Jason Micheli's Blog, page 93

The Sermon on the Mount, Karl Barth, and the (Already-Fulfilled) Law that Does Not Accuse

This Sunday’s lectionary Gospel raises the question of how Christians are to understand the law Jesus lays down in his Sermon on the Mount. Is Jesus a New Moses? Or, is Jesus the Faithful Israelite who perfectly obeys the law for the rest of us who cannot? Karl Barth wrestles with the relationship between the law and the gospel in volume II.2 of his Church Dogmatics, saying ““the doctrine of the divine election of grace is the first element, and the doctrine of the divine command is the second.” By prioritizing election (God’s choosing of humanity in Christ) over command, Barth reverses Luther’s distinction between the law and gospel in what becomes his gospel-law thesis. 

Because of his experience watching the German Church incapable of maintaining its Christian distinctiveness during the world wars, Barth was wary of permitting human experience to be the starting point or the interpretative lens into revelation. Barth believed Luther’s distinction between the law and the gospel did just this, privileging the subjective experience of the individual when confronted by the accusing demand of the law and the gospel promise of its fulfillment for you. Instead Barth reversed the ordering of law and gospel, prioritizing the electing God whose decision to save us from sin precedes creation itself.

The Word that is Jesus Christ is prior to God speaking creation into being; therefore, the gospel always comes before any demand of obedience from God to God’s creatures.

Not only is the gospel prior to the law for Barth, the two are one inseparable word, for the giver of the Sermon on the Mount is the word who was with God, who is God, and through whom all things were made. To begin with the gospel means to begin with the doctrine of election: “The doctrine of election is,” according to Barth, “the sum of the gospel.” In election, God wills to be for humanity and for humanity to be with God as his covenant partner. Election makes a claim on the one elected in the form of the law.

As David Hunsicker writes in The Making of Stanley Hauerwas:

“The problem, for Barth is that Lutheran theology overdetermines the difference between law and gospel in a manner that results in the eventual emancipation of ethics from dogmatics. 

Barth’s insistence that the gospel and the law are the one in- separable Word of God is a self-conscious determination to keep dogmatics and ethics together. Barth is concerned that establishing the law as a separate Word of God apart from Jesus Christ means that you can have competing claims to what the Word of God commands: one based in universal laws and represented by worldly ordinances such as civil magistrates and the other based on God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

A law independent of the gospel and an ethics independent of dogmatics threatens the freedom of the gospel itself, leaving us subject to “the worldly ‘ordinances’” and “the ‘competence of experts.’”

This was what Barth and the Confessing Church movement had specifically rejected eight years prior at Barmen:

“Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear, and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.”

Says Hunsicker:

“Luther sows the seeds for what will be eventually known as “the introspective conscience of the West.”The second use of the law, as Lutherans would later call it, acts as a judgment on all our sinful doing and leads us to the truth of the gospel, that is, that our being is determined by our passive (nondoing) reception of God’s grace. Human action becomes obsolete with regard to the question of human being. In this regard, personhood is now reconstituted along the lines of a sort of “inside-out” Cartesian dualism.

In contrast, Barth’s insistence that the law and the gospel are the one in- separable Word of God registers as a strong protest against inside-out dualism. For Barth, the person is constituted as a being-in-becoming, or a being-in-action. Barth’s actualistic ontology means that human being is self- determined by human doing as it corresponds to divine action. God acts toward humanity in the gospel. Then, in a corresponding action, humans act in receiving the good news and responding with obedience to the law.

The result is twofold.

First, humans are given a real agency with regard to the gospel. Obedience to the law does not lead to God’s grace, but it does arise as a genuine human response of gratitude to God’s grace.

Thus Barth’s refusal to separate law from gospel grounds his claim that ethics cannot be independent from dogmatics. This move immediately affects questions related to Christian social witness and divine and human agency. For Barth, both sorts of questions must begin with the subject of Christian dogmatics, the covenantal God who determines to be for hu- manity and who elects humanity to be with him.

This brings us to the two remaining components to the gospel-law thesis: the priority of the gospel to the law and the law as the form of the gospel. Both components differentiate the gospel from the law in the larger context of the unity they share as the one Word of God.

To say that the gospel is prior to the law is to affirm that “the very fact that God speaks to us, that there is a Word of God, is grace.”
In other words, to place the gospel before the law is to say that humans always encounter the Word of God in the context of the covenant of grace.

Even when the one Word of God is law, it is law as the form of the gospel. That is to say, the law always confronts us from the perspective of what has been accomplished by Jesus Christ on our behalf. In this respect, the already-fulfilled law does not hang from our necks like a millstone. Unlike Luther’s second use of the law, it does not accuse us or drive us to repentance; instead, it demands that we “allow [Jesus’] fulfillment of the law . . . to count as our own.”

Jesus’ fulfillment of the law, however, does not mean that Barth forecloses on human agency. To the contrary, the reversal of law and gospel “is at heart motivated by a desire to register a place for human agency.” Above I noted that a law which is separate from the gospel as a second Word of God risks appeals to competing sources of divine revelation. Similarly, a law that precedes the gospel always threatens to become an independent law (e.g., natural law) that points to an idol instead of the true God. 

