Jason Micheli's Blog, page 30

The Two Kingdoms as Gospel Correlative

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In preaching my way through the Epistle to the Romans, this Sunday brings me to Romans 13.1-7:

“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…

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One Way Love

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Hi Folks,

We have wrapped up our study of §33 of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. In a nutshell, it’s like Jesus says, “You did not choose me. I chose you.”

Up next, in light of the turning of the liturgical season, we’re going to study those topics the tradition has historically grouped under the category, “Last Things.”

First, we will spend some time with a chapter from Robert Jenson’s two volume Systematic Theology, “The Saints.”

You can read it here:

Jenson The Saints1.21MB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

We will follow this chapter with a look at the slim volume Jens edited, entitled The Last Things. Where Karl Barth writes in such a way as to suggest language can never capture the inexhaustible love of the triune God, Jens’ prose is concise but deceptively deep.

He writes theology like math.

Join us starting Monday night.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, the speakers delve into the profound themes of God's one-way love, the doctrine of election, and the nature of faith as a divine response. They explore the contrast between faith and enthusiasm, emphasizing that true faith is a gift from God rather than a human-generated effort. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding God's unchanging love and presence, the dynamic relationship between divine love and human autonomy, and the challenges posed by market-driven faith practices. Ultimately, the conversation calls for a deeper recognition of God's grace and the transformative power it holds in the lives of believers.

Takeaways

God's love is unconditional and eternal.

The doctrine of election emphasizes God's choice to love humanity.

Faith is a response to God's initiative, not a human effort.

Enthusiasm can sometimes overshadow genuine faith.

Understanding God's presence can alleviate fear and anxiety.

The nature of faith is to acknowledge God's reality and love.

Market-driven faith can distort the true message of the gospel.

God's love invites us into a transformative relationship.

The assurance of God's love empowers believers to live authentically.

Grace is the foundation of our relationship with God.

Sound Bites

"Help me make it through the night"

"God is not bound, he's free"

"Faith is a divinely created response"

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A Posture of Perfect Hatred

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The Old Testament passage assigned for this coming Sunday by the Revised Common Lectionary is Job 1:1, 2:1-10:

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and the accuser also came among them to present himself before the LORD. The LORD said to the accuser, "Where have you come from?" The accuser answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it." The LORD said to the accuser, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." Then the accuser answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that the man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." The LORD said to the accuser, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life."

So the accuser went out from the presence of the LORD and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself and sat among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Here’s a reflection on the Book of Job and the nature of suffering from my book, Cancer is Funny, thoughts I’ve had on my mind of late as I await additional tests.

Faith doesn’t provide a shot of optimism or a push of positive thinking, for faith in the cross and resurrection isn’t optimism; it’s against-all-odds, in-the-face-of-all-just-merit hope. Faith isn’t like all the steroid chasers tomy chemo-poisons, convincing me I can lick cancer because I’ve the Big Guy in my corner for the bout of my life. Cancer may have its practical benefits, but I’m not so sure faith does—at least, not in the way we typically imagine benefits.

Contrary to what most people assumed, my faith did not at all comfort me in the days of my first chemo cycle. It didn’t help me sleep easier at night, and it sure as hell did not silence the abacus in the back of my brain always doing the odds before me.

Nor did my faith provide any easy answers or assurances. Freud was wrong. My faith, I discovered, was not any kind of coping mechanism.

When you have stage-serious cancer, you realize how everyone assumes a rare, aggressive cancer diagnosis will beget the “Why me, God?” question à la the Book of Job, which in a few short weeks I had decided is a thoroughly dissatisfying story because Job never encounters anyone who’s hurting as much as he is.

Surprisingly, cancer doesn’t lead you to ask Job’s question any more than faith arms you with his answers. What cancer does is thrust you into a community of people you didn’t know existed—people who are hurting every bit as much, if not more than, you.

For example, there was a girl on my oncology ward. She was twenty-three and the mother of a two-week-old. She learned she had cancer—had it bad—during her delivery. I listened to her cry every night when they came to bring me my night meds.

The nurse I spoke to at my oncologist’s office, just before I started chemo, said I was one of thirty people she was scheduled to see that day alone. People of all shapes and sizes and situations.

And ages.

Cancer doesn’t make you wonder, “Why me, God?” Only a dick would get caught up with that kind of question. No, cancer throws in you the scrum and makes you ask, “Why them, God?”

Why us, God? Why this world? Which is the only possible world if the world, as my faith teaches me, is indeed the perfect expression of God’s infinite goodness. Why this world where a lion fulfilling its lion-ness leads to the lamb being slaughtered and where a few efficient tumorous cells fulfilling their design lead to cancer?

That was my problem with the book of Job, the Old Testament folktale in which God devastates Job with the loss of his family and home and afflicts him with painful illness in order to determine whether Job loves God for God’s own sake or because God had blessed Job with such an abundant life. As a preacher, I’ve never cared for the book of Job. The morality play nature of it makes God seem like an arbitrary prick, and when God does finally show and speak to Job from the whirlwind, God can’t bother to answer any of Job’s pained, plaintive questions.

With cancer, I discovered I disliked the book of Job for different reasons. For one, Job’s cast of characters is too small; the point of view is too limited. Job never so much as goes to the doctor’s office. Job never encounters anyone who is suffering as much as he is.

Cancer doesn’t lead you to ask, “Why me, God?” Cancer leads you to wonder why God, whom we call Light, can’t seem to enter or act in our world without casting shadows.

Faith wasn’t comforting or practical for me. For me, faith was more like that story where Jesus needs a do-over before healing a blind man. After Jesus’ initial try, the man says, “I see people. . . but they look like trees walking.” Faith was like that for me as I underwent chemo; faith was to have been touched by Christ only to have the world appear more bewildering than when I was blind. Like that story, faith got me wondering why God doesn’t seem to have gotten everything right in the first go-round.

Faith amidst my suffering instead put me in mind of others’ suffering, reminding me that Christ’s suffering wasn’t isolated or even unique. Rather, somehow summarized in Christ’s suffering and encompassed by it was the suffering of all those others who were crucified on the same day as he was. Faith was not useful, not in the sense my licensed clinical social worker encouraged.

Cross-shaped faith doesn’t cultivate a positive, productive attitude. It produces hatred, perfect hatred, toward the meaningless of all suffering, the absolute needlessness of sin, and the sheer unnatural emptiness of death, which the first Christian proclamation outs as our “last enemy.”

