Jason Micheli's Blog, page 134

We are the Silent Majority

I’ve invited some friends and colleagues to share their thoughts about Charlottesville, race, and our political discourse here on the blog over the coming days.

I thought I’d use the blog to create space for differing perspectives tempered by patience and hospitality- what I seldom see in our self-selected social media echo chambers, especially at this (rightly) heated cultural moment.

That my friend did not feel comfortable sharing his name with his reflection underscores, I think, the damage we so often do in our online fury.

This is from Ben Maddison:

I’ve seen this going around, a lot: “If you’ve wondered what you would’ve done during slavery, the Holocaust, or Civil Rights movement…you’re doing it now.”

Short, pithy, biting–the perfect smirk-response to today’s situation. For whatever reason it gets posted, the statement is “supposed” to rouse us from complacency; it’s supposed to spur us to action; it’s supposed to slap us across the face with the brunt realization that we are living history. But it does something else.

It accuses.

“Lex semper accusat; the law always accuses.”

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We could use standing accused to the reality that it’s not what goes in that defiles, but what comes out. “The heart is deceitful and wicked and who can know it.”

The reason the phrase stings is because we know that in each of us is a supporter of slavery, a Holocaust accomplice, or a silent Civil Rights observer.

This saying makes us stop and recognize that, when push comes to shove, we aren’t the agents and movers of change we wish we were–we are the silent majority, tacitly supporting systems of injustice because they don’t directly affect us or are easy to ignore or are inconvenient to combat. To put it in other words, the saying hurts because it reminds us that we are sinners, incapable of saving ourselves.

The only thing that will help is Jesus. But there is Good News; the same law that accuses, speaks to a larger truth.

The REASON it accuses is because God hates injustice, God despises hatred, and because God’s wrath will be poured out on those institutions and systems.

But even before that, God did intervene. God sent Jesus Christ to the world to bring us back to God. And as much as God hopes it would happen by listening and comprehending, it was brought to fruition by the death of His son…death at the hands of same forces and systems of injustice, oppression, bigotry, hatred, self-interest, and dehumanization that are exerting their final death gasps now.

We have a God, then, who doesn’t just hate what is going on in places like Charlottesville, but we have a God who knows what it means to lose a child to those systems. God stands with, and calls us to stand with, the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddy Grey, Sandra Bland, and countless others who are being killed and destroyed by these forces. God demands that we love justice and show mercy, because God knows what happens when we can’t. Because God is one of those parents.

And here’s the thing: we aren’t expected to do any of this alone. God knows that it’s hard work. For those like myself (white, cis, hetero, privileged), it’s going to hurt because we must say “I am a sinner; here is my sin; I repent and return to the Lord.” And do that…again and again and again. But our (nay, MY) uncomfortability, shame, or whatever we/I feel(s) pales in comparison to the pain experienced by our African-American, Latino, Native-American, [insert everyone abused by Whites ever] over the last 500 years (and much longer). And, even if this work seems impossible or too much or not enough or takes too long, we can be certain of two things:

Christ is already victorious.

God is working and inspiring this work.

Sometimes the work means marching. But often times it means praying, repenting, listening, and working. This means less Facebook rants from me, and more listening to others. This means learning more, seeking understanding, and having compassion and mercy and grace.

Because I’m not better off or further along or anything like that. I am a sinner in need of saving, and I cry out to the Lord:

Have mercy on me and save me. Forgive me of my tacit support for injustice. Cleanse me of my family’s sin of white supremacy and racial injustice. Use me to help others get to this place, that Your grace might flow like a river, you mercy like springs of water, and justice like the ceaseless ocean waves, from age to age. Amen.

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Is the Left the New Christian Right?

I’ve invited some friends and colleagues to share their thoughts about Charlottesville, race, and our political discourse here on the blog over the coming days.

I thought I’d use the blog to create space for differing perspectives tempered by patience and hospitality- what I seldom see in our self-selected social media echo chambers, especially at this (rightly) heated cultural moment.

