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The Iowa Preachers Project

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Hi Friends,

Here is the recording of Sunday’s sermon on Colossians by my friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones. And this is the perfect time to announce a project that he and I are coordinating in partnership with Grand View University, Mockingbird, and 1517: the Iowa Preachers Project.

Funded by the Lily Endowment, the Iowa Preachers Project is based in Iowa but not is not specific to preachers in Iowa. We will gather together a cohort of preaching fellows around our shared theological foundation and over three years equip working preachers to proclaim the gospel with clarity and passion.

We will meet three times in person, in Des Moines, Southern California, and Charlottesville, Virginia (Wahoowa).

Ken is the Director of the Iowa Preachers Project.

I am the Preacher-in-Residence (mentoring the fellows on a monthly basis).

Dr. Johanna Hartelius, whom many of you will know from podcasts and Monday night sessions, is also part of the team.

The best part— thanks to the Lily Foundation all costs for the Preaching Fellows will be covered. The program kicks off September 22 in Des Moines at Grand View.

Applications went live yesterday. If you’re a preacher and wouldn’t mind spending a little time with me, I encourage you to read more over on the program website.

Check out the project here.

If you’re a working a preacher, apply.

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About the Project

Without a doubt, the church's place in the culture is in the midst of radical change, and its preachers face an unknown future. The Iowa Preachers Project at Grand View University provides a unique, supportive environment for the church's public proclaimers to hone their skills as well as a place to discover ways to deliver the gospel in this new environment.

In partnership with Mockingbird and 1517, and with funding from the Compelling Preaching Initiative of the Lilly Endowment, Inc., the Project focuses on building the Body of Christ and on building preachers' skills in delivering compelling messages that bring the word of God to their congregations and the world beyond.

​Each year, the Project's preaching fellows are welcomed from across denominations, connect to faithful and worthy mentors and scholars, and explore the breadth and depth of the gospel with one another.

Theological Foundations

From the moment of creation in Genesis to Revelation's Jesus the pale rider coming to battle with a sword in his mouth, God’s relationship with us is wrapped up in his Word. As John says of Jesus in his prologue, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The call of the preacher is to enter into the relationship between God and sinners as the mouthpiece through whom God speaks. Preachers may be many things, but they are first and foremost servants of the Word. As in the Lucas Cranach altarpiece of Martin Luther preaching, the church's public proclaimers point to Christ. The proclamation of the gospel is a peculiar kind of speech in which God uses preachers to deliver the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection to those who stand on the far side of the chasm of sin from God. This means that true preaching actually declares God’s mercy in the here and now. As the Swedish theologian Gustav Wingren wrote, “The preaching of the gospel is essentially the same as absolution. …It does not wait hopefully for faith to appear in a doubting soul, but brings faith about where it is lacking.” [Gospel and Church] There are all sorts of ways for words about God to be entertaining, engaging, or informative. But the actual proclamatory event does something more. God uses human words on the lips of preachers to change the hearer’s identity, status, and future. The clearest, shortest sermon appears in this kind of active language: “You are forgiven for Jesus’ sake.” This is a declaration to its hearers that God has made a decision about them apart from their achievements, attitudes, or piety — or to use Paul’s phrase, regardless of them being dead in sin. This proclaimed promise becomes compelling when the Holy Spirit uses it to create saving faith, that is, the restoration of a person’s broken relationship with God, first, but also the relationship with others and with the world. In The Freedom of a Christian (1520), Martin Luther argued that preaching shifts a person’s understanding of Christ: Jesus “is not simply ‘Christ’ but ‘Christ for you and me’ and what we say about him and call him affect us.” Preachers’ ability to deliver such an unmitigated promise depends on two things. First, preachers must know sin and death present in themselves. Second, they must themselves hear the gracious announcement of Christ “for you.” Preaching is best learned “in the middle of life’s crucible: in our brokenness, failures, and death.” [Ken Sundet Jones, “Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation: A Little Course on Preaching”] The existence of preachers today who have the courage to speak for God is evidence that the Spirit has entered into these low places again and again to make sure people today continue to be freed and raised to new life.

The Iowa Preachers Project at Grand View University gratefully partners with Mockingbird and 1517 with generous funding from the Compelling Preaching Initiative of Lilly Foundation, Inc.

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Oprah Isn't Bringing You a Casserole

Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, pay it forward by becoming a paid subscriber!

(image by Chris E.W. Green)

The lectionary Gospel passage for the Sixth Sunday of Eastertide is John 15.9-17:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. He prunes any of my branches that don’t produce...”

Who are we kidding, Jesus? This just doesn’t work.

As a message, as a teaching— a sermon— Jesus goes about this all wrong.

Sure, Jesus had a big heart for the least, the lost, the left behind. Sure, Jesus could suffer for my sin. Yes, that whole swallowing up Death in Victory feat is pretty impressive, but take it me from a working preacher. Jesus doesn’t know what he’s doing.

A good sermon should pick at and prod against and pull on the tension in the text or in the room, teasing out the MAIN IDEA only at the very end. Preaching isn’t just talking and it’s not the same as lecturing. For a sermon to be good, for the word to be a living word, then the preacher’s words have to land on target:

The sermon has to be written for the ear not the eye.

The imagery has to be relevant and compelling.

The verbs have to be active.

Savior of the world maybe.

Good preacher?

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Jesus starts off promising, despite how the rest of it goes. Jesus begins the sermon with an illustration, actually more like a piece of performance art. Jesus takes off his robe and ties it around his waist like a slave. Jesus rolls up his sleeves, and Jesus stoops down on his knees. And like a slave, the savior washes his listeners’ filthy feet.

One at a time he does what no Messiah would ever do and only a servant ever would. He washes their feet!(?) The congregation— they have no idea what he’s doing. They’re hanging on every word he doesn’t say. It’s a brilliant counter-intuitive way to begin a sermon.

And when Jesus finishes and stands up and puts his robe back on, he keeps it short and sweet, “Just as I have washed your feet...wash one another’s feet.”

Bam- his words match the ritual action.

What they hear echoes what they’ve just seen.

It’s visual. It’s memorable. And the takeaway can fit onto a bumper sticker, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jesus starts off with A plus promise.

If he’d only stopped there.

But then Jesus commits the first mistake of preaching: he just keeps preaching. He rambles on and on about betrayal and his Father’s House and a Comforter coming. He preaches so long you forget this teaching started with a street theater grabber like the foot-washing. What’s worse, Jesus then makes the kind of promise that NO preacher should ever make. Jesus says in his sermon, “I won’t say much more to you...”(14.30).

