Jason Micheli's Blog, page 29

What is Church?

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber!

In my parish, I’m pivoting to the ethical portion of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (though such subdivisions are likely an imposition on the letter). In the world, America creeps quickly towards another in a series of “the most important election of our lifetime.” As a friend notes, the political cycle seems to be the actual lectionary for many preachers who have “innovate” by planning election-themed sermon series (e.g., How to be a Christian this Election).

Chief of sinners, here, for I’ve been revisiting some of the political thought from the church’s communion of saints.

Here is a brief essay by Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled “What is Church?” from January 1933, just after an auspicious election indeed. Given the context in which Bonhoeffer wrote this essay, it’s all the more remarkable how thoroughly theological it remains and how intentional he is to keep politics within its proper, subordinate frame.

Notice, too, how Bonhoeffer does not speak of the church but of church; he omits the definite article because church is Christ, proclaimed and proclaimer.

“What church *is* can only be said if we say both what it is from the viewpoint of human beings and what it is from the standpoint of God. Both belong inseparably together. It is in this dual nature that the church exists. Thus we are not talking about what the church should be but what the church *is* when it is.

This is the essential point.

Church is the presence of God in the world; truly in the world a present God. Church is not consecrated shrine; it is from God for the world called to God, which is why there is only one church in the world.

It is an institution that is not a good model of organization, not very influential, not very impressive, in need of improvement in the extreme. However, church is a ministry from God, a ministry of proclamation, the message of the living God. From it come commission and commandment; in it arise eternal ties; in it heaven and hell clash; in it the judgment on earth takes place because church is the living Christ and his judgment.

Church is the preached and preaching Christ, proclaimer and proclamation, ministry and word.

Church is the awakening of the world through miracle, through the presence of the life-creating God calling from death to life. Church is fellowship, the church-community of the saints, freed by God from isolated existence, each one belonging to the other, giving themselves, accepting responsibility because it was placed on them by God. Church is a community through sacrifice, prayer, and forgiveness, shattering the chains of isolation, the reality of being together and for one another, love, fraternity. All that from God, the living Christ. Church is his people called from the world by his Word, bound to him as the sole Lord in faith, bound to their brothers in love.

Church *is* always both things simultaneously; those who see only of the two do not see the “church.” God, not we, makes the church into that which it is. In the end we want to get around this difficulty by saying that there are somehow two churches (the visible, unfaithful church and the invisible, faithful church). Yet this misses the decisive point. It is one and the same church, its visible form and its hidden divinity. As it is one and the same Lord, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth and the Son of God.

As God’s church in the world, the church proves its worth through nothing other than properly spreading the message of the gospel, through properly proclaiming grace and commandment. And just as an aside— we suffer not from too much preaching but from too much false preaching.

Thus, in the church it is a question of spreading the Word of God in the world, of witnessing to the breaching of the world and its laws through the revelation of God’s resolve and goodness in Jesus Christ.

The church speaks of miracles because it speaks of God:

From eternity into time.

From life into death.

From love into hate.

From forgiveness into sin.

From healing into suffering.

From hope into doubt.

This it does in full knowledge that its message disconcerts but also that its own task is irreversible.

The church’s preaching is of necessity '“political.”

That is, it is directed at the political order in which humans are bound. Yet precisely in this “political” sense it is first of all the critical limit of all political actions. The church is the limit of politics, which is why it is eminently simultaneously political and apolitical. Because it witnesses this breached boundary, the church points to the limited, to the law, to order, to the state.

The first political word of the church is the call to recognize one’s own limits, to sobriety.

The church names this limit sin; the state names it reality, both tend to call it finiteness.

It must be observed: The first political word of the church is not the Christianization of politics!The first political word of the church is the recognization of finiteness!

No one should see the limits of politics more clearly than the church, which stands at the boundary that has been broken through from above.

It thus follows of necessity that nothing would be more destructive and detrimental for the Protestant Church than if it unthinkingly let itself be used in party politics.

That would certainly mean its end.

This dilemma summons the church in its political responsibility and decision.”

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

The Eschatology of Individuals

If you appreciate the work, pay it forward. Literally! Become a paid subscriber.

Here is the first session of our new series discussing some of Robert Jenson’s work on the Last Things, beginning with his chapter, “The Saints.”

Jenson The Saints1.21MB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

Next Monday, we will discuss the content under sections II and III.

You can join us live this evening at 7:00 EST HERE .

And by way of introduction, here’s the recording of the Mockingbird Book Club discussion I did on Robert Jenson:

Tamed CynicSeeing What Is from What Will BeTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate what we do, pay it forward and consider becoming a paid subscriber…Read morea year ago · 4 likes · Jason MicheliShow Notes

Summary

The conversation explores the themes of liturgical significance, the eschatology of individuals versus community, the impact of injustice, and the nature of hope and forgiveness in the context of faith. The participants reflect on personal experiences and theological insights, particularly focusing on the communal aspect of God's promises and the importance of recognizing the interconnectedness of all believers, both living and deceased.

Takeaways

The liturgical calendar marks significant events in the Christian faith.

Injustice in the death penalty system raises moral questions.

Eschatology should focus on community rather than just individuals.

Israel's history is crucial to understanding God's promises.

Hope in resurrection is a communal promise, not just individual.

Forgiveness is a powerful theme in the Christian narrative.

The saints represent God's faithfulness to His promises.

God's love is inclusive and extends to all individuals.

The church's role is to embody and proclaim hope.

Personal stories illustrate the complexities of faith and justice.

Sound Bites

"It's not about where do you go when you die."

"Even your unforgiveness is forgiven."

"God refuses to be God without us."

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

The Incongruous Gift is Strongly Obliging

If you appreciate the work, pay it forward. Literally! Become a paid subscriber.

Romans 13.8-14

Shortly after he died, I spoke to Mike’s son on the telephone.

Mike was a member of the church, a singer in the choir, and the sexton of the cemetery. Long before cancer ensnared him, Mike dreaded the day when he would be a dead body in need of a gravedigger. Mike’s melancholy abided with him as reliably as Linus’s blanket, making it all the more miraculous that in the last few weeks of his life, Mike approached his dying accompanied by dozens of you.

