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Published on November 19, 2024 08:14

November 18, 2024

The Salvation of Satan?

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(Thomas Talbott, Fr Aidan Kimel, Robin Parry, Enrique Ramos, and George Sarris all give their takes on whether or not even Satan will be reconciled to God.)

Preaching on Romans 16.20 this Sunday, I mentioned how the church fathers understood the redemption even of Satan and the fallen spirits as a necessary component to salvation. While scripture gives us few handholds for such speculation, the ancient church— along with more recent Orthodox theologians— nonetheless boldly incorporated such an affirmation into their theology.

This surprised some listeners.

So I thought I should show a bit more of my homework.

In addition to Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, both of whom I cited in my sermon, St. Isaac of Nineveh wrote about the salvation of even the Adversary. Isaac saw the salvation of the fallen angels as a necessary correlative to the total victory of God’s work in Jesus Christ as well as to the absolute, ultimate irresistibility of the Triune love.

Isaac writes:

Nor are we able to say that the love of the Creator is diminished towards those rational beings who have become demons as a result of their demonic action, and is any less than the fulness of love which He has towards those who remain in the angelic state; or that it is less for sinners than for those who are justly named righteous. This is because the divine Nature is not affected by what happens and by opposition, nor does there spring up within it any causal stirring which takes its origin from creation, and which is not to be found with Him from eternity; not does He have a kind of love which originates as a result of events which take place in time.

Rather, everyone has a single place in His purpose in the ranking of love, corresponding to the form He beheld in them before He created them and all the rest of created beings, that is, at the time before the eternal purpose for the delineation of the world was put into effect. For it was not with an adventitious love that He had, without any beginning, the stirring that initiated the establishment of the world. He has a single ranking of complete and impassible love towards everyone, and He has a single caring concern for those who have fallen, just as much as for those who have not fallen.

And it is clear that He does not abandon them the moment they fall, and that demons will not remain in their demonic state, and sinners will not remain in their sins; rather, He is going to bring them to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to His own Being—in a state in which the holy angels are now, in perfection of love and a passionless mind. He is going to bring them into that excellency of will, where it will not be as though they were curbed and not [free], or having stirrings from the Opponent then; rather, they will be in a state of excelling knowledge, with a mind made mature in the stirrings which partake of the divine outpouring which the blessed Creator is preparing in His grace; they will be perfected in love for Him, with a perfect mind which is above any aberration in all its stirrings…

The Fathers tell us that at the hour when the saints will be attracted by the divine wave, they will be raised to that beatitude by meeting our Lord Who will attract them with His power, like a magnetic stone drawing iron particles into itself. Then all the legions of heavenly hosts and Adam’s descendants will gather together into one Church. And then the purpose of the Creator’s providence will be fulfilled which He prepared from the beginning of the world, making the creation by His benevolence. To this purpose the long course of various events of this world was prepared, serving to rational (beings) as to its master. And henceforth the exiles of the Kingdom will enjoy a life in peace in which there is no end or change.

And since in the new World the Creator’s love rules over all rational nature, the wonder at His mysteries that will be revealed (then) will captivate to itself the intellect of (all) rational beings whom He has created so that they might have delight in Him, whether they be evil or whether they be just.

Yesterday’s New Testament lectionary text was from the Book of Hebrews, whose author speaks of our Great High Priest sitting down beside the Father, his sacrificial work having been perfectly completed. On this note, Isaac says:

“You are a Priest forever” (Ps 110.4). This “forever” (means) that our Lord Jesus Christ is a priest now and ministers to us for our redemption. It always continues (and will continue) until He elevates us all to Himself…

The ministry of Christ consists in saying prayers on behalf of all rational natures to the Divine nature which dwells in Him . . . The Apostle testifies: “He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence” (Heb 9.24). This “for us” should be understood (as follows): He rose for the sake of us all and sat down on the right hand of God and intercedes for us. He did it not only for the sake of human beings but also for the sake of holy angels…

No part belonging to any single one of all rational beings will be lost, as far as God is concerned, in the preparation of that supernal Kingdom, which is prepared for all worlds. Because of that goodness of His nature by which He brought the universe into being and then bears, guides and provides for the worlds and all created things in His immeasurable compassion, He has devised the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven for the entire community of rational beings—even though an intervening time is reserved for the general raising of all to the same level. And we say this in order that we too may concur with the magisterial teaching of Scripture.”

Once again, given that the scriptures do not answer every question we might bring to them, the final destiny of God’s Enemy and his minions remains speculation. Nevertheless, it’s speculation we can engage as boldly and playfully as the fathers, for they’re questions born of faith and wonder— the magisterial teaching— in the fullness of Christ’s saving love.

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Published on November 18, 2024 08:02

November 17, 2024

Love Must Be Loved with Answering Love

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Romans 16.17-20

The church fathers called it the Proto-Evangelium, the First Gospel.

After the serpent lures Eve and Adam to distrust the Lord’s word, God searches for them as they hide in the garden, “What is this you have done?” the Lord God asks Eve.

And she replies, “Satan deceived me.”

In response to the news of the devil’s deceit, the Lord speaks his two words.

Curse and blessing.

After pronouncing judgment upon the tempter, God utters a gracious promise, “I will put enmity between you and the woman; and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” That is, while the struggle between God’s creatures and this particular creature will be both constant and cosmic, it will not be ceaseless. The Lord will deliver a final crushing blow in the battle.

Thus, the primal church referred to Genesis 3.15 as the Proto-Evangelium, the good news before the Good News. For there, at the site of our original sin, God hands over a promise that is undeserved precisely because it is unthwartable.

One day God’s people will triumph finally over God’s enemy.

One day.

But that day is not yet this day.

Paul’s promise at the end of his epistle is pending still, “And the God of peace shall shortly crush the Adversary under your feet.”

Shortly.

But not yet.

Several years ago, I was traveling home from guest preaching. On my flight, sitting in first class and sipping champagne was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington. I recognized him instantly from the front page of the Washington Post. This was the very same week the McCarrick Report, commissioned by the Vatican, had made clear that Theodore McCarrick was not only— for decades— a serial sex abuser protected by the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy, but he was himself a member of that hierarchy which protected other serial sex abusers. Even Saint John Paul the Great turned a blind eye to McCarrick’s crimes and coverups.

Shortly after the Vatican released the findings of the McCarrick Report, Dr. Larry Chapp, a Catholic professor of theology, wrote in Macrina Magazine:

“After I left the seminary and moved on with my career as an academic, I always kept one eye on the rise of McCarrick to high office. And when he was made Archbishop of Washington and then later a Cardinal, I just could not fathom in my naiveté why someone had not blown the whistle on this guy. I could not get my mind around how such a manifest sexual deviant and drunken ecclesiastical party boy had gotten so far. And I worried that the entire thing was a train wreck waiting to happen, a fear that was deepened when in 2002, while I was a guest on Fox News for a segment on priestly sex abuse, off camera, a journalist told me that they were investigating a leading American cardinal for sexually inappropriate behavior with adults. I said to him, “You mean McCarrick?” And he just grinned from ear to ear, leaned back in his chair and replied, “Have a safe trip home, Dr. Chapp.”