So while cancer proved useful in giving me dozens of jokes about my vagina, faith didn’t work for me in a similarly productive fashion.

What faith gave me is more like what my teacher David Bentley Hart calls a posture of perfect hatred, knowing that, in the suffering, dying faces I saw in the oncologist’s office and there on the cancer ward, I did not see the face of God.

Instead I saw God’s enemy, Death, against which the cross and empty tomb enlist my meager help. That’s not exactly “useful.”

But as we say in the church, it is the gospel.

The night after my surgery, while we waited for a word for the type of cancer in my body, I wrote this question and answer on my blog as a part of an online catechism I’d been writing:

Question 13: How should we speak of God?

With deep humility, realizing that even our best speech is nonsense when applied to God and, as sinners, we’re prone to project our feelings and wills upon God.

We should speak of God always realizing our best words fit God like a baby’s clothes fit on a grown-up. Our language for God is approximate without being at all adequate. For this reason, the best way to speak of God is to begin by saying what God is not (an approach called the via negativa):

God is not hate, for example.

God is not a man with a beard.

Or, God is not cancer.

When we arrive at a negative statement which we know is false (e.g., “God is not Love”), then we know we’ve hit upon something true.

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God is Never an Echo

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Hi Gang,

Here is the most recent conversation from our Adventures in Barth. I was not available so the audio is a little wonky (my bad). Suffer through it because the guys had good observations.

You can join us live tonight at 7:00 as we finish this section of Barth’s Dogmatics. Click here.

Heads up!

As the liturgical calendar begins its turn to All Saints and Advent, we will change up topics and writers. Starting next Monday, we will be discussing Robert Jenson’s chapter on “The Saints” from his Systematic Theology: The Works of God, which I will make available here on the short-stack. We will follow the “The Saints” with a discussion of a small volume Jens edited entitled The Last Things: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Eschatology. Once again, I will share that out to anyone interested.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, the speakers discuss various themes related to Karl Barth's theology, particularly focusing on the concepts of election, freedom, and the nature of God's love. They share personal updates, navigate technical difficulties with humor, and delve into the implications of Barth's ideas for understanding God's presence and action in the world. The discussion emphasizes the importance of living in the freedom of God's love and the transformative power of being in relationship with a loving God.

Takeaways

The beauty of life is celebrated in personal updates.

Technical difficulties can lead to humorous moments in conversation.

Karl Barth's theology emphasizes God's personal presence.

Election is about freedom and love, not determinism.

Perfect love casts out fear, allowing for genuine relationships.

The God who speaks and acts is central to understanding faith.

Living in the light of God's love transforms our actions.

Curiosity and wonder are essential in theological discussions.

Community and conversation are vital for understanding theology.

The journey of faith involves both questions and discoveries.

Sound Bites

"It's a beautiful day to be alive."

"God is never an echo."

"The nature of the eternal God is that he is personally present."

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What the Therefore is There For

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Romans 12.1-2, 9-16

Pay attention to the passive voice.

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

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

“These times will be made right,” he said, just days after Dylann Roof stormed into Mother Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015 and shot, nine parishioners gathered for a Bible study. The scripture passage for that night’s meeting was chosen by Myra Thompson, Mark 4:16: “Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.”

One of the nine victims was Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, the track coach at Goose Creek High School. In addition to coaching, she was one of the pastors at Mother Emmanuel. After her murder, her boss at Goose Creek High School insisted to a reporter, “These times will be made right.”

Not, “We will make these times right.”

Instead, “These times will be made right.”

Pay attention to the passive:

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

Remember—

Just as you do not number your sentences, neither did the apostle Paul number his own. The epistle’s chapter and verse divisions are a later addition. The Letter to the Romans is not an encyclopedia with gospel here and law there; the Letter to the Romans is a single gospel announcement from beginning to end. Thus, chapter twelve follows logically from the preceding passages and is not a sudden, jarring detour into To Do List Christianity.

This is what the therefore is there for.

The therefore is there in order to signal to Paul’s hearers that what follows relies logically upon what has come before.

As Fleming Rutledge argues:

“Romans 12, filled with imperatives, is much misunderstood because it is so frequently lifted out of its setting, with “therefore” ignored.”

Taken in isolation, this passage indeed sounds prescriptive. Without the therefore there, listeners might conclude Paul is suggesting that Christ’s shed blood is not enough to save sinners. Lifted out of its context, Romans 12 sounds like Paul is now preaching glawspel, muddling the gospel with the law.

A genuine, justified Christian must now do this, it can sound like Paul is saying.

A genuine, justified Christian must love enemies, must bless those who curse them, ought to be patient in suffering and should be ardent about their faith.

In fact, interpreters typically do preach the chapter’s second verse as if it heralded a break in Paul’s thought, being popularly construed as Paul’s move from proclamation to instruction.

As Fleming Rutledge writes:

Positing such a break in Paul’s thought “does not do justice to the radical nature of Paul’s gospel and it drains off much of the impact of what has gone before; indeed, it undermines it. Chapter 12 is grounded so firmly in the previous exposition that it cannot, or should not, be separated from it.”

The therefore is there for you to know that what proceeds is inseparable from what precedes it.

And the passage which immediately precedes Romans 12.1-2 is the gospel doxology that concludes Paul’s reflections on the Israel of God and the cosmic scope of Christ’s work. Just before this passage, Paul’s proclaims unequivocally the universality of God’s redemptive reach, “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.”

From him and through him and to him are all things.

This immediately precedes “therefore.”

And the primacy of the divine agency could not be less ambiguous.

Only four days after Dylann Roof stormed into Emmanuel AME and left six black women and three black men in a bloody pile in the church basement, the leaders of the congregation concluded that the only way to press forward was for them to go back to exactly what they'd done before, to do the Sunday after the shooting, what they had done the Sunday previous, worship the Lord Jesus Christ and proclaim the only word which has the power to open the future as promise rather than threat.

Preaching that Sunday at Mother Emanuel AME Church, the Reverend Norval Goff, an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, proclaimed that, “Through our proclamation of the gospel, on this day, a message will be sent to Satan.”

Once again, take note of the grammar.

In speaking gospel, preacher Goff pivoted to the passive voice.