The law that is rejected is the law that suggests “we must do ‘something’ to make the gospel apply to us,” while the law that is affirmed is the law that expects humans to do something on account of the fact that the gospel already ap- plies to us. This is why Barth’s recharacterization of the law as the form of the gospel avoids Luther’s original concern: works righteousness.

Luther’s solution is to suggest that humans are utterly passive; humans do nothing, God does everything. For Barth, this solution is problematic,“What is wrong about works righteousness is not the fact that the human does something, so that in her passivity she would be in concordance with the grace of God. The wrong thing is that human action stands in contradiction to grace, competes with it rather than conforms to it.”

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God-Damned Christians

Matthew 5.1-12, Romans 5.6-10

My son, Gabriel, took this photo in October of 2018 on Opening Night of the comic book movie, Venom. 

Let’s just say it wasn’t Oscar-worthy. We went to see it, because Gabriel and Dewayne, the friend on my right, conspired together and chose it. 

When he was 25, Dewayne was charged in the murder of a police officer and cashier during a botched robbery of a cash check store in Houston. Upon his arrest, Dewayne had insisted that he’d been at home alone and that his girlfriend, whom he’d called from a landline in his apartment, could verify his alibi. The phone record was never recovered, and the prosecutor threatened Dewayne’s girlfriend with contempt, which meant she’d put her child at risk in the foster care system if she did not revoke her testimony. 

Dewayne fit the profile for a convenient scapegoat and an easy conviction. 

He’d grown up poor. He’d dropped out of school in the ninth grade. His skin was the right color. 

So, a Texas doctor ginned up Dewayne’s IQ from 67, which qualified him as mentally handicapped, to 70, which qualified him for exection. 

Despite any forensic evidence whatsoever or eyewitness corroboration, an all-white jury sentenced Dewayne to death in 2003. He spent the next twelve years in a 60-square-foot single cell. Once a day, he had been allowed to stand in an open-air room a little larger than his cell to catch a glimpse of the sky.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who weep, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are those who are persecuted…

On my left in the photo is my friend, Brian. 

Dewayne had already been on death row for two years when he met Brian, a fast-talking, wise-cracking white-collar defense attorney in D.C.  

Brian’s firm took Dewayne’s appeal pro bono— it was the altruistic, do-gooding case that law firms like to use for advertising and hiring pitches. 

Neither Brian nor the firm considered the possibility that Dewayne was innocent; that is, not until Brian flew down to Houston in 2005 and looked through the glass into Dewayne’s eyes as he maintained his innocence.

After that initial interview, Brian walked out of death row and threw up in the prison parking lot, realizing the liklihood that he would not be able to save an innocent man from death and that he would carry that guilt to his own death. 

Brian gave the next decade of his life to freeing Dewayne. The case jeopardized Brian’s career. The time away and the depression almost ruined his marriage. The Job-like injustice stretched Brian’s faith to the snapping point. 

Blessed are the peacemakers…

Blessed are those whom people ridicule and persecute  and utter all kinds of evil because of me…

———————-

We empathize with innocent victims, because we’ve all had the experience of receiving unfair or perhaps even unjust treatment. We praise those who stand in solidarity with victims, and we admire those who advocate for them for justice.  We especially esteem those who seek to rectify wrongs in the face of long odds and little reward. 

But—

While empathizing with victims and advocating for justice are attributes of those people who constitute the Kingdom of God, empathizing with victims and advocating for justice are not uniquely Christian concerns. 

Long before the invention of hashtags, Allah in the Qu’ran promised blessings upon you who work for justice and look out for the put upon. The call-out culture on Twitter is predicated on showing solidarity with victims and standing up to victimizers. Every religion, philosophy, and ethical system the world has ever known makes distinctions between good people and bad people, the just and the unjust, victim and victimizer.

But Christianity cuts against the grain of every other religion. Christianity is absolutely unique when it comes to distinctions. The Gospel, in its most radical form, is so offensively inclusive that the Apostle Paul has to acknowledge it at the get-go of his correspondence, admitting that our message risks tripping up religious people and sounding like foolishness to unbelievers.  And at the top of his letter to the Romans, Paul has to preemptively stipulate that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation.” 

What about the Gospel sounds like foolishness?

You might have noticed that the Beautitudes are divided into three discrete groups. 

The first four Beautitudes describe those who lack (wealth, joy, power, and righteousness). Next, the Beautitudes list those who give the grace they’ve been given (“Blessed are the merciful…blessed are the peacemakers…”). Finally, the Beautitudes address those who suffer as a consquence of their service. 

The word Jesus uses each time is makarioi. It has the force of a verb. It delivers something. When Jesus says makarioi, He’s giving it over. 

He’s not saying, You’re blessed, if you’re poor. He’s not saying, If you’re sick with grief, the good news is you’re blessed. 

This is more than Jesus offering thoughts and prayer to the hurting and hopeless. This is Jesus saying, I am with you. I am on your side. 

The New Testament scholar, Frederick Dale Bruner, says the Beautitudes should be translated instead, “Look up, you who are poor in spirit, I am here, taking your part, and the Kingdom I bring is especially for you.” 

Look up, you who are mourning. Look up, you who are persecuted…you who are without power. I am here, taking your part, and the Kingdom I bring is especially for you. God helps those who cannot help themselves.

Which all sounds like inoffensive, unsurprising, garden-variety good news until you take a look at that fourth Beautitude again, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 

Recall that what those in the first section of the Beautitudes share in common is their lack. 