That my friend did not feel comfortable sharing his name with his reflection underscores, I think, the damage we so often do in our online fury.

This is from E:

A few thoughts based on some recent events but, more importantly, based some of the commentary I’ve seen.

For obvious reasons, I’d be censored for saying this to anyone but you, in private, a friend. I think there has to be, in general, less self-righteouss fury on the left, not over this incident in particular (all should go for it, here) but in general.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that the left, especially those who are white, upper, middle-class, have tried to co-opt these 400 years of oppression toward especially African Americans and Native Americans (but, in general, minorities or any new immigrant group in general) in any which way they can, usually funneling it into their own myopic agendas concerning other “oppressed” groups.

I wonder if we need fewer white people posting things on Facebook, exuding this pseudo-fury and self-congratulatory fervor, and more reconciling themselves to a very real history in and through the Euchrarist and the bravery Eucharist calls for in the world: to love and reconcile ourselves to all our neighbors.

In this case, there must be an invitation toward reconciliation as we cannot reconcile in the same mode that we oppressed:
Through demand.

Here’s what I think might be important: let’s listen for once.

After all, it’s mostly my white, upper-class friends who insist on their world-views with the whitest of male attitudes (the worst name you can call someone on the left right now):

with a desire to conquer and dominate those who disagree genuinely.

There’s the double irony in the left’s demand that white people should shut up in that the demand insists on talking the whole time and reframing the issue around an image of looking progressive.

I’d also add that, in the name of progress, we enslaved, saving “sub-human animals” from themselves–a very real way that progressives of one era thought. We did the same with Native Americans. In other words, I’m a little suspicious of anything done in the name of progress, at least with the unbridled moralisms in which such agendas are pursued today.

If I haven’t been offensive enough-

I also have a feeling that the left is the new Christian right.

The left is the new Christian right in its willingness to censor and despise for its narrowly moralistic worldview. Hence, I have to write you, a fellow truth-seeker and conversation partner–one who I know can converse with me on these points rather than merely get angry–in private so that I don’t get ostracized by a group of people that I sincerely disagree with and, nonetheless love, like at one and the same time.

Can the contemporary progressive, leftist, or liberal offer me the same?

I fear not.

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Episode #108 – Live Podcast (Part 1): Trump Isn’t Hitler

Jason, Teer, Taylor, and Morgan hosted the Second Annual Live Podcast/Pub Theology at the Virginia Annual Conference 2017 with special guest Dr. Jeffrey Pugh.

Give us a rating and review!!!

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.

Oh, wait, you can find everything and ‘like’ everything via our website.

If you’re getting this by email, here’s the link. to this episode. Since there’s so many voices in this, I thought I’d post the video too. You can find it here.

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Sale & Schedule

Hey Folks!

I wanted to let you know that my publisher, Fortress Press, is running a YUGE ebook sale.  It’ll run August 15-September 15 and in that time you can get my book for the insultingly low price of $3.99. 

Seriously, that’s cheaper than a latte. You can gift it to someone you love (or loathe).

Click here to get it on Amazon.

Click here to get it on Barnes and Noble.

While I’m busy self-promoting, I’ll be on the road over the coming months speaking and preaching. If you’re in the area, check it out and say hello.

August 25-26: Theology Beer Camp – Oklahoma City

August 27: Preaching at Snow Hill Baptist Church – Oklahoma City

September 7: Speaking at Florida United Methodist Clergy – Orlando

September 23-24: Speaking at Camp Phoenix – Richmond

October 1: Speaking at the Loft LA Church – Los Angeles

October 6-8: Speaking at Young Adult Retreat – San Juan Capistrano

February 4: Preaching at Plantation United Methodist Church – Florida

 

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Angry Like Jesus: Righteous Rage as Full Humanity

Friday afternoon 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.

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 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’ (Walter Brueggemann). So not only does leprosy makes sick, it stigmatizes you. Which, if you weren’t already, makes you poor.