Jesus promises he’s almost done preaching and then what does he do?

By my count, Jesus preaches for another 2,040 words, which makes this the only basis on which you could ever argue that Jesus was a Baptist.

I mean— just because he died for us doesn’t mean we can’t be critical right?

Even if you just take this sermon within the sermon in John 15, it doesn’t work. Jesus just comes out with his main idea right away, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper.” It’s like giving away the punchline before you’ve told the joke. Sure, Jesus doesn’t have as much experience, but even Jesus should know that if you begin where you should end you’ve got no where to go. So it’s no wonder he just repeats himself over and over again.

But it’s not just the mechanics of the sermon Jesus screws up, it’s the substance.

Preaching, as one with a Master of Divinity degree knows, is a proclamation of the gospel. Preaching is the announcement of the unconditional promise that nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Apparently Jesus skipped Preaching 101 though because his sermon— if you can even call it a sermon— is loaded down with very conditional-sounding if/then statements that all run in the wrong direction:

“If you remain in me, then I will remain in you.”

“If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit.”

“If you don’t remain in me, then you will be thrown away.”

“If you keep my commands, then you will remain in my love.”

“If you do what I’ve commanded, then you will be my friends.”

Even a C minus, tone-deaf rookie preacher should know that when you make conditional if/then statements the listeners can’t help but then ponder the alternatives:

“If you don’t remain in me, then I will not remain in you.”

 “If you do not remain in me, then you will produce no fruit.”

 “If you don’t keep my commands, then you will not remain in my love nor will you by friends.”

And then it’s no time before your listeners aren’t even listing to you anymore. Now they’re listening to that voice inside their heads, the one reminding them of each and every instance in which they did not keep his commands.

And then—

It’s no time after that that your sermon— if you can even call it a sermon— starts to sound like something other than gospel. Good news.

Next:

To make matters worse, Jesus takes his most vivid, arresting, attention-grabbing language and he applies it to the wrong people.

He shoots at the wrong target.

All those metaphors or pruning and throwing away and burning up in fire— that’s the stuff of good, visceral, brimstone preaching. But Jesus uses it against the wrong people. It’s just basic, elementary rhetoric.

That kind of rabble-rousing language should be aimed against OUTSIDERS.

Pruning Off.

Throwing Away.

Burning Up.

Every good preacher knows you use those kinds of metaphors to draw a line between us and them. It’s the oldest sermon trick in the book.

The quickest way to unite a crowd, to inspire an audience, to mobilize everyone there listening to you is to demonize those who are not there.

Every good preacher knows the surest way to create an “us” is to label a “them.”

And to heap hot, heavy language on them like Pruning Off, Throwing Away and Burning Up. But Jesus takes that language and he turns it in the wrong direction. He turns it towards you. And he says, “If you don’t remain in me. you will be like a branch that is thrown out and dries up and thrown into a fire...”

What’s he doing?!

It’s a bold, stupid and probably counter-productive move. I would never dare tell my listeners that God might prune them off, throw them away and burn them up. Jesus is breaking the unspoken rule of all preaching: You have to suck up to your listeners and manipulate them into liking you.

Far be it from me to toot my own horn, but I think we can all agree that, as a preacher, Jesus could benefit from some pointers from yours truly. Or, if not from me then certainly we can agree that Christ could use some coaching from the greatest of all spiritual teachers...Oprah Winfrey.

That’s right.

I remember some time ago I was working at the Starbucks, slamming back Americanos while I studied Jesus’s preaching here in John 15.

And then I noticed these cardboard-sleeve sermons staring me right in the face:

“Follow your passion. It will lead to your purpose.”

“The only courage you ever need is the courage to live the life you want.”

“Your life is big. Keep reaching.”

And then my personal fav:

“Love from the heart of yourself. Seek to be whole, not perfect.”

Take it from a Dean’s List someone who knows: those are great, textbook sermons. They were brief and to the point. They were memorable and spoken in the language of our culture and they literally meet us where we’re at. And they appealed in an unconditional, unambiguous way to our greatest passion: ourselves.

Those cardboard-sleeve sermons are all about my freedom to be unique. To be special. To be fulfilled. To be the star of the movie entitled ‘Me’ which at the director’s discretion (ME) may or may not include a (minor) supporting cast.

When you read her cardboard-sleeve sermons it becomes all the more apparent how Jesus’ preaching just doesn’t work.

Look at it again, his imagery falls flat.Jesus is the vine, okay.God the Father is the Gardener, fine.Which leaves us to be...the branches?!It should be the other way.It should be Jesus is the Soil and God is the Gardener, or God is the Soil and Jesus is the Gardener- fine, either will work. But we should get to be the Plant and we should get to be whatever Plant We Want To Be bearing Whatever Kind of Fruit We Want God To Help Us Bear.

The way Jesus has it sucks. Branches?

Branches are all completely dependent on the plant.

If that sounds good to you then fine for you, but that’s not who I want to be.

Instead of a branch that can do NOTHING apart from the plant, Jesus SHOULD promise that with him I can do ANYTHING I want, fulfill my desires, realize my dreams, achieve my goals.

That will preach. Every time.

For my sins, I’ll turn to Jesus, but for sermons there’s better messages out there than Jesus’s.

The problem with Jesus’s sermon in John 15 isn’t just the branch analogy that Jesus draws. The problem isn’t just that a branch is not the object of attention— unlike my self-image. The problem isn’t just that apart from the plant a branch is no better than firewood- again, contrary to my self-image. No, the real problem with Jesus’s preaching, with his choice of metaphor, is the kind of plant of which we’re supposed to be branches: Vines.

Why not a tree? Or a friggin’ tomato plant?Vines are tangled and messy, inefficient and not very attractive when you get right down to it.

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Vines get so knotted together it’s hard to tell which is what- not really the kind of anonymity a narcissist like me prefers. Vines gets so wrapped up together that every blemish and bare spot on every branch is visible to at least a few other branches- that isn’t cool.

The thing about vines—

The branches get so twisted up with each other that when fruit does bloom it’s hard to tell which branch produced it.

And the thing about vines— the branches get so wound around each other that when  fruit goes bad you can’t tell whose _________ stinks.

And the thing about vines, they’re as likely to choke and kill each other as they are to flower and bear fruit.