Hunger and thirst here in the fourth Beautitude functions in the sense of starving. 

Jesus isn’t describing people who desire righteousness; he’s describing people who are devoid of it. 

Blessed are those who are completely empty of any righteousness, for they will be filled. 

And when you remember that the word for righteousness, in Hebrew and in Greek, is the same word as the word for justice, then you can begin to sense why Paul feels the need to issue disclaimers about the offensiveness of the Gospel. 

———————-

This is Harris County Assistant District Attorney Dan Rizzo.

Former District Attorney. 

Last year, his former office filed complaints against him, saying in their case:

“Prosecutors are supposed to be the guardians of justice in the search for truth in every case. We believe he abused his power and violated his sacred oath of office.”

By luck or providence, Brian discovered that DA Dan Rizzo had hidden the phone record, which corroborated Dewayne’s alibi. 

He also had a letter sent to Dewayne from a witness, the details of which would’ve cleared Dewayne, but the prosecution never told Dewayne what it said— Dewayne can’t read. In other words, Dan Rizzo was guilty of sending Dewayne to his death knowing his innocence from the very beginning. The evidence that exonerated Dewayne was discovered in 2013. Dewayne wasn’t released from prison until 2015 when the State of Texas decided not to retry him.

“Look up, you who are unjust and corrupt, I am here, taking your part, and the Kingdom I bring is especially for you.” 

Is anyone else uncomfortable yet? 

———————-

Near the end of his life, the famous British biblical scholar, F.F Bruce, was interviewed about the relationship between his academic study and his evangelical faith. “What does it mean to be a Christian?” the interviewer asked him, “What does it mean to have faith— in what does a Christian put their faith?” 

And Bruce responded without even needing to think about it:

“A Christian is someone who believes in the God who justifies the ungodly. To believe in him who justifies the ungodly, and nothing more and nothing less, is to be a Christian. That’s what a Christian puts their faith in.”

Jesus shows in the Sermon on the Mount what Paul says here in Romans 5, “While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” 

Paul says it again in Chapter Four, “the one who, apart from works, trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. As justice.”

Every religion the world has ever known is predicated on getting ungoldly people to turn to religion, so that through religion they might become godly. And if they don’t turn to religion, if they don’t cease being ungodly, there’s no Good News for them. 

For Paul, the Gospel is something else, entirely. The Gospel is not religion. The Gospel is the announcement that in Jesus Christ God takes the initiative, turns to the ungodly, and justifies them. 

For Paul, the justification of the ungodly is the Gospel in its purest and most radical form. 

When Paul says later in Romans that Jesus Christ is the end of the Law, the consummation of the Law, he has the justification of the ungodly in mind. He means that the whole Bible has been building to this revelation, and by revelation Paul means that we could never have arrived at this belief on our own. It had to be disclosed to us by God himself. 

It had to be revealed to us that God is not just a God on the side of the poor and oppressed, the righteous and the peacemakers— that’s what every religion believes. But the Gospel makes the offensive and audacious claim that God is also on the side of the irreligious, the immoral, and the unjust. 

These days we use words and phrases like “inclusive” and “All means all.” 

I’ve served four other churches, since I was twenty-two years old. 

Every one of those churches insisted that they welcomed everybody, and it was true of not one of them. 

Just like us, those churches had trouble tolerating people who could read the same Bible and land on a different position. They had difficulty dealing with people who could read the same newspaper and draw a conclusion opposite their own or make a different decision in the voting booth. Diversity always sounds like a wonderful notion until you realize it means some sacred cows must be sacrificed. 

When the lay leaders at my first church considered changing the style of the worship service from traditional to contemporary, OH MY LORD, I literally went outside one weekday and painted over the tagline on the sign that read,  “The Friendly Church.” I didn’t want to get sued for false advertising. 

None of us is reliably welcoming of everyone. 

Not one of us is all-inclusive when it comes to inclusivity.

Just as often, in the hands of sinners like us words like “inclusive” and “tradition” become a way for us to make distinctions between righteous and unrighteous and— let’s be honest— very often we make those distinctions with an air of self-righteousness. Chief among sinners, right here. 

The irony though— 

From the point of view of Paul’s Gospel of the justification of the ungodly, all our talk in the United Methodist Church about inclusiveness is not nearly inclusive enough.

The Gospel is Good News for victims, yes, but also for the victimizers, for the oppressed, of course, but their oppressors, too.  For the just certainly, but it does not exclude those who are completely devoid of justice. They also will be filled.

In the cross of Christ, God is a God who justifies the ungodly.

And that verb “to justify” is the most important word. 

It’s Paul’s favorite word. 

Paul doesn’t say that in Jesus Christ God forgives the ungodly; in fact, Paul hardly ever uses the word “forgive.” 

It’s not, Look up, you who are unjust…District Attorney Rizzo, free pass….

The Gospel is offensively inclusive, but it is not immoral. 

Paul doesn’t say God forgives the ungodly. Forgiveness doesn’t go far enough; the word “grace” isn’t radical enough to our ears. Paul says that in the cross of Jesus Christ, God justifies the ungodly. Again, it shares the same root word as the words righteousness and justice, dikaiosyne. 

To justify is to make just, to make right, to rectify.

God makes just those whom God justifies— that’s what the Gospel does, Paul says.