And according to the Law of Moses, 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.

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.

I’ve seen a lot of well-meaning white folks this week commenting on social media, counseling 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 but for the ungodly, and 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.

Nonetheless, I not only believe Jesus is God but I believe Jesus is the (only) true human being which means to react to Charlottesville with something less than rage and anger (see: Trump, The Donald) would, quite literally, make me less than human.

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Unite the Right(eous): Live Cross-Podcast Conversation on Charlottesville

Our friend of the podcast, Dr. Jeffrey Pugh, was present this Saturday for the counter-demonstration to the alt-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. We thought it was important to hear from Jeffrey about his experiences and observations. We also thought it important to extend his thoughts as far as possible so we invited a handful of other podcasters to join us for the conversation.

Todd Littleton of the Patheological Podcast, Scott Jones and Bill Borror of New Persuasive Words, Doug Pagitt of Doug Pagitt Radio all participated with us.

Here it is.

Give us a rating and review!!!

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.

Oh, wait, you can find everything and ‘like’ everything via our website.

If you’re getting this by email, here’s the link. to this episode. Since there’s so many voices in this, I thought I’d post the video too. You can find it here.

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Stanley Hauerwas: Racism, Reconciliation, and White Guilt

     My Alexandria neighbor, Richard Spencer,  and the alt-right have planned a Unite the Right rally near my alma mater, in Charlottesville, Va. It’s set for tomorrow to lament the loss of white culture and protest the removal of a confederate statue downtown. Various clergy collectives have counter-demonstrations planned that day, which I’d attend if I did not have a funeral to preside.

Below my man-crush and muse, Stanley Hauerwas, speaks Christian about race in a way I often find lacking in the public square and on social media.

“Standing up to evil” or “Resisting hate” or “Equality not hate” are laudable sentiments but, from a Christian perspective, they’re just that, sentiments. They are so because they are insufficiently Christian.

The word justice is unintelligible for Christians apart from the content named by Jesus Christ. Appeals to equality are likewise spurious for Christians, for Christians can rightly remember our nation’s history and we know the white men who wrote about equality at our founding were all slaveholders.

And hate and evil aren’t specific enough words for Christians to describe racism.

Sin is the word Christians must use first.

Our sin of racism is how the Power of Sin, and our bondage to it, manifests itself in the world.

If there’s a contribution Christians can make to the public square when it comes race, it’s speaking Christian.

Christians must resist racism as Christians not as Americans.

Keeping our lingo liturgical not political for the one to whom we offer our liturgy is a more compelling and powerful politics. For example, for Christians, particularly white progressive Christians, the first step in combating racism and privilege is acknowledging one’s own culpability and blindness; that is, confession.

A posture of confession can avoid perpetuating antagonisms such that everyone becomes ensconced in their positions; moreover, confession is a practice that produces empathy not only for the victims of racism but the victimizers as well. Empathy for only the former leads to self-righteousness that further inflames the latter. Empathy for the latter is the offense Paul calls ‘Gospel.’ Only such an empathy that sees, as Hauerwas puts it, “Slave holders were trapped too” approximates the love revealed to us through the God who died for the ungodly.

Stanley says:

…African Americans were persecuted and you have to give a reason for that.  If you had black skin, it justified you not having the position that whites had.  And this has become a self- fulfilling project.  Blacks live the life that confirms the stereotypes and now part of the challenge for African Americans is not to let this happen… White liberals need black suffering for moral identity but it is very destructive to use white guilt to further your cause because the guilty get tired of being guilty.

Then there is the game of “I’ve been more victimized than you have been.”  Some are given moral identity through the status of victimization but you need them for moral identity more than they need you and that does not underwrite the narrative of victimization.

[We get out we get out of the trap of history] through forgiveness and reconciliation.  But we have to first be willing to be forgiven. Giving forgiveness puts us in a position of power. We must not let history be our fate but history must be one that aims at reconciliation. White slave holders were trapped too. They didn’t know any other way of being. Racists are trapped. Offer an alternative, another way of life is to offer reconciliation.