This is a terrible sermon, an awful choice of metaphors. Even brown-nosing St. Paul gets it better when he chooses the analogy of the Body.

At least the hand and the ear keep a comfortable distance from each other.

 “I am the vine and you are the branches.”

 Take it from someone who knows: this is a terrible homiletical move.

Because, frankly, I don’t know if I want to get that to close to you, get that tangled up in you, so wrapped up in you that I can see your imperfections.

Or, to be more honest, I don’t know if I want you to get that close to me. I’m the pastor for a reason. I LIKE being able to stand up in the pulpit at a distance. I don’t know if I want you to get knotted enough up with me that you can see my prune marks and smell my stink.

John 15— this is a terrible sermon within a terrible, too-long sermon.

I know how to preach a better sermon. Oprah can squeeze a better sermon onto a cardboard coozie. Jesus’ sermon— it doesn’t work.

But that’s the thing, sermons aren’t everything.

As a preacher, as much as it kills me to admit, sermons aren’t everything. Or even much of anything. Oprah might be able to deliver the pitch-perfect, culturally-determined message we’re hungry to hear.

But when your Mom or Dad dies, Oprah isn’t bringing you a casserole. You need a church.

And when you lose your job or your child or when your spouse leaves you, Oprah isn’t showing up in your living room for coffee and a listening ear and a maybe a prayer. You need a church.

And when your _________ stinks- and it will- and when you’re deluded into thinking you’re the plant at the center of the earth basking in the well-deserved light Oprah is not going to show up and point out all your places to prune, notice your bare spots or exhort you to bear fruit for something greater than yourself.

She won’t do that. She won’t.

You need a church to do that. You NEED a church to do that. You do. Because no one else, no where else will.

“I am the vine and the vine you are the branches.”

As one preacher to another, Jesus, take it from me: this is a terrible sermon.

But it just might be true.

I am the preacher-in-residence and jack-of-all for the Iowa Preachers Project. It’s an initiative endowed by the Lily Foundation and in partnership with Mockingbird and 1517 ministries.

Applications for Preaching Fellows went live today and we kick off in September.

Check it out and consider applying.

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Q: Does the One-Way Love of God Necessarily Entail Predestination? A: Sorry, yes

Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, pay it forward by becoming a paid subscriber!

Thinking about the intersections and dissonances between popular religion, classical theism, and biblical dogma, I decided to revisit and finally finish a catechism I began writing a decade ago. Thanks to a long vacation called cancer I never completed it. My plan is to rework what I had written, as God has made me otherwise than who I was back then, and to write new entries for the questions that I left unaddressed.

There is a long tradition in the historic church, especially in the Reformation, of distilling the faith down into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures. As Luther intended his own Small Catechism, the Q/A's of a catechism are, really, the pretense for a longer dialogue, in Luther’s case a conversation between parents and their children. Given the post-Christian world in which we will live, I think it's important to outline the faith such that people can see— and learn— the philosophical foundation beneath it. It's important for people, in and out of the faith, to see that ours is a faith which isn't afraid of doubt even as it takes the reasons for doubt with moral seriousness. Ours is a faith that has ancient answers for modern questions, a faith that will always rely upon God's self-revelation but it is not irrational for all truth is God's truth. In other words, ours is a faith with the resources to tame the cynicism of a post-Christian culture.

You can see my last entry:

Tamed CynicQ: Does God Suffer? A: Yes.Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work, pay it forward by becoming a paid subscriber! Thinking about the intersections and dissonances between popular religion, classical theism, and biblical dogma, I decided to revisit and finally finish a catechism I began writing a decade ago. Thanks to a long vacation called cancer …Read more6 days ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Jason Micheli18. Is God Indifferent Towards Us?

Of course not.

A person’s act of being as well as every action done by a person is an act of God. So, if the creator is the reason for everything that is, there can be no actual being which does not have the creator as its center holding it in being always. So God literally cares more for us than we can conceive. Our compassion is a feeble attempt to be what God is all the time.

Put less philosophically, the entire point of the Reformation was that the gospel promise is unconditional.

Quite the opposite of indifference, God is so jealous for his creatures that he pledges a love freed of any condition of human fulfillment.

In other words—

The gospel is the promise of God’s one-way love for us.

The gospel declares, apart from any cooperation on our part, “The Crucified lives for you.”

Therefore, God is not indifferent towards us; God loves you for Jesus’s sake.

In fact, a primary implication of the gospel is that it responds to a hearer who does not believe it thusly, “Just by your unbelief you prove yourself the very person to whom God is not indifferent, whom God loves, for the Lord elects— above all— the ungodly.” The gospel tolerates no conditions— no systems of merit and demerit— exactly because the God of the gospel is the opposite of indifferent towards us.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.”

— Ephesians 2.8

19. Does the One-Way Love of God Necessarily Entail Predestination?

Yes.

The sheer unconditionality of the gospel promise, however, elicits another unavoidable question— that of human freedom.

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You May Be Right

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Colossians 2:20-33

For the Fifth Sunday of Easter, my friend Dr. Ken Sundet Jones continued our lectio continua series through Paul’s Letter to the Colossians.

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

Let’s pray. Gracious Lord God, you have chosen to reveal the fullness of creation and of your very being in the small thing that is no thing, for in your little word, the word that took on flesh in Mary’s womb, the word that hung bloodied and dead on a cross, the word spoken in this place for countless Sundays. Use that inconsequential thing today to rouse us and draw our attention away from the elemental spirits of this world that we might look only to you for hope, for security, and for life itself. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I’m under a little pressure here at Annandale United Methodist Church today. I am temporarily occupying the pulpit of my rogue plus-one in all manner of theological raconteuring, the guy whom I regard as one of the brightest lights around. But this dim bulb is also the director of a project designed to help preachers get better at their proclamatory task. I have some kind of ill-founded reputation I feel compelled to maintain. On top of that, weeks ago when I asked what the assigned passage of God’s word for our service today would be, Pastor More-Productive-than-Thou told me it was from Colossians.

I loathe Colossians. Among Paul’s letters, it’s not a brilliant argument like Romans, it’s not a not a vivid look into the lives of early Chrtians like Corinthians, it’s not as winsome and personal as Philemon, and it certainly doesn’t have anything in it for my inner 12-year-old boy like Paul in Galatians saying his opponents should cut off their junk. What Colossians does have is a lot of stuff about the fullness of things and elemental spirits, and sensual indulgence that for a preacher means taking pew-sitters into an ancient system of thought and doing a lot of pastor-splaining that nobody came here for.