You took him food and gave him company. You interpreted medical jargon for him and hassled his family to show up. You helped him to bed. You lifted his spirits. You picked him up off the bathroom floor. As his days turned to hours, you cradled his head in your lap and you ran your fingers through his hair; you rubbed his tumored bones and you wet his dry lips and you even played music on a handmade harp for him.

You made it difficult for me to have a moment alone with him.

I honestly don’t know what people do without a Body.

“You all at the church,” his son told me over the phone, “He loved the church, and the church loved him when it mattered most. You all really picked him up and carried him to the end. And that was especially important given that I live all the way out here in California. Let’s face it— it’s no secret— there was more distance between my dad and me than just geography. The church’s love made all the difference.”

Thinking about his comments, I commended one of you last week for stepping forward to love Mike to the End.

“I didn’t realize Mike and you were friends,” I said to her.

“Friends? Mike? Mike and I were not friends. In fact, he grated on me. I won’t miss the insufferable emails he always sent. And I’m pretty certain Mike didn’t care for me either.”

“But then, why did you…? I mean, I heard you helped him on and off the toilet.”

“I’m a Christian,” she replied with a shrug of the shoulders, “What choice did I have?”

As much as we might like to argue with her, as much as we might like to posit a choice for the Christian life, as much as we might wish to insist that God’s word of promise (the gospel) frees us from God’s word of command (the law), the apostle’s strict logic in his epistle will not allow us to do so.

At the top of chapter thirteen, Paul addressed the specific question of taxes and, more generally, the obedience believers owe to the governing authorities. Now, in verse eight, Paul pivots to deal with an altogether different debt, love expressed by those who know what time it is. First, Paul opens this passage by inverting the language of obligation. Instead of writing “Pay everyone what is owed them,” Paul says, “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love.” Paul then elaborates on this initial command with what philosophers call a syllogism.

A syllogism is a simple logical argument constructed from a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. The most famous example of a syllogism— as the apostle Paul surely knew— comes from Aristotle. 

Major Premise: All men are mortal.

Minor Premise: Socrates is a man.

Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Major premise, minor premise, conclusion.

If the first two statements are true, then logic requires that the last statement is true as well. No matter how much we might like it otherwise, logic will not allow for the conclusion’s contradiction.

Paul puts the major premise of his syllogism thus: “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

After enumerating exactly what he means by the law— the Decalogue— Paul asserts his minor premise: “The commandments are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Or, as Paul unpacks it in the next verse, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor.”

Finally, Paul signals the conclusion of the syllogism in verse ten with the telltale therefore. “Therefore,” Paul lays out the logic— we have no choice but to conclude, “love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

Because Paul has laid out such a spare, tight argument, what Paul does not write is just as critical as what he does.

Paul does not say love of neighbor is the entirety of the law.

Paul does not say love of neighbor leads to new life.

Paul does not say love of neighbor justifies or saves.

Paul does not say a great deal.But what Paul does say— precisely— is that “love is the summing up of the law.”

Paul would have no need to mention the law at this point in his epistle if he was determined to undermine or disregard the law, as some interpreters allege. The language of summation presupposes that the law is not void and warrants fulfillment. Life under grace has its own law. That is, our love of God takes place as an event. The event of our love of the other.

As New Testament scholar John Barclay writes:

“The incongruous gift of Jesus Christ is entirely undeserved but strongly obliging…This obedience is not instrumental (it does not acquire the gift of Christ, nor any additional gift from God) but it integral to the gift itself, as God wills newly competent agents who express in practice their freedom from sin and slavery to righteousness. Without this obedience, grace is ineffective and unfulfilled.”

Last Sunday, before the benediction, Edward stood in front of the altar to show you all his baby girl. Carolina is named after her grandmother, Edward’s Mom. The Cubillo family has been a part of the church for exactly five years.

In the fall of 2019, I had just arrived back at church on a Tuesday morning after a brief vacation. I had a long To Do list and my whole work week meticulously laid out. We were in the middle of a staff meeting. A visitor buzzed the security intercom at Door #2.

“I need help,” she shouted into the speaker in hesitant, broken English.

Dottie, the secretary, buzzed her inside and then summoned me.

I walked to the main office and discovered a woman about my age, neatly but simply dressed, with her black hair pulled back taut.

Three children sat across the same sofa as her.

Their names, she told me, were Scarlett, Edward, and Denis—6, 12, and 14 years old respectively.

I offered her my hand and introduced myself in my broken Spanish.

She introduced herself as Carolina.

“I was a teacher,” she said out of the blue and looking like she was struggling to get the English right.

I must’ve looked confused because she went on to explain, and what she told me wasn’t what I was expecting nor was it what I wanted to hear with such a busy week before me.

“We just arrived here,” she said, “last night. From Nicaragua.”

I still wasn’t processing her situation and it must’ve showed because she quickly added: “We left Nicaragua fifty days ago.”

“Por qué?”

“My community very dangerous,” she said and wiped away tears, “I left—my home, my work—for them, for my children.”

And then, as best as she could, she told me about their journey, first by bus, then on foot, and finally stowed away in the back of a delivery truck. Seeking asylum, they’d been separated and detained at the border and then eventually reunited and released on her own recognizance to report back at a later date.

She pulled a cell phone out of her back pocket and showed me the documents that corroborated her story, the first one stamped with her mug shot. They arrived on a Monday and were living in the basement of an acquaintance less than a minute’s walk from the church. Literally, a stone’s throw.

“Do you have any food?” I asked her.

“No.”

“Do you have a job lined up?”

“No.”

“Do you have a lawyer—an abogado?”

“No.”

“What about your children—are they registered for school?”

She shook her head and appeared overwhelmed.

“What are you going to do?”

This time she had an answer.

“I prayed and I prayed all last night,” she said, and she’d suddenly stopped crying and looked both serious and euphoric. “I prayed and finally God spoke. He answered me, and God said to me to come here.”

“Here?”

She nodded.

“God said to me that he’d make you help us.”

“He did, did he?”

And she smiled and shook her head and said “Yes.”

She said “Yes” emphatically, like she’d just witnessed a miracle.

“Isn’t that just like God,” I muttered under my breath, “he knows I don’t have time for one more thing and so he sends you my way.”

“Como?” she asked, confused by my mumbling to myself.

