his death.

Like scorning, unfaithful lovers, we betray him with a kiss and strip him bare, but all God needs is nothing to do anything and God takes the naked shame of Christ’s cross and by the baptism of suffering and death he makes us his betrothed.

Jesus is Nailed to a Tree

We boast in the cross, Luther says, because in nailing him to the cross God has nailed all our sins there once and for all. They’re forgotten in his body. ‘He has born our grief.’ ‘He has carried our sorrow.’ ‘Laid on him is the iniquity of us all.’

Jesus Dies

He could not die because it’s impossible for God to die.

He ought not to have died because Death had no claim on him.

Were you and I not in him, he’d have no sin in him. Christ doesn’t just die for the ungodly. He dies with the ungodly in him. He puts them on him in his baptism into unrighteousness; so that, by a different baptism- the baptism of his death and resurrection- they may be made what the former baptism could never make them: righteous.

In his baptism, Jesus enters into our sin and unrighteousness. In your baptism, you enter into Christ. In Christ, you’re crucified, Paul says. You’re Buried with him in his death.

Good Friday is your funeral.

You’re condemned with him because you’re in him who is the pardon of God; therefore, after tonight there is now no condemnation.

His Body is Taken Down

St. Paul calls Jesus the Second Adam, the first fruit of a second creation.

Adamah, is the name of the dirt from which God made the first Adam.

When Jesus finally dies, and all of his friends have fled in fear or shame and even his mother is gone. It’s Nicodemus who had lurked in the shadows who steps from the safety of the sidelines to take his body down from the cross and bury him in the plain light of day.

The priest who had scoffed at his teaching about being born again is the one who lays his body like a seed in the adamah of a garden as though he is who were always meant to be.

His Body is Laid in a Tomb

He was only one of tens of thousands crucified by Rome.

He wasn’t even the only one crucified on Good Friday.

The names of all the others are unknown to us. Only his name abides.

And the Jewish people to which he belonged did not have as a part of their religion a belief in life after death. Take those together and I am convinced that we would not be here tonight with him in his death had God left him there.

Follow @cmsvoteup

He’s Not Just Your Substitute, He’s Your Sin

     St. Paul says that in Christ God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. Tonight in Gethsemane, Christ empties himself even of that. He empties himself completely, pours all of himself out such that Martin Luther says when Jesus gets up off the ground in Gethsemane there’s nothing left of Jesus. There’s nothing left of his humanity.

He’s an empty vessel; so that, when he drinks the cup the Father will not not move from him, when he drinks the cup of wrath, he fills himself completely with our sinfulness.

From Gethsemane to Golgotha, that’s all there is of him.

He drinks the cup until he’s filled and running over.

Jesus isn’t just a stand-in for a sinner like you or me. He isn’t just a substitute for another. He doesn’t become a sinner or any sinner. He becomes the greatest and the gravest of sinners.

It isn’t that Jesus dies an innocent among thieves. He dies as the worst sinner among them. The worst thief, the worst adulterer, the worst liar, the worst wife beater, the worst child abuser, the worst murderer, the worst war criminal. He doesn’t die with the ungodly beside him; he dies with the ungodly in him.

Jesus swallows all of it. Drinks all of it down and, in doing so, draws into himself the full force of humanity’s hatred for God.

     Christ becomes our hatred for God.
He becomes all of our injustice.
He becomes Sin.

Upon the Cross he does not epitomize or announce the Kingdom of God in any way. He is the concentrated reality of everything that stands against it. He is every Pilate and Pharaoh. He is every Herod and Hitler and Assad. He is every Caesar and every Judas. Every racist, every civilian casualty, every act of terror, and every chemical bomb. All our greed. All our violence. Every ungodly act and every ungodly person.

He becomes all of it.

He becomes Sin.

So that God can forsake it. For our sake.

They weren’t wrong to shout “Hosanna!” last Sunday. They’re all correct about what to expect next. The donkey, the palm leaves, the Passover- it all points to it, they’re right. They’re all right to expect a battle.

A final, once for all, battle.

They’re just wrong about the Enemy.

The enemy isn’t Pilate or Herod but the One Paul calls The Enemy.

The Pharaoh to whom we’re all- the entire human race- enslaved isn’t Caesar but Sin. Not your little s sins but Sin with a capital S, whom the New Testament calls the Ruler of this World, the Power behind all the Pharaohs and Pilates and Putins.

