Jason Micheli's Blog, page 40
June 13, 2024
Stick to Handing Over the Goods
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Here is the final discussion of Karl Barth and the Barmen Declaration, in which we look at Thesis #6:
Next up, we will work our way through Barth’s Doctrine of Election from Church Dogmatics II.2— don’t be intimidated; we will read only 3-5 pages at a time. We will start with “Paragraph” 33: §33, the Election of Jesus Christ. If you’d like to read with us, here is a PDF of the volume:Cd 221MB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload
“See, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt. 28:20 “God’s Word is not fettered.” 2 Tim. 2:9
The Church’s commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ’s stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.
We reject the false doctrine that with human vainglory the Church could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of self-chosen desires, purposes and plans.
Show NotesThe conversation explores the theme of freedom in the context of thesis number six of the Barman Declaration. The speakers discuss the concept of freedom as understood by Karl Barth and its contrast with human vainglory. They emphasize that true freedom is found in being with and for one another, in imitating Christ, and in living out the mission of the church. They also highlight the danger of making the church's commission something other than the free grace of God and the temptation to prioritize relevancy or personal agendas. The conversation concludes with a reflection on the presence of Jesus and the importance of listening to his voice. The conversation explores the themes of corporate America, the role of the church, and the need for faithful witness. The Barman Declaration is seen as a prophetic call to the church to remain faithful to Christ and not be co-opted by worldly agendas. The conversation also touches on the importance of the law-gospel distinction and the need for pastors to proclaim the freedom and grace found in Christ. The participants express concern about the state of the church and the need for a renewed focus on Christ and the mission of the church. The conversation ends with a prayer for strength, courage, and guidance.
Takeaways
True freedom is found in being with and for one another, imitating Christ, and living out the mission of the church.
There is a temptation to make the church's commission something other than the free grace of God, such as prioritizing relevancy or personal agendas.
The presence of Jesus is central to the mission of the church, and listening to his voice is essential.
Human vainglory and the desire for personal freedom can hinder true freedom and the work of the church.
The concept of freedom in the Barman Declaration challenges conventional notions of freedom and calls for a reorientation towards Christ. Corporate America is on trial, with concerns about secrecy, abuse cover-ups, and ego-driven agendas.
The Barman Declaration is a prophetic call for the church to remain faithful to Christ and not be co-opted by worldly agendas.
The law-gospel distinction is important for pastors to proclaim the freedom and grace found in Christ.
The church needs to focus on Christ and the mission of setting captives free and proclaiming the good news.
There is a need for a renewed emphasis on the role of the church in society and the importance of faithful witness.
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June 12, 2024
The First Gospel
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I am preaching through Paul’s Letter to the Romans this summer. The last time I gave sustained homiletic attention to the epistle was seven years ago, which is when I preached the sermon which follows.
This sermon is included in the book Preaching Romans: Four Perspectives, edited by Scot McKnight. Check it out— it includes sermons by Fleming Rutledge, Will Willimon, and Stephen Westerholm.
The blurb for the book reads:
Pauline scholarship is a minefield of differing schools of thought. Those who teach or preach on Paul can quickly get lost in the weeds of the various perspectives. How, then, can pastors today best preach Paul’s message?
Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica have assembled this stellar one-stop guide exploring four major interpretive perspectives on the apostle Paul: Reformational, New, Apocalyptic, and Participationist. First elucidated by a scholarly essay, each perspective is then illuminated by three sermons expositing various passages from Paul’s magisterial letter to the Romans.
Along with Fleming’s, my sermon represents the “apocalyptic” interpretation of Paul’s epistle.
Immortal Combat — Romans 1.16-17
According to the Washington Post this week the local Alexandria chapter of Washington Sport and Health just cancelled the gym membership of Richard Spencer, the president of the Alt-Right/White Nationalist ‘National Policy Institute’.
Spencer was pumping iron in safe anonymity, when C. Christine Fair, a Georgetown University Professor, recognized him and then confronted him. At first he denied his identity. But she was sure it was him. According to the other patrons, the professor lambasted him, yelling: “Not only are you a Nazi — you are a cowardly Nazi… “
The gym cancelled his membership after the altercation. Reading the article in the Washington Post, my first thought was:
"That's what makes the Church different than the gym."
I wouldn’t disagree with the Georgetown Professor’s characterization of Richard Spencer as a repugnant, cowardly Nazi. I’d even go father than her. I don’t know Dr. Fair but- if she's a Christian- rather than agitate for his removal from a club her first response to Richard Spencer should have been to invite him to the club we call Church.
Now, I'm NOT suggesting Richard Spencer is entitled to his noxious views nor am I minimizing how monstrous are they. By any accounting Richard Spencer is racist. He's anti-semitic. He's xenophobic. He's an America First idolator. He's likely homophobic and sexist too.
In response to getting booted from Washington Sport and Health, Spencer tweeted: [Does this mean] “we can start kicking Jews and coloreds out of our business establishments?”
I can think of no one who fits the definition better:
Richard Spencer is ungodly.
And that’s my problem.
Because the Apostle Paul says it's exactly someone like Richard Spencer for whom Christ died (Romans 5.6).
If it was a gym to which we all belonged then I’d be the first to say kick him out on his a@#. But we’re not members of a club. We’re members of a Body created by a particular kerygma: that on the law-cursed cross God in Jesus Christ died for the ungodly a that death defeated the Power of Death. Christ didn’t die to make nice people nicer. Christ died so that ungodly cretins might become a new creation. Richard Spencer is precisely the sort of ungodly person we should invite to Church.
Where else could he go?
This is the only place where the Word of the Cross might vanquish him, delivering him from his bondage to the Power of Sin.
I chose that last sentence with care.
"Bondage to the Power of Sin," with a capital P and a capital S, is the only way to speak Christianly about Richard Spencer's racism; in fact, the Power of Sin with a capital P and a capital S is the only way to speak Christian.
Our text is Paul’s thesis statement and from it he unwinds a single, non-linear argument. The argument itself is odd.
Unlike Paul’s other letters this one continuously shifts focus from the congregation to the cosmic, as though what concerns this little house church in Rome somehow also concerns all of creation.
The letter is also odd in that Paul sticks the salutations, along with the introduction of the main theme, not at the beginning of the letter but at the very end. The introduction of the main theme doesn’t come until the very end like a final reveal.
“The God of peace will in due time crush the Power of Satan under your feet” (16.20).
