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Proclaimers: Preach the Whole Bible

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To preach the whole Bible, proclaimers must presume in advance that the doctrine of the Trinity is not only true but that it alone contains the answers to the questions scripture raises for us.

Later this week I travel to California for a cohort of the Iowa Preachers Project, of which I am the preacher-in-residence. Thus, I’ve had the practice of preaching on my mind. And since the theologian Robert Jenson lives rent free in that mind, he’s been guiding those reflections.

In an address for a Pro Ecclessia conference in 1995, Jenson insists that God only speaks through the scriptures when the church’s proclaimers “preach the whole Bible.” The scriptures are the word of God within this precise homiletical practice of the church. This is why, Jenson argues, it is better for the church choose the sermon’s text rather than the preacher. Jenson thus rejects topical, thematic sermons with the same fervor with which Karl Barth condemned them in his lectures on preaching, collected in Homiletics. Such “wisdom”sermons dominated in the German church that capitulated to Nazification and such preaching dominates today in American Christianity.

Jens writes:

“Real sermons do not expound an idea or theme chosen by some individual, nor do they tell any story other than the story in or around the text. Rather, homilies and sermons and instructions communicate the gospel exactly as the speakers try to say the same thing that a scriptural text or texts say.”

That is, we can get it in the way of what God wants to say. Only as the scriptures directly control our homiletical discourse does preaching say what God wants it to say.

When Stanley Hauerwas observes the decline of the church in the west and surmises that God is punishing his people for unfaithfulness, this is exactly what he means.

This fundamental hermeneutical principle— that preaching is the attempt to say what the text says— binds the preacher to the given passage in ways that should discomfort the preacher; after all, the Bible contains myriad stories, prayers, and events proclaimers of the gospel would prefer— sensibly— to avoid. From Jephtat’s daughter in Judges 11 to the talking ass in Numbers, from the young man named Lucky who falls asleep during a sermon and tumbles out a window to his death to Psalm 137 which bids the church to pray for the destruction of our enemies’ infants, the Bible is in many places forbidding terrain for preachers.

But therein lies scripture’s authority.

Biblical authority is established not by a theory of inspiration but by the church’s practice.

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Jesus Makes the Best Wine for Drunk People to Drink

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The assigned Gospel passage for the Second Sunday after Epiphany is John 2.1-11.

Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons.

Six stone jars.

Let's round to the middle, say 25 gallons. Unlike my boy's homework, this is the sort of math I know how to do.

Back in middle school, I was the doogie-houser of home economics. My Italian grandma was a chef. I've got knife skills. I've got all the mother sauces memorized. I'm a pretty good cook. So that's four quarts to a gallon. One quart equals, roughly, six glasses.

Cabernet glasses, and that gives you a minimum grand total of 2,160 glasses of wine that had been watered. That's a lot of wine. Even if I’m coming to your party, that's a lot of wine.

And Jesus makes not three buck chuck. Jesus transforms water into top shelf pinot. Pretty impressive party trick, Jesus. But not to be outdone.

Not to be outdone. Jesus' friends— you and me— the church, we've somehow managed to pull off the even more difficult feat of transforming gold metal wine of grace into the tasteless, odorless, joyless, everyday water of the law.

We've turned the gospel into Iocane powder.

Jesus kicks off the salvation of the world by turning water into wine, but we've pulled off the even more impossible trick of turning his wine back into water.

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Grace is for Losers: On Robert Farrar Capon

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Hi Friends,

We will begin a new study tonight at 7:00 EST. Two chapters at a time, we will be reading and discussing Robert Farrar Capon’s The Mystery of Christ: And Why We Don’t Get it.

As an amuse-bouche for your earballs, here’s an old conversation I had about Robert Capon with Mockingbird writer, Josh Retterer.

If you’ve not read Capon before, you’re in for ride. He writes for a lay audience, and he aims to make reading him as fun as the gospel. The Mystery of Christ is gospel proclamation in the form of pastoral counseling sessions.

Here is the link.

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God Answers Prayer with Words

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Psalm 23

Just south of Hadrian’s Wall in England’s Lake District, James Rebanks herds sheep on a hardscrabble farm his family has worked for over six hundred years. As a youth Rebanks hated formal schooling, eventually dropping out at age sixteen to work the family farm. Improbably, he ended up doing a degree at Oxford University in history. Today he works part-time as a consultant in order to subsidize his vocation as a shepherd.