Riding the train to New York on Thursday, we found ourselves trapped on the quiet car, and as I respectfully refrained from witty banter with my traveling companions, I took the opportunity to do a first run at this bit of homiletical horror you have before you now. By the time we were passing Hoboken, I’d given up. All I’d done was write a disquisition on first century ancient near East Gnosticism’s cosmology and its elaborate creation myth about the Bathos, the source of all being, and the pleroma — the fullness that surrounded it, and the Demiurge that created the evil material world. Yada, yada, yada. All of which students in my Ancient and Medieval Philosophers course need to know about, but none of which actually does the divine deed of saving you from yourself.So let’s begin again. I shall instead tell you a tale of my own penchant for falling prey to my inner elemental spirits. This story of my former foolishness will have the additional benefits of endearing me to you and of making your pastor look good for inviting me to preach.

You need to know two things before I tell my anecdote. First, my son Topher, my beloved gay kid and lover of Sondheim and politically astute urban planner in Toronto, is a roller coaster enthusiast. It’s perhaps more accurate to say he’s been a fanatic since he was four. Because of it we there were several summers when we did family vacations going to CoasterCons around the country. He and I once did thirteen parks in fourteen days, and because of him I’ve ridden 235 different coasters. Second, you need to know that in my years of doctoral study I worked as an apprentice in early modern imprints in the Reformation Research program of my school’s library. We had an MDiv student working with us who was a bodybuilder and was unabashed about the fact that thongs were his preferred undergarment. We gave him constant grief about his whale tail and his butt floss.

So now into the endearment phase of the sermon in which I will show how my elemental spirits got me not what they purported to provide but instead did me in. One bitter cold January day in Minnesota, my doctoral classmate Mary and I headed to Target for a couple purchases: Mary for a new kitchen timer and me for the Dad-of-the-Year birthday gift — the brand new Roller Coaster Tycoon board game for my coaster-lovin’ kid. Mary went off to housewares, and I headed to the back of the store to snag proof of my love for my progeny.

There I stood with my red Target cart looking at the shelves of games, deflated because Target didn’t have it. Mary, timer in hand, had found me, and I noticed that in our once empty cart now lay a hanger with three small clips on it. I picked it up, and from each clip there dangled a lovely pastel display of skimpiness, a less-is-more example of intimate apparel, a thong. In sum, three of them to adorn someone’s gluteal cleft. I declared, “Eww. Butt floss! Who would wear these?” As a nearby woman gave me the stink eye for being so craven in a temple of conspicuous consumption, Mary’s face went ashen, and she spoke the words that sparked my need self-loathing and and branded me as a carrier of foot-in-mouth disease. “That’s not our cart.”

I gently placed the illustrious tangle of threads back in the cart of the stink-eyed shopper, abandoned our cart to the store’s wearers of red, and left the store shame-faced and fully aware that my clever attempt at banter that I always hope will prove my mastery over the world had ended with several apparent truths: I am not as clever as I imagine. I am a loathsome worm a la Psalm 22 who is better off digging a hole to live in. And finally, thongs are an instrument of the devil.

Now I hope I’m properly endeared to you. But now I also face another predicament. Jim Nestingen, who preached on the Magnificat, Mary’s prayer, told me in that sermon, “Kenny, Mary begins her sermon by talking about herself. Don’t you ever do that. Preachers who start with themselves as the topic never get on to other matters.” And look at what I’ve done. I’ve followed the world’s wisdom to trust my instincts and follow my bliss. The score is elemental spirits two, Ken Jones one. So let’s begin again and see if we can’t let the word do its own work and avoid the traps set by our reasoning, morals, psychological need, and entertainment value.

In Colossians Paul sees his correspondents as the battlefield that Martin Luther described poetically in “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Paul would have liked Luther’s picture of us being in the crossfire between good and evil, between the crucified and risen Jesus and the Prince of lies. And Paul’s point in our passage from the letter is this: no more than I can apparently avoid craptastic preaching, you can’t be trusted to know what is right and meet and good. What you think of as wisdom is to him a compost pile at best and more likely a stinking pile of bad dog ownership. Paul is drawing those Colossians back to the one true thing: everything revolves around the fact that in Jesus Christ the cosmos has changed. Morality is different from what all you utilitarians and deontologists and demanders of right behavior think it is. Your perceived wins are to be counted as dross. The battlements and crenellations you construct against your enemies in defense of God are really prisons. Sermons that aim to make you successful suburbanites with kids that turn out and a healthy 401-k simply suck and will never achieve what they purport.

I know that your denomination is fracturing in the same way mine did fifteen years ago as we fought a losing war over sexuality that diminished all parties. I have no wisdom as to what should happen at the General Conference. I don’t understand my own Lutheran polity let alone how Methodists do business. But if Paul is right, tain’t nobody who knows anything, because all anyone has to go on is rules and structure and policies and personal preferences that are tainted by sin, and that are, for Paul, anti-Christ.

I’m a church historian. I can’t trot out my erudition and give you a quote from blazing theologians like Barth or Bonhoeffer or Billy Bob Jenson for you that’ll clarify things. But I can tell you about Luther. When he was holed up at the Wartburg castle because he was wanted dead-or-alive across the Holy Roman Empire, what finally drew him out of hiding was that things back home in Wittenberg had come undone. In Luther’s absence a small war had broken out between the traditionalists who sought to maintain what they were comfortable with and those who felt compelled by Luther’s teaching to free themselves of the old order. A university colleague had led worship not in priests’ vestments but in professor’s robes. Worship was led not in the dulcet tones of Latin, the language of angels, but in the guttural utterances of Frühneuhochdeutsch (early new high German). People were being given both bread and wine in the sacrament. And while the partisans on each side were duking it out, innocent people had their consciences torn asunder. People were worried their everlasting salvation was jeopardized, their consciences were troubled, and the sure and certain hope of God’s beneficence in Jesus had been lost.

Luther came home and preached a series of right sermons on consecutive days, which make great reading and give insight into the Reformer’s mind. But the first is the best. Luther drew his hearers to a simple earthy thing that everyone understood: feeding babies. No one, he reminded them, gives an infant a forkful of kale salad or a piece of ribeye steak or even mashed potatoes to eat. That would be neglect and abuse. Instead babies are brought to the breast for their mothers’ milk. Later they eat pap and Gerber strained beets. Eventually comes Cap’n Crunch, sliders, and if you’re lucky Korean corn dogs. Or to spin it another way, like spelunkers crawling through caves, the watchword is not “keep up” but “watch out for those behind you, so they’re not lost.”