If I were an African American, I’m not sure I would trust a white person.

We have trouble imagining the everyday slights that are part and parcel of a racialized society.  For example, a few years ago, they were having a debate as to whether or not there should be a black cultural center.  White liberals thought, “No, that’s re-segregation.”  African Americans have to live around whites that have very different styles and habits.  You need to get away.  Worship is a good work but we have to find a creative way of doing this… With the best of wills, we have a lot of trouble understanding white privilege. Power dulls the imagination.

The argument of whether or not slaves could be baptized- they were baptized and that was the signal that slavery was a clear contradiction… because you baptize human beings.  Christians produce knowledge of its bad faith through the practice of worship.

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Episode #107 – Rob Lee: Stained Glass Millennials

For Episode #107 we talk with Rob Lee about “those millennials.”

Millennials are a segment of our population that appears to be the unicorn most churches cannot seem to catch. From hiring staff who look the part to inserting young clergy into communities, hoping to attract young people, most churches do not know what do with or how to minister to millennials.

While some argue it is time to abandon millennials, Pastor Rob Lee argues otherwise. Rob believes millennials are willing to invest their lives in the institution because they believe in the church’s resurrecting power, but the question is, do our communities believe in the people they say they are trying to serve?







Give us a rating and review!!!

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.

Oh, wait, you can find everything and ‘like’ everything via our website.

If you’re getting this by email, here’s the link. to this episode.

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Baptism as an Apocalypse Now

 

“Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Cue the candidate’s response: “I do.”

Recently I presented on the Lordship of Christ at a retreat for ordinands. A friend presented on the sacraments. When she got to discussing the rite for baptism she mentioned how this second vow from the United Methodist liturgy about our freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression meant a lot more to her of late.

In the wake of The Donald’s election, she didn’t need to add.

Afterwards, as headed home, I half-joked to her that “I don’t think the Apostle Paul was quite as sunny as our Book of Worship about our power and potential to resist.”

“I’d like to talk more about that sometime,” she replied.

I shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t much matter though since we’ve excised Satan from the baptismal liturgy anyways. That we might be wrong about our power isn’t a problem if the Power of Satan is no longer the problem.”

I was only half-joking.

J. Louis Martyn writes that for the Apostle Paul:

“The Church is God’s apocalyptic beachhead and Paul sees in baptism the juncture by which the person both participates in the death of Christ (Romans 6.4) and is equipped with the armor for apocalyptic battle (Romans 13.22).”

Baptism, for Paul, is both a being put to death and an ongoing empowerment by God the Holy Spirit. Through baptism and the baptized, God contends against Another: Satan, whom Paul variously makes synonymous with the Power of Sin, the Power of Death, and the Principalities and Powers.

Not only does God put us to death in Christ through baptism, transferring us from the Lordship of Death to the Lordship of Grace, prior to baptism we are slaves to Death and after, Paul says, slaves to righteousness. Or, as Paul puts elsewhere, apart from the righteousness of God in Christ, Sin is a Power who we are all under and from whom not one of us has the freedom or the power to liberate ourselves.

Christians then have peculiar definitions for freedom and power, and we have a more specific set of names for evil and injustice. Prior to our baptism in to Christ, we have no freedom or power at all, as we are captives to the anti-God Powers, and proceeding baptism freedom is slavery to the righteousness of God. This is why Paul doesn’t use the language of repentance, as the baptismal liturgy does. It makes no sense to tell prisoners to repent their way out of captivity; they can only be delivered.

While God has defeated the Power of Satan through Cross and Resurrection, once for all, this defeat, though real, is not yet realized. God is yet contending against a Power whose defeat is sure if not surrendered. Thus Paul reveals the theme of his letter to the Romans only at the very end: “The God of Peace will in due time crush the Power of Satan under your feet.”