This is why Paul so often uses the language of combat and battle and powers and invasion. The theme of this whole letter is the defeat of the Power of Satan, and Paul’s thesis is that the Gospel is the Power by which God defeats that Power: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel…For in it the righteousness of God is revealed…”
Trouble is—
Paul’s thesis statement doesn’t sound like it’s about the defeat of anything much less the Power of Satan. This is because the English language lacks any equivalents to the Greek word which gets translated throughout Romans as either “righteousness” or “justification.” In the Greek, dikaiosune is a noun with the force of a verb; it creates that which it names. The only word in English that comes close to approximating dikaiosune is rectify-rectification. So “righteousness” here isn’t an attribute or adjective. It’s a Power to bring salvation to pass. It’s God’s powerful activity to rectify what is wrong in the world.
And the way God is at work in the world is the Gospel, the Word of the Cross. Through it, God’s rectifying power is revealed. In Greek it’s apokaluptetai: Apocalypse. Invasion.
Literally, Paul says: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel for in it the rectifying power of God is invading…”
Note the present tense.
You can only invade territory held by an enemy. If you think of sin as something you do, then you cannot understand what the Son of God came to do. For as much as we think Christianity is about forgiveness, Paul doesn’t use the word. Indeed he uses the word “repent” only once.
Repenting is something we do.
Paul’s Letter to the Romans isn’t at all about anything we do. It’s everywhere about what God does.
It makes no sense to forgive slaves for their enslavement. Captives cannot repent their way out of bondage. Prisoners can only be delivered.
From an enemy.
Only at the end of his long letter does Paul finally reveal this Enemy as Satan.
In chapter 3 he names the enemy Sin with a capital S and calls it an alien, anti-god Power whose power we are all under and from whom we’re unable to free ourselves (3.9). In chapter 5 he make Sin-with-a-capital-S synonymous with Death-with-a-capital-D (5.12). In chapter 8 he widens the lens to show how it’s not just us but all of creation that is held in captivity to the Power of Sin and Death (8.21). And in chapter 13 he tells the Christians in Rome that they should put away the works of darkness and put on the “weapons of light” (13.12) which he also calls the “weapons of rectification” (6.13).
Then, finally at the end, he reveals the Enemy as Satan from whose bonds only the invading righteousness of God can free us.
Outside the Church it’s Memorial Day weekend, when we remember those who’ve fallen in war. But inside the Church we’ve not remembered. We’ve forgotten, such that this all probably sounds strange to you. We’ve forgotten that salvation itself is a battle. We’ve forgotten that God has a real Enemy God’s determined to destroy.
We’ve forgotten that the cross of Jesus Christ is God’s invasion from on high and that our proclamation of his act upon the cross is itself the weapon by which the God of peace is even now rectifying a world where Satan still rules but but his defeat is not in question.
Salvation isn't our evacuation from earth to God.
Salvation is God's invasion of earth, in and through the cross of Jesus Christ, the Power that looks like no power.
Only when you understand scripture's view of Sin as a Power and our sinfulness as bondage to it can you understand why and how Paul can claim something as repugnant as there being no distinction whatsoever between someone like you and someone like Richard Spencer (2.1).
That’s not to say you’re all as awful as Richard Spencer; it’s to say that all of us are captive, all of creation is captive, to a Pharaoh called Sin.
And not one of us is safe from God’s rectifying work.
To invite Richard Spencer to Church then isn't to minimize or dismiss his noxious racism or odious views.
It's to take them so seriously that you invite him to the only place where he might by assaulted by the only Word with the Power to vanquish him and create him anew.
During their confrontation at Washington Sport and Health, Dr. Fair, the Georgetown Professor, yelled at Richard Spencer: “I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable.”
The gym later terminated his membership without comment.
In all likelihood inviting him to church would be as bad for our business as the management of the gym judged it to be bad for their business.
Maybe 'bad for business' is what Paul means by the scandal of the Gospel.
You haven't really digested the offense of the Gospel until you've swallowed the realization it means someone like Richard Spencer might be sitting in the pew next to you, his hand out to pass the peace of Christ, the weapon which surpasses all understanding.
You haven’t really comprehended the cosmic scope of God’s salvation until you realized it includes both you and Richard Spencer, both of you potential victims of the awful invading power of the Gospel of God’s unconditional grace.
I haven’t actually invited Richard Spencer to this church.
Yet.
But I did leave a copy of this sermon in the door of his townhouse yesterday.
I don’t know that he’d ever show up.
But I do know- I’m not ashamed of it- that this Gospel is powerful enough to defeat the Powers of the Enemy that enslaves him.
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June 11, 2024
Larva Dei
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Ezekiel 17
The Old Testament lectionary text for this Sunday comes from the prophet Ezekiel:
Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the LORD have spoken; I will accomplish it.
17.22-24
With verse twenty-two, Robert Jenson notes, God sheds his typical reserve and, as an eagle, appears as the protagonist of a new parable of salvation. The Lord thus seizes the action of the prophetic drama, making himself the subject of the verb, “I myself will. . . .”
Every theology posits some construal of the relation between God himself and created carriers and representatives of the Lord’s action, like the eagle in the passage. Martin Luther called such historical agents of God’s work “masks” behind which God hides (larva dei).
In the lectionary passage, the Lord takes off the mask of earthly powers.
But what will happen when God removes his masks?
And when may we expect it?
What is the scope of the passage’s future tense?
The first thing to note is that the Lord does not say he will simply unmask himself. He will no longer hide behind Nebuchadnezzar and his like; nevertheless he will not appear as naked deity—which by biblical lights would no longer be deity—but as the eagle of the riddle.
If in this new masking he is nevertheless to act as himself, it must be that he and his mask will now be one, that he will himself be the eagle as which he masks himself.
Within Christian theology, it is the doctrine of the Trinity that asserts and accounts for this. The second person of God is another than the Father, indeed he is the man Jesus, who looks not at all like God.
The incarnation does not unmask God. Rather it reveals him precisely by masking him absolutely.June 10, 2024
Remembering Jürgen Moltmann: Part Two
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Hi Friends,
Here is another conversation to commemorate the passing of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, this one with friends of the podcast— Old Testament Professor Rolf Jacobson and Theology Professor Ruben Rosario Rodriguez.
Segway!Ruben was my TA for a theology course at Princeton and had a hand in teaching me Karl Barth.
Show Notes
We are closing out our study of Karl Barth and the Barmen Declaration tonight with Thesis 6.