Luther’s point, of course, is that, even though you’re in the right on an issue, advancing your cause holds the distinct possibility of destroying another’s faith.

Paul spoke of this when he warned us not to devour ourselves or elsewhere to avoid the works of the flesh and still elsewhere to love your freedom but only in the context of love for your neighbor. Besides, what both Paul and Luther knew is that nobody really knows right from wrong, good from evil, this decision from that one, or whether holding one’s tongue or spouting a clever bon mot about thongs is advisable. Such knowledge is only gained with future hindsight and in the moment is only known in the inaccessible mind of God.

All we’re left to in our contention with our own elemental spirits and their claims of making the world a better place is this: God as sovereign demands that the future, the way forward, is his sole domain, not ours. We might cheer him on, thinking he’ll bring the gavel down as we would. But we’ll only go so far in allowing him to do his job, never fully letting go. Because, when it comes down to it, not only are we impatient with God’s timeframe for bringing in our hoped-for version of the peaceable kingdom, we’ll reject his methods and him altogether.

That’s because this is a God who who pulls the rug out from under our self-righteous legalism by going against his own law: “Jacob will I love. Esau will I hate.” Add to that the Lord’s affection for tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus, the triple threat of women (one caught in adultery, another slathering nard on his feet, and still another begging for crumbs), Paul the coat-check girl at Stephen’s stoning, and having this old South Dakotan as your preacher of an April morning. All are indications that in this kingdom the  last are first, and the first are last. It’s all Jesus in some divine psychotropic wonderland you could never plan as even a fiction.

The problem has never been what people do with their or others’ junk. That’s small-fry sin that the elemental powers want you to concentrate on. The real danger is the pious moralizing in place of compassion, the hypocrisy of parading our rectitude and ignoring the reality that the judge’s banc from which our decrees are rendered is smack dab in the middle of the lake of fire where we’re under even worse judgment.

The only way forward is to turn from hubris to confession: I got nothin’. As Rock of Ages says, “naked come to thee for dress.” The only solution is to be reminded by Paul in Galatians that you have put on Christ. Like Joseph at the end of Genesis, we’re unable to render judgment, not knowing good from evil.

But being dressed in Christ is to be clothed in his grave clothes.It is to identify with the least, the last, the lost, the lame, and I might add the LGBTQ+.

What’s required here (and indeed, is always required) is not Robert’s Rules of Order, church constitutions, moral theories, or a political figure or strongman telling us what's what. No, what’s needed is God coming to us, revealing himself to us, as is his want, on the lips of a preacher who speaks the words on which all our decisions, all our history, and all our future hinge. You Methodists and we Lutherans and every bit of churchianity around us, along with desperate and dubious wonderers, and devoted pagans, and out-and-out atheists, need to hear this one thing.

There’s only one vehicle getting you into the kingdom, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ.Everything else is penultimate.

Everything else is penultimate and more than likely is either an expensive add-on that lines the dealer’s pockets or is something that’ll keep the vehicle from performing as intended.

Human beings plan, and the evil one snickers. But a church and its people who do not have their eyes stayed on Jesus are no church. We sinners always get it wrong. Our witness is always corrupted by it, and it reveals a hollowness at the core of our message. But the truth that will set you and me free is this glorious good news: Everything — every last single thing, every sorrow, every worry, every grief, every election vote that cancels yours, every cancer cell, every adolescent eye roll and monosyllabic answer, every tearful sigh — everything will be alright. Every. Thing. In fact, it’s not only a future tense thing. It’s all resolved right now, because the one who is the word spoken at the beginning, who spoke through the prophets, who died on Calvary and broke the bonds of death, has claimed you and made you his own. Relax already. He’s got this in hand. He’s got our churches in hand. He’s got you in mind and in hand. Amen.

And now May the peace which far surpasses all our human wisdom and understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

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Q: Does God Suffer? A: Yes.

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Thinking about the intersections and dissonances between popular religion, classical theism, and biblical dogma, I decided to revisit and finally finish a catechism I began writing a decade ago. Thanks to a long vacation called cancer I never completed it. My plan is to rework what I had written, as God has made otherwise than who I was back then, and to write new entries for the questions that I left unaddressed. Using the catechism of the Catholic Church as a basic skeleton of categories, my own responses will be an incestuous amalgamation of all my other theological crushes.

There is a long tradition in the historic church, especially in the Reformation, of distilling the faith down into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures. As Luther intended his own Small Catechism, the Q/A's of a catechism are, really, the pretense for a longer dialogue, in Luther’s case a conversation between parents and their children. Given the post-Christian world in which we will live, I think it's important to outline the faith such that people can see— and learn— the philosophical foundation beneath it. It's important for people, in and out of the faith, to see that ours is a faith which isn't afraid of doubt even as it takes the reasons for doubt with moral seriousness. Ours is a faith that has ancient answers for modern questions, a faith that will always rely upon God's self-revelation but it is not irrational for all truth is God's truth. In other words, ours is a faith with the resources to tame the cynicism of a post-Christian culture.

You can see my last entry:

Tamed CynicQ: Does God Change?Tamed Cynic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and all content, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Earlier this spring, my friend Ken Tanner finally managed to prod me into revisiting (his idea) and rewriting (my idea) a catechism of the faith which I had begun several years ago…Read more9 months ago · 4 likes · Jason Micheli

And my first one:

Tamed CynicQ: Does God Exist? A: NoJason Micheli is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. My podcast posse of Dr. Johanna Hartelius and Teer Hardy recently rebooted our show Hermeneutics by recording a conversation on atheism. Thinking about the intersections and dissonances between popular religion, classic…Read morea year ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Jason Micheli17. Does God suffer?

Yes.

Critically, this is not a question the scriptures of Israel and the church ask. In assigning himself jealousy as his chief attribute, the God of the Bible straightforwardly suffers to the extent he suffers the infidelity of the Israel in whom he fell in love.