They’re all correct about what to expect, but their enemies are all propped up by a bigger one.

A battle is what the Gospel wants you to see in Gethsemane. The Gospel wants you to see God initiating a final confrontation with Satan, the Enemy, the Powers, Sin, Death with a capital D- the New Testament uses all those terms interchangeably, take your pick. But a battle is what you’re supposed to see.

Jesus says so himself: “Keep praying,” he tells the three disciples in the garden, “not to enter peiramos.”

The time of trial.

Not a generic word for any trial or hardship, it’s the New Testament’s word for the final apocalyptic battle between God and the Power of Sin.

The Gospels want you to see in the dark of Gethsemane the beginning of the battle anticipated by all those hosannas and palm branches.

     But it’s not a battle that Jesus wages.

Jesus becomes its wages.

That is, the battle is waged in him.

Upon him.

Follow @cmsvoteup

No, You Can’t Get Rid of Jesus as Your Substitute on the Cross

St. Paul’s argument for Christ’s resurrection is older than the Easter narratives themselves, and in it the Apostle presents the resurrection as the necessary corollary to Christ’s dying “for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” The two together, along with his burial, comprise what Paul proclaims as “the Gospel.”

     We like to say that every Sunday is a little Easter.
But, really, every Sunday is a little Good Friday too.

That Christ was raised from the dead is an unintelligible message apart from the news that his empty tomb is the sign that your slate is empty of any sins.

The “therefore” of God’s absence of condemnation of us hinges on the “because” of Christ’s death for us.

Its cliche, for those in mainline and progressive circles to say they favor the Church Fathers’ emphasis on the incarnation rather than the modern, Western emphasis upon the cross.  Such a position however, ignores how, in the Church Fathers especially, God’s conquest of Sin and Death is the only way we’re incorporated into an incarnate new humanity and that this new humanity is a present, social reality nowhere else but in the community that preaches Christ crucified and baptizes its members into his death.

Criticisms of (sub)versions of substitutionary atonement are valid, but, as Fleming Rutledge argues in her book, The Crucifixion: the solution to the abuse of the tradition’s atonement language is not to jettison it. Not only is the language of substitution the dominant key in which scripture speaks of God’s redemptive work, substitutionary atonement’s concerns echo throughout the bible:

Something is terribly wrong in the world and needs to be set right.

God’s justice demands that sin not go unheeded.

Compassion alone will not make right what is wrong.

Rectification requires the action of God from beyond our sphere.

As Rutledge notes, the popular impressions of Anselm’s God as petty and capricious, easily offended and demanding a tribute of blood in order to forgive us, are so wildly off the mark it makes one wonder if anyone has actually read Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo or, if they’ve paused to consider the title of it: ‘Why the God-Man?’

The title itself indicates that Anselm does not commit the misstep of which he’s commonly accused; namely, he does not pit the Father and Son against one another nor does he posit Christ’s humanity as the sole agent of our salvation, another frequent charge against him. As the title makes clear, from the front cover forward, Anselm sees salvation as a fully Trinitarian work enfolding incarnation and unfolding from it.

Those who resist substitutionary language disregard the extent to which the claim Christ’s death is “for sin” is found all over the New Testament.

And, in most instances, that “for” means “for the sake of” or “on behalf of” or “in place of.”

It simply overwhelms any other manner of speaking of the cross. Much of the resistance to substitution rightly resists what sounds like an individualized reduction of sin, but again we should not erase the bible’s primary motif for understanding the cross simply because of errors in its application. The substitutionary death of Christ is a death for our collective sin, as the long record of the prophets shows.

A theology of the cross is deficient if it neglects an account of the corporate and systemic nature of sin. As Rutledge distinguishes, Sin is an alien power to which we’re in bondage, but sin is also a kind of contagion of our nature, for, in our bondage, we become active agents of Sin. We require, therefore, two modes of deliverance. We need God to remove our guilt but also to liberate us from the Power of Sin. The cross is ground zero for both.

While the wages of sin merit his death for us, his death is where God wages battle against Sin and Death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

Yes, You Have to Believe in the Resurrection

Or, it’s immoral to teach your kids to follow Jesus.

Near the end of Kurt Vonnegut’s war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, the narrator envisions a bombing mission in reverse. Fires go out. Homes are repaired. Bombs that were dropped over towns and cities are raised back up through the sky into the bodies of the American planes. The bombers fly home backwards where they are taken apart rivet by rivet and, eventually, even the soldiers become babies.