The justification of the ungodly then is the power of God. It’s the power of God to make right all that is wrong. 

Again, Paul believes God justifying the ungodly is what the whole Bible has been building towards, not just the Beautitude. 

The justification of the ungodly is what the prophet Ezekiel foreshadowed when he said,

“God himself is able to remake the hearts of his people, and he promises to do so in them irrespective of ungodliness.”

God himself is able. 

God will do it. 

———————-

Which begs the question: If it’s all God’s initiative and work, then is there nothing for us to do? 

Humbly, I’d respond that if you’re stuck on that question, you do not yet know the grace of God. 

This Gospel message frees you from the tyranny of the thought that everything depends on you, and that freedom sets us free to enter in and actually engage the radically inclusive ministry of the justifying God, which we would never choose for ourselves. Will Campbell was a Baptist preacher and civil rights activist, who died a few years ago. He’s the author of Brother to a Dragonfly and Up to Our Steeples in Politics. Will Campbell was present in 1998 for the Mississipi trial of Sam Bowers, the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Klan, for the murder of several people including Vernon Dahmer. The murders were the inspiration for the film Mississippi Burning. Dahmer had been a brave local leader in the voter registration effort. He burned to death, defending his home, as his wife and children ran to safety. 

Bowers was tried a third time in 1998, the first time his trial would not be a sham trial. Will Campbell attended the trial every day. He would sit on the prosecution’s side with the Dahmer family, offering comfort and praying with them. And then, the next day he would sit on the defense team’s side, comforting Bowers the Klansman and praying with him. Day after day of the trial, Campbell alternated sides, ministering to the family of the victim and then the victimizer. 

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

And Campbell answered in his trademark salty way, “Because I’m a God-damned Christian.”

Even more remarkable than Campbell’s retort— Vernon Dahmer’s family, Christians all, never once asked Will Campbell how he could be on both sides. 

———————-

There is much in me that needs to be rectified. 

There is much about me that I look forward to our Lord setting right. 

I honestly cannot imagine myself capable of Campbell’s radically inclusive ministry. 

When I think of what DA Dan Rizzo did to Dewayne…I could never do it. 

When it comes to that sort of righteousness, I am empty.

But God is able. 

And Jesus Christ, who is not dead, promises to fill you. 

So come to the Table and, in your hands and on your lips, receive the God who justifies the ungodly.

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Episode #246: Douglas Campbell— Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love

“Christians often fail to get in touch with the shocking message that can lie at the heart of evangelism: “I am here to change you, and I’m going to change you so that you become like me.”

Our guest today is Douglas Campbell, Professor of New Testament at Duke. His new book, Pauline Dogmatics unpacks the eschatological heart of Paul’s gospel in his world and its implications for today

Drawing upon thirty years of intense study and reflection on Paul, Douglas Campbell offers a distinctive overview of the apostle’s thinking that builds on Albert Schweitzer’s classic emphasis on the importance for Paul of the resurrection. But Campbell—learning here from Karl Barth—traces through the implications of Christ for Paul’s thinking about every other theological topic, from revelation and the resurrection through the nature of the church and mission. As he does so, the conversation broadens to include Stanley Hauerwas in relation to Christian formation, and thinkers like Willie Jennings to engage post-colonial concerns.

But the result of this extensive conversation is a work that, in addition to providing a description of Paul’s theology, also equips readers with what amounts to a Pauline manual for church planting. Good Pauline theology is good practical theology, ecclesiology, and missiology, which is to say, Paul’s theology belongs to the church and, properly understood, causes the church to flourish. In these conversations Campbell pushes through interdisciplinary boundaries to explicate different aspects of Pauline community with notions like network theory and restorative justice.

The book concludes by moving to applications of Paul in the modern period to painful questions concerning gender, sexual activity, and Jewish inclusion, offering Pauline navigations that are orthodox, inclusive, and highly constructive.

Beginning with the God revealed in Jesus, and in a sense with ourselves, Campbell progresses through Pauline ethics and eschatology, concluding that the challenge for the church is not only to learn about Paul but to follow Jesus as he did.

Don’t forget to go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and become a patron! Or, support the show by giving us a rating and review in iTunes!

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Episode #3 — You Are Not Accepted

Grace does not name an ontological possibility available to anyone apart from God’s self-disclosure and the mediation of God’s elect people. More is at stake in God’s Kingdom than accepting acceptance. The poor do not want God to accept the oppressor; they want God to destroy the oppressor. They know we are at war with powers who know nothing of a God who would rule the world from a cross.

— Stanley Hauerwasw

For our third episode, Dr. Johanna, Jason, and Teer talk about Stanley Hauerwas’ essay whence the pod series name came, “You Are Not Accepted.” The piece is Stanley’s rejection of Paul Tillich’s famous sermon “You Are Accepted” and featured in his book, Unleashing the Scriptures. This provocative critique of the uses and abuses of Scripture in the American church shows how liberal (historical-critical) and fundamentalist (literal) approaches to biblical scholarship have corrupted our use of the Bible. Hauerwas argues that the Bible can only be understood in the midst of a disciplined community of people, where the story is actually lived out by dedicated practitioners.

Don’t forget—

Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com! Click Support the Show and help us out. Check out our store. Go to iTunes and leave us a review. DO IT.