If you’d like to join us live, here is the link. 7:00 EST
Summary
In this conversation, Rolf Jacobson and Ruben Rosario discuss the life and work of Jurgen Moltmann, a prominent theologian who recently passed away. They explore Moltmann's influence on 20th-century theology, his engagement with liberation theology, and his redefinition of eschatology. They also discuss Moltmann's theology of hope and the crucified God, as well as his rejection of traditional theistic categories for deity. The conversation touches on the problem of innocent suffering, the role of the church in the world, and the challenges of biblical theology. They also reflect on the historical context of Nazi Germany and the need for resistance in the face of authoritarian rule. In this conversation, the hosts discuss the theological contributions of Jürgen Moltmann and his impact on progressive Christianity. They explore Moltmann's views on the doctrine of God, Trinity, and the political consequences of Trinitarian thought. They also touch on Moltmann's response to the accusation that he rejects the impassibility of God and his emphasis on the moral character of God. The hosts discuss Moltmann's influence on ecumenism and his understanding of hope as a central theme in theology. They also examine Moltmann's approach to biblical interpretation and the role of prayer in the ministerial life.
Takeaways
Jurgen Moltmann was a prominent theologian who had a significant impact on 20th-century theology.
Moltmann redefined eschatology as the fullness of time towards which God is moving creation.
His theology of hope and the crucified God explored the meaning of resurrection and the suffering of God.
Moltmann rejected traditional theistic categories for deity and emphasized the need for a biblical theology.
The conversation also touched on the historical context of Nazi Germany and the importance of resistance in the face of authoritarian rule. Moltmann emphasizes the moral character of God as the core reliability on which to ground our understanding of God.
Moltmann's theology is missionary and public, concerned with the future of all creation.
The prophetic imagination is about resisting secular ways of thinking and discerning hope.
The gospel's first work is to deconstruct all of our systems and bring us to a place of freedom and following God.
Prayer is central to the ministerial life and involves getting involved with the reality of God's agency in the world.
Sound Bites
"God is moving creation towards a fullness."
"The crucified God is the fullest disclosure of God."
"The crucified God is where God has promised to meet you and bring you to new life."
"What is unchanging in God is God's moral character."
"Israel's no does not make it a witness in history to God's judgment."
"Scripture is its own interpreter."
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June 9, 2024
God's Search History
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Here is the sermon I preached for the Lutheran Church of the Master in Corona Del Mar, California. I’m here for their Gospel Freedom series. My texts from lectionary were Genesis 3:8-15 & Mark 3:20-35.
Almost ten years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare, incurable cancer in my marrow. It will never be in remission; therefore, every day is Ash Wednesday, a constant reminder that I am but dust. If I didn’t knew it before my diagnosis, I’ve since known it in my bones— literally, in my bones.
I know, as Gerhard Forde says, that the gospel is a matter of death and life.So, let’s not dicker around.
Let’s get right to the heart of the matter. Let me give to you the gospel, distilled and straight up:
As a called and ordained preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ, and therefore by Christ’s authority and Christ’s authority alone, I declare unto you— every last one of you— the entire forgiveness, the full and complete remission, the unconditional and absolute forgiveness of all your sins.
Every last one of them— even that one.
You are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There you go.
Everything else I can say today is now just a footnote.
From beginning to end, from the Book of Genesis to the last book of the Bible, everything in the word is about God finding us and forgiving us and rectifying us because the one Word of God, the Word God speaks to us, is Jesus Christ, who, Forde says, just shows up on the scene announcing the pardon of God.
So then, having given you the gospel, here’s my question.Why are you hiding?
Everything has already been done.
All your sins are forgiven.
Christ our Great High Priest has sat down.
And he’s put his feet up on the coffee table.
He’s got no more work to do where you’re concerned.
As Karl Barth writes, “In the man taken down dead on Golgotha, man the covenant-breaker (meaning, you) is buried and destroyed— he has ceased to be.”
So— why are you hiding?
Whereas Adam and Eve hide from God behind some trees in the garden (not real smart), we hide everywhere (even dumber).
Some of you— maybe all of you— are hiding right now, here.
Just as Bruce Wayne is really the Batman’s costume, we hide behind the selves we project in public.
Just as Bruce Banner is never not angry, we’re never not hiding in plain sight.
Our true selves— they’re the ones we reveal to Google.
In an article from the Guardian entitled, “Everybody Lies,” U.S. data analyst Seth Stevens writes about what our Google search history reveals about us, about who we are when we think no one is looking. Google may not be God, but Google knows to be true what we discover about ourselves in the Garden.
As Seth Stevens begins his essay:
“Everybody lies. Everybody’s hiding. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when they’re not. They say they’ll be in touch when they won’t. They say it’s not about you when it is. People lie to friends. They lie to bosses. They lie to kids. They lie to doctors. They lie to husbands. They lie to wives. They lie to themselves. And they damn sure lie to surveys. Many people will underreport embarrassing, shameful behaviors or thoughts on a survey— even an anonymous survey— it’s called social desirability bias. We want to look good; we want to be counted good. So if we think someone is looking at us, we hide.”
And so, for example, in one survey Seth Stevens conducted, forty percent of a company’s engineers reported that were in the top five percent of their class.
And in another survey, ninety person of college professors say they do above average work.
It’s not just professors and engineers.
We learn to lie and hide young.
You might say it’s original to us.
The only way to see someone truly— to see their true self— is to see them when they think no one is looking at them.
In this regard, Stevens writes, Google’s search engine serves as a sort of “digital truth serum.”
It’s online. It’s alone.
And no one will see what you search (you think).
Stevens writes:
“The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else. Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, but it turns out the trail our search history leaves behind our reveals more about us. Our search history reveals the disturbing truth about our desires and insecurities, our fears and our prejudices.”
For example, the word that most commonly completes the googled question, “Is my husband...?”
Gay.
“Is my husband gay?”
In second place, cheating.
Cheating is eight times more common a search than the third most searched question: alcoholic.
And alcoholic is ten times more common than the next most searched term, depressed.
Proving the point about our private and our pretend selves, the most popular hashtag on social media using the very same words is the hashtag #myhusbandisthebest.
Is my husband cheating?
My husband is the best.
We filter out the truth from the self we present in public.But Google knows us better than Facebook.
For example, Google knows that no matter how many Fit Dad tags you use on Instagram, odds are you’re worried about your Dad Bod.
Forty-two percent of all online searches about beauty or fitness come from men.