As the church ventured beyond Israel to gospel a world previously converted by the religion of Plato, question of the Lord’s passibility became a chief intellectual labor of the church. For Plato and Aristotle, the ultimate distinction in reality was not the distinction drawn by the Bible, that between Creator and creature. In the pagan conception, the ultimate distinction between the temporal world and the atemporal realm of deity. Plato believed God is the geometric point at the center of time’s circular mobile— just so, immobile. Aristotle understood deity as an unmoved mover, utterly self-contained in his being.

For God to be eternal, God was to be without.

A God beyond time is, by definition, a God who is not affected by events in time.

Thus, God does not suffer.

Quite obviously, the religion of Plato and the religion of the Bible cannot both be true. The God of Israel is not a fixed being beyond time but creates time exactly to make a history with his creatures. The narrative of scripture— the witness of God’s acts— is not detachable then from what we may say of God’s being. Even if Jews could reconcile Israel’s true and living God with pagan deity, the church cannot, for the creeds confession of God’s triune identity asserts that “one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.”

The second person of the Trinity is therefore not impassible. The adverb “in the flesh” does not displace the subject-object relation. The subject of the verb suffered is God, the Word.

And because what the church confesses about one person of the Trinity she may confess equally of another person of the Godhead, then God is likewise not impassible.

So rather than insisting with the religion of Plato that God does not suffer, we may say that in the Logos, who loves freely by humbling himself unto death— even death on a cross, God suffers.

But, as Robert Jenson, turns the matter:God does not suffer the fact that he suffers.

“Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

— Philippians 2.8

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"Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem because if it's only a Jewish problem, it has no solution"

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Passover blessings to all of you.

Here is a recent conversation with Rabbi Joseph on anti-semitism on campuses, more salient now than we had the conversation last week.

Show Notes

Summary

My conversation with Professor Rabbi Joseph Edelheit revolves around the topic of antisemitism in universities. We discuss the history of antisemitism in universities, the lack of Jewish studies programs, and the need for education on antisemitism. They also touch on the recent congressional hearings on campus antisemitism and the role of academic freedom. The conversation highlights the importance of dialogue, critical thinking, and understanding in addressing antisemitism. The conversation explores the topic of anti-Semitism on college campuses and the need for education and understanding. It delves into the complexities of addressing anti-Semitism and the challenges faced by universities in dealing with controversial faculty members. The conversation also touches on the importance of teaching the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, as well as the need for empathy and inclusivity in society. The Passover holiday is mentioned as a time to reflect on the past and strive for a better future.

Takeaways

Universities need to address their antisemitic past and create Jewish studies programs

There is a lack of education on antisemitism in universities

Academic freedom and diversity should be balanced with responsible teaching

Dialogue, critical thinking, and understanding are essential in addressing antisemitism Anti-Semitism is a significant issue on college campuses that needs to be addressed through education and understanding.

Universities face challenges in dealing with controversial faculty members who espouse anti-Semitic views.

Teaching the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust is crucial for fostering empathy and inclusivity.

The Passover holiday serves as a reminder to reflect on the past and strive for a better future.

Sound Bites

"This course represents a part of the history of our university"

"Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem because if it's only a Jewish problem, it has no solution"

"If you come upon something that is a right answer, please run away from it immediately"

"Is bringing genocide to the Jews anti-Semitic? Yes!"

"60 years ago, I was admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. When I was 17 years old, Mario Savio stood on the roof of a car in Sproul Hall Plaza, and the free speech movement was created."

"Do Jews feel safe on a campus?"

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We’re all Eunuchs

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The Old Testament(!?) text assigned for the Fifth Sunday of Lent is Acts 8.26-40.

While I may quibble with the Revised Common Lectionary for disappearing Jesus’s scriptures during the season of his resurrection, I count it auspicious that this passage from Luke should intrude upon the middle of my denomination’s global gathering. Just as United Methodists will be in the midst of our quadrennial squabble over LGBTQIA Christians, a sexual outcast from the first century will remind us how God the Holy Spirit is always transgressing what we take to the parameters of his law.

The Holy Spirit cracking open settled worlds, disrupting contented lives, exposing our lack of imagination, and infinitely expanding the horizon of salvation— that’s about as good a dust-jacket summary as any for Luke’s sequel to his Gospel.

Despite the prophet Isaiah promising that the Messiah would lure to himself people from all over the world; even though Jesus of Nazareth taught that the Kingdom of God would draw people from east and west, from north and south; in spite of the fact the Risen Christ makes it plain in his Great Commission that the disciples—now apostles— are to venture forth and make disciples of all the ἔθνη (ethnics), nonetheless the Book of Acts documents in embarrassing detail how the gravitational pull of the human heart is to draw lines between us and them, to make distinctions between insider and outsider, and to hunker down into our homogenous tribes.

The gravitational pull of the human heart is to draw lines between us and them.

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There is No God Without You

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Colossians 3.1-11

I am a Christian because one Sunday, at an ordinary church in the suburbs of Richmond, after several months of conscripted worship attendance, 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 offered 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 unsettled me that I skipped past the chalice and sat down in a frightened, astonished daze.

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

On the one hand, I realize it’s crazy to claim that for several seconds before me Steve Chiocca was both Steve Chiocca and yet simultaneously also Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim. For moments less than a minute long, Steve the Sunday school teacher and Christ “the firstborn from the dead” were coincident with one another. On the one hand, I am open to the possibility I imagined it and that I have since deluded myself about the memory.

On the other hand, such a strange and sudden coincidence is not at all astounding. It is sheerly the straightforward claim of scripture, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Why should the Lord Jesus not have appeared in Steve’s stead? After all, the real Steve Chiocca, the Steve as he will be revealed when Christ appears, already exists with Christ in God in such an inseparable way that Steve and Jesus are mutually identified with each other. “For [Steve has] died, and [his] life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Karl Barth says Colossians 3.3 is “the basic Pauline perception…which is that of all Scripture.”

“Hidden with Christ in God” is how scripture sees all of reality.

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One summer afternoon during seminary I ran into the actor Russell Crowe. I was walking my dog and he was in town filming A Beautiful Mind. “Nice dog,” he said, squatting down to pet Quincy. It took me a moment to recognize the actor as he was costumed as the famous Princeton mathematician John Nash. Realizing the famous actor— my man crush, in fact— was standing in front of me, wanting to chat, I became suddenly articulate and charming.

“Uh…” I said.

And then I start to laugh uncontrollably.

And then I watched as Russel Crowe slowly backed away from me, the crazy street person he had unwisely engaged on the sidewalk.