But nothing ever came of their investigation. And so I can only surmise that they ran into the same problem that everyone else had; namely, that you could not get anyone to go on the record and that McCarrick was being protected by some powerful American prelates who were masters of deception.”

Chapp concludes his article with an assertion:

“My claim is actually shocking. Some would even say dark. My claim is that the concrete actions taken with regard to McCarrick in particular and the entire sexual abuse issue in general tells us that many, if not most of our priests and bishops are de facto atheists. They may overtly give public statements of faith, perform the sacraments, and kneel dutifully before the blessed sacrament, all the while living as though there is not a God who sees. The sins of Theodore McCarrick and others are sins of such magnitude that one is safe in assuming that no one who possesses a genuine faith would commit them. These are the actions, the sins, of faithless men.”

Not quite. The scriptures forbid us from an answer as simple and banal as “faithless men.” “De facto atheism” is not as dark and shocking an explanation as the Bible demands.

How can evil men capture Christ’s church?

How can corrupt men captivate a nation?

Why do cruelty and lies abide?

Why do those who know better do the worst?

Only at the end of his Letter to the Romans does the apostle make his answer to such questions explicit. The God of peace has not yet trampled Satan underfoot. And in the meantime of the Lord’s long delay, the devil musters many minions. Among the Prince of Lies’s legion, Paul says at top of this passage, among the Adversary’s army are the church’s false teachers— those who, under the guise of Christ, serve their own appetites and deceive the hearts of believers, sowing cynicism so as to reap unbelief.

On our flight home to Washington, Theodore McCarrick held forth on the tiny plane, charming other passengers with his flattery and regaling them with beautifully told stories. His valet, a young ruffled priest, sat in coach next to me and carried the disgraced cleric’s bag. After listening to the cardinal entertain his fellow passengers like we were all guests on his private plane, I muttered to his assistant beside me, “If God is a Consuming Fire— like the scriptures say— do you reckon there will be anything left of your boss after he meets his Maker?” The valet managed an awkward smile and pretended not to hear me over the din of the cabin.

Later, after we'd landed, as we waited at the baggage claim carousel, I watched Cardinal McCarrick as he posed for selfies with admirers, adjusting his red vestments in between each photo. I watched as he signed autographs with impunity, as though he had deceived no one more completely than himself. And I watched in horror as he ate up the credulous attention of mothers and fathers who beckoned him near in order to introduce their children to him. “Faithless men” does not lift the luggage as far as explanations go. “Do you not follow the news?! He’s a monster!” I wanted to scream at the adulating crowd around him.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t.

Because I was scared.

“Faithless men” do not frighten.The devil does.

In his essay “Evil as Person,” the theologian Robert Jenson writes:

“It has always been my principle that there is more in heaven and in earth, and presumably then also in hell, than is dreamed of in anyone’s philosophy. I have therefore always acknowledged reality so abundantly testified in human history as angels and demons…That is, somewhere in being, somewhere out there and in there and down there, there is a subjectivity that comprehensively despises the world, that hates all things, and, thus, deceives all things. And that subjectivity, that hatred, that despising, that deceiving is also antecedent to all our hating and despising and deceiving.”

That subjectivity is scary.

I got my start as a preacher in a maximum security prison. I know of sin. I have handed over the goods to hardened men who did unspeakable acts. Predations I have prayed God would help me forget. Yet the only time I have been certain that I was in the presence of the Lord’s Adversary was that fall evening at Baggage Claim #3 in Reagan National Airport. I stipulate to my certainty; so that, you will know the question elicited by this passage is neither frivolous nor sentimental.

A scholarly consensus dating to the ancient church concurs that verses twenty-one through twenty-seven of chapter sixteen are later additions to the epistle. The apostle therefore concludes his Letter to the Romans with this benedictory promise of God’s final triumph over Satan. And as far back as the primal church, Paul's deliberate echo of the Proto-Evangelium has raised a question.

When the day that is not yet finally arrives, when the God of peace— and note the critical paradox— crushes Satan underfoot, what— if anything— will remain of him?

And before you rush to dismiss the question, remember that according to the apostle Paul Satan’s chief transgression is different in degree but not in kind from humanity’s own original sin. We are the only animals who know not how to be creatures, eating the fruit that is the Creator's alone; we want to be God not give God his due. Likewise, the devil is the angel who refuses to be one. Satan’s insane self-contradiction is our own insane self-contradiction.

Once again the question:

What will the Lord have forged by casting Satan into the lake of fire?

If the devil is the angel who refuses to be one, will his defeat by God result in restoration to his former glory? Will the Father’s love turn out to be the fate of the Prince of Lies too? Can the shed blood of Jesus redeem even the fallen spirits? Will Satan with his kingdom be saved?

After all, Satan is not a name but a title.

Ha-satan: The Accuser.

Lucifer is the name of the angel who refused to be one.

Jus so, the question:

Once the Lord crushes the satan underfoot will Lucifer remain?

The extent to which such a question strikes us as silly or speculative reveals our own de facto atheism, for the Word of God declares unambiguously, “When everything is subject to Christ,” the scriptures proclaim, “then God will be all in all.” When Christ is lord over everything, then God will be everything in everything— that doesn’t leave a lot of room for exceptions.

The good news: that includes you.

The bad news: that includes not just you.

Kallistos Ware was an Eastern Orthodox theologian and bishop who died in 2022. In the first of his Collected Works, he recalls an assignment doled out to him when he was a young priest. His superior tasked him with escorting an important Greek archbishop on a four-hour journey by car. Kallistos Ware looked forward to the time for conversation the trip would afford them, and he began with a question he felt certain would provoke a long discussion. “Archbishop,” Ware asked, "If it is possible that the devil, who must surely be a very lonely and unhappy person, may eventually repent and be saved, why do we never pray for him?”

And the archbishop replied, “Mind your own damn business.”

End of discussion.

Silence accompanied them for the rest of the journey.

Reflecting upon the hierarch’s clipped response, Kallistos Ware writes:

“He was right. So far as we humans are concerned, the devil is always our adversary; we should not enter into any kind of negotiations with him, whether by praying for him or in other ways. His salvation is quite simply none of our business. But the devil has also his own relationship with God, as we learn from the prologue of the Book of Job, when Satan makes his appearance in the heavenly court among the other “sons of God.” We are, however, altogether ignorant of the precise nature of this relationship, and it is futile to pry into it. Yet, even though it is not for us to pray for the devil, we have no right to assume that he is totally and irrevocably excluded from the scope of God’s mercy.”

Kallistos Ware has a point.

Jesus commands us to pray for our enemies. Scripture exhorts us to pray even for the emperor. But Satan has never been the object of the church’s corporate prayers. At baptism, the church renounces “the devil and all his pomps.” During the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for deliverance from his malignant power. In the eucharist, we anticipate Christ’s coming again and so triumph final over him. But the church has not taught the baptized to pray for his salvation precisely because we know not the power of his lure.