Vonnegutt’s vision is one where the violence and death of war is undone. Original beauty is restored.

While Vonnegutt was himself one of the 20th century’s most articulate atheists, he might be chagrined to discover how thoroughly biblical was his version of hope. Slaughterhouse Five reads like it was ripped off of the prophet Isaiah (65) or St John (Revelation 21-22).

Of course, if God did not actually, literally, physically raise Jesus’ cold, dead body from the tomb, then it’s just what Vonnegutt took it to be: fiction.

Somewhere along the way I discovered that the most contentious, disputed doctrine among the every Sunday pew people isn’t homosexuality, abortion, or biblical authority.

It’s belief in the resurrection of the body.

The literal, physical, historic and material resurrection of Jesus from the tomb as the first fruits of our eventual literal, physical, historic and material resurrection from our tombs, caskets and urns.

I know many more Christians who cross their fingers during that part of the creed (‘…and the resurrection of the body…’) and who are willing to argue with me about it than I do Christians willing to debate the ‘social issues dividing the church.’

The (mainline at least) Christians get their panties in a bunch like no else when you suggest that belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus is the lynch pin of Christian orthodoxy.

Except…it is.

Don’t believe me read the Book of Acts. Every sermon of the first church revolves around the resurrection. Peel away your penal substitution prejudice and read Paul again- it’s resurrection through and through.

Times may change but you can be damn sure cowardly Peter didn’t let himself get crucified upside down because he held a ‘Search for Spock’ doctrine of the resurrection (when we remember him, it’s like he’s still here with us).

I’m not even arguing science or history right now. I’m arguing linguistics.

Christian speech falls apart without Easter.
Resurrection’s the verb that makes sense of all Christian language.

Without it, Cross and Incarnation and Sermon on the Mount are all unintelligible, free-standing nouns.

Jesus might’ve thought all the law and the prophets hang on the greatest commandment, but- think about it- we’ve absolutely no reason to pay any attention whatsoever to anything Jesus said, thought, or did if God didn’t vindicate him by raising him from the dead.

Actually. Really. Truly.

If the resurrection is just a metaphor, then Jesus’ teaching and witness is just another way that leads to Death.

Even worse, if you still insist that Jesus is God Incarnate, the Image of the Invisible God but deny the resurrection you’re arguing that violence, suffering and tragedy is at the very heart and center of God’s own self-understanding- rendering a God not worthy of (mine, at least) worship.

In other words- without the actual, physical, literal resurrection of Jesus we’ve no basis to assert that the way of Jesus goes with the grain of the universe.

If God did not vindicate Jesus’ words and way by raising him from the dead, we’re in absolutely NO position to say his teaching about the Kingdom (see: cheek, turning of) corresponds to any present or future reality. 

If there’s no high Christology, there’s no intelligible ‘way’ of Jesus, and if there’s no Easter, there’s no Eschaton.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Annandale Bound

Since there’s some overlap between my congregation and this constituency here on the blog- and because the blog and podcast themselves have become a community all their own- I thought I’d use this space to let you know of coming changes for me and my family. Starting in July, I will be the pastor just down the road at Annandale United Methodist Church. Whether this appointment proves Bishop Lewis’ wisdom or folly only time will tell. You can find out more about the church by clicking here.

If you’re a member of Annandale UMC presently e-stalking me to check me out, I meant that last remark as a joke. I’m an acquired taste to be sure, but I’m not a clown. Just ask the good folks at Aldersgate who tolerated me for a baker’s dozen years. Actually, you can ask most of them (“most” = anyone but L@$).

Thus far, our conversations with Annandale’s leadership have impressed us. I look forward to working with two associates, Chenda Lee and Peter Kwon, who bring not only diversity of experience to the church’s ministry but diversity of perspective too. They come highly recommended by some of my friends, and I look forward to working with them as partners and fellow pastors. Annandale Church itself comes to me with the thumbs up from none other than friend of the podcast Dr. Kendall Soulen who worshipped there before absconding to teach at Emory. Annandale’s current pastor, Clarence Brown, has been a fixture (seriously, he’s even older than Dennis- so says Dennis!) in the Virginia Church since I was a tadpole swimming up the ordination track and I look forward to receiving the baton from him. 