In the sacraments, says theologian Joseph Mangina in Baptism at the Turning of the Ages, “the apocalypse (invasion/irruption/revealing) of God in Jesus Christ becomes an apocalypse now.”

Baptism and Eucharist, in other words, are means (for Paul, in Romans, the Gospel kerygma itself is the primary means) by which God invades territory held by an Enemy, a world that, as the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal service once put it: “…is the realm of Sin and Satan.”

Note how different that is than today’s baptismal question:

“…evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Here, evil, injustice, and oppression present themselves in varying forms in our world. There is no acknowledged agency behind them.

In the older liturgies (and Romans 8) evil, injustice, and oppression are the forms by which the Power Sin/Satan/Death manifests in our world.

What’s critical about the apocalyptic character of Word and Sacrament in Paul is the active agency of God. When it comes to resisting evil and injustice, God never stops being the subject of the verbs. Even our growth into Christ likeness Paul casts in the passive voice: “…do not be conformed to this world but be transformed…”

It is not that God begins this process of transformation in Christ and then hands it off to us to resist evil and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. Indeed apart from the activity of God in and upon us, we cannot be trusted to identify evil or rightly to resist injustice for the insidious Power of Sin is such that in can corrupt even our best religious impulses. 

God is the acting agent of our transformation into conformity to Christ from beginning to end, acting against the agency of the Enemy.

Likely, Paul would put our baptismal question in the passive as well:
Do you trust that you will be used by God to resist…?

In much of our liturgical practice today, we’ve demythologized the rites such that Satan becomes vague, as in, “spiritual forces of wickedness” or, worse, vaguely anthropocentric, as in, “injustice and oppression.”

Even worse is the example in the present Book of Common Prayer: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

As Joseph Mangina notes: “Striving for justice and peace, respecting human dignity- these high, humanitarian aspirations are as generic as they are idealistic. It is not clear what they are doing in a Christian baptismal liturgy…for only by the agency of Christ can we grasp the true contours of ‘justice’ and ‘peace.’ “

In the 1979 Book of Common Prayer the baptism ritual asks the candidates questions such as “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching…will you persevere in resisting evil…will you seek and serve Christ…?”

In each case, the requisite reply is “I will, with God’s help.” 

In the previous iterations of the Book of Common Prayer, similar questions required a much stronger affirmation of God’s agency (and betrayed much less interest in our own potential): “God being my helper.” 

The prescribed answer in the United Methodist Book of Worship: “I do.” 

Note the (only) subject of the verb.

God’s agency is assumed to the point of obscurity.

Compare this to the Tridentine rite- if you’ve seen Godfather I you’ve seen it.

Salt is placed on the infant’s tongue to protect it from corruption by the Power of Sin. The priest performs an exorcism, blowing 3 times, on the child. The confession of faith is followed by a robust renunciation: Do you renounce Satan? And all his works? And all his pomps?

Cranmer’s first Book of Common Prayer kept the exorcism as part of the baptismal rite but it disappeared as the biblical worldview waned and the modern liberal world waxed. In fact, the shift from God as acting subject responsible for faith to acted upon object of our faith, from theology to anthropology, in modern Enlightenment theology is mirrored in worship.

Ludwig Feuerbach famously (and correctly) diagnosed most Christian speech about God as really being speech about ourselves. We could not turn to some of our liturgical texts to disprove him.

Compared to the Tridentine rite and the Book of Common Prayer of John Wesley’s day, the emphasis, intentional or not, in our contemporary liturgies is on human promise-making at the expense of God’s singular action in Jesus Christ. This sole agency of God is itself the foundational principle of baptism’s un-repeatablity. In the act of baptism and in the life of the baptized thereafter, God is the acting agent, overturning the world.

“That a Christian has been baptized should be nothing less than a cause for astonishment,” Joseph Mangina says, for it is the work of the Living God.

Such astonishment at the agency of God is either muted or altogether missing in any question where we are the answer: I do. 