“Mind your own damn business.”

On the one hand, Satan and the fallen spirits are none of our business. We should steer as clear from them as I did at Baggage Claim #3.

On other other hand, as Paul makes clear in the passage, Satan and the fallen spirits are God’s business. Indeed, as Paul’s letter makes clear, they are the last bit of God’s business. And if God is determined to be all in all, then the void that appeared in heaven as a consequence of their fall must surely be filled. What was lost must certainly be found. For if the void persists eternally then the saving work of the three person’d God is not without remainder.

Not long ago, I met with a young woman— she’s barely out of college— to plan the funeral for her father. Her mother, his ex-wife, wanted nothing to do with the affair. Mary was a rookie law enforcement officer. Her Dad, Henry, worshipped at my former parish. After over a year of aches and pains and doctor visits and elusive diagnoses, Henry learned he had stage four bone cancer. Only ten days later he died of massive organ failure. I knew Henry’s face and name. I knew his youngest daughter, Rachel, was in my son’s class. But I didn’t know much else about him. I didn’t know what Mary told me in my office.

After running a successful campaign in his home state of Michigan, Mary told me, her Dad had come to DC to make his living in politics. And for a time, he was more than six-figures-successful. But he lost his position at a policy firm during the Great Recession, and in the years that followed he refused to take any job that would pay him less than what he was making before.

“Pride took a hold of him,” Mary told me— notice her language, “It possessed him and then it turned him into a stranger.”

He disengaged at home. He started to drink. He circled the drain. And he ran up debts no career comeback could ever settle. Seven years ago he was discharged from the hospital after a minor illness. He came home to find his wife finally had made good on her threat to change the locks. His belongings were on the sidewalk next to old, wet newspapers.

“It was fall, but he lived in his car for the next six months,” Mary told me, blowing her nose, “After that, for all these years, he’s been living in a tiny room in a house not far from here. He had fewer belongings than bills and letters from debt collectors. The landlord said none of the people who’ve lived with him the past seven years knew anything about him, “probably not even his name.” We’d see him every couple of months. He’d come by the house to take us to dinner or the movies. Eventually, it was just the two of us. My sister didn’t want to see him. She’s too young. This version of Dad is the only version of Dad she can remember. Honestly, maybe it is the only version of Dad.”

Mary paused and looked at me.

“Maybe there’s nobody left underneath what he became?”

Once the Lord crushes the satan underfoot will Lucifer remain?

It may strike us as peculiarly astonishing but the redemption even of Satan and the fallen spirits was an inevitable component of the ancient church fathers’s understanding of salvation, for they saw that it was the straightforward claim of scripture. Citing the church fathers Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, the Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov writes:

“Does the universal power of the redemptive sacrifice brought “for all” extend also to demons? Or is it necessary to recognize that this power is limited, that it is manifested only in relation to the earthly human world? But it is clear that it is impossible to admit any limitation on the power of the redemptive sacrifice. Scripture bears direct and certain witness to this: “That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth.” That is, angels, men, and demons. The tongues of them all shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…Therefore, the fullness of salvation presupposes not only the annulment of the cosmic minus that was introduced by Satan but the participation of all of creation in this new being.”

If the gospel begins in the garden with the serpent, does the gospel not ultimately end with him too?

The question is not meant to dismiss the devil’s detriments. The contemplation of the question is not sentimental. We do not deny the Adversary’s crimes under the pretext of divine love.

Bulgakov continues:

“It is impossible for human experience to measure the ages of ages of torments of hell necessary to exhaust satanical selfhood and malice. Nevertheless, there is a basis for such a conversion in and recovery of Satan’s nature, for he too is a creature of God and does not stop being such….Satan’s very being, his createdness by the omniscient God is, so to speak, an ontological proof of the inevitability of his future salvation. Even Satan in his madness does not have the power to overcome the fact of his own being, its divine foundation, by virtue of which “God will be all in all.” Satan, once the supreme archangel, an anointed cherub, also exists, like each of us, only by virtue of divine love. To be sure, he can never lose this knowledge once it has become known. Once it is known, a love must be loved with an answering love. This love turns out to be a kind of fate for Lucifer too.”

I am not always the best listener but, sitting in my office to plan her father’s funeral, I caught how Mary had put it to me as a question, “Maybe there’s nobody left underneath what he became?”

That is—

Is he recoverable?

She wanted an answer.

And she waited for one.

I nodded.

“Here’s what I know,” I said to her, “No one’s story ends with death— that’s the gospel. And the final outcome of your Dad’s story must correspond to the beauty and goodness with which God intended it. Otherwise, God’s making of him (only to lose him) would be an enormous mistake and a failure. But God doesn’t make mistakes— not with you, not with your Dad, not with any of his creatures.”

I was standing askance at Baggage Claim #3, waiting for the carousel to cough up my suitcase and thinking about how it was ironically appropriate for the cardinal to be dressed in red.

A man in a navy fleece with close-cropped hair and a Wisconsin accent leaned in towards me. He carried a rolled-up newspaper in his hand and, with it, he pointed at Cardinal McCarrick holding court as his valet fetched bags off the conveyor belt.

“Can you believe guys like that?”

I shook my head, sharing his revulsion.

“The audacity! No shame! I don’t know what in the hell the Lord’s waiting for. You’d think God would do something already!”

The God of peace will one day crush Satan under your feet.

I do not know why the promise is still pending.

But I do know:

God’s saving love is absolute to the outer limit.

Just so, when Christ Jesus our Lord comes again, the wideness of his mercy will encompass far more than we have dared to believe.

If you need proof, come to the table, for there no less than “the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven” join us at loaf and cup. And if those creatures meet us here over creatures of bread and wine, then perhaps the promise is true indeed— one day, “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth and the tongues of all— forked and not— shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

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Tamed CynicHitmen and Midwives: Talking Preaching with PreachersJason Micheli is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…Read more2 years ago · 6 likes · 4 comments · Jason Micheli

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Published on November 17, 2024 09:31

November 15, 2024

9.5 Theses on Preaching the Gospel

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Last year, I gave a series of talks on grace and proclamation to a clergy conference for the Anglican Church of Canada. I titled the talks, “Hitmen and Midwives,” taking the idea from the Word’s self-description in the Book of Deuteronomy:

“I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.”

Just so, preachers are like Hitmen and Midwives, killing the Old Eve and Adam in hearers in order for God to create faith and, through faith, a new creation.

You can find the audio of those talks here on the site.

As an extension of those talks, I began a series of conversations on preaching with my friend Dr. Ken Jones. Together we sketched out 9.5 Theses on Preaching. Ken is also my partner on the Iowa Preachers Project.

Technology issues recently interfered with our attempt to record conversations on the final couple of theses, but in the interim I thought I would post all the theses and recordings in one place for easy reference.

9.5 Theses on Preaching

The task of preaching is the delivery of the free and immutable gift of mercy on account of Jesus, crucified and risen, to all who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Preaching is an extension of what Christ does and who he is, and of what scripture declares God has been making of us from the foundation of the world.