“Through our proclamation, a message will be sent to the Enemy, the Prince of Lies, the Power of Sin and Death.”

A message will be sent.

The worshippers at Mother Emmanuel Church were not the ones sending the message. Later in his sermon, his voice roaring, Reverend Goff added, “Something wants to divide us, black and brown and white, but no weapon formed against us shall prosper.”

Notice:

The preacher didn't say Dylann Roof wanted to divide us.

He didn't say racists and bigots want to divide us.

“Something wants to divide us,” he said.

There's another agency at work in the world.

As Paul writes to the church at Ephesus— which should be everyone’s memory verse during election season:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

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

“God is using us,” he continued, “for good despite what the Enemy wills.”

Although this preacher used the active voice rather than the passive, he nevertheless made humanity the object of his sentences. Reverend Bowers insisted, “God is using us for good.”

We are being used by God for good.

The Sunday after the mass shooting, the service at Mother Emanuel Church began with a hymn, “You are the Source of my strength and you are the Strength of my life.”

Meanwhile—

As they sang at Emmanuel AME, the family of twenty-one year old Dylann Roof worshipped at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina. The pastor of St. Paul's read the names of the victims and the congregation prayed for them and their families.

The victimizer's family prayed for the victims and their families.

About the victimizer's family, the preacher at St. Paul told his listeners later— once again, pay attention to the passive— “They are shattered, but through their faith, they are being made strong.”

They are being made strong.

We are being used by God for good.

These times will be made right.

“From him and through him and to him are all things.”

It’s on the basis of this divine agency that the apostle makes his appeal, “Therefore, brothers and sisters…Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

In turning to the new life in Christ, Paul proclaims “that there is a power at work in redeemed human nature that is beyond human possibility.”

Paul is not prescribing behavior for those in Christ Jesus.

Paul is pointing to a power at work upon those in Christ Jesus.

A power beyond human possibility.

Paul makes clear he’s speaking of such a power by the word he selects, the same word the Gospels use to describe Jesus upon Mount Tabor when the Lord changes before Peter and the sons of Zebedee into whiteness and lightness and brightness.

The word Paul uses in verse two, the word translated into English as “be transformed” is actually the word metamorphosed.

Transfigured.

Do not be conformed to this world.

Be transfigured.

Even on Mount Tabor, transfiguration is a change only God can wreak.

Fleming Rutledge elaborates on this transfiguring power thusly:

“Conformity suggests being formed with, or by, this age of Sin and Death — being shaped by it and therefore lacking freedom — the situation personified in Romans chapter 5 as “Adam.” How do we escape such captivity? A typical response to this question would be to urge greater religious or moral effort.

But that is not the gospel.

How then are we to understand the source of transfiguration?

The Greek word translated “renewal” here means something much more drastic. Paul’s word anakainosis actually means “being completely taken over.” This is not a process that God begins in us, followed by his stepping aside to observe how we will respond. God is the power of this process from first to last. Put another way, renewal, in Paul’s gospel, can be defined also in terms of dikaiosyne, not simply to be declared righteous but to be actually made righteous by the rectifying power of God.

What may sound to us today like an imperative (“be transformed”) is actually a sort of description of something that has already happened in Christ. Romans 12 is preceded not only in the literal sense by the preceding chapters, but  by the story of Christ Jesus, the second Adam, and our incorporation into his reign through the baptismal “takeover.” The imperative is not only dependent upon but organically produced by the indicative, or declarative, proclamation: you have died with Christ; you have now been transferred into the new sovereignty with its guarantee of participation in the righteousness of God.”

In other words—

You don’t need to set a table in the presence of your enemies in order to be justified!

Whether you believe it or not, whether you can see it or not, because you are justified you already are becoming a person who sets a table in the presence of your enemies.

You are!

Already you are being made into a person who hates what is evil and holds fast to what is good. Already you are being transfigured into someone blesses those who curse you and gives drink to those who thirst.

“From the triune God and through the triune God and to the triune God are all things.”

All things— including you.

Just so, God is transfiguring you.

There is a divine agency at work in the world.

The Sunday after Dylann Roof shot nine at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Members of Citadel Baptist Church, a white Southern Baptist church with a long and complicated relationship with racism. Members of Citadel Church walked the mere steps from their church to Emanuel Church, and they placed purple daisies around the front of Emanuel. The Reverend David Walker, pastor of Citadel Baptist Church, explained the gesture thus to the New York Times.

Pay attention to the passive.

“Something compelled us to do this,” he said.

“From him and through him and to him are all things.”

Thus far in the Epistle to the Romans, Paul’s relentless emphasis has been on what God does. Why should we suppose that when he gets to this point in his letter, the apostle is suddenly talking about us? About what we do?

The therefore is there for you to know that the promise is the last word.The gospel is not followed by new law.Jesus is not a new Moses.

The therefore is there for you to rejoice in the promise that you do not need to become a new you but rather— pay attention to the passive— you are being made new.

By God.

Through the mercy of God, Paul says.

And this no pious cliche, for the word Paul uses dia refers to the instrumentality of God. Only by the merciful activity of God upon you can you be conformed not to this world but transfigured into Jesus Christ.

The therefore is there to point to a claim far more mysterious than we often hear. Paul is not simply and suddenly urging his auditors to emulate and imitate Jesus. Good luck— Jesus did not even have an easy time being Jesus. How could you possibly emulate and imitate Jesus on your own?

No, Paul is not exhorting you to imitate Jesus.

Paul's already told you before, back in chapter six, that through water and the Spirit you are now in Christ Jesus by baptism. Paul does not mean that as a metaphor. You are in Christ. And therefore— pay attention to the passive—you are being shaped you into Christ-likeness.

Patience and suffering.

Blessing those who curse you.

Perseverance in prayer.

Genuine love.

This is NOT a Code of Conduct.The cross of Jesus Christ is the end of To Do List religion.

These verses are neither exhortations nor expectations. They are attributes of Christ. They describe who you are in Christ. They proclaim who you are being made by a power beyond every human possibility.

What Paul says here in Romans merely restates what Paul says to the Philippians, “The God who began a good work and you will, in the fullness of time, bring it to completion.”

Not—

You must now bring it to completion.

God will bring— is bringing— it to completion.

And what Paul says in chapter twelve is what Paul already said in chapter one. The gospel— what we announce in word and sacrament— is the power of Almighty God to invade our world and to take over our minds completely, so that all things are rectified, put right according to Christ.