 

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Resisting Harm to the Sacrament of Baptism

There’s much harm done, I believe, by the United Methodist Church’s punitive, retrograde policy towards LGBTQ Christians. The list of names I’ve acquired over almost twenty years of ministry is depressingly, shamefully long. After General Conference, I received three different anonymous letters narrating the sad aftermath of these people having followed former pastors’ advice long ago to deny who they were, get married, and have children only to have all involved suffer because of the lie. 

But I always think of my friend, Andy, first. He was one of the best youth directors I ever supervised, possessing both a call and gifts for ministry I’ve not seen matched. The fruit of his gifts were affirmed by the congregation he served with me and, later, as a student pastor while he studied at Yale. But because the UMC will not permit the Living God to call whom the Living God elects to call, Andy left the MDiv Program when he exited the closet.  

The Church is impoverished by having lost his ministry— the policy that would preclude Andy from ministry is an odd form of self-harm the Church inflicts upon itself in the name of a God who has chosen to justify us by means other than our right reading of scripture.

How dare the UMC, having baptized Andy into Christ, withold from him the exercise of that baptism through marriage or ministry?

There’s much harm done by the United Methodist Church’s punitive, retrograde policy towards LGBTQ Christians. 

It also harms our theology of baptism. 

Since the Special Sex Conference in St. Louis, many of my fellow clergy have pledged to perform no weddings so long as the rite is available only to some (ie, those who evidently are righteous not by Christ’s gratuity but by virtue of having been born straight). 

While I sympathize with such a gesture of protest— and I think this debate would be more coherent generally if Methodist clergy opted out of the wedding industry and married only active baptized members of their congregations— I wonder if baptism not marriage is the rite the church should withold in order to resist harm.

In the mid-20th century, Karl Barth wrote a surprising critique of infant baptism at the conclusion of his massive work Church Dogmatics.

Barth’s experience from having seen Germany and the German Church capitulate to pagan-like nationalism in two world wars eventually convinced him that the practice of infant baptism- though perhaps theologically defensible- was no longer practically tenable. In his about-face on infant baptism,

Barth reiterated the fact:

There is no explicit scriptural basis for infant baptism in scripture while there is a clear prejudice towards adult baptism.

More urgent for Barth was his belief that infant baptism had led to the malignant assumption that one is a Christian from birth, by virtue of having been baptized quite apart from any appreciation of conversion.

In Barth’s view this had the effect of cheapening the grace won by Christ on the cross but, even more, it wore away at the eschatological character of Christ’s Church; that is, infant baptism helped create the circumstances wherein Christians no longer remembered they were set apart by baptism to anticipate Christ’s Kingdom through their counter-cultural way of life lived in community.

Perhaps its the cogency of Barth’s theology or the integrity of Barth’s lived witness (he was one of the few Protestant leaders in Germany to oppose from the beginning the rise of Nazism), but from time to time I dip in to his Church Dogmatics again only to find myself empathizing if not agreeing with Barth’s view- or at least agreeing with Barth’s diagnosis that the Church has lost its foundational, Kingdom-embodying point of view.

I never had the courage to admit it in the ordination process, but whether or not you agree with Barth’s conclusion his critiques are spot on.

Too often debates about adult and infant baptism focus on the individual baptismal candidate and obscure what was central to the early Christians: baptism is initiation into a People. Christ intends the gathered baptized community to be a social and political reality.

We neither baptize to encourage sentimentality about babies nor do we baptize to secure private, individual salvation.

We baptize to build an alternative polis in a world where all the other Kingdoms care not about God’s Kingdom.

What’s missing in baptismal liturgies, adult and infant, is the sense of awe, or at least appreciation, that God is slowly toppling nations and planting a new one with just a few drops of water. That baptism doesn’t only wash away an individual’s sins but washes away the sins of the world because through baptism God creates a People who are his antithesis to the Kingdoms of the world.

This is what Paul conveys when he writes about how those who are one in Christ through baptism are now no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. Baptism is a social reordering. Baptism sets apart a community that challenges and critiques the social hierarchies of this world.

Baptism makes Church a community where the class distinctions of Rome no longer matter and where the familial distinctions of Israel no longer matter.

Whereas in Israel priestly service was reserved for the sons of Aaron, baptism creates a community where we are all priests now because every one of us bears the investiture of the Great High Priest’s death.

This is why the question of baptism, not marriage or ordination, is more interesting theologically when it comes to the issue of sexuality.
If baptism commissions us to service in Christ’s name and if marriage and ministry are but forms Christian vocation take, then the Church should not baptize LGBTQ Christians if it’s not prepared to marry or ordain them.

 

Of course, I’m not really suggesting we stop baptizing infants. It’s really more of a wish— a prayer— that we who baptize babies, we United Methodists, might recognize that the only entrypoint that matters to marriage and ministry is not a natural one (gender or sexual identity) but one so unnatural it requires an act of God’s self-revelation, our incorporation by water into Jesus Christ.

Once we have aided and abetted God putting them in Jesus Christ, we’re not really in a position to stand in the way of their baptismal vocation. By water and the Spirit, Christ has already said “I do” to them. Who the hell are we to stop them from telling others about their Beloved?

Worse, to the extent we question the sufficiency of the baptized’s in-Christness (by implying they’re somehow more incompatible than all the rest of us) the Church, as Luther might point out, casts itself in the role of the devil.