Rebanks says that he comes from people who are “built out of stories” embedded as they are in the everyday necessities of life. In his memoir The Shepherd’s Life, Rebanks describes the passage of the seasons and the physical realities of farming: herding, shearing, feeding, castrating, deworming, doctoring, mending, mucking, chopping. The book is a love letter to the land, to his forebears, and to a way of life as old as the scriptures.

In the closing paragraphs of The Shepherd’s Life, Rebanks reports on a single moment in his life as a good shepherd. In late spring, Rebanks returns his flock— sheep bred to survive on their own in the rocky terrain— to the craggy hills of the Lake District. Once he has herded his sheep to the fells where they will graze for the summer, Rebanks attempts to convey to his flock the safety and satisfaction of their new environs. In the hopes that the sheep will imitate their shepherd, Rebanks lies down in the grass on his stomach. With his hand he cups a sip of sweet water from a narrow stream. He rolls on his back and takes in the sky and breathes in the cool craggy air. His well-trained sheep dogs, Floss and Tan, who have never seen the shepherd so relaxed, come and lay next to him. “Tan nuzzles into my side,” Rebanks writes, “because he has never seen me lazing about.”

Rebanks then sets the closing lines of his book in verse, like a psalm:

“He has never seen me stop like this.

He has never seen summer before.

I breathe in the cool mountain air.

And watch a plane chalking a trail across the blue of the sky.

The ewes call to the lambs, following them as they climb up the crags.

This is my life.

I want for no other.”

While the scriptures do not supply the motivating occasion for each of the prayers of King David, the Bible does report the event with which David begins his practice of composing psalms. After the LORD abandoned King Saul, the LORD called the prophet Samuel to anoint David as his successor in secret. Having been abandoned by God, an evil spirit takes possession of Saul who yet remains on the throne. Desperate, King Saul dispatches his servants to procure him someone with the power to exorcize the foul spirit which plagues him. A servant replies to the king’s request, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite…a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, a man of good presence, and the LORD is with him.” “Therefore,” scripture reports, “Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, “Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.”

And so David arrives in Gibeah from Bethlehem in order to pray.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, which had come upon him at his anointing by Samuel, David prays over Saul, exorcizing the evil spirit from him. Thenceforth David serves the king until he succeeds him.

We do not know when David first prayed, “The LORD is my shepherd.” We do not know what in his life led David to so pray. But we do know the practice of such prayers is the reason the king summons the shepherd from his flock and thereupon bequeaths to David a life he had not previously imagined.

Or rather, the psalms are the mechanism by which God brings his promise to David to fruition. David’s prayers are the outworking of the LORD’s providence.The psalms are a part of God’s providence.

Though we cannot plot the twenty-third psalm onto a timeline of David’s life, we can surmise with some certainty that the shepherd from Bethlehem never seconded the shepherd from Britain’s Lake District, “This is my life. I want no other.”

On the contrary, David’s passions define him. His appetites possess him.

In the valley of Elah, David is not content to fell the Philistine warrior Goliath with a sling and a smooth stone. Having struck the decisive blow, David’s desire for glory overwhelms him and he runs over to the giant’s body, unsheathes Goliath’s sword, cuts off his head, and finally parades the head into Jerusalem.

Quite unlike James Rebanks, David is determined by his desires.

David’s desire for King Saul’s daughter Michal is such that he went out and killed two hundred Philistines and delivered the foreskins of the dead to her father as a bride-price.

David wants.

After a while, his passion for Michal wanes and David dispatches his servants to fetch Abigail for him. Abigail is the newly widowed wife of a rich man named Naval. “David has sent us to you,” the king’s servants announce to Abigail, “to take you to him as his wife.”

David craves.

You know how his story unfolds. One spring David stays behind in Jerusalem as all his troops and servants depart for battle. One afternoon he rises from his couch and prowls the rooftop of the king’s house from which he spies a beautiful woman bathing, the wife of Uriah. This time David doesn’t send servants to fetch the woman. He takes her. And when she later informs David that she is pregnant, David orchestrates the murder of Uriah.

David desires.

In fact, David’s passions define him. His appetites undo both him and his family. The child produced by his rape of Bathsheba dies seven days after its birth. We do not know the context to the twenty-third psalm. We only know that David does not regard his life with the contentment which the other shepherd esteems his own, “This is my life. I want more.”