“Never mind,” I said, “it sounds like Jesus is determined for us to help you so what choice do I have?”

“None,” she said matter-of-factly, “no choice,” like it had been a serious question.

Just as it is essential to pay attention to what Paul does and does not stipulate about the law in his syllogism, it is critical to recall what Paul has heretofore said about love.

When you do, you realize this summons is even more burdensome than it sounds. Remember, Paul writes to the church in Rome around the year 55AD, nearly a half century before the evangelist composed the Gospel of John; consequently, Paul’s auditors did not know how Jesus, “on the evening when his hour had come,” set forth foot washing as the paradigmatic form of love.

Likewise, the Christians at Rome were not privy to Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians so they had not heard that “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” Paul has not told them as he told the churches in Galatia that “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love…”

When it comes to love, the Romans’s only reference point is what Paul has already told them in his epistle.

And thus far, what Paul has said about love Paul has said about God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord. This love, Paul has declared to the church at Rome, “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been gifted to us [through baptism].”

The love with which we are to love, the love which is the summing up of the law, the love which is our always-outstanding-debt to everybody, is a love beyond human possibility. It is a love that is innate to no one under the Power of Sin. It is a love that must flood our sin-hardened hearts exactly because it is love without regard for deserving. The love that has been poured into our hearts in order to be poured out onto others— Paul says in the very next verse that it is love for the weak, for the ungodly, for sinners and enemies, and even for those at enmity with God. Martin Luther says in his Large Catechism that the commandments are “blessed revelations of our good, delightful to follow.”

Maybe the law is a delight to follow.

But this love with which we are to love?

This law for life under grace?

It is a whole other order of obligation.

“What choice do I have?” I asked Carolina five years ago this fall.

“None,” she said matter-of-factly, “no choice.”

And just like that, we were obliged to act.

Meredith, our Children’s Director, found games to occupy the kids while they waited. Peter put down what he was doing and left to stuff his trunk with food for them. And I stared at the fourteen items I had on my To Do list for the day as I waited on hold, making calls all day long for Carolina, connecting her with the county, finding her a lawyer, locating services, resourcing her three kids. I hassled a few of you for the cash for a down payment on an apartment.

When we drove them home later, I carried bags of food inside and I gave her my cell number and I told her that if there was anything else she needed to call me.It was the sort of compassionate gesture you make to someone when you don’t really expect them to take you up on the offer.

Later that night I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize.

“This is Carolina,” it said, “thank you to you and your church.”

“De nada.”

And then I watched the text bubbles roll up and down as she texted another message. “The school say I need to go to Central Office to register my children.”

“How are you going to get there?” I texted back.

“I prayed,” she replied, “and God said you should take me.”

“He did, did he?”

“Si.”

And then the next text quickly followed.

“God say to tell you that I’m baptized. You have an obligation to me. As a brother. In Christ.”

“That’s the annoying inconvenience of worshipping a living, loquacious God,” I typed but didn’t send.

Over a year ago, I stood outside in the cemetery and I watched Mike,  weighing perhaps no more than one hundred pounds soaking wet, slowly fill a grave while a family wept.

Wheezing from the effort, Mike dusted the mud off his pants and then quickly left to go package food at the church’s mission center. But Mike was not alone with us that afternoon. I remember more than a dozen of you gave up the better part of your Thursday to get the dead guy where he needed to go and get the living he left behind where they needed to be. And here’s the stunning fact. Not a one of you— neither Mike nor the rest— knew the dearly departed or his family.

On the way back through the graveyard, the deceased’s daughter commented to me about the work of love the church had extended to her father, a stranger to all of us.

“I’m surprised so many people would show up to help someone they didn’t know,” she said, “It’s remarkable.”

“It’s a miracle,” I mumbled.

“I’m just surprised this is how people would choose to spend a Thursday.”

“I suspect they felt like they had any choice in the matter,” I replied.

“Prophecies will come to an end,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Tongues will stop. Knowledge will cease. But Love will never end.”

It’s another syllogism disguised as a song.

Major Premise: Love will never end.

Minor Premise: Love does not contradict the law.

Conclusion: Therefore, the law cannot be refuted.

And so Paul speaks of its fulfillment.

On the law, Robert Jenson writes:

“God’s work on creatures is not random but morally purposeful. He creates and redeems us to be this and not that…It is in fact but the other side of a radical doctrine of sin and new creation that our understanding of the commandments themselves can be simple and straightforward: God tells us what he has made us to be and will yet make of us.”

God tells us what he has made us to be and will yet make of us.”

Simply—

Our love of God takes place as an event.Our love of God is the event of our loving the other.Time can be as eternity— this is what it means to know what time it is.

In other words, you can do this. Indeed you have no choice. Well, let’s be clear here. If you don’t want to owe everybody an always outstanding debt of love, then hear the good news. These words are not for anyone. Paul is writing to believers. If you want to be one of those— here’s the bad news— then he is writing to you.

Paul is writing to believers.And if you want to be one of those, then Paul is summoning you to what for any other person is beyond human possibility.

But for you it’s not an impossibility.

For you it’s an inevitability.

How?

As Luther unpacks this inevitability:

“By your baptism, you have been so joined to Christ it is as though one person were made of the two of you…so that by faith you can say, “I am Christ, that is, Christ’s righteousness, obedience, and life is mine,” and Christ can say: “I am that sinner, his sins, her death, are mine because they cling to me and I to them;" for baptism binds us into one flesh and bone.”

Baptism binds Christ and you into one flesh and bone.

It is another syllogism hiding in the mystery of you baptism.

Major Premise: By water and the Spirit, you have been clothed with Jesus Christ.

Minor Premise: And we know for certain that Jesus can love others to hell and back.

Therefore: You can pour out onto others the love God has poured into your heart.

Five years ago this fall, at the end of a long week helping a family that showed up at our door, I mentioned all the details to Dottie, our secretary.

And Dottie replied, “In order to be a pastor, you must have to really enjoy helping people in need.”

“Enjoy?” I asked, “Do you know many people in need? Most of them aren’t that enjoyable.”

“Then why did you choose to do it?”

“Choose? I’m a Christian, no different than you— what choice did I have?”