We hide everywhere except the place that isn’t anywhere, the internet. Google’s search engine knows our true selves.
And survey says— we’re sinners.
For instance, one of the most common questions we ask Google— brace yourselves, it’s not pretty: “Why are black people so rude?”
And the words most often used in searches about Muslims:
Stupid
Evil
Kill.
In fact, according to Google’s search history, the phrase “Kill Muslims” is searched by Americans with the same frequency as “Migraine Symptoms” and “Martini Recipes.”
I get a headache and need a drink just trying to digest that ugly fact.
It gets worse.
Every year— every flipping year— seven million of us search “nigger” in Google.
Not counting rap or hip hop lyrics, seven million searches.
The Google searches are highest whenever African Americans are in the news, spiking with President Obama’s first election.
Says Seth Stevens in his essay:
“Google’s data would suggest the real problem in America for African Americans is not the implicit, unintended racism of well-intentioned people but it is the fact that millions of Americans every year continue to do things like search for jokes featuring the N-word.”
It’s not just our prejudice we hide.
Stevens notes how after President Trump’s election in 2016 the most frequent comments on social media in progressive parts of the country were about how anxious progressives felt about immigrants, refugees, and global warming.
On the contrary, the Google search history in those same parts of the country suggests progressives aren’t at all as anxious about immigrants, refugees, or global warming as they want their peers to think.
Survey says they’re more worried about their jobs, their health, and their relationships.
Survey says we’re sinners.We lie.And we hide.In an interview about his work and essay, Seth Stevens says:
“I had a dark view of human nature to begin with. Working with the Google data, it’s gotten even darker. I think the degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking; therefore [pay attention now], we can’t fight the darkness by turning to ourselves. We’re the problem. We can only fight the darkness by looking to the data; that is, by looking outside of ourselves.”
If your search history doesn’t indict you (and odds are it does), then scripture does indict you.
If Google doesn’t confirm it for you, God already did in the garden by the first question God asks us, “Adam, where are you?”
Pay attention—
God’s question is about location.Where.
Meaning:
Our problem is about lostness.
Notice, the Almighty doesn’t ask what any of us would ask. God doesn’t start off by asking any what, why, how, or who questions.
Who are you?! I thought I knew you, Adam!?
How could you have betrayed me, Adam?!
What did you do?!
Why did you do the one thing I asked you not to do?!
God simply asks Adam for a pin drop, “Where are you?”
God doesn’t ask Eve and Adam what they did or why they did it or how come they did it. God doesn’t ask about the sin; God asks after their hiding. In other words, guilt is not what constitutes our lostness but shame.
And fear.
Guilt is the residue when you’ve done something wrong. Shame is the stain left by believing that you are the wrong you’ve done. And so you hide. That’s why “love the sinner, hate the sin” is a crappy cliche because from Adam on down we sinners think we are our sins. We can muster no distinction between who we are and what we’ve done and left undone.
We are lost in a thicket of shame.
And see what our shame produces.
No sooner has he swallowed the fruit than Adam goes from declaring breathlessly of Eve “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” to grumbling to God “This woman you gave me...” Adam manages to blame both Eve and God in a single sentence. Meanwhile, Eve tries to explain herself with a long run-on sentence of fifty-five words.
Just so, our shame begets blame and self-justification.And what’s the Hebrew word for blame?Satan.Our shame turns us into a kind of satan, accusing others while justifying ourselves.
The house divided against itself that Jesus warns about in today’s Gospel passage is the space occupied between our two ears, between the chambers of our heart.
Our lostness— our shame— it turns God into a kind of satan too. Ashamed, we run and hide from the God who's given absolutely no reason for us to fear. And we’ve been hiding in the bushes ever since.
Shame and fear are our chronic condition.
Whereas Adam and Eve had a choice to trust and obey God, we do not.
As St. Augustine teaches, the choice available to Adam and Eve is no longer open to us.This is why it’s incredibly dumb to debate whether or not this story literally happened in history. It does not matter where on a timeline Adam and Eve may or may not fall because the point is that they are us.
As the Thirty-Nine Articles of John Wesley’s prayerbook puts it:
“The condition of humankind after the Fall of Adam is such that we cannot turn and prepare ourselves by our own natural strength to God.”
The Articles merely echo Luther’s teaching on the third article of the creed in the Small Catechism:
“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.”
We are lost.
And our lostness is such that we cannot turn even seek God— much less find God— on our own.
When it comes to faith and the things of God, Wesley’s prayerbook agrees with Luther’s finest treatise, our wills our bound.
We require help from outside of us.
We require an external word.
Thus, “Adam, where are you?”
For us, this external word is the gospel.
It’s the word from outside of us in which God gives himself to us, word and water, loaf and cup.
You see, God is a loquacious Lord.
The God who spoke creation into being, the Lord whose word works what it says, is a God who is constantly interrupting our creation, searching us out with his gospel word.
The implication is as simple as it is straightforward. This is why people need the church. This is why people need the risen Lord who is the head of his odd body called church. Because without the church, without Christ using the church for his word, people are lost.
They’re hiding in the bushes, naked and ashamed.
And, so long as there they remain, they’re likewise dead in their trespasses.
So forgot that nonsense attributed to St. Francis, “Preach the gospel. If necessary use words.” Even if St. Francis had said that (he didn’t) it’s wrong. Just as St. Paul says, what was true of Adam and Eve is true today for all of us. We’re lost so faith— salvation— it comes by no other means but words. Our rescue comes from hearing, “Adam, where are you?”
To say that you are justified by faith alone is nothing less than to say that you are justified by audition.Our rescue is oral and aural.Which means, you need a preacher.
Therefore, let me hand over the goods:
What God’s first question in the Bible reveals about you is that you are sought.
The grammar of the sentence makes all the difference. You are sought. It’s passive voice. Put it in the active voice and you are no longer the subject of the sentence. God is seeking you.
I’m not sure if churches still offer what were once called “Seeker Services.” If such worship services disappeared with Jars of Clay and WWJD bracelets, it’s all the better. After all, we’re hiding in the bushes. Go to Google if you find Genesis hard to swallow. On our own, left to our own devices, whatever is at the end of our searching might be a little-g god but it will not be God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.
You are sought.
We do not seek out God.
We seek out a hiding place from him.
We do not search for God.
God searches for us.
And this is important, this distinction between seeking and being sought, because it shapes how you read scripture. Every other religion in the world is about you seeking after God (and doing what you ought to do to get closer to him).