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What the Therefore Is There For

     I continued our summer sermon series through Romans with 12.1-2, 9-16.

Pay attention to the passive voice:

“Our society is broken, pretty much, but there will be a time when these times will be made right.”

“…these times will be made right” said the principal of Goose Creek High School in Charleston, South Carolina.

“…these times will be made right” he said just days after Dylann Roof stormed into Mother Emmanuel AME Church and shot 9 parishioners gathered for bible study. One of the nine victims was the track coach at Goose Creek High School.

“…these times will be made right.”

Which is to say, despite the brokenness we can see everywhere an unseen agency is at work, making right. Or as Paul would say, rectifying.

Only four days after Dylann Roof stormed into Emmanuel AME and left six black women and 3 black men in a bloody pile in the church basement, the leaders of the congregation concluded the only way to press forward was for them to go back to exactly what they’d done before, to do the Sunday after that shooting what they had done the Sunday previous.

Worship the Lord Jesus Christ.

Proclaim the Gospel. The Gospel which Paul says is the rectifying power of God unleashed in our world (1.16-17).

Preaching that Sunday at Mother Emmanuel AME Church, Reverend Norvel Goff, an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, proclaimed: “through our proclamation of the Gospel on this day a message will be sent to Satan.”

Note the passive voice again: “through our proclamation…a message will be sent.”

The worshippers at Emmanuel Church were not the ones sending the message.

Later in his sermon, his voice roaring, Reverend Goff added: “Something wants to divide us- black and brown and white- but no weapon formed against us shall prosper.”

Notice- he didn’t say Dylann Roof wanted to divide us. He didn’t say racists and bigots want to divide us. Something wants to divide us– there’s another agency at work in the world.

Speaking of that other agency, that same Sunday, outside the church, the Reverend Brandon Bowers, who is white and the pastor of Awaken Church, said: “What the Enemy intended for evil, God is using- God is using us- for good.”

He said Enemy with a capital E- even the NY Times caught it.

And he did not say we’re using this for good.

Pay attention to the passive: “God is using us for good.”

We’re being used by God for good.

The service at Mother Emmanuel AME Church began with a hymn: “You are the Source of my strength, you are the strength of my life.”

Meanwhile, while they sang at Emmanuel AME, the family of 21 year old Dylann Roof worshipped at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

The pastor of St. Paul’s read the names of the victims and the congregation prayed for them and their families. The victimizer’s family prayed for the victims and their families.

About the victimizer’s family, the pastor of St. Paul told his congregation later: “They are shattered but through their faith they are being made strong.”

“…they are being made strong.”

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     “…these times will be made by right.”

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     Pay attention to the passive:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice…Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection…Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit…Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer…

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them…do not be haughty…do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil…if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink…overcome evil with good.”

“I appeal to you therefore…by the mercies of God…do not be conformed… but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

If you don’t understand what the therefore is there for, not only do you miss Paul’s point here you mishear this passage as bad news instead of good, as burdensome rather than freeing.

Because, let’s face it-

Genuine, 100% of the time, love

Unflagging zeal

Patience in suffering

Perseverance in prayer

Feeding your enemies

I’ve been here coming on my 13th year and I don’t know any of you who score better than a D on this long list of attributes of what transformation looks like. I’d bet the house that behind closed doors Pope Francis doesn’t do better than a B-.

I mean, half of you can’t even get along on Facebook, let alone blessing those who curse you. This is DC- a lot of you make your livelihood claiming to be wiser than you really are.

“Do not be haughty?” So long as Donald Trump is in office that’s an impossible command for some of you.

Assuming it’s a command, that is.

If you don’t know what the therefore is there for, you’ll mishear this passage.

You won’t hear it as Gospel. You’ll hear it- if you’re honest enough to admit it- as a guilt trip. You’ll hear it as a To Do list of musts and shoulds, as a prescription of what we have to do.