In his book Paul and the Gift, John Barclay writes:

“Christian life is an impossible newness given as an unfitting gift…everything that can be said about Christian action, obedience, and obligation arises from this generative basis because the very life that believers now live is created and sustained by the resurrection of Christ…who enables and shapes their patterns of behavior…Hence, the obligation now incumbent on believers is not to “gain” grace (or salvation), nor to win another installment of grace. There is a only single grace of eternal life that runs from the Christ-event to eternity not a series of “graces” won by increases in sanctification…what is given to believers is not a new set of competencies added to their previous capacities: what is given is a death [baptism] and the emergence from that death of a new self…thus Paul gives genuine exhortations to agents who have been genuinely freed.”

Like Israel, you have been set free for joyful obedience. And like Israel, the Lord feeds you for the journey ahead. So come to the table. Eat up.You need all the sustenance you can get— you’ve got an everlasting debt to repay.

In fact, it’s another syllogism:

Major Premise: The love of Jesus knows no limits.

Minor Premise: The bread and the wine are his real presence.

Therefore: Believers, be warned. This incongruous gift— loaf and cup coupled with faith— is strongly, strangely obliging.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

The Preacher's Undertaking

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber!

“Deaths are not cumulative. They’re compounding.”

Christopher Brewer is an Anglican priest at St. Mary’s in Chattanooga. He’s also a regular interlocutor at Speakeasy Theology. I’ve very much enjoyed his candor and thoughtfulness and I have much to learn from him.

A while ago now, Chris pinged me to say that he’d like to have a conversation about death, dying, and funeral preaching. I asked my Ken Sundet Jones to join us, adding age to youth and beauty. I know these are subjects over which I’ve labored as a preacher and I suspect the same is true for others so we decided to record the conversation for the sake of others.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, the speakers explore the complexities of dealing with death and dying, particularly in the context of pastoral care. They discuss the challenges faced by pastors when navigating their roles as caregivers for their families and congregations during times of grief. The importance of truth-telling in funerals, the art of crafting eulogies, and the need for emotional honesty are emphasized. The conversation also touches on the significance of memories and the role of the pastor in providing comfort and guidance during these difficult times. In this conversation, the speakers explore the complexities of funerals, grief, and the role of pastoral care in navigating death. They discuss the importance of truth in addressing loss, the significance of rituals, and the need for community support. The conversation emphasizes the promise of eternal life and the challenges faced by those in pastoral roles when dealing with grief and expectations from families.

Takeaways

Death and dying are central themes in pastoral care.

Pastors often struggle with being caregivers for their own families.

Accompaniment in grief is crucial for families.

Eulogies should reflect the truth of the deceased's life.

Honesty in funerals helps convey the gospel's truth.

Family dynamics can complicate the grieving process.

Memories can serve as a powerful tool in eulogies.

Pastors must balance emotion with the message they deliver.

Theological reflections on death are important for pastoral care.

Truth-telling is essential in ministry, especially during funerals. It's easier for them to entrust their loved one to the Lord if they think that promise is true.

Funerals can serve as moments of evangelism.

Pastors often face the challenge of addressing grief in a meaningful way.

Death is a constant presence in the lives of congregants.

The dying process can be seen as a liturgy that helps people grieve.

It's important to find the right time to address theological beliefs about death.

Pastoral care requires accepting that you will disappoint people.

Honesty and truth are crucial when addressing death and dying.

Conversations about dying should be approached with grace and humor.

Community support is vital for both the dying and those who grieve.

Sound Bites

"What does it mean to be with those who are dying?"

"It's difficult to be a pastor to your family."

"Death lingers there, it hovers."

"It's easier for them to entrust their loved one to the Lord."

"Funerals become a moment of evangelism."

"I would rather do 10 child deaths than one wedding."

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

We Cannot Take His Word about the First Being Last and the Last First as His Last Word to Us

(Visible Words by Chris E.W. Green)

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber!

Notice— to the list Jesus adds a brand-new commandment. Along with, “Don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness” he adds “don’t defraud.” 

The lectionary Gospel passage for Sunday is Mark 10.17-31.

“Good teacher,” the rich man beckons Jesus. But Jesus refuses the compliment, “Why call me good?  None is good but God alone.” Luther says that Jesus comes dangerously close to denying his divinity in this exchange.

Jesus didn’t scold the rich man for his question. Quite the opposite, he proceeded to give a list of what needed doing: “You know the commandments,” he said.

Why tally up commandments if there was nothing to be done? 

And to the list Jesus adds a brand-new commandment, at least, according to the best manuscript tradition. Along with, “Don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness” he adds “don’t defraud.” 

Was this a hint; was the rich man enjoying ill-gotten gains? At any rate, the man replies, “Teacher, I’ve kept them all, plus the one you’ve added.”

Read more

Selling All His Stuff Would Not Have Been the Last Law

If you appreciate the work, pay it forward. Literally! Become a paid subscriber.

It’s the very nature of the law that if the rich, young ruler had gone and sold all his stuff and given the money to the poor, he would’ve discovered there was yet one more thing for him to do.

Unless, of course, he realized that standing before him was the God at the End of all those commandments.

The lectionary Gospel passage this Sunday is Mark 10.17-31.

You know the story.

This blue-blooded, honor roll brat asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit the Kingdom of heaven?”

After replying to Jesus that he’s kept all the commandments since his youth— he’s kept them all since his youth, okay— Jesus tries to bring the well-heeled kid to his knees.

“Go,” Jesus says, “Liquidate all your assets. Empty out the attic. Sell the timeshare. Get rid of it all. Give the money to the poor and then come follow me.”

I once preached on this text for a baccalaureate service after which, during the reception in the fellowship hall, the father of one of the graduating seniors approached me nervously.

“Let me get one thing straight, preacher,” he said, smacking cake frosting in his mouth.

“Sure thing,” I said, “What’s on your mind?”

“Jesus only said that to the one guy, right? He only said ‘sell everything you own’ the one time, right? To that one guy? He didn’t, like, say that to everybody did he?”

There’s an even more remarkable feature in the text than the one to which the nervous father pointed; namely, Jesus does not reject the premise of the rich guy’s question.

Jesus does not reject the premise of the rich guy’s question.