As a family, it’s hard to leave a church and a community that means so much to us, is the only home our boys have known, and who were Christ to us when we needed him most. It’s even more difficult to leave a partnership with Dennis Perry that has meant so much to me. That said, we’re grateful the boys will be able to maintain their friendships and sports and will be in a community they’ve already gotten to know somewhat through swimming.

My last Sunday at Aldersgate will be June 10 and because my spring schedule was booked without knowing I’d be getting appointed elsewhere, I’ll unfortunately be away from the pulpit quite a bit in the meantime, speaking at a few conferences and performing weddings. This is hard for me and hard for us as a family given our love for the people in our community and church, just as I’m sure it’s hard for folks at Annandale to say goodbye to Clarence. No doubt the move and the transition will insert itself it into the blog and podcast for a while, so just stay patient with me. Upside is, I don’t actually have any hobbies. Nats tickets have gotten too expensive and I don’t know how to golf so things here won’t stay quiet long.

Peace, J

 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

Resident Aliens LIVE Podcast with Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of their book Resident Aliens, we’re hosting a live podcast with theologians Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon of Duke University along with our friend Tripp Fuller of the Home-brewed Christianity Podcast. Emmaus Way is providing the hospitality for us at the Durham Pour Taproom. There will be live music, fresh brews, nerdiness, and more!

It’s going down on Wednesday, April 18

6:00 – 9:00

Tickets are $15.00

You can get the tickets here.

Check out our Facebook Page for more details.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Episode #144 – Chad Bird: Your God is Too Glorious

In this episode, I talk with Chad Bird about his two new books Night Driving and You’re God is Too Glorious, both of which debuted in the past year. A PhD in OT, Chad is an oil rig driver in Texas- the story behind that is in Night Driving.

Chad Bird has served as a pastor in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, as assistant professor of Hebrew and exegetical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and as a guest lecturer at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Novosibirsk, Siberia. He has contributed articles to the Lutheran Witness, Gottesdienst, Concordia Journal, Concordia Theological Quarterly, Modern Reformation, Concordia Pulpit Resources, Logia, Higher Things, and The Federalist. He is the author of The Infant Priest, Christ Alone, and Night Driving. In addition to hosting chadbird.com, he is a regular contributor to christholdfast.org and 1517legacy.com. He lives in Texas.

You can read more of Chad and find his books at www.chadbird.com.

Here’s a powerful video of Chad’s talk at the Here We Still Stand Conference: 

If you’re receiving this by email and the player doesn’t come up on your screen, you can find the episode at www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.

Help us reach more people: 
Give us 4 Stars and a good review there in the iTunes store. 

It’ll make it more likely more strangers and pilgrims will happen upon our meager podcast. ‘Like’ our Facebook Page too. You can find it here.

Help support the show! This ain’t free or easy but it’s cheap to pitch in.

Click here to become a patron of the podcasts

Okay, here’s the latest episode.

 

 

 

 

Follow @cmsvoteup

I’m in the Humor Issue of Mockingbird Magazine

David Zahl and the good folks at Mockingbird Magazine have included a piece of mine in their Humor Issue. You can purchase the issue, read more about it, and subscribe for future issues here.

While we’re talking Mockingbird, I’ll be speaking at their NYC conference at the end of April, dialoguing with Fleming Rutledge about her book The Crucifixion. Check it out here.

Here’s a taste from the Table of Contents:

The Church Is Dying for a Laugh by AARON M.G. ZIMMERMAN

The Confessional

Everything I Never Learned from Seinfeld by DAVID ZAHL

A Poem by MICHAEL CHITWOOD

On Bleeding Funny by HARRISON SCOTT KEY

Depraved Puppetry by CAROLINE HENLEY

A Poem by MARJORIE MADDOX

The Man of Sorrows Was a Funny Guy by BILL BORROR

For the Record: Books, Laughs, Not-So-Fresh Disciplines

Tumor Humor: Talking Faith with JEANNIE GAFFIGAN

Putting the Fun in Fundamentalism: Tales from a Righteous Youth by BEN MADDISON

A Poem by BRAD DAVIS

Message in a (Wine) Bottle by CHARLOTTE GETZ and STEPHANIE PHILLIPS

The Comedy of Mercy Is Not Strained by IAN OLSON

For the Record: Favorite Onion Headlines, New Mbird Book Titles

Laughing at Hurricanes by SARAH CONDON

A Sermon by JASON MICHELI

Follow @cmsvoteup