In 2017, I attended a friend’s graduation from Wesley Theological Seminary, held at the National Cathedral. The pastor of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, killed by Dylann Roof, would have been in the graduating class. The school awarded Reverend Pinkney’s degree posthumously. And when it came time for his name to be read, they invited his wife, Jennifer, forward to receive his diploma and speak.

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

She had no idea what to say.

“But then,” she said, “but then I was hit with the words to share.”

I was hit with the words to share.

Not—

I hit upon the words to share.

I was hit by God.

And what followed was plain and simple and unremarkable and, without a doubt, the living word of God.

The divine agency at work.

More so than the official sermon that had come before she spoke— a glawspel sermon that had been an exhausting litany of musts and shoulds— what Jennifer Pinckney from Emmanuel AME Church said was power beyond every human possibility.

Look—

You can't become unflagging in your zeal by exerting more zeal. You don't persevere in prayer by practicing prayer. Your love doesn't become genuine through effort of your own. You don't achieve patience and suffering by enduring it. Blessing those who curse you doesn't come about by you biting your tongue.

None of it is possible for you to do!

But all of it is possible for the living God to do in you!

The therefore is here in chapter twelve in order for you to remember that the Christian life is pointless if we do not serve a living God.

Friday a week ago, I called on Mike Moser, our cemetery manager, before I headed out of town to preach a series of sermons in Des Moines, Iowa. As many of you know, Mike’s long battle with cancer is nearing its end. Still others of you will not be surprised that what Mike wanted to hear from me was what Mike always wanted to hear. Just as his countenance is often dark, even before he was dying Mike feared death. He feared what would happen to him after he died.

“Mike, Jesus lives for you!” I promised him on the phone last Friday.

“Please keep proclaiming it,” he said, “My trust in it only lasts the time it takes to go in one ear and out the other.”

After a long pause to catch his breath or to gather his thoughts, despite his despair, Mike said, “I can’t say much about the constancy of my faith, I’m afraid. But I will say I am not who I once was.”

Pay attention to the passive.

Mike said to me, “This much I know. I have been changed.”

“Transfigured,” I should have replied.

Let me hand over the goods, the good news:

What may sound to you today like an imperative (“be transformed”)— it is actually instead a description of what God has done and is doing and will do in you.

In spite of what you see in the mirror, no matter how you might grade your performance of the Christian faith, despite how your spouse or your neighbor might rate your discipleship, regardless of how quick your tongue is to curse or how much your zeal lags these days, take God at his word today.

Take God at my word.

And pay attention to the passive:

You ARE being changed.

You ARE being transformed.

You ARE being transfigured.

YOU are.

There is a power at work on you.

There is a power beyond any human possibility at work in you.

There is no To Do List.

There is only the divine agency at work in you.

In you.

And this good news is as literal as it gets, for in a moment that Power beyond human possibility will make himself an object on your lips and in your bellies.

There is a divine agency at work in the world.

You need look no further than loaf and cup.

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He Intends It to be a Word that Impinges on Our Existence

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The lectionary Gospel passage for Sunday is Mark 9:38-50.

It is Christ, and Christ alone who determines who’s on either side of the reconciliation, who’s in and who’s out.

Don’t be misled by the pronouns in the sentence, “Whoever gives you a cup…will by no means lose the reward.”  

The subject of the action is Christ.

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The Little Word that Turns the Cosmos

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1 Corinthians 1.18-25

For the closing service at the Iowa Preachers Project, my partner in homiletical hijinks, Ken Jones, offered this sermon on the foolishness of preaching.

In the name of the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

Paul begins this section of his letter by handing on two unexpected truths to the recalcitrant and fractious Corinthians.

First, you're wrong.

And second, you suck.

Thus, I'm only following one of my betters in two millennia of preachers when I say, here's a truth to declare to you all as you head home today.

Nobody wants what you're selling.

Not only does the world regard your line of work as being in the same category as purveyors of snake oil, it's not even sexy snake oil like mambas, cobras, and my South Dakota prairie rattlers. No, the world regards your stuff as harmless garter snake oil.

When I was growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota on Sunday drives for picnics up in the mountains among the redolent ponderosa pines, our family would drive by all the tourist traps designed to lure in families of tourists with whiny kids in the way back of their paneled station wagons. Cosmos of the Black Hills, where you can see water flow uphill. Marine Life, where you can touch a seal in the middle of the continent where it should never be found. Rockerville, where you can pan for gold but wind up with worthless garnets. The place we Jones kids continually begged to go to was Reptile Gardens. They had a trained chicken show and they had alligator wrestling. But the star was the rattlesnake milking.

A staff member would grab a slithering serpent with a prod and then hold it behind its head, open its gaping maw, rest those sharp fangs over the edge of a petri dish and collect drops of rattlesnake venom. The spiel was that the venom would be used for healthful purposes. Even as a kid though, I had an inkling of Gen Z skepticism about what they were shilling. I knew rattlesnakes.

My family went rattlesnake hunting regularly in the summer. We'd drive the pickups to a rattlesnake den, park the trucks all around, the menfolk would get out their guns and start shooting those things, while the kids would be in the box of the pickup and then hop down and run to the other pickup and hop into that box, avoiding all those snakes. It was so much fun.

I do know that this whole thing in reptile gardens that act with milking rattlesnakes fangs. I do know that that kind of thing is where snake oil has its roots. A product made with some unusual ingredient that promises to fix what ails you, baldness, hemorrhoids, and women's problems, whether painful periods or unwanted pregnancies. Neil Diamond's brother -in -law's traveling salvation show reminded us that snake oil was often bound up with sketchy preachers and fawning beauties as feminine acolytes. So it's no surprise that anyone looks askance at you as wonders that can't be trusted. But it's actually worse than that. Not only are you irrelevant as snake oil sellers, someone to whom people in Pew Research polls say they're just not really into, when it comes down to it, for any human being with an ounce of self -respect, the word that the Holy Spirit has put on your lips is anathema.

The word that the Holy Spirit has put on your lips is anathema.

It's not snake oil, but the poison itself. It is a threat to all that we children of Adam and Eve hold dear and that the world sees as most holy, autonomy, control, free will, and just desserts.