Though you can only inherit a gift, Jesus nonetheless gives him something to do.

Read more

Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty

If you appreciate the work, pay it forward. Literally! Become a paid subscriber.

“If “politics,” in a general way, refers to the deliberate judgments and decisions ordering our corporate existence, then our Christian calling is to limit our politics to the boundaries of our actual created lives and to the goods that stake out these limits: our births, our parents, our siblings, our families, our growing, our brief persistence in life, our raising of children, our relations, our decline, our deaths. Christian politics is aimed at no more and no less than the tending of these “mortal goods.”

Here is a conversation with the theologian Ephraim Radner.

Ephraim Radner (PhD, Yale University) is professor emeritus of historical theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Profound Ignorance, All Thy Lights Combine: Figural Reading in the Anglican Tradition, Time and the Word, A Time to Keep, A Brutal Unity, The End of the Church, and Leviticus in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. A former church worker in Burundi and an Anglican priest, he has served parishes in various parts of the United States and has been active in the affairs of the global Anglican Communion.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, Ephraim Radner discusses his life journey, academic interests, and the motivations behind his book 'Mortal Goods.' He reflects on the importance of understanding the Good Samaritan parable in the context of political engagement and the moral imperatives of helping others. Radner shares insights on parenting, cultural influences on young people, and the concept of Christian indifferentism. He emphasizes the significance of mortal goods in our lives and critiques the inflated hopes placed on political systems. Ultimately, he expresses a nuanced hope for the church and the future, grounded in the goodness of God.

Takeaways

Ephraim Radner shares his journey from Berkeley to Denver.

The Good Samaritan parable is often misinterpreted in modern politics.

Radner emphasizes the importance of mortal goods in life.

Cultural values can lead to a sense of insufficiency in young people.

The church has a responsibility to convey the goodness of life.

Political engagement should focus on immediate, local relationships.

Radner critiques the notion of 'betterment' in political discourse.

He argues for a more grounded understanding of Christian vocation.

The pandemic highlighted the need for recalibrating our focus as a church.

Hope for the church lies in its ability to encounter God in everyday life.

Sound Bites

"I wanted to write to them about what I thought was important."

"The Good Samaritan has moved easily into being an image of the imperative."

"Nothing is ever enough. Nothing is ever satisfied."

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

“You”

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber!

You can boil the whole promise of Jesus down to one word, “You.”

Luke 23:43

St. Dysmas Lutheran Church: South Dakota State Penitentiary, Sioux Falls, SD

Here is a sermon by my friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones of Grand View University. Ken is a part of the Iowa Preachers Project with me. FYI: St. Dysmas is the thief on the cross to whom the Lord promised paradise on Good Friday.

Grace to you and peace, my friends, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Let me start with a question for you this afternoon.

What’s your favorite Bible verse?

Maybe that’s not such a great place to start. It assumes you know your Bible well enough and that you’ve been steeped in the faith long enough that you actually have a set of Bible verses you know from memory.

That’s a big assumption, and we all know what they say happens when you assume something: it makes an ass out of u and me.

Maybe some other time we can take up the question of how many asses are present in this room. But for now let’s just say no one knows anything, so I’ll tell you what some of the most popular Bible verses are.

Lots of folks like “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

That’s a good one, but it get misinterpreted all the time to mean “Because of Jesus I’ve gotta be strong.” But St.Paul wrote those words in prison, and he meant “I can get through the indignity and horror and boredom and being reduce to nothing, because the only thing I can count on is Jesus.”

Other folks like the verse from the prophet Jeremiah, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

That’s a good one to have memorized, especially if you think God is an architect with a blueprint for living. The problem is, as the musician Jason Isbell sings, God “is like a pipe bomb ready to blow.”

All the prosperity and the blessed future come after the hard stuff the world harms us with.

The most famous verse that people like to write on a piece of tag board and hold up in the end zone of NFL games for tv cameras to catch is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

I like it that God saves the world.

That’s nice as a general idea, but what about me?

Am I included in that?

Personally I’d probably be more apt to like you if your favorite Bible verse were from Psalm 137 where it says “Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks.”

At least that’s an honest sentiment without getting all pious and cloyingly religious.

Or how about Peter’s reply in Act, chapter 2, to the accusation that he disciples are half-snockered: “These guys aren’t drunk like you assume [there’s that assumption again], because it’s just 9 o’clock in the morning.” If that’s your favorite Bible verse, it at least reveals to the world that you have a sense of humor and aren’t afraid to act the role of the ass in the drama playing out here.

Let’s go back to square one and say you’ve never opened a Bible and need a Bible verse to strengthen you in your days as a guy who’s been placed in custody, adjudicated, declared guilty, and sentenced to spend your days living behind these walls. You could do no better than having this one sentence from our Gospel reading memorized and ready to take out of your brain when you feel reduced to nothing: Jesus says to the guy hanging next to him, a guy who’s been taken into custody, adjudicated, declared guilty, and sentenced to die, a guy who bears the same name as this congregation,

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Of course, Jesus’ words are an utterly ridiculous thing to say. St. Dysmas is hanging on a cross, for crying out loud. He’s nailed to two perpendicular wooden planks, to die a slow agonizing death. And to make it all the more humiliating, unlike every picture of crucified people you’ve ever seen, Dysmas and Jesus were crucified stripped naked to make sure there was literally no cover for what they were accused of thievery and crimes against the state. What hope is there when you’re in pain and have laid bare for all the world to see your figurative and literal junk?

No other Bible verse will do. St. Dysmas doesn’t need the cheerleading of Paul’s “I can do all things.” He doesn’t need grand talk of plans, when there’s no time to execute them because he’s being executed.

And who freaking care if God loves the world when you’re a very particular and insignificant person facing the biggest, worst thing you could face?This is when you need a Lord hanging on a cross next to you who can make a wild and ridiculous promise like “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus’ words to Dysmas function as a gate our Lord opens to bring a convicted thief into something Dysmas had never imagined for himself. Jesus’ promise here is that St. Dysmas, the guilty one finds himself trading places with the innocent one hanging next to him. Jesus takes on all of Dysmas brokenness and sin, his early life of petty pilfering, his history of grand theft auto, his knowledge that he can’t deny it been all taking and no giving. And in return Jesus opens his hand on the cross and give Dysmas everything that’s his to give: life, salvation, faith, spotless purity, a clean record, and a paradise where you don’t have to communicate by kite.