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The Dead Don’t Make Decisions

Numbers 21, John 3

I realize we’re still getting to know one another, so it may come as a shock to some of you to learn that I tend to be contrary by nature.

Case in point:

Towards the end of my first semester at the University of Virginia, my freshman year, I was invited one Saturday night by my friend, Ben, to attend a Christmas party hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ. 

Back then, I was still new in my faith. I’d only become a Christian a year or so earlier. Like a lot of new converts, I thought I had all the answers, but also didn’t know what I didn’t know.  

As their former name implies, Campus Crusade was an aggressively evangelistic organization, and even that is putting it mildly. 

Of course, I didn’t know that when I accepted the invitation. 

An organization like Campus Crusade probably seemed so tame to Ben, having grown up in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, he hadn’t bothered to prepare me for this “party.” 

Now I shouldn’t have to tell you that the word “party,” to a college student, conjures particular images and elicits very specific expectations— none of which were matched by the gathering Ben took me to that Saturday night. 

In fact, in all my years of college and graduate school, this was the only party where a den mother asked me to take my shoes off at the front door. 

As we walked through the cold darkness of the night on a thin layer of snow, to a neighborhood just off campus, we came to a short driveway to a small ranch home. 

I could see through the big bay window in the living room a glimpse of the evening that lay ahead of me.

At first, I thought we must be at the wrong house. 

This must be a Mary Kay or Tupperware party. 

Maybe a bridge club going on. 

Ben assured me it was the right address. 

When Ben knocked on the door, this skinny guy with a soul patch under his lip and a guitar slung across his back answered the door. 

When Ben introduced me, the guy— the student pastor— shook my hand with disproportionate enthusiasm and said, “Jason, yeah, Jason- Acts 17.7.” 

And I replied, “What?”

This must have been his secret Christian greeting. 

And because I didn’t know what he was talking about, because I didn’t even know my name was in the Bible, and because I didn’t reciprocate with “Michael, yeah, archangel of the Lord, Daniel 12.1,”  he gave me a sad, pathetic sort of look and ushered me inside.

But first, his wife asked me to take off my shoes.

Everyone else must have drank the Kool-Aid before I arrived, because I didn’t fit in and couldn’t understand how people seemed to be enjoying themselves. 

Once we were inside, Ben abandoned me. 

He mingled around the house while I stood near the dining table in my threadbare socks eating chocolate covered pretzels and looking at my calculator watch between bites.

You can imagine how much my mood improved when Mike, the campus pastor, asked us all to circle up in the family room for a sing-along. 

I ended up sitting shoulder to shoulder on a sofa with two other people.

On my left was a girl who began every sentence with “The Lord just put it on my heart to ________”, and who looked at me like I was as crazy as I thought she was.

On my right, with his arm resting uncomfortably behind me, was a 50-something man who worked in the dining hall. 

He had a long, scraggly beard and was wearing a Star Trek sweatshirt. 

Earlier, over chocolate covered pretzels, he asked me if I thought the incarnation was a violation of the Prime Directive.

“I’m sorry. I don’t watch Star Trek,” I lied.

We sang songs whose words I vaguely knew and whose tunes seemed unseasonably fast-paced. 

Mike, the pastor, strummed his guitar and led us in a breathy, earnest voice while his wife accompanied him on a small plastic keyboard on her lap.

When the singing was over, Mike, assuming a serious tone of voice, asked us to open up our Bibles. 

I felt like the music had stopped and I was the one without a chair. 

Not only was I the only person who had failed to bring a Bible with them, I hadn’t a clue where a Bible reader could buy a carrying case for their Bible. 

“You didn’t bring a Bible with you?” Mike asked chagrined. 

“Uh, I’m a Methodist.” 

And, to my surprise, everyone nodded like this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

“Luke, chapter two,” Mike said. 

Everyone but me read along as Mike read aloud, “In the days of King Herod…”

After he finished the reading, Mike started in on his Campus Crusade for Christ mandated “talk.” 

“The promise of the Gospel,” he began, “is that God gives himself in Christ for the sin of the world— for your sins and my sins— but…” he said, “you have to do your part, too.”

“At Christmas God gives Christ to you, on the Cross Christ gives himself for you, but it’s not complete until you give yourself to Christ, too.”

And everyone around the room nodded their heads. 

“In order to get saved, you’ve got to get born again,” Mike said, closing his Bible. 

And for several long minutes, people around the room shared stories about the time they got saved— down to the date and the place and the crisis that occasioned it. 

“What about you?” Mike asked me, “I’m sorry I forgot your name…you—the one who didn’t bring a Bible.” 

“Me?” I asked and looked around, wishing I could be debating the Prime Directive. 

“Well, I got baptized…”

And he shook his head, “But when did you get born again?” 

“I started going to church against my will not that long ago,” I said. “And, I don’t know, I just suddenly realized one day that I trusted in Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, Jason, but that’s not good enough and, well, there’s eternal consequences to consider.” 

And that’s right about the point when the contrarian in me came out. 

“Excuse me?” I said, “Not good enough?”

He nodded in a patronizing way and explained, “In order to get saved, you’ve got to get born again. You’ve got to make a decision for Christ. You’ve got to invite Jesus into your heart to be your personal Lord and Savior.” 

Little did this soul-patched pastor know, he was stepping with a recent Virginia State forensic-and-debate champion. 