If we're surprised by the church's 21st century plummet, it's only because we have pretended that in our halcyon days of Fords with fender fins and pews filled with beheaded church ladies and their stoic husbands, our religious message was beloved. But that all may have been because the church reckoned itself as something other than what Paul declares in Romans.

As Paul deals with the wayward Corinthians, he knows the risen word who accosted him on the way to Damascus was contrary to the wisdom that sinners welcome with open arms.

He knows the gospel is utterly foolish. No one, no one wants a Lord who prefers losers and who seeks them out as customers. No one wants a Lord who has neither comeliness nor any proclivities toward prosperity.

When I was in high school, every time the thought of becoming a pastor entered my brain, I shoved it back in my mind's recesses and locked it in a chamber of dangerous secrets. The idea had to stay there because if I acted on it, I would become in a word. weird. And then what would Dennis' governor think of me? I already had a bully who accosted me in passing time each day with the word faggot to reduce me to the nothing that he thought I was. Did I want to add insult to injury? But I misunderstood the gift of this calling and the glory of operating on a holy island of misfit toys with all the other losers and lepers and layabouts who have no future, no joy, no life other than in Jesus. Little did I know years later I would understand the deep honor and deeper truth that becoming a gospel snake oil salesman would provide me.

When Jason and I were at the Conclave of Grantees in Indianapolis last March, I quickly realized that a goal for many of the programs that grantees were setting up was to help preachers attain greater relevance.

But that's a losing game for losers who haven't realized they're lost.

They think they can do something.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, you see, is never relevant to sinners.

It helps no one self-actualize. It doesn't look good on a spreadsheet, and it doesn't fix those voters in that other party.

The foolish snake oil we purvey presents instead a guy in the building trades who got executed.

It asserts that all of history suffered a tectonic shift at his last breath. It says the blood and Golgotha gore happened because human beings, including you and me, are too weak -willed to balance their karmic wheels. It proclaims the illogic of mere words, a splash of water, a chunk of bread, and a swallow of wine as having the capacity to hold the infinite presence, being, and will of God in wonder wonders, it declares that the way God chooses to bear out the divine will for the world and create the kingdom of heaven is to go all eschatologically delulu and appear through means such as you. What shall I do with you to send you home except to proclaim to you that you, misshapen, ridiculously self-involved and chronically slow on the uptake you are the exact ones whom God put in your church, your community, your specific world to open your gaping maw and let out a holy, braying YAWP as the sainted fools and asses you are. For the very thing that has saved you, grasped you and compelled you into this vocation, while totally irrelevant is the only thing, the very thing with the power to contend with the claims the world inflicts on those in your care. None of us has the will to enter into this fray. None of us has the wherewithal to affect the change we know the world needs.

You know that whole phrase, know, Gandhi, be the change in the world you want to see. You don't have it in you. And yet, and yet you have been made into people, finite beings with the capacity to hold the infinite mercy, steadfast love and will of God in the world.

Saving faith comes by hearing. It must be spoken without reservation, without hedging of bets, and with equal measures of seriousness and giddy elation.

Your lips, teeth, and tongues have hearers waiting to receive what God has put me here today to hand on to you.

For the sake of Jesus Christ and by his authority, your quest for achievement as preachers has been usurped.

Your craven ethos to be the best is commandeered as an agent for his love. Your sinful breach from God is not just bridged, but cemented. Your jagged edge to his encompassing delight. He's begun a good work in you and is already making it complete.

You don't have to sell anything.

Just give it away.

The freedom and forgiveness and deliverance and life first given to you by Jesus who treads on snakes' heads and has all the snake oil bottled up in the spear wound in his side where his powerless claims can no longer have play.

My beloved fellow sinners, fools, and preachers, what an honor it is to know Jesus has created this space, this calling, this life for us, and to find myself in your company. We get to do this together. Yawp yawp for us. Delulu? Yup. Holy calling? Sure enough. Bet. Pitter patter, best get at her. Amen.

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"Perfect Love" is a Person

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1 John 4.18

I’m in Des Moines for the Iowa Preachers Project. On Tuesday morning, I preached the chapel service at Grand View University. If you’re a preacher, bookmark the page and consider applying to next year’s cohort.

For the homily this morning, Dr. Ken Sundet Jones issued only two directives to me.

“First,” he commanded me, “be authentic. This is a college campus— a Piety Free Zone— so keep it real. Second, your scripture verse is 1 John 4.18, “There is no fear in love, but Perfect Love casts out fear.”

Keep it real.

There is no fear.

And my immediate response to his instructions?

“Crap.”

Whining soon followed, “How can I possibly preach on this passage with authenticity? How can I bear witness to the Truth given my truth?”

Just to be real, people in my congregation are going to listen to this and hear it for the first time. And, seriously, that’s not fair to them, but fidelity to the scripture I’ve been given for today demands honesty.

This month—

A guy with a bunch of letters behind his name diagnosed me with letters of my own.

Four letters.

PTSD.

Those in Gen-Z don’t even need me to unpack the acronym. And apparently the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis isn’t bullshit because my insurance provider is actually paying for it. They didn’t even bother to do their coverage-denial dance with me.

A little context:

For nearly a decade I have suffered a rare, incurable cancer in my marrow. After a harrowing initial year of surgeries and treatments, my doctors have kept it bay. But a few weeks back, I noticed a lump on my neck. A couple of days later, I found more on my throat and the back of my head. The next day, I traced the ones that had swelled on my groin. Two weeks ago, my oncologist had me sit down on the examining table. She snapped on rubber gloves and began to move her fingers over my body like she was reading Braille.

As she did so— for lack of a more precise medical term— I cracked up.

I broke down.

I fell apart.

Into pieces.

Like Humpty, I’d be lying to you if I said I was mended.

Apparently, incurable cancer featuring recurring brushes with death along with a vocation that frequently puts me front row to other people’s trauma and mortality— as absurd as it sounds, apparently this is no bueno for my mental health. Evidently, I have been trying to keep a lid on more fears and a degree of fright I could neither see nor voice.

And a few weeks ago, the lid popped.

It all spilled out.

And it’s not going back in again.

Just so—

If you expect me to promise you that if you just love Jesus you will have no fear, then I am not your guy.

Perhaps it’s possible to invite Jesus into your heart such that he evicts all anxieties, but I’ve been a preacher for almost a quarter of a century and I have yet to meet any fearless Christians.