But if “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” is too long a Bible verse to remember, let me reduce it to a single word that you hear day in and day out (and knowing some of you guys and your own histories, it isn’t always said with kind intent).

Boil the whole promise of Jesus down to one word, “You.”

You hear the word you slung at you in so many ways. “You, inmate, get moving.” Or “You need to do this or that.” Or if you grew up with alcoholic blue-talking West River ranchers for great uncles like I did, you might be nosy familiar with the word “you” if it has an f-bomb placed in front of it. Of course every one of you has heard “you” at the end of the phrase “I sentence…you.” So often that word “you” comes as either command or judgment. So rarely does it come as a blessing.

But here on Golgotha Jesus shapes his mouth around the word “you” like a lover whispering sweet somethings in your ears, all you brothers of St. Dysmas. Jesus turns to you hanging on your cross not to give you a plan, not to make you strong, not to love and save the world, but to make you his. With the word “you” he names you, the particular, real you who lives in a place where everywhere but this room you’re a number on a set of tan scrubs.

You will be with me in paradise. And your pass through its sally port is his declaration of you. If you’re baptized you know the ticket is stamped with your name. If you’re not baptized, I know a certain pastor whose initials are Jeff Backer who’s ready with some water and a promise that will allow you to know with certainty that you are the St. Dysmas Jesus dies next to today.

I assume you need this word and promise, because I know the sentence God has sent down from his judgment seat on me. I, too, am guilty as sin. But I know our God occupies both a judgment seat and a mercy seat. I know of a God who emptied himself so thoroughly that he’d be found on a cross about to breathe his last death rales next to the likes of us.

He turnstile his bloody, thorn-crowned head your way and stretches out one solitary finger in your direction and utters across two thousand years that one specific pronoun that all of history hinges on for you today: you. “You are mine. You I will not let go. You are the one I’ve come for. You and your loss and death are the one I’m dying for.”

Have you ever had anything like that given to you so freely, so fully, so unreservedly?

Never was there a promise with fewer strings attached. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Even as a thief hanging on a cross that’ll let you breathe easy.

And easy is what paradise is known for. When you’re hanging there about to die on the cross, Jesus has you where he wants you, because you’ve assumed the position: arms stretched wide by the world to humiliate and kill you, but from Jesus’ vantage they are arms open wide to welcome his promise. He doesn’t care if your hands are nailed and your arms are immovable, because he’s never been concerned with you choosing him.

With his “you” he declares his choice and wraps himself around you to carry you in. If anyone ever asks you what you favorite Bible verse is, you can says it’s just a part of Luke 23:43, one single word, “You.” It carries all the world’s judgment in it but bestows all of God's mercy and paradise with it, too. Amen.

And now ma6 the peace which far surpasses all our human thieving understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus in paradise. Amen.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

L'Chaim in the Midst of Death

If you appreciate the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Seriously, do it!

On the year anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in Israel, I thought I would post the first conversations I had with friends Liel Liebowitz of Tablet Magazine and Rabbi Joseph Edelheit.

Liel was born in Tel Aviv, immigrated to the United States in 1999, and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2007. In 2014, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. A veteran of the Israeli Defense Force, Liel is now Editor at Large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One.

Joseph A. Edelheit served as a rabbi in Reform synagogues for thirty years, earned a doctorate in Christian theology, and retired as an Emeritus Professor of Religious and Jewish Studies. He has served as a prison chaplain, on a Presidential Advisory Council for HIV/AIDS, created a multi-faith orphanage in rural India for children with HIV/AIDS, and removed five swastikas constructed into the original 1931 facade of a Catholic cathedral in rural Minnesota.

Tamed CynicL'Chaim in the Midst of TerrorismTamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, consider joining the posse of paid subscribers…Read morea year ago · 5 likes · 4 comments · Jason MicheliTamed CynicListen to Us!Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, consider joining the posse of paid subscribers…Read morea year ago · 9 likes · Jason Micheli

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

The Great Divine Minus Sign

If you appreciate the work, pay it forward. Literally! Become a paid subscriber.

Romans 13.1-7

The Monday before we kill him the begrudgers try to entrap Jesus with a question, “Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?”

The tax in question is the imperial head tax, which Rome levied for the privilege of being a citizen of the empire. The tax was payable only with a silver denarius from the imperial mint. Before Jesus steps into the trap they’ve set for him, he asks to see the coin in question.

And notice—  Jesus does not carry one.

"Bring me a denarius and let me see it,” Jesus replies.

They fumble in their pockets until someone in the crowd produces the coin. Jesus looks it over before finally answering.

The Gospel of Mark reports that upon hearing his response the Pharisees and the Herodians “were utterly astounded by Jesus.”

But why?

Even Madison and Jefferson managed to clear this easy hurdle. What was so bewildering about Christ’s answer? It sounds as straightforward as it does commonsensical. Evidently not, for they reacted to his response with utter amazement.

Why?

Exactly what is the astonishment hidden in his apparently anodyne answer?

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Give to God what belongs to God.”How is this an utterly amazing answer?

Indeed how is it not every bit the stabilizing compartmentalization to which the apostle Paul exhorts his auditors in his Epistle to the Romans:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

Nearly a century ago, under the duress of a different Caesar, the theologian Karl Barth composed a confession of faith that sounds like it contradicts both Jesus’s answer to the question about taxes and Paul’s command to submit to the governing authorities.

The opening salvo of the Barmen Declaration, written in response to the Nazification of the German Church, defiantly declares:

“Jesus Christ [not the Bible] is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death…Jesus Christ is God’s vigorous announcement of God’s claim upon our whole life.”

Karl Barth wrote the Barmen Declaration on behalf of the dwindling minority of Christians in Germany who publicly repudiated the authority of the Third Reich. Barth drafted the entire document while his colleagues slept off their lunchtime booze. “We reject the false doctrine,” Barth continued in the second thesis, “that there could be areas of our life in which we do not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords…With both its faith and its obedience, the Church must testify that it belongs to and obeys Christ alone.”

What happened to giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar?

Where did Paul’s summons to submit to the governing authorities go?