But as Karl Barth says, the strange new world of the Bible speaks not of your search for God but God’s relentless search for you.
If you’re looking to the Bible for insights into history or politics, Karl Barth says, you’d do better to turn to the newspaper because those are not questions the Bible tries to answer. If you’re looking for teachings on morality, ethics, justice, virtue, or just everyday practical advice, good luck with that, Karl Barth says, because you’ll find large swaths of scripture useless and Jesus Christ has absolutely no interest in your everyday practical life. If you go to the Bible searching for how you can find God, you’re only going to walk away frustrated, Barth says.
Because—
The Bible does not tell you what to think about God; it tells you what God thinks of you. The Bible does not teach you what you should say about God; it teaches you what God says about you. The Bible does not show us how to seek God; it shows us this God who searches out those who will not come to him.
You can even try to hide from God in ungodliness.Good luck, Barth writes, it’s just those ungodly ones God is determined to find.The Bible is God’s search history not ours.
Just so, says Barth, Adam and Eve are not merely the first humans. They are the first Christians. They’re the first Christians, for they are the first ones to receive the gospel promise of the forgiveness of sins. And what this question from God conveyed to them, it conveys to you: the entire forgiveness of your sins.
Because remember, God’s word works.
That is, God’s word in scripture always accomplishes what it says.
To use a fancy theological term that justifies my plane fare, there is no ontological distance between what God says and what God does.
God says, “Let there be light.”
And there is light.
God says, “It is very good.”
And it is.
The Lord on the lips of a preacher says, “Your sins are forgiven.”And as surely as his word hung the stars in the sky, you are forgiven them.Every last one.The Lamb of God took away the sins of the word.
And he did not miss a single one.
In one of my first congregations, I had a parishioner who dressed up as St. Nicholas for the children’s story on Christmas Eve. Shortly before I departed that congregation, Steve had a massive stroke and his prospects appeared grim. Only months before his stroke he’d been found out by his wife and daughters. They discovered a statement for a credit card they didn’t know he carried. For years he’d been keeping and hiding a whole other family.
Both women were with him when I arrived at his hospital room, his wife and his other.
“Princeton Theological Seminary didn’t prepare me for this,” I thought as I stepped up to his bedside, at least we can dispense with the pro forma chitchat.
He had tears falling from the corners of his eyes onto the salty patches where earlier tears had pooled. He struggled for what felt like a lifetime to get the word out through the wreckage between his brain and his mouth. “Fffffff,” he mumbled.
The word was almost unrecognizable.
He was asking for forgiveness— for “the forgiveness.”
He’d been a leader in the church, chair of the worship committee, sang in the men’s choir, dressed up as St. Nick every Advent and it turned out Santa was near the top of the naughty list.
Lying, cheating, making a mockery of the Lord.
He’d broken a good third of the Ten Commandments.
The second time he asked for it all he could get out was the fffff.
But I nodded and told him that yes, I would give him the absolution.
Before I did so, I looked over at his wife, half expecting her to say to me, “Like hell you will.”
As if reading my mind, she said to me, “Well, go and get on with it. Or do you not really believe what you preach Sunday after Sunday, pastor?”
“Uh….”
“He just dressed up as Santa once a year. But he was clothed in Christ’s righteousness, once for all time.”My cheeks blushed at the better theologian in my midst.
I stepped closer to Steve’s bedside. It felt like walking miles.
Nevertheless, I gave him an assurance he longed to hear far more than a doctor’s all clear: “In the name of Jesus Christ, I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all your sins. You are just for Jesus’s sake.”
“Thank you,” both women said to me when I finished and turned to leave.
God’s word works.
It accomplishes what it says.
When God asks you “_________, where are you?” you are already found, home free, safe in his death.
Which brings me back to my original question.
Why are you still hiding?
Or, instead of why maybe the better question is how.
How do we come out of hiding?
How do we, who have been found already, no longer linger in our lostness?In his essay in the Guardian, Seth Stevens notes how after the attack in 2015 in San Bernardino President Obama did deliver one address that had a measurable effect on driving down American’s Islamophobic Google searches.
Stevens notes that President Obama’s San Bernadino speech about how we ought not fear Muslims had the opposite effect.
The more Obama argued that we ought to do better about being more loving and respectful of Muslims, the more the people he was trying to reach became enraged.
The Google data confirms it, Stevens writes, the more you lecture angry people, the more you fan the flames of their fury.
The more you exhort them about their prejudice the more their prejudice will persist.
But one form of words worked, Stevens writes.
According to the Google search history, what reduced people’s rage and racism, what reduced their sin was whenever Obama spoke about Muslims being our neighbors.
And what had an even greater change on people was when he spoke of Muslim neighbors who served in the military and what had the greatest change upon people was when he spoke of Muslim American soldiers who gave their lives as a sacrifice for us, who died for us.
In other words, to put it in St. Paul’s words, the survey says the way to get sinners to change isn’t the law.It is the gospel.The way to get sinners to change isn’t by admonishing them about what they ought to do. It’s by telling them what has already been done, for them.
God’s gospel word works.
In other words, the gospel isn’t a word about something that God did.
The gospel is the word by which God does.That’s why everything you do here—and especially in here— needs to be surrounded by and bookended by the gospel because it is the power God works in the world, says St. Paul. The way we come out of hiding is by hearing not the law (what we ought to do) but by hearing the gospel (what has been done). We change not by hearing what Adam and Eve did wrong that we must do better.
That simply leaves the house in our heads more precariously divided than before.
We change by hearing how God sought out Adam and Eve and found them in their naked shame and— what did God do?
God gave them animal skins to wear.
Medieval paintings always show Adam and Eve leaving the garden naked and in tears, but that’s not what happens in the story. God clothes them in animal skins.
Where God created from nothing, their forgiveness costs God something.
Their forgiveness costs God a part of his creation.
God sacrifices for their sake.
And then one day, in the fullness of time, your forgiveness cost God too.
God entered “the Strong Man’s house” and became your neighbor.
God sacrificed.
God gave himself for you.
In order to clothe you— once, for all— with his Son.
God clothes you with Christ’s righteousness.
Though the survey says you lie and hide like the First Adam, you don’t need to— no matter what you’re searching online— because the Father has dressed you in the righteousness of the Second Adam.
He searches you out, and when he finds you, he chooses to see not your sin or your shame but his Son.
The search history that defines you is not the search history that shows up on your screen.