Without the therefore there, you’ll hear Paul saying: A real transformed Christian looks like this…a genuine Christian must do this…must love enemies, must bless those who curse them, must be patient in suffering and ardent about their faith.

     No.

That’s what the therefore is there for.

The therefore signals that what comes next depends upon what came before.

The therefore signals that what proceeds is possible only because of what preceded.

The therefore signals that what follows is a part of everything prior.

Or, in other words, chapter 12 comes after chapter 11.

Chapter 12 comes after chapter 8 and chapter 6 and chapter 5 and 3 and 1.

The therefore is there for you to remember that what comes next here in chapter 12 continues and concludes what has come before.

Just before this, the verse that sets up this therefore- it’s a doxology. It’s a song of praise, thanking God for the work of God to save all of God’s creation (11.33-36).

And before that, Paul has said that even the disbelief of some is a part of God’s work to show mercy to all. Before that, Paul has said that the all-ness of God’s saving work includes not just creatures like you and me but all of creation.

All of creation because all of creation, Paul has said before, is in captivity to the Power of Sin with a capital S. A Power that, just before, Paul made synonymous with the Power of Death with a capital D.

A Power, Paul said before that, whose power we are all under such that not one of us can free ourselves. We have no power against this Power. We’re prisoners, Paul has said before.

Which gets back to what Paul said just before that, at the very beginning of his argument (and remember, it is all one, long argument). In his thesis statement at the beginning, before the therefore and everything else, Paul announced that his letter is about what God is doing:

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for in it the rectifying power of God is invading [the world].”

You can only invade territory held by an Enemy.

The Gospel is the Power of God to take God’s world back from the Enemy who binds it. The Gospel, Paul has said, is the means by which God takes God’s world back from the One who holds it captive.

Pay attention to the present tense.

The Gospel isn’t about what God did.

The Gospel is what God does.

Everything that has come before the therefore has been about God’s doing.

     You didn’t invite Jesus into your heart. God has poured God’s love into your heart through the Holy Spirit, Paul has said.

You didn’t journey to God. God has transferred you from the dominion of Sin into the dominion of grace.

You didn’t decide to become a new you. God killed off your old self- you have died with Christ- and now you are in Christ.

You didn’t sign up to serve God. God has set you free from slavery to Sin and Death and made you instead a slave of righteousness.

It’s all been about what God does.

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     So, why should we suppose that when he gets to this point in his letter Paul is suddenly talking about us, about what we do?

What the therefore is there for is to remind you that what comes next describes what God is doing not what we do.

It’s proclamation not exhortation.

It’s indicative not imperative.

The therefore is there so you don’t mistake this as a prescription of what we must do: We must be genuine in love. We must be patient in suffering. We must be zealous for God all the time. We must bless those who curse us and love our enemies. 

If there’s a must or a should or a have-to in your sentences, you’re not speaking Gospel.

The therefore is there for you to know this is not a prescription of who you must be or what you must do. It’s a description of who Jesus Christ is and what God is doing.

Pay attention to the passive: “I appeal to you therefore…by the mercies of God…do not be conformed…but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

We’re not the ones doing the transforming.

The therefore is there for you to see that this transformation isn’t up to us. You’re not left to your lonesome to live up to impossible ideals. The point of this passage isn’t that you have to become a new you; it’s that you are being made new.

By God.

By the mercies of God, Paul says.

That’s not a throwaway religious cliche.

The word Paul uses there, dia, refers to the instrumentality of God, i.e, what Paul is saying: Only by the merciful activity of God upon you can you be conformed not to this world but transformed into conformity to Jesus Christ.

That’s different.

That’s different than Paul simply telling you to emulate and imitate Jesus. Jesus didn’t even have an easy time being Jesus; how could you possibly emulate and imitate him? No, Paul’s not exhorting you to imitate Jesus.

Paul’s already told you before, back in chapter 6, by faith and by baptism- by God- you NOW are in Jesus Christ. He doesn’t mean that as a metaphor.

You are in Jesus Christ.