“Tell me, Mike,” I said. “You called it the promise of the Gospel.” 

And he nodded his head, thinking he had me. 

“But if there’s a condition, if there’s something I’ve got to do for it to be true for me, doesn’t that turn the promise into a demand?” 

Ben blushed as red as the pastor’s wife’s corduroy dress. 

“I mean— if you’re saved, because you give your heart to Jesus (and not saved until you do), doesn’t that mean you’re saving yourself, Mike? Not Jesus?”

The pastor’s wife was biting her lip, and where I had spent the first thirty minutes of the evening wondering how I could escape, she was now clearly wondering how she could get me out of her house. 

NO ONE SEEMED TO APPRECIATE THE BUDDING THEOLOGIAN IN THEIR MIDST!

No one except for the bearded fifty-year old with the Star Trek shirt who said, “Dude, that’s deep,” which didn’t exactly help my case. 

In fact, the girl sitting next to me had placed her large KJV Bible in the crack of the sofa cushions, erecting a barrier between us and making clear that she was not with me.

Still, I’ve always had thick skin, so I pressed into the point. 

“Think about it, Mike,” I said. “If salvation isn’t real until my decision activates it, then isn’t my faith just another work? Isn’t salvation something I’ve earned for myself then?”

“Jesus says it plainly,” Mike rebutted, stroking his soul-patch. “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.” 

“But isn’t it odd,” I said, starting to enjoy myself in a sado-masochistic sort of way, “to turn that verse into a requirement— something we must do, get born again— when the whole point of an image like being born is that it’s passive? I mean, I don’t know about you, Mike, but I didn’t contribute a single thing to my birth. In fact, my mom had to have a C-section my head was so big.”

“Sounds like you’ve still got a pretty big head,” Mike did not say to himself. 

As if on cue, Ben summoned a fake “hahahahaha” from somewhere in his belly and nervously suggested we sing another song. 

Mercifully, Mike swung his guitar around like Church Berry, said “Amen,” and started another song.

———————-

“I’ve seen the signs you do,” Nicodemus says to Jesus. “Tell me, who are you?”

And oddly, Jesus answers with that verse which tightens the sphincter of every good, liberal United Methodist: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again.” 

Apparently, Nicodemus knows what he doesn’t know. 

Nicodemus must suspect his faith is somehow inadequate and lacking; otherwise, Nicodemus— a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin even— would not take the great risk of coming to Jesus under the cover of darkness. 

Sure, it’s only chapter three, but here in John’s Gospel, Jesus has just thrown his temple tantrum and already he’s made himself public enemy Number One. 

But Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, doesn’t do anything at all to mitigate whatever spiritual crisis has led Nicodemus to Jesus. 

Jesus doesn’t bother to comfort Nicodemus or reassure Nicodemus or do anything to relieve whatever existential tension has brought Nicodemus to Jesus. 

Notice how Jesus tightens the screws. 

Jesus doesn’t do what United Methodist pastors are trained to do. 

Jesus doesn’t let Nicodemus off the hook with some blessed assurance like, “It’s okay. Don’t worry, Nicodemus, be happy. God loves you.” 

Jesus doesn’t offer Nicodemus a non-anxious presence and say, “Your faith is fine just as it is, Nicodemus. We’re all on a journey. There are many paths to my Father.” 

No, Jesus sticks his thumb in whatever ache Nicodemus is nursing and raises the stakes absolutely, “If you want to see the Kingdom of God, Nicodemus, you must be born again.”

Oh, and FYI, he’s not just talking to Nicodemus. 

Jesus dials it up to DEFCON ETERNAL for all of us, because that “you” in “You must be born again,” is plural. 

I know that the last thing you United Methodists want is to be considered among those kind of Christians, but, like it or not, we are swept up in that you. 

It’s, “You all must be born anothen if you want to see the Kingdom of God.” 

No exceptions. 

No loopholes for raking your neighbor’s yard or never missing a Sunday service. 

That you— it’s all of us. 

“You all must be born again.”

And Nicodemus, he’s a Pharisee. 

He’s super religious, so he responds— like we religious types always respond— with what he’s supposed to do. 

“How do I do that, Jesus…? 

And then Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You all must be born again.” 

Pay attention to the verbs Jesus uses on Nicodemus in verses three and five. 

The verbs are what makes this passage that’s normally bad news for Christians like us good news for everybody. 

Unless you all are born again, Jesus says, you will never see the Kingdom and you will never enter the Kingdom of God. 

Apart from our being born again, we can neither see nor can we enter God’s Kingdom.

That is—

When it comes to God and God’s Kingdom, on our own, we’re powerless. 

We are born— naturally— spiritually blind and spiritually paralyzed. 

When it comes to God’s Kingdom, we are born dead. 

Therefore—

Whatever Jesus means by you being born again, he’s not talking about something you do. 

The dead don’t make decisions.

———————-

I waited until we walked to the end of pastor Mike’s driveway before I said to Ben, “Well gosh, that was an awesome party.”

And Ben laughed, “I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“Difference? It makes all the difference in the world. People like him turn that verse about being born again into a threshold you must cross— you’ve got to do it a certain way, pray a particular prayer— otherwise you’re not a genuine, real-deal Christian.”

Ben didn’t say anything else until we’d walked back onto campus, crossing the footbridge over Emmett Street when Ben said:

“Still, even if it’s a passive image— like with your mom and the C-section— you can still point to a date when it happened, right? 