The search history that defines you is the search history that begins here.
With “Adam, where are you?”
Today Jesus promises that those who trust his Father with their own “Here I am” make our brother him who is for us.
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June 8, 2024
The Grace of the Gospel
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This morning I delivered a lecture for the Gospel Freedom series at the Lutheran Church of the Master in Corona Del Mar in California.
My friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones promoted it by posting:
“Jason’s the most Lutheran Methodist I know and probably the best public theologian in the country today. His biblical understanding is deft. His grasp of popular culture is unexcelled. And his ability to craft language into a free word for you has made him one of my primary preachers. Get yourself to Lutheran Church of the Master.”
Most of what Ken said is horseshit, but I try to do what is asked of me. The text of my talk is below. When I receive the recording from the event, I will post it for anyone interested.
About ten years ago, a woman in my congregation asked to meet with me.
Diane sat across from me one morning in my office. I knew her from classes I’d taught, pleasantries in the line after service, and a few hospital visits to her spouse, but I didn’t know her.
“Since we’ve decided to make this our church home, I thought you should know my story,” she told me, rubbing her hands along the channels of her pleated skirt over and over again.
Her voice was taut with anxiety or shame. I didn’t say anything. I just waited. After you’re a pastor for a while it doesn’t take Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting to spot someone who’s wanting to drop whatever burden they are bearing. Still, what she told me surprised me. It wasn’t the sort of story you hear everyday.
With long pauses and double-backs and tears— lots of weeping— she told me how a few years earlier she’d been driving home from the grocery store in the middle of the afternoon on Route One in Alexandria, Virginia. Out of nowhere a pedestrian stepped into the street. Diane hadn’t been drinking. She hadn’t been distracted. She wasn’t texting or talking.
“There just wasn’t enough damn time!” she said with such force it was clear that she— not me— was the one she was trying to convince.
What she told me next surprised me even more. Diane told me how her mind developed a split personality to cope with the trauma of having killed another person. She spent nearly a year, she said, hospitalized for schizophrenia. She told me how worshipping at a new church, where folks didn’t know her and didn’t stare at the floor whenever they saw her, was one of the goals she’d set for himself upon her discharge.
She wept for a long time. I had to get up, leave my office, and go hunting for more tissues.
When I returned and sat down across from her, she said, “I know Jesus forgives me, but I just can’t forgive myself.”
And I didn’t respond immediately. I waited for her eyes to meet mine.
When they did, I said to her, “You know Jesus forgives you, but you can’t forgive yourself? Just who in the hell do you think you are, Diane? The one who forgives you— he’s not a teacher. He’s not a prophet. And he’s certainly not a relic of the past— we’re not the Jesus Memorial Society here. There is no other God behind Jesus Christ. You think you’re above God? Who are you to hold on to what the Lord’s let go? As though he’s wrong and you’re right? If you’re looking to repent of anything, repent of that.”
I didn’t know if what I said to her was helpful.
I just knew it was true.
In the Book of Acts, a man crippled from birth sits on the streets of Lystra and listens intently as Paul and Barnabas preach. Seeing him, Paul discerns the strength of the lame man’s faith. The apostle exhorts the crippled man in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” Luke reports that immediately the man “sprang up and began to walk.”
Just as quickly, the bystanders begin to shout in their Lycaonian language, positing Paul and Barnabas as avatars of their pagan deities, “”The gods have come down to us in human form!”” The denizens of Lystra then identify Barnabas as Zeus while Paul, they surmise from his role as chief speaker, must be Hermes.
According to Luke, all of Lystra kicks into cultic gear. “The priest of Zeus,” Luke writes, “whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.”
Unlike C3PO in Bright Tree Village, Paul emphatically rejects the honor. The apostles tear their clothes and rush out into the crowd, shouting, “Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you.” And then Paul announces the purpose of their travels, “We are here to speak the gospel to you; so that, you may turn from such barren deities to the living God.”
Pay attention to the conjunction, “so that.”
Mind the prepositions, “from” and “to.”
“We are here to speak the gospel to you,” Paul announces, “so that, you may turn from such barren deities to the living God.”If you were so motivated to come out on a beautiful Southern California summer day to listen to an Enneagram 8 jaw on about Jesus, then presumably you have already heard the gospel that the apostles uttered in that pagan city. You have heard this gospel. You have received it in trust, as promise not threat. And, as Luther commended, you cling to your baptism into it.
Moreover, having heard this gospel and trusted it and been drowned in it, your charge is now no different than the one laid upon the apostles. Your baptism is also your ordination, Gerhard Forde insisted; therefore, you are called to gospel others.
Just so, my question is both simple and necessary yet seldom examined.
What is the gospel?Last fall I co-taught a homiletics course at Duke Divinity School. The class had about thirty-five students in it, working preachers of all ages from across the breadth of Christ’s church. Figuring that it was a waste of time to talk about the how of preaching if we could not establish the what or why of preaching, I began by asking them the straightforward question, “What is the gospel?”
Their answers skipped all over the place.
Tellingly, even the preachers whose answers came closest to the apostolic kerygma (as it is defined in 1 Corinthians 15) betrayed no visible confidence they in fact had answered more or less faithfully.
Perhaps the confusion is due to a lack of clarity about the answer to still another question.
What is the gospel supposed to do?What is the gospel supposed to do for those who hear it?June 7, 2024
Remembering Jürgen Moltmann
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“This is the fundamental question at the center of Christian Christology: Is the Jewish No anti-Christian? Is the Christian Yes anti-Jewish? Are the No and the Yes final or provisional? Are they exclusive, or can they also acquire a dialectically positive meaning for the people who feel compelled to utter them?”
Author of The Crucified God and A Theology of Hope, Jürgen Moltmann was a German theologian notable for his incorporation of insights from liberation theology and ecology into mainstream trinitarian Christian theology. He was Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Dr. Moltmann died this week at the age of 98, and Rabbi Joseph and I got together to discuss Moltmann’s importance to the Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Here is the excerpt we discussed:
Israel’s No: Jews And Jesus In An Unredeemed World – Religion Online64.3KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownloadShow NotesSummary
The conversation between Jason Micheli and Rabbi Prof. Joseph Edelheit revolves around the theological ideas of Jürgen Moltmann and the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. They discuss Moltmann's emphasis on the eschatological nature of faith and the importance of engaging with scripture. They also explore the concept of redemption and the role of Jews and Gentiles in God's plan. The conversation highlights the need for dialogue and understanding between different religious traditions. Overall, the conversation encourages a nuanced and inclusive approach to theology.