Preaching is not to be equated with the presentation of information about the Bible, a psychological examination of people’s motives, or moral exhortation for the amendment of life, for while these things are useful they cannot create saving faith.

Tamed CynicHitmen and MidwivesI’ve started a new series talking about preaching with preachers and those who suffer preachers. My friend Dr. Ken Jones have kicked off the project by discussing what we’re calling the 9.5 Theses on Preaching…Read more2 years ago · 4 likes · Jason Micheli

When it comes to the content of the gospel to be preached, there is nothing new under the sun, and preachers need not trade in novelty; the new has no primacy simply because it is new.

Tamed CynicHitmen and MidwivesTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and all content, consider becoming a paid subscriber…Read more2 years ago · 2 likes · Jason Micheli

Preachers who assume a free will on the part of their hearers will always confuse law for gospel and will instead deliver advice, wisdom, or exhortation while also making the cross a mere adjunct to personal improvement or an exemplar of purposeful living.

Tamed CynicHitmen and MidwivesTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and all content, consider becoming a paid subscriber…Read morea year ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Jason Micheli

The gospel preached in its truth and purity has no relevance to those who are self-made or self-sustaining, but for those who exist under judgment and pain, loss and death, it is life itself.

Tamed CynicHitmen and MidwivesTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and all content, consider becoming a paid subscriber…Read morea year ago · 1 like · Jason Micheli

Preachers who seek religious activity or social action on the part of their hearers as the goal of their preaching make Jesus’ crucifixion and death into a small thing of no effect.

Tamed CynicHitmen and MidwivesTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and all content, consider becoming a paid subscriber…Read morea year ago · 1 like · Jason Micheli

Only preachers who have suffered under the judgment of the law and been freed from it by the proclamation of the gospel are able to hand on what they were first given to people in similar straits.

Faithful preaching assesses its effectiveness not by worldly results but recognizes the preached word as a planting of God’s promise that will grow unseen in those in whom it is planted.

The preacher who understands these theses will thenceforth regard delivering the gospel as a privilege and delight.

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Published on November 15, 2024 06:59

November 14, 2024

Purgation is Not Damnation

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With All Saints Day past, the church’s lectionary anticipates the season of Advent by taking an apocalyptic turn. In this way, the church readies itself to celebrate the first coming of Christ by looking to his promised coming again.

The lectionary Gospel passage for this Sunday, for instance, comes from Mark’s “little apocalypse” while Christ the King Sunday features the prophet Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days assuming his fiery throne amidst the judgment of the sinful world. In this fashion, the liturgical calendar mirrors the way in which the primal church reordered Israel’s scriptures, concluding the Old Testament on precisely this End Times expectation.

Whereas the Tanakh concludes with the Book of Chronicles, the Old Testament ends with the prophet Malachi uttering a promise about the looming Day of the Lord when the righteousness of God shall appear as a consuming fire, “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.” The Lord so describes himself in Deuteronomy and Exodus, a refrain which the Book of Hebrews echoes in the New Testament, “Our God is a consuming fire.” The Day of the Lord’s appearing, Malachi warns at the end of his prophesy, will be “like a burning oven.”

While the recurrent imagery accounts for popular conceptions of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment, it’s essential to remember that Malachi’s vision of the burning oven immediately precedes the promise that the Day will simultaneously bring the “sun of righteousness…with healing in its wings.”

The last judgment, so to speak, is not final.

How is God both a burning oven and a balm of healing?

If God is a consuming fire, what exactly does he consume?

Does the Lord in his judgment permanently extinguish some of his creatures?

Do those who fail to turn to the Lord burn?

Origen of Alexandria is one of the “ante-Nicene” church fathers, meaning he worked before the fourth century ecumenical council which gave the church the Nicene Creed. He begins his book On First Principles— one of the first books of Christian theology— with precisely this question. After explicating the biblical claim that God is light in whom there is no darkness at all, Origen asks, “For what does God consume in respect of the fact that he is fire?”

Perhaps more than any of the church fathers, Origen insists on submitting all of scripture to the revelation that the Word which spoke to the prophets was none other than Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim.

An apocalyptic promise like the one uttered by Malachi, therefore, must be interpreted in a way that is consonant with the God who is human.

Just so, Origen proceeds to unpack his question:

“Can God— who is spirit and truth, not a body— possibly be thought to consume bodily matter, wood or hay or stubble? And what, in this, would be worthy of the praise of God, if God is a fire consuming materials of that kind?
Let us rather be consider that God does indeed consume and destroy, but that he consumes evil thoughts.
Hhe consumes wicked actions, he consumes the desires for sin, when they enter the minds of believers, and that, inhabiting with his Son those souls which are rendered capable of receiving his Word and Wisdom, according to the saying, “I and the Father shall come and make our abode with him,” he makes them, after all their vices and passions have been consumed, into a temple pure and worthy of himself.”

That is—

Purgation is not damnation.

“He makes them, after all their vices and passions have been consumed, into a temple pure and worthy of himself.”

Indeed for Origen the act of creation imposes a commitment upon God. Having called creatures into existence, the Lord who is a consuming fire is now obligated to realize their consummation.

Origen writes:

“Their destruction is to be understood in this way, not that their substance, which was made by God, shall perish, but that the hostile purpose and will which proceeded not from God but from itself shall disappear. The sinful creature is destroyed, therefore, not in the sense that it shall not be, but that it shall not be an enemy. For nothing is impossible to the Almighty, nor is anything beyond healing by its Maker, for it was on this account that he made all things, that they might exist, and those things which were made that they might exist cannot not exist. Because of this, they will undergo change and variation, but things which were made by God that they might exist and abide, cannot undergo a destruction of substance. For those things which, in the opinion of the common people, are believed to perish, the rule of faith or truth alike accepts that they have not perished. The substance of all that God has made certainly abides.”

The Lord’s righteousness, in other words, will be our rectification.

*image by Chris E.W. Green

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Published on November 14, 2024 07:52

November 13, 2024

The Mary We Forgot

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My friend and former classmate joined us recently to talk about her new book, The Mary We Forgot.

Jennifer Powell McNutt (PhD, The University of St. Andrews) is the Franklin S. Dyrness Chair of Biblical and Theological Studies and professor of theology and history of Christianity at Wheaton College. She is an award-winning author, a fellow in the Royal Historical Society, and an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian tradition. McNutt serves as a parish associate at her church and regularly speaks at universities, seminaries, and churches across the country. She and her husband cofounded McNuttshell Ministries, which serves as a bridge between the academy and the church, and live with their three children in Winfield, Illinois.

About the book:

Mary Magdalene's life was transformed when she was healed by Christ and joined his ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem. The Gospels teach that she was also a witness at the cross and the first one sent by Christ to preach his resurrection. Yet her story is often confused, scandalized, and undervalued by the church.

In The Mary We Forgot, award-winning church historian and theologian Jennifer Powell McNutt unpacks Scripture and history to reveal the real Mary Magdalene: the first apostle of the good news and a model of discipleship for both men and women today.