I know I have not buried any fearless Christians. I’ve encountered some self-deluded Christians, sure— most of them are clergy. I’ve known many other Christians who wear courageous masks and play brave roles. But I’ve never met any bare-faced Christians without fear.

Despite how the verse for this morning sounds, I believe a Christian without fear is an oxymoron.I believe a fearless Christian is a paradox precisely because I know Jesus— I know Jesus— whom John refers to as Perfect Love, is not dead.

First things first.

In service to Ken Jones’s stipulation for authenticity, I believe Jesus is alive not because the Bible tells me so. Why should you believe a book? That’s stupid. I believe Jesus is alive because I’ve met him. I’ve met him. He’s as real to me as you.

I believe Jesus is alive because I’ve met him.

Therefore, I trust the Bible.

When I was an unbelieving, college-applying, resume-stuffing, gold-star-grabbing high school junior (who had not grown up in the church) Jesus hijacked my life.

One Sunday, after a few Sundays of conscripted church attendance, at an ordinary church in the suburbs of Richmond, Va, I came forward down the sanctuary aisle where a bland but kindly-looking middle-aged man named Steve, who was about thirty pounds beyond a Dad-bod and who wore a royal blue polo shirt, stood next to a small African-American woman holding a cup and offering me a torn piece from a loaf of Hawaiian bread, and in that slight moment of receiving— suddenly— the hands holding out the bread to me were not Steve’s hands at all for Steve’s hands did not have holes in them.

The face— for an instant— was the face of another. Neither did the voice for seven short syllables belong to Steve. Steve was no longer Steve. Yet Steve was also somehow more Steve than the Steve I knew.

The preacher had been speaking the truth that Sunday.

The Risen Christ really was the host of the table.

The encounter so frightened me that I skipped past the chalice and sat down in an unsettled, astonished daze.

“What if it’s true?” I muttered under my breath, terrified, “What if it’s all true?!”

I realize, of course, I could’ve just been crazy. I mean, I have PTSD now. Nevertheless, I’m not the only one who knows that Perfect Love is not dead.

There was a young woman in a congregation I served.

Her name was Ann. She was a straight-A student in college. She was nearing graduation, and her parents couldn’t have been more excited about what lay in her future. Maybe a graduate degree at another prestigious school. Maybe a career and no less than a six-figure salary.

In contrast to their expectations— or, because of them— Ann was beset by fear and anxiety. And then, one day, out of the blue, Ann threw them all for a loop, when Ann announced to her parents that rather than doing anything they wanted, she was going to work in a clinic in some poor village in Venezuela. I only found out about this when Annʼs mother burst into my office one day, clearly assuming I was the one who put the idea in her daughter’s head.

Red-faced and furious, she said: “Preacher, you’ve got to talk to her. You’ve got to convince her to change her mind. I’m so afraid sheʼs throwing her life away.”

Ever the obedient minister, I met with Ann and communicated all her motherʼs fears:

She was being naive

She was being irresponsible

She was being idealistic

Her education should come first

She should not jeopardize her career.

“The gospel’s about grace not works,” I said in my attempt to dissuade Ann.

Ann looked back at me liked Iʼd disappointed her in some way.

“Didn’t Jesus tell the young man to give up all his stuff and follow him?” she asked.

“Uh, well, yeah, but...I mean...Jewish hyperbole and all...he couldn’t have been serious...that would’ve been irresponsible. At least tell me why youʼre doing this.”

“Why do you think?” she asked like there could be only one possible answer and it should be obvious.

“I didn’t really know if it was true, that he’s risen. But then Jesus sorta invaded my personal space and told me— he spoke to me— and he told me to go and do it.”

“He did, did he?”

And her eyes narrowed, like she was about lay a straight flush down on the table.

“Are you telling me, pastor, that I should listen to you instead of him.”

“Um, uh...okay, I think we’re done here. Just leave me out of it when you talk to your parents.”

As she was leaving my office, she said, “You know, pastor— this whole time in school I’ve had so many worries, anxieties and fears…over…stuff…and then Jesus got ahold of me…I mean, Venezuela? Suddenly, I have a whole new set of fears I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for Jesus.”

Perfect Love casts out fear. It sounds nice as a sentiment to smack on a sticker. But John’s Perfect Love is a person, who not only died for you but lives with death behind him.

On the one hand—

Because he lived, as Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim, he knows fear.

He knows your fears.

On the other hand—

Because he lives, he is free to give you all new fears, fears you would never have if he had stayed in the grave.

Just a few weeks ago, my therapist asked me, “How in the hell did you make it this long without cracking up.”

I was about to answer, “Jesus. Jesus got me through it.”

But I don’t know if that can be true.

Because the Jesus who died for me, didn’t stay in the grave. And he is able to call me and change me and give me all new fears. Fears I would not have were Perfect Love not risen indeed.

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The Beauty of the Infinite

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I am the Preacher-in-Residence for the Lily-funded and Mockingbird-supported Iowa Preachers Project which kicked-off today in Des Moines at Grand View University. My title comes with no job description, glory, or pay, but I’m happy to meet preaching fellows and mentors from different traditions, experiences, and places.

This evening Ken Sundet Jones planned a “Preaching Slam” for the cohort, in which the mentors and myself needed to preach with little warning on an unorthodox “text.”

Each of us had as our preaching text a different work of art. Ken’s reasoning behind the exercise is that every preacher should be ready to find a way from whatever situation that encounters them to the gospel.

My “passage” was Piet Mondrian’s Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue.

As the Preacher-in-Residence, I got a bit more heads-up than the other preachers on the docket last night (only a little), all of whom handed over the goods in ways that gifted me faith all over again.

I’m no Sister Wendy, but as an undergraduate student, I enrolled in so many art history courses that I could have graduated with a minor in the department. I took several classes on modern art taught by an elderly professor from Spain who chain-smoked cigarettes outside of class and— we all suspected— drank Port inside of class. She often reminisced about her love affair with Pablo Picasso in a level of detail that begged for Cubist abstraction.

I remember the mechanical gear shift sound as the slide of the painting fell into place. She always held the microphone too close to her lips. The yellow, orange, and amber that appeared on the drop down screen warmed the darkened lecture hall. Her voice whispered awe as she helped us to see Van Gogh’s final and most famous draft of the Sower.

“He’s a preacher,” the proud, avowed atheist explained the figure in the straw hat to us, “He is a little Christ, working under a bright, living halo of a sun, scattering the gospel across the ground he travels, trusting the seeds to take root in the earth.”