Just so—

For King David to pray, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want, “ that is, for David to anticipate the end of his appetites and the healing of his passions is nothing less than to appeal to the LORD as one who is able to accomplish ultimate and indeed impossible-seeming acts.

In an interview with the NY Times, James Rebanks explains how, despite the great varieties of breeds and the variations within them, a shepherd is able to discern and identify the unique qualities of each and every individual sheep. “Everyone is conditioned to think of sheep as commodities,” Rebanks explains, “but here they’re also cultural objects. To an amateur eye they all look the same, just as fifty Picassos might look to a novice eye. To us shepherds, however, they are objects of beauty.” Proving his point, the reporter notes how Rebanks the following morning at six o’clock, at the height of lambing season, could recognize not only each sheep in his flock but also which newborn lamb belonged to which mother.

If that shepherd knows so precisely each sheep in his flock, just try to reckon with the LORD’s absolute knowledge of you. Therein lies the paradoxical absurdity of prayer.

The first verse of David’s prayer is only four words in Hebrew, yet it hides a puzzle. Having acknowledged that the LORD is the Shepherd of all things, whose knowledge encompasses all things and whose will superintends all things, David nevertheless petitions God to remedy his gravest lack. Such a petition is astonishingly unnecessary.

Given God’s providence, to petition God in any instance is essentially superfluous.

As Thomas Aquinas summarizes the dogma:

“God’s universal knowledge and universal will are in such sort one that God’s foreseeing determines what is seen. He is the cause of all things per suum intellectum, and in this context that holds precisely with respect of their ordering to their good. The LORD’s prevision and provision, moreover, extend to every item and single event of creation.”

This problematizes the practice of prayer.

For example—

Suppose I pray for the recovery of a friend.

If the LORD foresees from all eternity that my friend will or will not recover, and if that foreseeing determines the event, and if God thus already knows what he ordains and ordains what he knows, what role does my petition have?

Or in the case of the psalm: by definition, the LORD already knows whether or not the passions which control King David will come to an end just as the LORD has already determined what to do about those desires which rule King David. Therefore, why does David need to petition God? And such petitions are a matter of obedience. Just so, why does the LORD command us to address God as Father and pray petitions to him? The Shepherd is most certainly not going to learn new information from his sheep.

As Robert Jenson puts the puzzle:

“Prayer is, of course, a funny phenomenon, and in both senses: funny peculiar and funny ha-ha. Whyever, after all, would omnipotence enjoy our praises? And why do we need to petition omniscience? If omniscience solicits our praises, if omniscience wants information from us, this can only be described as that peculiar kind of self-awareness and humility that we call humor. It is funny when God converses with us, paying real attention to our side of the converse. Oddly, God does do just that.”

But why does God do just that?

If God indeed is already and always the One “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,” why does he do just that?

Why does the LORD command us to pray?

In The Shepherd’s Life, James Rebanks recalls the lambing time his father missed one year during treatment for cancer. After Rebanks’s father enters remission, he joins his son to show sheep at a local competition:

“In the pens my father is showing his Swaledale sheep, and my other daughter, Molly, is holding one of his, and it wins its class. Three generations of us doing what we do. Other families are spread out like this around us. The lamb Molly is holding was sired by the tup that my father and I bought the year before, the one that he had admired on Christmas day from the window, when I thought he was going to die. He has seen this dream come true. He looks suntanned and happy. The cancer may still be inside him, and may someday have the final say, but for now he is alive— fully alive.”

Fully alive as the creature God made him to be.

When God chooses David to replace Saul, the prophet announces that the LORD has made his choice not on the basis of David’s character but David’s heart.

“The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart,” Samuel informs Saul, “and the LORD has commanded him to be king.” Though David is determined by his wants, though David is a great and grave sinner, David is nevertheless a man whose heart resembles God’s own heart.

Once again, David’s prayers are a part of God’s providence.

In that David is driven to pray to God, David’s heart mirrors God’s own heart.

Consequently, the LORD chooses David to rule as the shepherd of his people.

After all, perhaps the chief revelation unveiled to us in Jesus Christ is that the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a life of prayer. We pray to our Father only because the second person of the Trinity prays to him as my Father.