McNutt also invites readers along on her journey through southern France, tracing the path remembered by some church traditions as where Mary Magdalene spread the gospel. Christians will learn from the disciple known as the "apostle to the apostles" how to embrace Jesus's calling to "go and tell" with faith and courage. They'll also be encouraged by the reminder that God calls ordinary, imperfect, and unexpected people to share the good news of Jesus Christ. The hope of remembering Mary Magdalene is ultimately to better know the one to whom she pointed, the risen Christ.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, Jennifer Powell McNutt discusses her work on Mary Magdalene, exploring her significance in theology and church history. She highlights the misrepresentation of Mary throughout history, her role as an apostle, and the importance of recognizing women's contributions in the church. The discussion also delves into the nature of scripture, the complexities of biblical narratives, and the need for a more inclusive understanding of women's roles in ministry.

Takeaways

Mary Magdalene is a significant figure in all four gospels.

The historical portrayal of Mary Magdalene has often conflated her with other women.

Women reformers used Mary Magdalene to validate their ministry.

The church has historically silenced women's voices.

Mary Magdalene's role as an apostle is affirmed in both Eastern and Western traditions.

The nature of scripture requires understanding its oral traditions and historical context.

Mary Magdalene's story is often overshadowed by other biblical narratives.

The Revised Common Lectionary often excludes important women from scripture.

Encouraging young women to take on leadership roles is crucial for the church's future.

Understanding the complexities of biblical characters can enrich our faith.

Sound Bites

"Mary Magdalene is the first to see the risen Christ."

"We have a lot of assumptions about what the gospels say."

"The church has silenced women throughout history."

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Published on November 13, 2024 07:19

November 12, 2024

Time Will Run Out. Why the Meantime?

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As the liturgical year winds to a close, the scriptures assigned by the lectionary take on an increasingly apocalyptic tenor. The Gospel for this coming Sunday, for example, is from the “Little Apocalypse” in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 13:

“As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?"

Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

It’s remarkable that many persist in thinking of Jesus primarily as a teacher of golden rules and a dispenser of good deeds when, in fact, Jesus's longest discourse in Mark’s Gospel is this apocalyptic sermon. In Mark 13, Jesus dispels any illusions that our righteousness will make history come out right.

During his three year ministry, Jesus has spent a lot of his time at the temple; so that, by the time we get to the cusp of the passion story, Jesus is like Peter Finch in Network. He’s mad as hell and he’s not going take it anymore. Jesus has just been condemning the temple guild for “devouring the homes of widows,” widows like the old lady with the pocket change she set aside from her old man’s pension. Yet the disciples manage once again to miss the point. As soon as they march out of the temple Jesus has just condemned as the first century equivalent of a payday lender, the disciples start admiring its architecture.

"Teacher, look, what large stones and what large buildings!”

“Let me tell you about those buildings. It’s all going to come crumbling down.”

Jesus says no more until they come to the Mount of Olives, the place where the prophet Zechariah had proclaimed God’s messiah would commence his saving work. “Lo, the Day is surely coming,” Zechariah prophesies, “On that day the Lord’s feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which lies before Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two.”

Stones will be turned, one upon another.

So it’s not surprising that, as they sit on the Mount of Olives looking across the valley at the edifice Christ has just said will soon be eradicated, they’d get to thinking about what Zechariah called the Day of the Lord, the time when God will come again to judge the quick and the dead. No sooner has Jesus just predicted the temple’s destruction than they’re sitting at ground zero for God’s mushroom cloud-laying messiah. In other words, it’s a rather obvious question the disciples ask.

“When?”

“‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’”

And immediately Jesus cracks the whip, chastising his disciples “Do not be led astray by asking ‘When?’”

“Only the Father knows the day and the hour,” Jesus preaches at the end of his fire and brimstone sermon.

That is—

“When?” is a question that cannot be answered; therefore, “When?” is a question that should not be asked.Do not be led astray by the when question, Jesus warns.

There will be wars and rumors of more. There will be earthquakes and famines and floods. There will be plagues and pandemics and polarized families. There will be grifting prophets and phony preachers. It’s going to get worse before God makes all things new. All the bad that’s certain to be is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

Do not get distracted, trying to read the signs of the times, Jesus scolds.

Do not get preoccupied, attempting to make predictions, Jesus reprimands.

Do not be led astray by asking “When?”

When are you coming again?

When will be the End?

Nonetheless, Jesus would make an absolutely horrible HR director. He’s a rotten evaluator of talent. Down through the years, the rest of his recruits have proven to be every bit as bad at heeding his words as the initial dozen.

I mean— despite this unambiguous rebuke from Jesus, for two thousand years his friends have frittered away their time and squandered much of their witness, busying themselves with the one question Christ Jesus commands us clearly not to probe.

When will this be?

What will be the signs of the end time?

For example, the year 500 AD proved too auspicious to avoid speculation. Long before Dan Brown or that purple haired lady on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, ancient Church Fathers— legitimate thinkers and leaders— like Hippolytus of Rome and Irenaeus of Lyon predicted Christ would come again in the year 500. And they attempted to prove their prediction by “decoding” the dimensions of Noah’s ark. Pope Sylvester II predicted the apocalypse would occur at the turn of the first millennium, Y1K. When Jesus did not come again to judge the living and the dead, Sylvester and others regrouped and insisted that the only detail they’d gotten wrong was the starting point. The End would come not a thousand years after Jesus’s birth as they’d thought but a thousand years after his death, 1033 AD. Joachim of Fiore was a Catholic mystic who discovered what he called the secret “eternal gospel” in the Book of Revelation, 14:6. According to him, Christ would come back and inaugurate the Age of the Spirit in 1260 AD.

Flash forward a couple hundred years and it gets worse.

Thomas Muntzer was an Anabaptist in Germany— a Mennonite— who scoured the scriptures to interpret the signs of his time. Muntzer became convinced that the world teetered at a tipping point. He predicted that the New Age would arrive in the year 1525. The revolutionary furor his prediction unleashed ignited a violent rebellion by the peasants in central Germany. The revolt was quelled with equally great violence. The when question led Thomas Muntzer was led astray and before he knew it ploughshares and pruning hooks were being beaten into swords.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement— otherwise, kind of a normie guy, he got led astray too. He read a verse— a single verse— in Revelation and came to the conclusion that the apocalypse would be in 1836. Not long after Wesley, a Baptist preacher named William Miller led a movement of believers called the Millerites.

William Miller got more specific than any Christian heretofore had dared. Based on his idiosyncratic reading of Daniel 8, William Miller insisted that the Lord would return (to upstate New York) on October 22, 1844. As it turns out, the most remarkable event that happened on October 22, 1844 was that President James Polk had urinary bladder stones removed. Well, the bladder stones came in second place after what the press dubbed “The Great Disappointment” referring to Miller’s failed prediction. The Great Disappointment didn’t stop William Miller though; his movement of Millerites became known as the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Christians on cable television went nuts as the year 2000 approached. When Barack Obama became president, Jerry Falwell predicted the End was nigh.