One of the teachers from whom I learned Karl Barth’s theology is Dr. George Hunsinger. Professor Hunsinger has a thick, white beard and usually wore reading glasses perched precariously at the end of his nose. Often his wife would sit at the back of the classroom and signal to him when it was time to wrap up so prone was he to lecture on and on, oblivious to the time.

I remember we were discussing Barth’s Barmen Declaration in class one morning, and Dr. Hunsinger, uncharacteristically, broke from his lecture and took off his reading glasses. His jovial countenance turned serious, and he said, seemingly at random though not random at all, “just outside the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria, immediately outside the walls of the concentration camp, there was and still is a Christian church.”

It was an 8:00 class but suddenly no one was fighting off a yawn.

He continued:

“Just imagine the prison guards and the commandant at that concentration camp probably went to that church on Sunday mornings and even Wednesday evenings. Every week they walked from gas chambers and gallows,  through razor wire, and past cattle cars to the church where they confessed their sins and received the assurance of pardon and prayed to the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ, and then they walked out of the church and went back to the camp and obeyed their orders to kill scores of Jews. And they did not think it in any way contradicted their self-identification as Christians.”

“How does that work?” a classmate joked, trying to take the edge off.

And Dr. Hunsinger did not immediately respond. But he did not need to reply. Because anyone who had matriculated all the way to seminary already knew an answer. Taken at face value, the Bible told them so:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

Commenting on this passage from Paul’s letter, my teacher Beverly Gaventa writes:

“No one takes up a text innocently…These seven verses rank among the most difficult in a letter that overflows with interpretative challenges. Interpretations of this particular passage have a sustained and often troubling history that shapes readers and responses.”

No one takes up a text innocently.

Michael Cassidy is a white evangelist from Johannesburg, South Africa, who founded an ecumenical organization aimed at reconciliation called the African Enterprise. When he was eighteen years old, Cassidy converted to Christianity while in the United Kingdom, crediting the Anglican priest and theologian John Stott with his transformation. Cassidy started African Enterprise after he graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary in California. Starting in the middle of the 1960’s, Cassidy began holding multiracial evangelistic crusades in apartheid South Africa. Years later, Billy Graham received a letter from Nelson Mandela. While he was imprisoned on Robben Island, the gospel had profoundly affected Mandela, prompting him to reach out to the famous preacher. Adverse to getting himself involved in allegedly “radical politics,” Graham asked Michael Cassidy to visit Nelson Mandela in his stead.

Cassidy met with Mandela during which the political prisoner pressed Cassidy to network with other Christian leaders and push for the end of apartheid. Cassidy took Mandela’s request as the call of God upon him. And immediately he set out to work. As a result, Cassidy eventually received a long-sought invitation to a meeting with South Africa’s president.

Recalling his experience, Michael Cassidy writes:

“On October 1985, in an interview with President P.W. Botha in Pretoria, in a private meeting, with the earnest request that apartheid be dismantled: I was immediately aware, on entry into the room, that this was not to be the sort of encounter for which I had prayed. No sooner had I entered than the President stood up at his desk, picked up a Bible, and began to read at me a passage of Romans 13, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.” President Botha evidently imagined that this passage was enough to justify unequivocal support of the Nationalist Government’s apartheid policy.”

No one takes up a text innocently.

The first seven verses of Romans 13 were deployed against Martin Luther King Jr by white moderate clergy as King sat in a Birmingham jail. Attorney General Jeff Session invoked them to quell criticism of the Trump administration’s border policies. In the summer of 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer attempted to stave off his execution by appealing to the Judge Advocate on the grounds of his agreement with these verses.

To Judge Roeder, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“It is hard for me to see how my earlier conflicts with the Gestapo…have now led to the point when I can be thought capable of a severe failing in the obvious duties of a German towards his people and nation. I still cannot believe this charge has been made against me. If true, would I have offered myself as an army chaplain immediately after the outbreak of war? If anyone wants to learn something of my conception of the duty of Christian obedience towards the authorities, he should read my exposition of Romans 13 in my book The Cost of Discipleship. The appeal to subjection to the will and the demands of authority for the sake of Christian conscience has probably seldom been expressed more strongly than there.”

“Even if guilt hangs on almost every crown…government is an order of God not in its origination but in its being.”

Not only is it surprising to hear the famed, modern-day martyr speaking of the Christian necessity for obedience to empire, it is likewise disorienting that the apostle Paul makes what feels like a jarring turn in his epistle.

Do not forget:The author of Romans 13.1-7 frequently suffered unjust imprisonment at the hands of the authorities, endured flogging at least three times, knew of Caesar’s edict to ban all Jews from Rome, and eventually died— like his Lord— under an imperial executioner.

Nevertheless, Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

There was a woman in my first congregation named Rebecca.

Rebecca had thick brown hair and a stern, drawn face. Rebecca wore round, wire glasses over her fierce, sad eyes. Rebecca was a second generation Christian.

Her parents had been Jews who escaped occupied France only because a Russian Orthodox priest and nun supplied them with counterfeit baptismal certificates. They came to the United States as Christians and for their daughter the faith became more than a disguise. Nevertheless, Rebecca struggled at the points where her family’s story seemed to collide with the scriptures.

One Sunday after worship, she made her way through the line in the Narthex and approached me with her bulky Harper Collins Study Bible laying open in her hands like an animal she had found on the side of the road. Rebecca had turned in the Bible to Romans 13. I looked down and saw that in the margins of the thin, crinkly paper, next to these seven verses, she had scrawled in angry, red ink, “What the Hitlers? What about the Stalins and Pol Pots? What about the Wallaces and Husseins…” Her last scribble was followed not by a final question mark but by an ellipsis…

Because it is ever thus.

No one takes up a text innocently.

Paul’s transition in this passage strikes the hearer as so malapropos that the ancient church fathers quickly moved to smooth it of its apparent offense. Polycarp of Smyrna qualified the passage by adding fine print, testifying to a Roman proconsul that Paul “taught Christians to render all due honor to rulers and authorities appointed by God, in so far as it does us no harm.” Others, like the church father Origen, sought to limit the text’s claims by pairing it with other New Testament texts, such as Peter’s response when the cops tell him they ordered him no longer to teach in the name of Jesus, “We must obey God rather than human beings.” Still others paired Romans 13 with Revelation 13. Whereas Paul the apostle commands submission to the governing authorities, John the Revelator depicts Rome and its rulers as sea monsters.