The film A Beautiful Mind begins by recalling John Nash’s impressive start to his career and his fortuitous launch as a man, flourishing in a prestigious post at M.I.T and marrying a good and beautiful woman named Alicia.

After his auspicious start, suddenly schizophrenia disables Nash and the audience discovers that several of the characters in Nash’s life have existed only in Nash’s head.

Shock treatments and antipsychotic medications return him to outpatient life, yet they render him incapable of doing mathematics or making love to his wife. So Nash quits his meds and his delusional friends and fictitious persecutors return to him. In the film, Nash triumphs over his disability by learning to live with it, to live with his delusions as delusions and thereby to re-inhabit the real world. The decision to live with his delusions as delusions poses yet another difficulty for Nash; namely, he now has to learn how to distinguish delusion from reality. For instance, rather than indulge his delusions Nash has to learn to discern the difference between, say, the Russian agents pursuing him around Cambridge and that of his doctor, whom he initially takes to be one of his KGB antagonists. Nash even tells friends and colleagues to be on the lookout for his delusional behavior. Approached by a representative of the Nobel Committee, Nash asks a nearby student if she sees the stranger too. Just so, Nash’s delusions never leave him. His friends still appear to tell him that they miss him. And spymasters continue to appear and enlist him for his country’s service. None of these delusions go away; they simply no longer determine Nash’s other behaviors and beliefs.

In attempting to learn how to distinguish delusion from reality, Nash founders under the burden of an even more difficult problem. That is, how can you know that you truly know what is real? When the mathematician finally knows that the KGB agents pursuing him are not real, for example, the problem besets him how does he really know that this is so. Perhaps his insight into reality is but another delusion.

Critically, even with his beautiful mind, Nash cannot on his own establish reality. Reality must be unveiled to him from outside of him by another.

Thus, the final turning point in the film comes when Nash's wife, Alicia, says to him, “You want to know what's real?” And then she takes his hand and puts it to her face, and she places her hand to his, and she says to him, “This. This. This. This is real.”

We do nothing less than Alicia when we call scripture the word of God.

In a world ensnarled in delusions, today Jesus in his Spirit takes this word and places it in my mouth and against your ears and says to you, “This. This. This: For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God…When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory…Christ is all, and in all.”

This is real.

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Critics of the faith will often allege that the church’s high Christological claims about Jesus developed centuries after Mary’s boy became Pilate’s victim. Such critics will thus distinguish between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, positing that the creedal tradition subsequently turned Jesus the itinerant teacher into Christ the incarnate Son of God and second person of the triune identity. The unbelieving New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has a book whose title captures this very assumption, How Jesus Became God. In other words, the first Christians had a relatively low understanding of Jesus (rabbi, prophet, messiah— identifiable with God in some general way) and only much later did the church articulate the high view of Christ confessed in the creed:

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.”

Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith.

And it’s not simply a scholarly prejudice but it’s the presupposition held by many lay people. Hundreds of years after Easter, for political reasons all its own, the church came along and complicated the simple faith of the first Christians. I don’t know how many church people I’ve heard advance that sort of argument. Or still another— the notion that the Trinity is an extra-biblical doctrine rather than the proper name of the God disclosed by the Bible. The ubiquity of these kinds of arguments is frankly amazing given the staggering claims scripture straightforwardly makes about Jesus.

There is absolutely nothing in the Nicene Creed that avows anything more astounding and mysterious about Jesus Christ than what you will find in the Letter to the Colossians.

The creeds are merely the church’s attempt to say systematically what Paul already said occasionally to the church at Colossae.

And the Epistle to the Colossians predates Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Prior to the church possessing the Gospels, Paul was already citing breathtaking claims about Jesus:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

In other words—

The claim Colossians makes about our fundamental reality (“Your life is hidden with Christ in God”) is not a later addition to the faith; it is one of the first conclusions drawn by those who personally knew Jesus.

The claim Colossians makes about our fundamental reality (“Your life is hidden with Christ in God”) is not a later addition to the faith; it is one of the first conclusions drawn by those who personally knew Jesus.

And on its face, with merely a surface reading, this word is grace and good news.

Your life is right now, already and always, hid with the Son in the Father.

Tell that to the voice inside your head!

Tell that to your ex-husband!

Say it over yourself when you survey the wreckage of your life!

That life, your life, is right now, in spite of appearances, already and forever, hid with the Son in the Father.

That’s what’s real.

Just so, the determining factor in your life is not your past— you have died. The determining factor in your life is not your present— good or bad, saint or sinner, you have died. What defines you is your future, a future that is already presently established though hidden.

Your life is concealed with Christ in God.

This is real.

This is grace and good news.

But we’ve still not scratched the surface or said all that scripture here says about what is real.

Listen again to the passage in a literal, less-polished translation of Paul’s Greek:

“For you have died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ might become manifest—your life—then you yourselves will also become manifest with him, in glory…in this condition there is no Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free person. Rather, here all things are Christ and in all things is Christ.”

When Christians confess that the true and living God is a triune identity, we mean that there is nothing more to God the Father but as the Father of this Son, Jesus. There is no mysterious God lurking behind the Father of the Lord Jesus. And there is nothing else to God the Son but this Jesus who calls God Abba, Father. Finally, there is no Spirit that is Holy other than the love exchanged between the two, a love that is the power of the Future.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They self-determine their identities according to their relations with each other.

Karl Rahner was a 20th century Catholic theologian. Someone once asked him what he thought of infants whose priests had baptized them not in the name of the triune God but under the attributes Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

Rahner replied:

“Well, I’m sure the children are saved but I’m certain their priests will be damned.”

Rahner was pointing to the inseparability of the relations. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not functions. They are identities that cannot be known apart from their mutual relationship. But now, more mysterious still, into this three person’d relationship, scripture inserts still another— you:

“For you have died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ might become manifest—your life— then you yourselves will also become manifest with him, in glory.”

Notice: Colossians makes Christ synonymous with you— “your life.”

It’s like Paul is saying, When I say Christ I mean you. When Christ is revealed, you will be revealed too. No, it’s even more astonishing. Paul is claiming that you cannot appear at all in glory unless Christ appears and Christ cannot appear in glory apart from, without you.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And You.

Paul points to a mutual manifestation because your life is hidden with Christ in God. These are the things above that Paul implores you to ponder. There is no Father without the Son. There is no Spirit without the Father of the Son. And there is no Son— and so no Father or Spirit— without you.