Takeaways
Jürgen Moltmann was an influential theologian who emphasized the eschatological nature of faith and the importance of engaging with scripture.
The conversation highlights the need for dialogue and understanding between Judaism and Christianity.
Moltmann's theology encourages a nuanced and inclusive approach, recognizing the different paths and vocations of Jews and Gentiles.
The concept of redemption is explored, with an emphasis on the unredeemedness of the world and the hope for a future transformation.
Sound Bites
"We can't talk about the idiot. We have to talk about something worthy of our dialogue."
"It's not our mission, it's God's mission."
"God taking an unexpected detour is like a major recurring plot device throughout the Hebrew Bible."
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June 6, 2024
God's Two Hands are Different Hands
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Here is the recording from our discussion of the Barmen Declaration’s Fifth Thesis:
Show Notes
“Fear God. Honor the Emperor.”
— 1 Peter 2:17
Scripture tells us that by divine appointment the State, in this still unredeemed world in which also the Church is situated, has the task of maintaining justice and peace, so far as human discernment and human ability make this possible, by means of the threat and use of force. The Church acknowledges with gratitude and reverence toward God the benefit of this, his appointment. It draws attention to God’s Dominion [Reich], God’s commandment and justice, and with these the responsibility of those who rule and those who are ruled. It trusts and obeys the power of the Word, by which God upholds all things.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the State should and could become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfill the vocation of the Church as well.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the Church should and could take on the nature, tasks and dignity which belong to the State and thus become itself an organ of the State.
Summary
The conversation explores the intersection of Christian convictions and political beliefs, drawing from personal experiences and historical contexts. It delves into the Barman Declaration, scripture, and the role of the state in maintaining justice and peace. The discussion challenges the dichotomy of church versus state and the tendency to see the church as the sole agent of God's work in the world. The conversation delves into the relevance of Barth's thesis in the current context, highlighting the dangers of merging church and state, the impact of politics on faith, and the need for a proper understanding of the church's role. It also addresses the challenges of equating democracy with the will of God and the importance of discernment in power and influence.
Takeaways
Christian convictions can prompt a reappraisal of previously held political beliefs.
The role of the state in maintaining justice and peace is acknowledged, but not absolute.
The conversation challenges the dichotomy of church versus state and the tendency to see the church as the sole agent of God's work in the world. The relevance of Barth's thesis in the current context
The dangers of merging church and state
The impact of politics on faith
The challenges of equating democracy with the will of God
The importance of discernment in power and influence
Sound Bites
"The conversation challenges the dichotomy of church versus state and the tendency to see the church as the sole agent of God's work in the world."
"We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission, the state should and could become the sole and total order of human life."
"A lot of Christians equate American democracy with the direct will of God in a way that would make Barth very uncomfortable."
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June 5, 2024
Deprive Them of Their Pathos
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Heads up— if you’re in the L.A. area, I will be speaking and preaching this weekend at the Lutheran Church of the Master for their Gospel Freedom Series.
Check it out here.
Politics: A game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity
You would never guess it from the way they greet one another along the sidewalk in the morning or wave as they jog their dogs after work, but just about everyone in my neighborhood believes America’s partisan cold war is about to ignite with fire and fury. Depending on who you ask, we are sitting on either the brink of civil war or the end of the democracy itself. They’re all angry and afraid, convinced that we have arrived at an apocalyptic inflection point in our history. Of course, you’d never know they hold these convictions with religious zeal by driving through our neighborhood. Biden and Trump campaign signs are sparse. I hear none of my neighbors voice their fears or antagonize one another on the deck of our community pool. But, they do tweet— or X— them. And they share posts on Facebook with the vitriol of a WWE heel — except no one is pretending.
This may be an odd time in history, but it’s not unique.It’s often forgotten the extent to which political propaganda and siloed partisan media outlets in Germany created the conditions that made possible the Kaiser’s war effort, the resentment and conspiracy-mongering that followed its defeat, and the rise of German nationalism. Like us, Germans were hyper-political and had politicized every aspect of their lives. Political tribalism extended into other areas of German life such that one’s party affiliation extended into every other components of social life. As Richard Evans notes in The Coming of the Third Reich, “Choirs, sports clubs, libraries, youth groups, women’s organizations, dramatic societies — even pubs — identified themselves in political terms: as Social Democrat, nationalist, Centre, and so forth.” German politics was a lifestyle brand, or what David Zahl would call seculosity.
This was the climate in which the Protestant theologian Karl Barth began holding his “Exercises in Sermon Preparation” in 1932 at the University of Bonn.
Barth was from Switzerland and had signed an oath to refrain from political organizing as a condition of employment in Germany, but Barth felt called to give these future communicators an alternative to the toxic and partisan rhetoric that had infected every aspect of German life.
In shaping these lectures on preaching, Karl Barth returned to his thoughts in the second edition of his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In his exegesis of Romans 12 and 13, the question of the ethics of revolution came to the fore as Barth reflected upon the relationship between the Church and the State. To would-be activists and revolutionaries, especially Christians (rightly) dissatisfied with the status quo, Barth’s counsel bears resisting for our own fractured, Flight-93 time. Barth believed Paul’s epistle provides no justification either for reactionary, nationalistic conservatism or violent left-wing revolution. According to his reading of Romans, as Angela Hancock notes in her book Karl Barth’s Emergency Homiletic, Karl Barth argued that Christians should resist the absolute claims of the State, ideological leaders, and political parties by depriving them of their pathos.
Christians should resist the absolute claims of the State, ideological leaders, and political parties by depriving them of their pathos.
Barth writes:
It is evident that there can be no more devastating undermining of the existing order than the recognition of it which is here recommended, a recognition rid of all illusion and devoid of all the joy of triumph. State, Church, Society, Positive Right, Family, Organized Research, and so forth live off of the credulity of those who have been nurtured upon vigorous sermons-delivered-on-the-field-of-battle and other suchlike solemn humbug. Deprive them of their PATHOS, and they will be starved out; but stir up revolution against them, and their PATHOS is provided fresh fodder. (Romans)
By “pathos” Barth points back to his treatment of the word in Romans 7:5 where Paul uses the word to speak of “the sinful passions” to which we are all prone to fall captive.