That is, God is for himself, in himself, someone who prays.Therefore—The imago dei consists in prayer.

In the Book of Genesis, the Lord distinguishes one set of living creatures from all the others God creates. On the sixth day of creation, Genesis breaks the preceding rhythm of “And God said…And it was so.” After the land animals have been created along the usual pattern, a new locution is introduced, “Let us make…” The odd creatures of the sixth day are imbued with a distinction from their companion creatures: they are addressed by the Creator.

God’s address and our bidden reply is what distinguishes us from all other animals. We are the animals who pray. In fact, the Hebrew word rendered into English as “image” is best translated as “counterpart.” To be created in God’s image is to be made God’s counterpart in the triune colloquy. Thus, God wants us to pray not only because prayer fashions us after God’s own heart, but also because prayer is the means by which God is omniscient.

Prayer is the way God has chosen to be all-knowing.

As Robert Jenson jokes:

“I have sometimes said (only half in jest) that of course God knows everything, but that this does not settle how he finds out.”

Of course, God knows David needs to be freed from his wants. But David’s prayer is how God has chosen to find out. In other words, God has chosen to find out in such a way that he is not God without you. The LORD is not all-knowing apart from the petitions of his people; prayer is how God constitutes his omniscience.

This is exactly why Jesus commands us to pray.

I was at the infusion center at the oncologist’s office. An old woman sat directly across from me, a red-orange tube running from a bag to her chest. She wore a blue scarf with peacocks on it around her small, bony head. Her face looked so sunken and her skin so stretched and translucent that guessing her age felt impossible. She greeted me—exhausted, her eyes only half open—with a distinct prairie accent when I sat down and cracked open my book.

I didn’t get past the first page.

She started to cry—whimper really—from the sores her chemo-poison had burnt into her mouth and tongue and throat. Beseeching the nurse, she pleaded, “make the pain go away.” She kept on like that, inconsolable, with no concern for what I or anyone else might think about her. In a different-size person you’d call it a tantrum.

Seeing her there, spent and defeated, I felt compelled to do the only work I could for her. I prayed. Quietly, under my breath, just above a whisper, my lips moving to the petitions. And when I finished, I made the sign of the cross over her.

“You religious?” the man in the next infusion chair asked me.

“Sort of, I guess.”

He went to wave me off, dismissively, but then remembered his arm was taped and tethered to tubes and the tubes to an IV pole. He’d been on the phone on work calls almost the whole time I’d been there. A gray tie that matched his hair hung loose from his unbuttoned collar.

“You really think that stuff works. I mean, prayer?”

He said the word prayer like you might use the word unicorn to describe the landscape outside your window.

“I take it from your tone of voice that you don’t put much stock in it.”

“I used to pray,” he said, “Or, I tried it when my wife was laid up in a place like this. But none of my prayers ever got a response so I said the hell with it.”

I nodded.

I waited a beat before I laid the question on him.

“Where do you go to church?”

He stifled a laugh. He flushed red, embarrassed now to be part of this conversation. And then he shook his head like I’d suggested he try riding a unicorn.

“I’ve never gone to church,” he said, “I never even considered it. Why would I go?”

“You just said you’d tried praying before but never got any answers. But prayer is necessarily antiphonal. It’s one side of a conversation. How do you expect to get a response to your prayers if you never put yourself in the place God has promised to show up and speak a word?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending.

“The gospel is God’s power in the world,” I said, “The proclaimed word is how he speaks. If you want an answer to your prayer, you’ve got to put yourself on the receiving end of a promise. And listen. He does answer prayer— you’ve got to hearken to it.”

He laughed.

When I did not, he realized I had not been joking.

Prayer is necessarily antiphonal .

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

We do not know the context to the twenty-third psalm. We do not know the why behind the what of David’s prayer. But we do know where David was when the LORD answered his prayer.

The phrase recurs throughout the story of David:

“King David went in [to the tabernacle] and sat before the LORD.” In other words, David went to worship where he waited on a word.

It’s odd that we persist in trying to tease out answers to our prayers in the random acts and chance developments of our lives.

Events rather than words.

If the Triune identity is a colloquy, if our chief relation to God is through word utterance, if we reflect the image of God in that we are bidden to speak to God, if God creates a covenant history with us through address, then why would we think that the LORD answers our prayers by any other means but words ?