As good and gracious a word as it is, scripture is saying something far more than that your life is hid with Christ in God. It’s saying that which seems impossible to say. It’s saying that God's own life is bound up with ours. Your life is already with Christ in God. And when Christ is revealed, you too will be revealed. Christ’s life and your life are so bound together, one cannot appear without the other appearing. What’s more, they both appear through one another.

Quite simply—There is no God without Christ.And there is no Christ without the world.Because Christ is the life of you.And you.And you.And you…Ad infinitum.

As Karl Barth says:

In Jesus Christ God has elected not to be God without you— literally.

This is real.

“Whenever Christ might become manifest—your life—then you yourselves will also become manifest with him, in glory.”

Christ is himself and also at once our life, Colossians clearly says.

Which is to say, Christ is not life first in some generic fashion before he elects to identify with us and therefore becomes our life. Christ is our life; that is, his very being is already our life and the life of all things, which is where the passage winds up in verse eleven where Colossians claims that what will one day be manifested to us is not only that all things are in Christ but that all things are Christ.

All things are in Christ.

All things are Christ.

Everyone that you meet, everything that is, all in your life is Christ.

Your life is hid with Christ in God because Christ is in you and Christ is you.

This is real.

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In the Gospel of Mark, during his final week, Jesus eavesdrops on an argument between some scribes. “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus repeats their question. And then Jesus answers the question they did not ask him, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. And you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love God.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

This is good Jesus of History terrain, we think. This is Jesus the Teacher before the church came along and made him the Christ of faith, we think— Jesus before we make him God.

Except, even before the Gospels, Colossians makes it clear that it is a profound mistake to separate these commands into two commands. Christ complicates these commands in such a way as to make them a single command.

Your neighbor’s life is hid with Christ in God.

Your enemy’s life is hid with Christ in God.

Your life is hid with Christ in God.

All things are in Christ.

All things are Christ.

Therefore—

There is no loving God that is not also loving your neighbor.

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There is no loving God that is not loving your neighbor with the love with which God loves God. There is no loving your neighbor that is also not received as love by the God in whom that neighbor is hidden. You cannot treat your neighbor badly without knowing that you’re doing it to the Son of God. This is what the Book of Hebrews means when it laments that “They are crucifying once again the Son of God.” The two loves are ultimately one love because Christ is in all things and becoming all things.

In other words—You are even worse off than the delusional mathematician.

At least, John Nash knew he was crazy.

But you might not have known until just now when the Holy Spirit told you— you might not have known that what you take to be the real world isn’t.

And every day you are surrounded by people who are not as they appear to you.

You may as well have been treating them like delusions given the fact that, in reality, they are Christ.

In his Nobel Prize address, John Nash speaks of his lifelong quest for the reasons of things, for the mathematically formulable underlying dynamic of economic and analogous behavior, for a metaphysics of physics to discipline his madness, for the reasons madness itself provided.

He says:

“I've always believed in numbers; and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask "What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional -- and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.”

And then Nash looks up from his address and looks directly at his wife, Alicia and says, ”You are my reasons.”

Love is the criterion of reality.

Since Russell Crowe and I are friends I went to see the movie in the theater, and I remember that was the moment in the film when the audience wept audibly. Accordingly, it’s important to point out that what Nash says about the mysterious equations of love is utter sentimentality— its pure nonsense— if our lives are not hidden in the God who loves another as himself.

What Nash says about the mysterious equations of love is utter sentimentality— its pure nonsense— if our lives are not hidden in the God who loves another as himself.

This is real.

In the film, the deluded man’s wife does not simply affirm her love. She made him touch her. She takes his hand and she puts his hand to her face, and she places her hand to his hand, and only then does she say to him, “This is real.”

Love that is not embodied is a mere figment.

There is no love without embodiment.

Just so—

Even though it’s the word of God, it’s not enough for Colossians to assure you that “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Love requires more than words.

So come to the Table.

Here, like Alicia to John, the Love with which you are loved makes himself an object in your hands and on your lips. He says to deluded you, “This is my body. This is my blood.” In receiving him, he becomes hidden within you just as you are already hidden with him in God.

This.

This.

This.

This is reality.

Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism

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Here is a conversation with Brian Taylor and Beau Underwood about their new book which lays the problem of Christian Nationalism squarely at the feet of liberals like the United Methodist Church— ouch.

Order the book here.

Check out their work too at A Public Witness:

A Public WitnessAn award-winning e-newsletter from Word&Way covering faith, culture, & politics. By Word&WayShow Notes

Summary

In the podcast episode, Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood discuss their book 'Baptizing America' and the role of mainline Protestantism in the rise of Christian nationalism. They explore the origins of the book and the realization that the evidence used by Christian nationalists often comes from traditions within mainline Protestantism. The conversation delves into the tension between American Christianity and politics, highlighting examples such as the presence of flags in sanctuaries and the use of churches for political events. The authors also discuss the need for self-reflection within mainline churches and the importance of addressing complicity in the rise of Christian nationalism. The conversation explores the concept of Christian nationalism as a continuum, recognizing its presence in churches and denominations. It delves into the role of Christian nationalism in immigration policies and the purpose of the book in creating space for conversation. The need to critique Christian nationalism within churches and denominations is emphasized. The attempt to remove 'So Help Me God' from oaths is discussed, as well as the global network of Christian nationalism. The importance of a healthy Christian care for the nation is highlighted, along with the role of Christians in the public square. The conversation also addresses the potential consequences of Trump's return and offers guidance for pastors in approaching this issue. The book title, 'Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism,' is mentioned, along with where to find it.

Takeaways

Mainline Protestantism has played a significant role in the rise of Christian nationalism in America.

The evidence used by Christian nationalists often comes from traditions within mainline Protestantism.

Mainline churches have often blurred the line between American patriotism and Christian worship.

There is a need for self-reflection within mainline churches to address their complicity in the rise of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism exists on a continuum, and it is important to recognize its presence in churches and denominations.

Christian nationalism can be embedded in immigration policies and other political issues, and it is not limited to a specific political affiliation.

The book 'Baptizing America' aims to create space for conversation and reflection on Christian nationalism within mainline churches.

It is crucial to separate God claims from political campaigns and to critique the misuse of God's name in politics.

A healthy Christian care for the nation involves engaging in the public square while maintaining a prophetic voice and advocating for the common good.

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The assigned psalm for this coming Good Shepherd Sunday is Psalm 23.

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