And maybe you recall—

Family Radio host and self-taught Bible expert, Harold Camping, predicted the rapture would happen on May 21, 2011, paving the way for the destruction of the world’s remaining sinners a few months later on October 21, 2011. Harold Camping led hundreds, likely more, so astray they quit their jobs, left their families, sold their homes, and cashed out their 401Ks in anticipation of the end times. As a result, one of Camping's coworkers committed suicide.

“‘Tell us, Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’”

When it comes to Christ’s Second Advent, there’s a better question to ask than “When?” Not only is it a better question to ask, it’s a question Christ does not forbid us to ask.

The question we should ask is not “When?” but “Why?”Why has the End with a capital E not yet come?Why has Christ not yet come again?Why does God give more time?

Remember—

The Bible is absolutely unique in the history of religion. Unlike the paganism of ancient Rome and Greece, the scriptures do not view the universe as eternal. Likewise, the Bible departs from eastern religions which understand existence as circular, an endless cycling loop of reincarnations. No, the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of John alike claim that creation had a beginning. Before anything was God spoke all that isinto existence. Creation had a beginning and, thus, creation will have an end.

Time, according to Christianity, is less like the reliable constancy of grandfather clock and more like the sand in an hour glass.Time will run out.

Just as there was a first day, one day there will be a last day. God is bringing history to a head. This is what Paul means when he writes to the Church at Rome, “Your salvation is nearer than when you first believed.” As we pray at the table, one day Christ will come back in final victory, time will be transformed into glory, and we will, as the catechism puts it, enjoy him forever.

Why the meantime?

Why does time not simply stop? Why does God let history continue? What else is there for God to do? Christ himself says from his cross, “It is finished.” And on his way to the cross, Jesus declares, “Take heart. I have overcome the world!”

So why?

Why does God give us more time? What else is there for God to do? He’s already given himself for sins, once for all. As the author of the Book of Hebrews says, Christ our Great High Priest has offered a perfect sacrifice such that, now, his work forever complete, he sits at the Father’s right hand, resting with his feet propped up on his enemies— Sin, Death, and the Devil. They are now his ottoman. If there is therefore now nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, what in the world is left for God to do?

Why the delay?

Why does God give us more time?

What is still going on that absolutely must be done?

When I was a student at Princeton, I attended a series of lectures the late theologian, Robert Jenson, delivered for undergraduates and faculty members. Though the attendees recognized that Jenson was one of the most brilliant theologians America has ever produced, not every one in the lecture hall was open or hospitable to the claims of Christianity.

Some listeners, though curious, were openly hostile to the Gospel.

One skeptical student in the audience persisted in trying to poke holes in Jenson’s arguments. “Doesn’t the New Testament indicate that the world was about to end? Didn’t Paul and the apostles expect Christ to return in their lifetimes? Didn’t Jesus even suggest the apocalypse was imminent? Why has God delayed?”

And Jenson revealed the slightest crease of a smile, and he responded nonchalantly to the skeptic’s question with a brilliant six word reply.

“Why has God waited?

His answer:

1) Because

2) He

3) Wanted

4) To

5) Include

6) You

Why the meantime?Because he wants to include you.

He wants you in him who is our universal safe harbor. He wants you to hear that heaven is a gift everyone already has by the death of the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He wants you to hear that your sinful deeds will not be judged because the whole world died to the Law by the Body of Christ. He wants you to hear your good deeds are not required nor will they be rewarded for Christ is the end of the Law; so that, everyone who believes may be justified. He wants you to reach out by faith and cling to this, the only promise that can save you.

Why does God give us more time?

What is still going on that absolutely must be done?

The proclamation of the promise.

The Gospel.

The word of the cross.

Just wrap your head around it—The only reason left for history to happen is for you and I to proclaim Christ and him crucified.

That’s not my opinion, and it’s not some dead theologian’s interpretation.

This is red-letter, straight from the lips of Jesus: the Gospel of Matthew 28. Christ has not yet come again because in this meantime Christ has given us a commission.

God has given us time to proclaim, in word and deed, the Gospel of grace.

The Gospel promise of grace for sinners— not only is this message the main thing, it’s literally the only reason any of us are still here. In other words, when we speak about stewardship in church, as we do every November, we’re not simply talking about how much you should give to the church. Fundamentally, we’re talking about how we as the Church spend the time God continues to give us.

The hour glass would be empty by now except for the fact that God wants to include more than just you.

The promise for you— it’s also our vocation.

Maybe you’ve read it.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story for Esquire magazine in 1936 entitled, “The Horns of the Bull.” Hemingway later changed the title to “The Capital of the World” for his collection The Fifth Column.

Set during the Spanish Civil War, the story features a young waiter named Paco, a common Spanish name. Paco aspires one day to be a matador like the men he serves at his restaurant. Paco, the reader learns, ran away from home after a bitter falling out with his father. Paco’s father, however, is determined to find his lost but loved child and to bring him back home. After combing the streets and shops of Madrid to no avail, Paco’s father grows desperate. He spares no expense, taking out a full-page advertisement in the newspaper.

The ad is as plain and clear as a street sign.

The ad reads simply, “PACO, MEET ME AT THE HOTEL MONTANA. NOON TUESDAY. ALL IS FORGIVEN. PAPA.”

When Paco’s father arrives at the hotel plaza at noon on Tuesday, he cannot believe his eyes. A squadron of police officers has been dispatched there to control a crowd of nearly a thousand young men, all named Paco, all of them looking to reconcile with their father.

All of them needed to hear, longed desperately to hear “ALL IS FORGIVEN.”

Jesus warns us not to get distracted trying to read the signs of the time because we’re supposed to be the sign the Father has posted in the world.

At great cost.

And the Father has given us literally all the time in the world to be that sign.

We are the sign that says: YOUR FATHER IS NOT MAD AT YOU— HE’S BEEN SEARCHING FOR YOU. YOU’RE SAFE TO COME HOME. ALL IS FORGIVEN.

And any other contradictory messages we put out there in the world, we’re WASTING TIME.

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Published on November 12, 2024 06:52

November 10, 2024

The Company He Keeps

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Romans 16.1-16

My friend Ken Sundet Jones is a Lutheran preacher, who teaches theology at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. Two weeks, Ken drove five hours northwest to hand over the goods at a church named after the thief who died beside Jesus, his pierced hand holding a promise that changed everything for him. St. Dysmas Lutheran Church is located within the razor-wired walls of South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Given the peculiar name for the parish and its particular parishioners, my friend took as his passage of scripture one of God’s last words, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Kenny took that gospel word and he midwifed a miracle the world could never work. He uttered a promise only the Lord can promise. He made certain that every criminal, murderer, thieve, addict, molester, and rapist who heard him— everything nothing in state-issued khaki with “inmate” stitched down the leg of their scrubs— knew that that “you” meant me.

You, Inmate #39016, will be with him in paradise.

You, Jeff, will join him in the kingdom.

You, Michael, as soon as you die, the very next voice you hear will be Jesus calling you into the resurrection.

When you hear the Lord promise Dysmas, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” trust and believe that that you means me.