And now- therefore- Paul is telling you, God is shaping you into Christ likeness.

Patience in suffering. Blessing those who curse you. Perseverance in prayer. Genuine love. This isn’t a To Do list or a Christian Code of Conduct. They’re not exhortations or expectations. They’re attributes of Christ.

He’s describing the mind of Christ.

The mind according to which God is at work to conform us.

“I appeal to you therefore…by the mercies of God…do not be conformed…but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

Pay attention to the language.

That word renewing- it’s anakainosis. It means literally “completely taken over.”

God is at work to transform you. To conform you to Christ.

To completely take over your mind with the mind of Christ.

What Paul says here is what Paul says to the Corinthians: “God made Jesus to be Sin who knew no sin (why?) so that (therefore) we might become the righteousness of God.”

What Paul says here is what Paul says to the Philippians: “…the God who began a good work in you will in the fullness of time bring it to completion.” Not, you now have to bring it to completion. God will bring it to completion.

What Paul says here is what Paul said at the very beginning of this letter:

The Gospel, what we announce in Word and Sacrament- it is the power of Almighty God to invade, to completely take over, until you are rectified, put right, according to the mind of Christ in whose image you are made.

And through you…the world.

“…these times will be made right.”

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     Pay attention to the passive.

Last May, Dennis and I attended Hedy’s graduation from Wesley Theological Seminary, held at the National Cathedral.

The pastor of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, killed by Dylann Roof, would’ve been in the graduating class.

They awarded his degree posthumously, and when it came time for Reverend Pinckney’s name to be read, they invited his wife Jennifer forward to receive his diploma and to speak.

She acknowledged that the ceremony was a bittersweet moment for her. She painted a picture of her husband asleep in his man cave, his coursework still on his lap. And then she confessed that she’d had no idea what to say to those gathered there in the cathedral.

She’d had no idea what to say.

‘But then,’ she said, ‘I was hit with the words to share.’

I was hit.

By God. By the Holy Spirit.

And what followed was plain and unremarkable, but it was powerful- more so than the sermon that had come before, a sermon that had been all exhortation, an exhausting litany of musts and shoulds.

But what Jennifer Pinkney from Emmanuel AME Church said was powerful not because of the pathos of the moment nor for the profundity of her words.

It was powerful because she had reminded us- testified to us- that God is real.

God is living.

Acting.

At work: “…I was hit with what to say…”

——————————-

     Look-

You can’t become unflagging in your zeal by exerting more zeal.

You don’t persevere in prayer by practicing prayer.

Your love doesn’t become genuine through effort.

You don’t achieve patience in suffering by enduring it.

Blessing those who curse you doesn’t come about by you biting your tongue.

You can forgive 70 x 7 times but if it takes in your heart even 1 of those times it’s not your own doing.

You don’t walk in newness of life because you set out to do so.

You don’t become lovers of enemies by trying- neither will they cease to be your enemy because you’ve attempted to love them.

     None of it is possible for you to do.
     But all of it is possible for the Living God to do in you.

The therefore is there for you to remember that the Christian life is pointless if the God we serve is not a Living God.

The therefore is there for you to remember that Christianity is bigger than simply doing the things Jesus did because you can’t do any of the things Jesus did if God did not raise him from the dead to conform and transform you.

And sure that takes different kind of patience, sure that sounds messier and slower and more frustrating than if Paul just handed us a simple To Do List of Musts and Shoulds.

But our understanding of the Gospel, our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, should at least require that Jesus Christ is alive and at work in the world.

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     The Sunday after Dylann Roof shot nine at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston members of Citadel Baptist Church, a white Southern Baptist Church with a long and complicated relationship with racism, walked the mere steps from their church to Emmanuel Church and they placed purple daises around the front of Emmanuel.

The Reverend David Walker, pastor of Citadel Baptist, explained the gesture thus.

Pay attention to the passive: “Something compelled us to do this…”

Christ is Risen indeed.

   

 

 

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