I can’t tell you how many seeds I’ve cast that appeared to get tangled in thistles and weeds as soon as they left my lips. So many other sermons fall, stillborn, through my fingers just as I’m drawing my hands from the seed bag. It’s so simple an undertaking, sowing seed, the artist did not need to depict any other laborers in the field.

The painter painted only a single preacher.

Nevertheless!

Only those who sow the word know how it is hard work to sow the word.Therein lies its peculiar potential for loneliness.

As Karl Barth described the sower’s conundrum:

“As preachers, we cannot speak of the God who is God. It’s literally impossible. But as preachers, we must speak of the God that cannot be spoken.”

It is hard work to sow the word.

Just so, if your fields look fallow to you, if the fruit of your work would lead listeners to conclude that you’re always aiming for rocky terrain, if you’ve spent more time and effort sowing words other than the gospel word, then first things first. Let me hand over the goods. Before I speak about God by way of Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue, allow me to speak for God.

As Luther said, no one can self-apply the promise so let me do God to you:

In the name of Jesus Christ and by his authority alone, I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all your sins— especially all your ill-sown seeds.

If you have preached as though its up to us to continue the Kingdom movement begun by the dead Jesus, you are forgiven.

If you have pretended that they teach advice-giving in seminary and doled out life lessons and practical wisdom from your bag of seed, take it from me— I’m speaking for God— you are forgiven.

If you’ve made grace cheap by muddling the gospel with the law, if you’ve made the mistake of not believing your listeners are always experiencing an existential crisis, you are forgiven.

If you’ve preached sermons that did not need God to be a Jew, who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly, well that same God— Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim— forgives you.

You are forgiven.

And more so than absolution, hear the good news, which is always a promise about the Future.

Because Jesus lives with death behind him, all the seed you have sown will flower in the fullness of time. Every promise you have proclaimed in light of the resurrection will come true exactly because your gospeling, however imperfect, has been Jesus’s address of himself. Your words, therefore, will not return to the Lord in vain.

Even in your worst sermon, the word— your words— is not fettered.

The Word works what it says.

Through you (talk about faith alone).

Around the same time Karl Barth was writing about the irony which binds preachers (We cannot speak of God. We must speak of God), the Dutch painter and art theoretician Piet Mondrian was pushing modern art into ever greater abstraction. In the name of an unchanging universalism, Mondrian sought to expunge any elements of concrete reality from his art. Mondrian first articulated what he termed “Neoplasticism” in the journal “The Style.” Neoplasticism sought to purge even traditional artistic principles that modern art had kept in place, especially figure-ground opposition. Thus Mondrian reduced his most famous series of work, Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue, to simple flat geometric elements.

Van Gogh’s kinetic, halo-like sun became a square of yellow.

Piet Mondrian rid his art of figure-ground opposition because such a way of ordering images— ordering— implied a transcendental order beyond reality.

Now, there is no way you could conclude this was the artist’s intent simply by gazing upon Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue. Neoplasticism produced the sorts of paintings about which my kids opine too loudly at the National Gallery, “I could paint that.” And, as much as I hate to sound like the guy hating on modern art, the truth is: they could paint that.

It’s no accident that with modernism the explanatory card on the museum wall next to the frame became as important as the art itself.

In his book The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe observes that once the church was no longer art’s primary patron, artists no longer had the public in mind in their work. After the medieval church’s patronage, art was cosseted by royal courts for royal consumption. Later, in the years just before World War I, art migrated once again, this time into a small, chic circle of artists and theorists, all of whom lived in a handful of cities around the world and who had one another as their primary audience. It’s not incidental, in other words, that Piet Mondrian self-identified as both an artist and a theoretician.

As Tom Wolfe writes:

“The chic of modernism put a heavy burden on theory. Each new movement, each new ism in modern art was a declaration by the artists that they had a new way of seeing which the rest of the world (i.e., the bourgeois) couldn’t comprehend. This is where theory came in.”

Art theory thus went from an enriching element in conversation to an absolute necessity.

Art now required explanation.

Wolfe continues:

“In no time these theories seemed no longer mere theories but axioms, part of the given, as basic as the Four Humors had once seemed in any consideration consideration of human health. Not to know about these things was not to have the Word…In short, the new order of things in the art world was: first you get the Word, and then you can see.”

In short—

With works like Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue, modern art privileged explanation over presentation. And the theories which informed those explanations had not the world as its audience but the small, chic cliques— cénacles— which produced them. In order to see a work like Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue, you first need to receive the Word. But that Word was a word proclaimed only to some.

It is not seed meant to be scattered in the world, sown all over the world.

For the sake of the world.

Terrence Malick’s 2019 film A Hidden Life depicts the witness and martyrdom of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian Christian who refused conscription by the Nazis. Towards the end of the film’s first act, Franz walks into his village church where he must have gone to pray or to meet with his priest.

Inside the church, Franz finds a painter, Ohlendorf, retouching the church’s frescoes. Standing on scaffolding, the painter towers over Franz, and asks Franz to hand him up a piece of coal. As he turns to his work, restoring an image of the holy family, Ohlendorf reflects on the ultimate vanity of his project. The artist confesses to Franz a pressure which practitioners of the preached word can also feel. Looking up at God and his mother, Ohlendorf laments that in all of his work, drawing and painting, he’s never once managed to capture the true Christ.

When I was a graduate student, I attended a series of lectures the Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson delivered for undergraduates and faculty members. Though the attendees recognized that Jens was one of the most brilliant theologians America has ever produced, some listeners, though curious, were openly hostile to his gospel.

One skeptical student in the lecture hall was undeterred by Jenson’s arguments and persisted in trying to poke holes in his logic:

“Wasn’t the resurrection supposed to signal the conclusion to God’s history? 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? Why has God delayed? Does the church have an answer to those questions?”

I turned my gaze from the argumentative undergrad to the white-haired theologian. Robert Jenson revealed the slightest crease of a smile, and finally 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) Wants

4) To

5) Include

6) You

I saw the argumentative undergrad furtively raise his hand to rebut the theologian, but Jenson smiled again and quickly said, “And so, you see, the answer to the question of God’s delay is also the answer to your last question. The church not only has an answer to the question of God’s delay the church is God’s answer to the question.”