As my friend preached:

“Saint Dysmas died two deaths on Good Friday. His second death happened hours after the politicians and priests hastened the Lord's death, when Dysmas’s breath finally became air and his body was left on the tree to be scavenged and scattered. Dysmas’s first death, however, happened as a result of the short, simple sermon Jesus preached from one cross to another, “You will be with me.” That moment was a hinge, an axial point, a place that could be pointed to that had a distinct Before and After. With this promise from Christ, it was not possible that anything could ever be the same for Dysmas. No matter what he had done, his future was Christ. And so it is for you. I know full well how the world regards you who live on the hill as nothings. But when you grab a hold of the gospel by faith, you become more than somethings. It’s as good as God himself unlocking your cell door and buzzing the gate open onto a future you couldn’t have earned even if you’d never landed yourself inside. So let me hand over the goods. As a called and ordained servant of Jesus Christ our Lord and by his authority alone, I promise you: On account of Christ and by his merit alone, you will be with him. Trust and believe.”

It’s a simple word, the gospel.

It’s a word offensive for its unimpressive ordinariness.

It’s a short word even, reducible to you.

And yet scripture proclaims this Word has the power to give life to the dead and to justify the ungodly.

Ken handed over the goods.

Immediately, eight hardened lifers asked to be washed in the word; so that, like Dysmas, they would know the time and place Christ’s you became me. Eight men grabbed ahold of the promise by faith and asked to be baptized. Still another asked Ken to absolve him. He’s doing life for taking his girlfriend’s life. Ever since he did the deed, he’s been haunted by the knowledge that she did not die in the Lord. Ken heard his confession and pronounced the forgiveness of sins for him and, so doing, the gospel unlocked chains not even the state of South Dakota could bind on him.

It’s a simple word, the gospel, offensive for its ordinariness.

And yet, it— and nothing else— is the power of God.

Shame on us, then, if we think politics more interesting, standard bearers more compelling, and elections more urgent than this little Word that is able to “call into existence things that do not exist.”

On December 10, 1933, not long after Election Day, Karl Barth preached in the Schlosskirche at the center of the University of Bonn in Berlin where he was Professor of Theology. Already the university, just like most of the church, had acquiesced to the demagoguery of the new administration. On that day in Advent, Barth stood in the university pulpit and preached on a passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Members of the Gestapo lurked in the back of his lecture hall, monitoring him. After worship, Barth left the Schlosskirche, folded up his sermon manuscript, slid it into an envelope, and sent it off to the new, popularly elected president.

Soon after, Barth was fired from his position and exiled back to his home in Switzerland. Bidding their teacher and preacher a tearful farewell, Barth’s students asked him for a benediction. Famously, Barth responded, “Exegesis, exegesis, exegesis.” In other words, our only hope as the world hangs on the precipice is to proclaim more stubbornly than ever before the Word that is alone the power of God. Those same students asked the departing Barth how they, as preachers, should respond to the recent election, to the antagonism in their nation and to the riven nature of Christ’s church.

Barth’s surprising reply confounded them.

“Preach,” Barth insisted, “as if nothing happened.”

That is, as a Christian, do not be fooled. And as preachers, do not fool others. The real world, what’s really going on in the world, the true state of reality— no matter what your eyes see or the headlines say— is that Jesus Christ is Lord and is, through his gospel promise, drawing all things unto himself.

“How can Adolf Hitler be a nothing?” Barth’s students protested.

But Barth insisted, “the little man in Berlin is not the Lord of History;” therefore, do not commit the sin of making that little man in the capital more fascinating than the only Word that is able to work what it says.

You will be with him.

Whether you voted for the man headed to the capital come January or for his opponent, we are all guilty of being more animated by our politics than by the gospel. And there is no mystery as to the why. After all, when we draw lines and pick sides, we get to choose the company we keep.

This is the whole point—they’re tribes!

But the Lord of History has a habit of thrusting upon us brothers and sisters we never would have selected for ourselves.

The little Word of the gospel not only justifies the ungodly, it calls into existence a community of no one’s choosing save Jesus Christ.

As the woman charged not only with delivering his epistle to the church at Rome but interpreting it for them too, Phoebe receives the most elaborate introduction of any person found in the New Testament. In exhorting the Christians in Rome to welcome her “in a manner worthy of the saints,” Paul refers to Phoebe as a prostasis; that is, she is a benefactor of the church. She is sufficiently wealthy so as to be able to afford to take the time to travel from Corinth to Rome to deliver Paul’s letter. Moreover, she could not only read the epistle but interpret it for them. This implies Phoebe was more than literate; she was educated. And notice, Paul does not mention Phoebe in relation to a husband. Whatever wealth and status Phoebe possessed she possessed them on her own.

She’s rich!

Just so, Phoebe is not vulnerable in the way many are in the church at Rome. By all measures, the empire that would kill the apostle Paul was working for Phoebe. She’s able to be the church’s benefactor because the empire was benefiting her. The little man in Rome’s administration has been good for her portfolio.

By contrast, the next two names Paul names, Prisca and Aquila, are slave names— Jewish slave names. Paul refers to all three as his “fellow workers in Christ Jesus.” According to Luke, Prisca and Aquila fled Jerusalem after the Edict of Claudius, which banned Christians from Caesar’s cities for upsetting the status quo. Prisca and Aquila met Paul in Corinth and then ventured to Ephesus with him.

Once again, the empire had expelled Prisca and Aquila from their homes; but now, on account of the gospel, they were working alongside Phoebe for whom the empire had worked quite well.

From there, Paul greets twenty-four more believers in the church at Rome. Sixteen of them are male, and eight of them are female. Still more are gathered up anonymously as “those who are from the household of Aristobulus” or “of Narcissus.” In other words, the slaves of Aristobulus and Narcissus. Some of the twenty-four names in Paul’s greeting are Jewish names; these believers he refers as “my kinfolk.” Many of the names Paul names originate in neither Rome nor Israel but in the Greek East. Remarkably then, in Rome the gospel has created a community that also includes immigrants. Thus, Paul calls Epaenetus, whom he also mentions at the end of his letter to Corinth, “the first fruit of Asia.”

Rich and poor.

Female and male.

Imperial and oppressed.

Pagans and Jews.

Slaves and immigrants.

From the very beginning, the gospel not only justifies the ungodly, giving new life to the dead, it blurs the lines between Us and Them.

Will Campbell was a Baptist preacher and activist during the Civil Rights movement. Unlike a lot of preachers from that era, Campbell was committed to the biblical belief that the living God is at work not only on the progressive side of the political divide but also on its conservative end. Likewise, Campbell drew deeply from the well of the Reformation and its reading of Romans, and Campbell refused to impute innocence to anyone on either side of partisan issues.

Will Campbell was present in 1998 for the Mississippi murder trial of Sam Bowers, the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Bowers stood accused of killing several people, including Vernon Dahmer, a local leader in the voter registration effort. Bowers was tried a third time in 1998, the first time that his trial would not be a sham trial, and Campbell attended his trial every day.

And every day Campbell bore witness to a controversial kind of community.