And where else would we expect to hear those words except in the gospel in which God promises to give himself?

It happens all the time.

The most recent time was after the first service on Christmas Eve. A stranger came up to me in the atrium and grabbed me by the hem of my robe.

“Pastor, thank you” she said, “after your sermon tonight I know that God wants me to accept the outcome of the presidential election.”

“Uh…” I started to say.

But when I saw she was serious, I said, “That’s funny. I didn’t intend to speak to that at all. Evidently, the Holy Spirit had something he needed to tell you.”

“I’ve been praying about it,” she said, nodding.

In his memoir, James Rebanks details how a good shepherd spends an inordinate amount of time minding after the mouths of his sheep.

He writes:

"I check their teeth by grabbing a sheep and peeling back its bottom lip (sheep only have teeth on the bottom jaw). The teeth tell me a lot…As the sheep ages, the teeth get longer and start to weaken. When ewes are broken mouthed, they are sold for meat because their ability to feed themselves and produce lambs has gone…The art is to judge from these teeth whether the ewes will last several years or just a year or so. Our judgement of their value is in many ways a judgement about what their mouths will be able to handle. I check hundreds a day.”

The LORD our shepherd minds after our mouths too.

But the loaf and the cup are more than the means by which he feeds us.

Precisely because God attaches the gospel promise to them, the bread and wine can be the means by which the LORD answers your prayer.

So—

Don’t just sit there before the LORD.

Come to the table.

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The "I" that A.I. is Missing

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Correction:

For those of you in the Los Angeles area (prayers for you), I am scheduled to preach Monday morning 1/20 and again in the evening for the cohort’s preaching slam. Come, join us. It’ll happen at the Lutheran Church of the Master in Corona Del Mar, 9:00 and 7:00. Sorry for the confusion.

And a reminder:

We will begin a new study the following Monday, January 13th. We will be reading and discussing Robert Farrar Capon’s The Mystery of Christ: And Why We Don’t Get it. If you’ve not read Capon before, you’re in for ride. He writes for a lay audience, and he aims to make reading him as fun as the gospel. The Mystery of Christ is gospel proclamation in the form of pastoral counseling sessions. Get a copy and join us 1/13 at 7:00 PM EST.

Here is the link.

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Preaching Helps for Epiphany

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Hi Friends,

As part of the work for the Lilly Endowment’s Iowa Preachers Project, my friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones has compiled some sermonic thoughts on the season of Epiphany.

For those of you in the Los Angeles area (prayers for you), I am scheduled to preach Monday morning and again in the evening for the cohort’s preaching slam. Come, join us. It’ll happen at the Lutheran Church of the Master in Corona Del Mar, 9:00 and 7:00.

Come out!

Preaching in Epiphany

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He Wades in the Water to Hallow It

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In the church year, Sunday is Baptism of the Lord.

St. Philaret the Confessor preached a homily on the passage, in which he makes the point— going back to Maximus— that Christ enters the water at the Jordan River in order to sanctify it for our own later baptisms.

He writes:

“But we know that the water did not cleanse Him, the most holy and sinless One; but it was He who sanctified the water by deigning to be washed by it.”

Here’s the homily:

On the day of the feast of Theophany— the Baptism of the Lord— it is not out of place to remember another baptism: that baptism which was performed over each of us, that baptism at which each of us, by the mouth of our godparents, gave a promise to God that he would always renounce Satan and his works and would always unite himself, “join himself” with Christ.

This, I repeat, is especially fitting for this present day. The solemn rite of the Great Sanctification of Water will be performed shortly. Its center, its main part, one could say, is the majestic prayer wherein the Lord is glorified and the grace of the Holy Spirit is called down upon the water being sanctified. This prayer begins with the beautiful words: “Great art Thou, O Lord, and marvelous are Thy works, and no word sufficeth to hymn Thy wonders.” Whoever has been at a performance of the mystery of Baptism and was present attentively, knows that the prayer at the sanctification of the water in which a man will be baptized begins with these same words, and the first part of this prayer is completely the same, both at the Great Sanctification of Water and at the performance of the mystery of Baptism. And only later, in the last part, does the prayer at the performance of the mystery of Baptism change, as applicable to this mystery, when a new human soul will be baptized.