The lesson is that we should not give to our party politics the passion they seek; that is, we should not invest them with eternal importance.Once given the ultimate pathos it seeks, political ideology has the power to extract from us all sorts of self-justifications that lead us in directions contrary to the good. That this is a word of caution needed by leftist and Trumpist activists alike seems self-evident. Rather than imbue politics with religious zeal, Barth writes that those who seek the common good should “do their best to prevent the intrusion of religion into that world. They will lift up their voices to warn those careless ones, who, for aesthetic or historical or political or romantic reasons, dig through the dam and open up a channel through which the flood of religion may burst into the cottages and palaces of men.”
Barth’s recommendation extends beyond ideology and politics to those who participate in them. Deprive them of their pathos; don’t give them the endorphin rush of their righteous indignation. Don’t buy into activists’ insistence that ______ issue means we must, as Barth put it, “storm the heavens.” With good cheer — the love of neighbor — refuse to grant the premise of their rhetoric; that is, refuse to accept that this or another political issue is an end of such ultimate, consequential stakes that any means of success are thereby justified.
Political activity is important and necessary, but should be engaged as “a game that is played in full and vigilant awareness of its relativity” (Barth’s Emergency Homiletic).In other words, to deprive them of their pathos is in fact an exhortation to extend grace, ignoring a perceived transgression and reckoning in its place a goodness that may not be present.
In 2016, 2020, and now in 2024, activists on both ends of the political spectrum have compared the voting booth to “a Flight 93 moment,” hearkening back to the brave, selfless passengers who did whatever was necessary on 9/11 to down the hijacked plane before it could wreak unimaginable devastation. To novice communicators of the gospel, in the thick of nationalistic propaganda and fascist demagoguery, Barth cautioned against exactly this sort of rhetoric that presently chokes our national discourse. It does not deprive the left of their pathos, Barth would likely say, but only ensnares them into responding in kind; likewise, seeing the defeat of President Trump at the polls this November as an existential crisis and an apocalyptic threat to America that does nothing to starve his MAGA-clad fans of their sense of belonging to something ultimate. It deprives no one of their pathos to call those in one party deplorable nor to identify your own side as “the coalition of the decent.”
To deprive them of their pathos is in fact an exhortation to extend grace, ignoring a perceived transgression and reckoning in its place a goodness that may not be present.
Barth’s thinking in Romans is a word we all need to hear. If Barth could write this in the time of Hitler (he eventually lost his post and was exiled to Switzerland), then our own circumstances do not exempt us from his wisdom. Barth was hardly a disengaged quietist, yet he worried that the measured reflection and back-and-forth negotiation required by democratic politics had been replaced by “the convulsions of revolution.” Any healthy politics must be grace in practice, for it requires a humility which is only made possible by the recognition that all participants involved are not only finite but inescapably sinful creatures.
Or, as Barth puts it, politics is only sustainable when “it is seen to be essentially a game; that is to say, when we are unable to speak of absolute political right.”
To deprive them of their pathos is to reserve for God what is God’s alone, the adjudication of absolutes.
Pathos — investing politics with all-encompassing meaning and identity — results, as Angela Hancock notes, “in an escalating exchange of the political propaganda. Because their respective political views are held with deadly eternal seriousness, neither critical distance nor reasoned dialogue about politics is possible any longer.”
The neighbor who picks up my newspaper for me from the driveway is the same person who, according to Facebook, thinks people like me (i.e., people who think maybe we should talk about racism) “hate America and think only armed resistance will solve the problem.” Sarah Condon says we know now as much about social media as smokers did in the ’20s about cigarettes. One day, gasping for our last breath, I wager we’ll discover that one of the tolls taken by social media, shepherding us into ever more precisely partisan echo chambers, is that it did not allow us to do the one thing Karl Barth learned we must do when it comes to politics.
The most extended biblical meditation on the Lord’s Supper occurs in the context of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which the Apostle rebukes his flock because they do not “discern the body” during the Lord’s Supper (I Corinthians 11:29). The context makes clear that by “discern the body” Paul does not mean the bread or wine themselves; he means the diversity of members that make up the Church body. Paul’s admonition to discern the body was, in Corinth, a rebuke of the way in which the Church had segregated rich from poor, male from female, spiritual from irreligious, Jew from Greek.
The New Testament instructs us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in such a way that we are forced to reckon with the nature of the motley crew Jesus draws together.To celebrate with bread and wine in a way that allows you to avoid those whom you would never choose as friends — except that Jesus has first befriended you — is to celebrate something other than the Lord’s Supper of the New Testament. In that same meditation, Paul warns that “those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.” If there is an ecumenical corollary from sacrament to public square, then perhaps we’re all now sick from the judgment we’ve feasted upon in our politics for too many years. And if there’s a remedy to what ails us politically, then perhaps it’s in line with St. Paul’s own prescription, to get out of our social media silos and into places where we must discern the body politic and engage it in all its diversity. Only in the latter spaces will we discover the power to deprive them, with good cheer, of their pathos.
*originally published at www.mbird.com
*photo: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/op...)
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June 4, 2024
The Political Correlatives to Radical Grace
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In our weekly examination of Karl Barth’s work on the Barmen Declaration, the political correlative of the gospel kerygma has proved unavoidable. The chief claims of gospel faith are at once, simultaneously, exercises of that same faith. Just so, Barth’s penultimate fifth thesis in the Barmen Declaration confesses:
According to Barth in the Barmen Declaration— Apolitical Christianity is pure delusion.
“Fear God. Honor the Emperor.”
— 1 Peter 2:17
Scripture tells us that by divine appointment the State, in this still unredeemed world in which also the Church is situated, has the task of maintaining justice and peace, so far as human discernment and human ability make this possible, by means of the threat and use of force. The Church acknowledges with gratitude and reverence toward God the benefit of this, his appointment. It draws attention to God’s Dominion [Reich], God’s commandment and justice, and with these the responsibility of those who rule and those who are ruled. It trusts and obeys the power of the Word, by which God upholds all things.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the State should and could become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfill the vocation of the Church as well.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the Church should and could take on the nature, tasks and dignity which belong to the State and thus become itself an organ of the State.
But so is an overly politicized Christianity which collapses the church into the state. Just as law and gospel are God’s two words, the church and the principalities are both God’s modes of working in the world to shepherd it towards the future Fulfillment promised by the gospel. Thus, the Reformation’s call for radical faith in the gospel carries with it every day political implications.
A student of Barth’s, Robert Jenson, suggests some political ramifications to Luther’s rediscovery of the doctrine of justification.
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