On one day, the preacher would sit on the prosecution side with the Dahmer family, offering comfort and praying with them.

On the next day, he would sit on the defense team's side, comforting Bowers, the Klan's men, and praying with them.

Day after day of the trial, Campbell alternated sides.

He ministered to the family of the victims one day.

And then he ministered to the victimizers and their families the next day.

When the trial was over, a flummoxed New York Times reporter asked him, “Mr. Campbell, why do you seem to be on both sides?”

And Campbell answered:

"Because I'm a god-damned Christian!”

Phoebe’s name comes from Greek mythology. She is a Gentile, from Cenchreae. In other words, the Letter to the Romans— perhaps the most consequential item in the New Testament— its sole link between the apostle Paul and posterity is a woman called out of paganism by the Lord who speaks through the gospel.

Notice—

Though she is a pagan, though her politics are all wrong, though she is in a problematic tax bracket, Paul nevertheless calls her, “our sister.”

Quite simply, Paul regards his relationship to Christ as the most important fact of his life, and, by extension, his relationship to this ungodly woman whom the Father’s Son has made a sibling.

And then there’s Junia. According to Paul, not only is she an apostle according to Paul, Junia, along with Andronicus, is an ex-convict. Like Paul, she was victimized by the administration responsible for Phoebe’s windfall, but now she and Phoebe both are fellow laborers in the gospel.

Just like Will Campbell, Junia might be the first to admit that the only explanation for the company she now keeps is Jesus Christ.

The Tuesday before Election Day I attended an ecumenical lunch for area religious leaders. In no time, the conversation turned to the little man in the capital and who might replace him. After remarking with satisfaction that their congregations were completely homogenous politically, two clergy asked me about my parishioners.

“I don’t know that my church is of one mind on anything much less politics,” I said, watching the reproach crease across their faces, “In fact, I like to think the only explanation for the messy range of perspectives in my congregation is that Jesus Christ is not dead. He’s made them sisters and brothers, and— you know how it is— you can’t choose family.”

The church father John Chrysostom likened this list of names to the Bible’s genealogies which most readers are more than likely to skip past. The genealogy in Matthew comes at the beginning of his Gospel. Likewise, in all his other epistles Paul puts his salutations at the top. In the rest of his writings, he sends his greetings at the very start.

But here in his most comprehensive and theological work, the apostle places them at the end.

Why?

Contrary to what Chrysostom quipped, Paul’s final greetings are neither an afterthought on the part of the author nor an unnecessary appendix for the reader.

This list of names is instead the exemplification of what Paul has argued for fifteen chapters.

For over four hundred verses, Paul has proclaimed that the promise justifies the ungodly. For over four hundred verses, Paul has declared that Jesus Christ takes sinners and enemies and makes them righteous and friends— his friends and friends of one another. For four hundred and six verses, Paul has preached that the gospel is the power of God to absolve trespasses, undo the Power of Sin, give life to the dead, and call into existence things that do not exist.

And after fifteen chapters, finally in these last few verses Paul names names as proof of what he’s preached. As though, look— this is what the gospel has created.

Phoebe and Prisca and Aquila and Epaenetus and Mary and Adronicus and Urbanus and all the household of Aristobulus and Narcissus and all the rest of the names Paul names, they are Exhibits 1-27 of the word that works what it says.

Rich and poor.

Female and male.

Colonizer and colonized.

Victims and victimizers.

Pagans and Jews.

Masters and slaves and strangers.

This is the kind of company Christ keeps. This is the church only he would choose. This is the community the gospel creates.

Shortly after he preached it, my friend Ken told me about his sermon at St. Dysmas Church.

“I don’t know that I’ve heard of any other sermon eliciting so many demands for baptism and absolution,” I said to him.

“I think its due to the fact Christians distract ourselves with other words— especially the closer you get to a place like Washington DC. We busy ourselves with other words because we’re afraid of what the gospel does. The gospel makes siblings of odd bedfellows. Take it from me. This bow-tie wearing PhD from the Ivory Tower never imagined he’d have to call Inmate #39016 “brother.” I tell you, it’s unnerving stuff; nonetheless, it’s like Luther said, “Preach Christ or be silent.”

The year Paul drafted this letter, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the imperial throne, died under mysterious circumstances in Rome, clearing the way for Nero to become emperor— Nero, the worst villain in the history of Christianity. Yet the apostle makes no mention of this “news.” Paul spares not syllable on the little man in Rome. Instead to a church that included slaves and ex-cons of the empire, Paul refers to a well-heeled citizen of Nero’s nascent administration as “our sister.”

In other words—

Like Jesus says from one cross to another, Paul promises them, “You will be in paradise with her."

At the end of his salutations, Paul summons the believers at Rome to greet one another with a holy kiss; that is, with the Christian sign of reconciliation.

Similarly, in his first letter to the Corinthians Paul exhorts the church to “discern the body” before they come to the table’s loaf and cup. The context makes clear that by “discern the body” Paul does not mean the bread or wine themselves; he means the diversity of members that make up the Church body. Paul’s admonition to discern the body was, in Corinth, a rebuke of the way in which the Church had segregated along partisan lines.

Thus, scripture instructs us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in such a way that we are forced to reckon with the nature of the motley crew Jesus draws together. To celebrate with bread and wine in a way that allows you to avoid those whom you would never choose as friends is to celebrate something other than the Lord’s Supper. In the same passage, Paul warns that “those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.”

So before you come to the table, look around at the gospel’s aftershocks. See the sorts of odd bedfellows the Son has made your brothers and sisters. Trust me— I can show you my inbox— there is precious little upon which you all agree. The only explanation for you is Jesus Christ.

Take a look before you take the bread that is his body and the wine that is his blood. Perhaps not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and very soon— I promise you— you will be in paradise with the likes of them.

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Published on November 10, 2024 09:38

November 9, 2024

Changing My Mind

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My friend and mentor Will Willimon joined us to talk about his new book, Changing My Mind: The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry. Will is thoughtful and winsome as always, and my new friend Slice joined Todd and me too.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, Bishop Will Willimon discusses the evolving nature of ministry, emphasizing the importance of truth in pastoral care, the role of mentorship, and the changing perceptions of preaching and evangelism. He reflects on his own experiences and the necessity of adaptability in ministry, while also addressing the ethical challenges faced by pastors. The dialogue highlights the significance of being open to change and the value of truth-telling in a pastoral context.

Takeaways

Adaptability and realignment are essential virtues in ministry.

Pastors must articulate faith and truth in their roles.

The importance of mentorship in shaping new ministers.

Evangelism is a responsibility to share the gospel with others.

Preaching has evolved to focus on open-ended questions rather than definitive answers.

Hearing the word requires cultivating surprise and wonder.

Stirring the pot can be a necessary part of ministry.

Ethical challenges often stem from the need for approval.

Change is a natural part of a pastor's journey.

The role of a pastor is to care for people and guide them spiritually.

Sound Bites

"We keep articulating the faith."

"A pastor is caring for people."

"We need to be tugged in both directions."

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