It’s as though, depending upon who is in the White House and how the administration aligns with your politics, you can pick your passage: submit to the ruling authorities or resist the monsters.

But!

Is Paul’s summons so different than Peter’s retort, “We must obey God rather than men?”

Is Revelation’s depiction of Rome really at odds with Jesus’s answer, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Give to God what belongs to God?”

Remember, Paul did not number his sentences.

The tradition only later added chapter divisions to his letter. Therefore, the transition is not as abrupt as it first sounds. The first verse of “chapter thirteen” is inextricable from the final verse of “chapter twelve. In context, these verses should read: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Let every person submit to the ruling authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”

It’s about overcoming evil.It’s not about endorsing the status quo.

Furthermore—

Like the twelfth, the thirteenth chapter follows from Paul’s doxology at the end of Romans 11, in which he gives praise to the primacy of the divine agency, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.” Thus, Paul’s point is that just as God is at work transforming those who are in Christ (chapter twelve), God is also at work in and with and through all realms of life, including the governing authorities (chapter thirteen). Hence, the agency of God supersedes even the ruling authority of Rome.

The epistle is still— here— about the divine agency.

The Lord is more powerful than the sea monster, no matter his name!

As Beverly Gaventa writes, “The governing authorities are outside the church, but they are not outside God’s grasp.” And it’s this grasp of God that puts Paul’s notion of Christian obedience in its proper place. That there is no authority above God means that God is the one to whom true and ultimate obedience is owed. In this way, the passage echoes the epistle’s first eight chapters in which Paul inveighed against humanity’s refusal to give God his proper due. Paul’s comment that “there is no authority except the authority that comes from God” is a far cry from implying blank-check approval of the authorities’s every action.

Indeed!

Even by mentioning God in the same breath as Caesar’s network of authority— even by mentioning God—even by uttering the name, Paul is proclaiming much more than we might suppose.

“How does that work?” my classmate joked, trying to take the edge off picturing believers like ourselves walking past gas chambers and gallows on their way to church.

Dr. Hunsinger let our discomfort linger for a few moments.

Finally, he answered, “It happens when you evict Jesus Christ from every place but the privacy of your heart.”

His righteous anger was like an ember warming inside him.

Then he erupted:

“Why would you give Jesus just your heart? Why would you give him your heart only when EVERYTHING BELONGS TO HIM?!”

“Teacher, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we or shouldn’t we?”

The denarius was the equivalent of a quarter.

On one side, Caesar imprinted his image.

On the other side, Caesar inscribed a claim.

The claim on the coin was the same claim Caesar had first inscribed on the monument Res Gestae; namely, the claim that the emperor was divine.

“Teacher, Should we or shouldn’t we?”

Jesus answers, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Give to God what belongs to God.”

And they are “utterly amazed by his answer.”

They’re astonished because merely by positing God as an alternative to Caesar, Jesus has undermined Caesar’s assertion of autonomous authority.

Go ahead, give him his money back. It’s got his face on it. But don’t think for a second he’s the authority over you he alleges. He is not your God! He’s a sea monster!

In his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Karl Barth summarizes this passage with a simple algebraic expression wherein State, Church, Law, and Society are represented by the letters a, b, c, and d.

Barth brackets the expression a+b+c+d within parentheses:

(a+b+c+d)

Then, Barth adds to the expression what he calls “the great divine minus sign.”

— (a+b+c+d).

Barth writes:

“The divine minus sign outside the bracket means that all human principles and politics, all orthodoxies and -isms, all principalities and powers, dominions and authorities, are subjected to the authority and judgment of God.”

Rebecca stood before me outside the sanctuary. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun. Her Bible lay flopped open in her hands, bleeding red ink. She handed it to me. She watched me look over the verses and read her questions in the margins.

“You know my story,” she said, “About my parents.”

I nodded.

“I can’t just shrug my shoulders and read past passages like this one.”

I nodded again.

“Any help?”

I closed the Bible and handed it back to her and said:

“You know, to us, it sounds like Paul is saying more than many of us are comfortable. And a hell of a lot of Christians and politicians have used the sound of it to suit their own ends. But you’ve got to remember Paul wrote this at a time when the head of the government claimed to be God. That's what got Paul killed by the government. What he says there about God and the government’s authority— it actually demotes Caesar from the throne where he wants to sit and the headspace he wants to occupy.”

I have been a pastor for twenty-four years. In all that time, guess how many people I have known who left their political party because its platform no longer aligned with their Christian convictions.

Just one— Gretchen makes one.

But in all that time, I have known more congregants than I can count who left the church because the church no longer aligned with their politics.

Paul meant this passage as gospel.

Paul intended this passage to proclaim the promise that above the antinomies of our history, despite the contradictions of our leaders and the corruption of our institutions, no matter how dark the times appear or ineffective our endeavors, there is a Power above all powers, an Authority above all authorities, a Redeemer who will trump every ruler. So take heart, be of good cheer, and give to God your joyful obedience.

Paul meant this passage to be gospel.But for us this scripture functions as law.

Lex semper accusast. 

The law always accuses.

In Paul’s day—Caesar had to kill Christians for refusing to bestow divine status upon him.In our day—Christians eagerly give what Caesar demanded.

Christians impute to politics a place of ultimate importance that belongs to God alone. We will exit the Body of Christ before we will leave the red or blue tents pitched by our Caesars. We have promoted the sea monster that Jesus and Paul so deftly demoted from the throne above every throne.

Don’t believe me?

How many days until Election Day?

How many days until All Saints?

Or Advent?

No one takes up a text innocently.Neither do we innocently take up politics.

Fortunately, the Lord is the Friend of Sinners.

And by his authority I can promise you the entire forgiveness of all your sins. What’s more, by his authority I can invite you to a table that is not for the innocent but for the guilty— for those guilty even of giving to Caesar what is God’s. So come, take and eat. For as they are Christ’s real presence, the loaf and the cup are the great, divine minus sign to all your sins.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Get more from Jason Micheli in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app