And so, it would not do us any harm to remember those vows given at Baptism on behalf of each of us. When a man is baptized as an adult, as even now sometimes happens, and happened especially often in antiquity, he himself makes the vows on his own behalf; but if he is baptized in infancy, his godfather or godmother--his “sponsors,” as the Church calls them--pronounce these vows for him. And so these vows, in which a Christian has promised God to renounce Satan and all his works and to join himself, to unite himself with Christ, these vows are not only forgotten by people, but many in general know nothing about them or about the fact that these vows were pronounced for them and that they ought to think a little about how they must fulfill these vows.

And what if at the last day of the history of the human race on earth – on the day of the Dread Judgment – it turns out that a man (or his sponsors for him) made vows, and he does not even know what the vows were and what was promised? What will happen to such a man?

Think, brethren, about what it means to renounce Satan and all his works and to join oneself to Christ. The times are such now that to join oneself to Christ. The times are such now that a God-opposing bustle, in which the enemy of the human race reigns, has taken possession of humanity and, as was said in olden times, forces almost all people “to dance to its tune.” All this bustle, of which our present life is composed, is a God-opposing bustle, in which there is no God, in which God’s enemy holds sway and rules. If we made a vow to renounce Satan and all his works, then, in fulfilling it, we ought to strive not to stifle our soul with this bustle, but to reject it and to remember how the Church says, “One thing is needful” – only one thing is necessary – and to remember that we must join ourselves with Christ, that is, not only fulfill His commandments, but also endeavor to unite ourselves with Him.

Think, then, about this, O Christian soul, on this day of the radiant and great feast; think and pray that the Lord send thee firm faith and the resolve to fulfill these vows, and not to be swallowed up by the bustle of the world and lose the tie with the Lord, with Whom thou didst promise to join thyself for ever.

Today’s feast is called the feast of the Lord’s Baptism or the feast of Theophany; but those who know well the church Typicon, know also that sometimes in this Typicon it is also called “the feast of the holy Theophanies” – in the plural number.

Why? Here is why: Of course, that which the singers sang about today – “God the Word appeared in the flesh to the human race” – is the center of the commemorations of the present feast day. The incarnate Son of God, of Whose birth, when He was born, only a very few knew, “appeared to the human race”; for His baptism is, as it were, His solemn inauguration of His ministry, which He then performed after that until His death and resurrection.

But at the very same time, the fact that precisely on this feast “the worship of the Trinity was made manifest,” as is sung in its troparion, is characteristic of today’s feast. All three Persons of the Holy Trinity appeared for the first time in their separateness, which is also why this feast, I repeat, is called “the feast of the holy Theophanies.” Men heard the voice of God the Father: “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (on Whom My favor rests); the Son of God accepted baptism from John (moreover, we know from the Gospel that John the Baptist was, as it were, at a loss when the Savior of the world came to him, and he attempted to restrain Him); and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended from the Father on the Son. In this way, “the worship of the Trinity was made manifest” for the first time, which is why the Church sings thus in the troparion, and why she also calls this feast “the feast of the holy Theophanies.”

Christ the Savior appeared in order to begin His saving ministry. Here, not so long ago, when there was another great feast – the Nativity of Christ – we said that the Lord, by his nativity in a poor cave, when He deigned to be laid in a cattle manger, thereby emphatically rejected, as it were, all earthly glory, all earthly splendor and magnificence, for He did not deign to appear in royal chambers or rich palaces, but precisely in those poor and modest conditions. And thereby He immediately showed that He had brought to the earth a new principle, the principle of humility.

Look, then, how He Himself, so to say, is true to Himself, how even now on today’s great feast He institutes the very same principle of humility manifestly and undoubtedly for us. For whither did He come? To the Jordan. Why? To be baptized by John. But sinners came to John; they confessed their sins to him and were baptized. But He was without sin, “could not be touched by sin,” was absolutely free of it and pure; yet nonetheless, He humbly stands in line with other sinners, as if He were in need of this cleansing washing with water.