The next day I said to Jens, “I attended your lecture yesterday.”

“Indeed,” he said.

“Because he wants to include you,” I repeated his reply, “Are you suggesting that, in the End, all will be saved?”

He smiled again.

“Sometimes I catch myself thinking I’m a universalist…” and his voice trailed off and he chuckled to himself:

“My boy— you’re a Christian, which makes you a sower of the word. Rather than speculate about what God will do ultimately one day in the future, why don’t you do something about what we know God, in fact, has done? We know God desires to save all and we know he has allotted precisely this time for sowers like yourself to sow the seed that it is gospel. So, rather than sit in lectures and posit speculative questions that put all the burden on God, why don’t you go and do the work God has given you to do?”

“Someday I might…” the artist Ohlendorf says to Franz, “Someday maybe I’ll paint the true Christ.”

Of course, the irony is that just yesterday morning God spoke to us in this place. And after we received a word from God, the Lord Jesus made himself an object in our hands and on our lips.

That is, the true Christ cannot be painted anymore than charcoal on canvas can fully capture the you you call you.

The gospel needs no more content than the simple sentence, “Jesus is alive.” The true Christ is not dead, and though he speaks ceaselessly and makes himself reliably available he nonetheless refuses to sit still and model for an artist.

Christ is risen.

Indeed he has a body.

A body which includes you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you as his mouth.

Mondrian was absolutely wrong to purge all particularity from his art in the hope of capturing the universal. The particular— a concrete word, a word that, as Jens writes, can never be preached the same way twice— on the lips of one sinner to another sinner— just is how the cosmic Christ sows his seed in the world.

In spite of the parameters of this exercise, I’m a preacher.

This isn’t a talk.

It’s a sermon.

So I must keep talking until I touch upon a text.

The New Testament Book of Hebrews proclaims that “Faith is the conviction of things not seen.”

Therefore, said Martin Luther, that which is to believed, God and his goodness, must be hidden.

That is, the substance of faith is not reducible to stable images or static illustrations. Instead the substance of faith— the beauty of the Infinite— is hidden under its opposite.

The Lord Jesus has no more obvious opposite than those whom he calls to sow the word. He has no better hiding place than your lips.

This is precisely why Hebrews 11.1 goes on to say that “Faith is the conviction of things not seen, the assurance of what can only be hoped for.”

In other words, faith is hope, convicted trusting hope.

In what?

In the word of gospel assurance on the lips of a preacher.

A year ago today, I stood in my congregation’s graveyard and watched as an old man, weighing perhaps no more than one hundred pounds soaking wet — he was battling cancer, finished filling the grave of the dearly departed. Wheezing from the effort, he dusted the mud off his pants and then quickly left to go package food at the church’s mission center. Mike was just one of a dozen or so volunteers who gave up the better part of their Thursday to get the dead guy where he needed to go and get the living he left behind where they needed to be. Neither Mike nor the rest  of them knew the deceased, a circuit-riding sower who died after a century of living.

Mike’s long battle with cancer is nearing its Appomattox moment.

As the cemetery manager, Mike is on my staff. I checked in with him before I left for the airport this week. I was not surprised to learn that Mike needed to hear what Mike always needs to hear. Mike has a past the details of which I can only speculate, an estranged son and too much time wasted in whatever far country he found himself. The dark cloud that follows him is drawn in such thick and obvious brushstrokes I think of him as a Charles Schultz character. A Pig Pen of regret, his melancholy abides as reliably as Linus’s blanket.

Mike is afraid to die. Even before he was dying, Mike feared what would happen to him after he died. He’s needed a lot of seed scattered his way. And he needs still more.

Before he assumed the cemetery duties after retirement, Mike owned an art gallery in Fairfax, Virginia. Today, all over the house where he’s slowly dying, are paintings, wrapped and stacked on the floor.

Mike is literally surrounded by beautiful images, but he is desperate for a particular word.

Desperate not for explanation, like all those cards affixed next to frames on museum walls. He is desperate for preachers to present Christ to him. He is desperate and dying not explanation but for proclamation.

In 1500, Matthias Grünewald painted Karl Barth’s favorite image, the Isenheim altarpiece depicting John the Baptist’s long bony finger pointing at Christ and him crucified.

A little more than four hundred years later, Piet Mondrian gave us instead simple geometric elements in red and yellow and blue, all lines and flatness and and right angles so as not to imply the ordering of a Creator with a capital C.

Which is to say…

To those of you in whom and under whom Substance of faith, is hiding— his sowers, his preachers:

No one else is going to do your job for you.

Mike does not need you to skewer pop culture. He has Andy Warhol for that.

Mike does not need you for your political hot takes. Banksy can do that far better than you.

And Mike does not need your advice. Not when we all have Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files.

Mike needs a promise.

Mike needs a promise that can only come from the true Christ.

And the true Christ, as effing crazy as it sounds, is you all gathered around word and wine and bread.

Just so, I will end with the good news with which I began.

In the name of Jesus Christ and by his authority alone, I assure you:

Every promise you proclaim in light of the resurrection will come true exactly because your gospeling, however imperfect, is Jesus’s address of himself.

The true Christ cannot be painted.But the Word will work what you sowers say.

“‘Mike, Jesus lives for you!” I promised him on the phone on Friday.

It was a particular moment irreducible to yellow, red, and blue.

But, I’ve been at this long enough to know the particular was universal.

“Please keep proclaiming it,” he said, “My trust in it only lasts the time it takes to go in one ear and out the other.”

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No Honest Reading of Scripture will Permit Us to Wash God’s Hands of the Consequences of his Partisanship

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The lectionary psalm for this coming Sunday is Psalm 124, which begins by singing:

“If it had not been the LORD who was on our side -- let Israel now say --if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us.”

God is on our side.

This is a conviction commemorated in the Old Testament lectionary passage, Esther 9, which hallows the days “in which the Jews gained relief from their enemies.”

“God is on our side” is an assertion made by both invaders and defenders in Ukraine today just it arises in the partisan battles between Democrats and Republicans.

Quite obviously, both sides who so say “God is on our side” cannot be right.

But if we obey the Bible, if we attempt to say only what scripture permits us to say, then neither can both be wrong.

Neither can both be wrong.

One of them is correct.

Only the religion of Plato is as politely distant and dispassionate as we would prefer. The God of Israel is not a God who refrains from taking sides.

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