But we know that the water did not cleanse Him, the most holy and sinless One; but it was He who sanctified the water by deigning to be washed by it, as was sung today during the sanctification of the water:

“Today the nature of the waters is sanctified.” And so, Jesus Christ brought the principle of humility to the earth and was true to it throughout the course of His whole life. But that is not all. He has also left us this testament: Come “and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

Remember one more radiant, joyful, spring feast – the feast of the Annunciation. Here the most blessed Virgin Mary hears the good tidings from the Archangel how the incarnation of God will be accomplished through her. What does her most holy, most pure and blameless soul say when she came to her relative, Elizabeth, in order to share her joy with her? She only says: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior, for He hath regarded the low estate [humility] of his handmaiden.” This humility was also the beauty of her spirit. From the very account of the Annunciation, we know that the Archangel appeared to her at that moment when she, having read the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the incarnation of God from a virgin, was not even thinking to apply this to herself, but only thought in the depth of her humility: “How joyful I would be if I were the least handmaid of that blessed virgin.” ...And here stands the Archangel Gabriel before her with his good tidings. The Lord, meek and humble Himself, regarded her humility.

He also enjoined humility on us, contrary to the principles of pride and self-love by which humanity today breathes. Look, why are there so many disagreements among us, both within the enclosure of the Church and in parishes? Because everywhere men made red-hot by self-love are clashing; but if that humility to which the Lord calls us would be found in us, none of this would happen. Let us, then, brethren, learn from our Savior, who as the least sinner came to John in order to be baptized by him; let us learn from Him this God-beloved and fragrant virtue, without which, as the holy fathers have said, no other virtue whatsoever can be perfect.

Amen.

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Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus's Death

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Here’s a conversation with Andrew Rillera on his recent book, Lamb of the Free.

Lamb of the Free analyzes the different sacrificial imagery applied to Jesus in the NT in light of the facts that (a) there is no such thing as substitutionary death sacrifice in the Torah—neither death nor suffering nor punishment of the animal has any place in the sacrificial system—and (b) there are both atoning and non-atoning sacrifices. Surprisingly, the earliest and most common sacrifices associated with Jesus’s death are the non-atoning ones. Nevertheless, when considering the whole NT, Jesus is said to accomplish all the benefits of the entire Levitical system, from both atoning and non-atoning sacrifices and purification. Moreover, all sacrificial interpretations of Jesus’s death in the NT operate within the paradigm of participation, which is antithetical to notions of substitution. The sacrificial imagery in the NT is aimed at grounding the exhortation for the audience to be conformed to the cruciform image of Jesus by sharing in his death. The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed to the image of his death.

Show Notes

Summary

This conversation explores the complexities of atonement theology, particularly focusing on the transition from Jehovah's Witness beliefs to evangelical perspectives. The speaker discusses the significance of Jesus' death, the implications of substitutionary atonement, and the understanding of Old Testament sacrifices. The dialogue emphasizes the need for a broader interpretation of atonement that aligns with the love of God rather than a punitive view, ultimately highlighting the transformative nature of understanding Christ's role in salvation.

Takeaways

The speaker transitioned from Jehovah's Witness to evangelicalism, leading to a deeper exploration of atonement.

Atonement theories often lack coherence with biblical texts, leading to confusion.

Jesus' death serves as a benefit for creation, not merely a sacrificial act.

Substitutionary atonement has historical roots but is often misinterpreted in modern theology.

Old Testament sacrifices had different functions and meanings than commonly understood.

Atonement is more about the purification of sacred space than individual sins.

The gospel reveals God's love rather than His wrath towards humanity.

Understanding atonement can liberate individuals from restrictive theological frameworks.

The mystery of faith is that Christ is in believers, offering hope and transformation.

The conversation encourages a re-evaluation of traditional atonement theories in light of scripture.

Sound Bites

"What is satisfied saving you from God?"

"The gospel reveals God's love, not His wrath."

"The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

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On the Distinction Between Jesus' Baptism and Christian Baptism

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On the liturgical calendar, this coming Sunday is Baptism of the Lord.

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Everything Ordinary But the Star

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January 6, despite its more recent sinister connotations, is Epiphany, whose scripture passage is Matthew 2.

In preaching this scripture, the church father John Chrysostom proclaimed:

“The star of Bethlehem was not an ordinary star, for no other star has this capacity to guide, not merely to move but to beckon and invite...The star remained after bringing them to the place, in order that the child might also be seen. For there is nothing conspicuous about Christ. The inn was ordinary. The mother was ordinary. The star needed to manifest and illumine the ordinary until they had reached their destination.”

- John Chrysostom

Here is an epiphany sermon from the vault.

Happy Three Kings Day!

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