You can still name the time and the place when you were born. Shouldn’t you have to be able do that for when you were born again. Shouldn’t you be able to see when and where you got born again?”

Like I said, I had the trophies to prove it. I was a debate champ. 

So, I knew when I’d been bested. 

———————-

Let me make it plain—Being born again is not “making a decision for Jesus Christ.” The dead don’t make decisions. We are born anothen. Again. Or, the Greek can also be translated from above. It’s top down. You’ve got nothing to do it. 

You don’t come to Jesus to get born again— corspes can’t get up and go anymore— Jesus must come to us and deliver us. 

We get so hung up on what Jesus says to Nicodemus in the dark of night that we close our eyes to what John tries to show us. 

          Just think about how John begins his Gospel, not with a nativity story but with an intentional echo of the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him and not one thing came into being without Him.” 

     In other words, this Gospel of Jesus Christ, says John, is about the arrival of a New Creation. And next, right here, Jesus tells Nicodemus and you all, that in order to see the Kingdom of God you’re going to have to become a new creation, too. 

By water and the spirit. 

     Skip ahead. 

     To Good Friday, the sixth day of the week, the day of that first week in Genesis when God declares, “Behold, mankind made in our image.” 

     And what does John show you? 

     Jesus, beaten and flogged and spat upon, wearing a crown of thorns twisted into his scalp and arrayed with a purple robe, next to Pontius Pilate. 

     And what does Pilate say? 

     “Behold, the man.” 

     And later, on that sixth day, as Jesus dies on a cross, what does John show you? 

     Jesus giving up his spirit, commending his Holy Spirit. 

     And then, John shows you Jesus’ executioners, attempting to hasten his death they spear Jesus in his side, and what does John show you? 

     Water rushing out of Jesus’ wounded side. Water pouring out onto those executioners and betraying bystanders, pouring out— in other words— onto sinful humanity. 

     Water and the spirit, the sixth day. 

     And then Saturday, the seventh day of the week, the day of that first week in Genesis when God rests in the Garden from his creative work- what does John show you? 

    Jesus being laid to rest in a garden tomb. 

     Then Easter, the first day of the week. 

     And having been raised from the grave, John shows you a tear-stained Mary mistaking Jesus, as naked and unashamed as Adam before the Fall, for the what?

     For the gardener, what Adam was always intended to be. 

     Later that Easter day, John shows you the disciples hiding behind locked doors. 

This New Adam comes to them from the garden grave, and like a mighty, rushing wind, he breathes on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says to them. 

     Water, Spirit, Wind blowing where the Spirit wills, the first day. 

     He breathes on them. 

     Just as God in the first garden takes the adamah, the soil of the earth, breathes into it the breath of life and brings forth Adam, brings forth life, this New Adam takes the grime of these disciples’ fear and failure, their sin and sorrow, and he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit, the breath of life. 

     They’re made new again. 

     They’re anothened

    And on that same first day, John shows you Jesus telling these disciples for the very first time, in his Gospel, that his Father in Heaven, is their Father, too. They’re now the Father’s children in their own right. 

     The Father’s Kingdom is theirs to enter and inherit.

What Jesus says to Nicodemus here in the night is true. 

The cosmically inclusive love God is exclusive through Jesus Christ. 

     You must be born again. 

And yes, we are incorporated in that “you.” 

It’s: 

You must be born again, Bill. 

You must be born again, Bob. 

Barbara, you must be born again. 

Every last one of you— you’ve got be born from above, the Gospel says. 

But what the Gospel shows, what the Gospel wants you to see, is that you have been. 

Already.

You’ve been delivered.  

Just as all of us were dead through Adam’s trespass, the Bible says, much more surely has the grace of God through Jesus Christ abounded for all, Paul says. The death he died he died to Sin, once for all, so you all can consider yourselves dead to Sin and alive to God, consider yourselves anothened. Being born again— it comes to you on God’s terms not your own. 

———————-

Back in college, a newly minted convert, I had a lot of answers, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. 

Turns out, my friend was right that dark winter night. 

You should be able to name the day. 

So, if someone ever asks you if you’ve been born again, then- like Venkman tells Ray- next time, “You say YES.”  Say yes. 

And give them the particulars, the where, and the when. 

Tell them you were born again— you got saved— sometime between Good Friday and Resurrection morning, the year— 33 AD, on a hill outside of Jerusalem. 

You got born again not when you chose Jesus Christ (Have you been watching the Impeachment Trial? Our choices aren’t trustworthy enough to stake a sandwich on let alone eternity.) but because God chose you in Jesus Christ. 

In Jesus Christ, God chose you from before time for all time. 

And by the doing and dying and rising of Jesus Christ, like a Mother, God delivered you from slavery to Sin and Death into newness of life— eternal life. 

Look—

There’s alot of Bible Belt baggage that comes with this verse about being born again so if you haven’t been tracking with anything today, pay attention right here. 

Alot of Christians turn this passage of the Gospel into the Law. 

Into a demand you must fulfill, an expectation you must meet, into an ought that only accuses. 

In order to be born again, you’ve got to make a decision. You’ve got to invite him into your heart in this way. You’ve got to pray this prayer. You’ve got to clean up your act and you have got do these things. 

Alot of Christians turn this Gospel into the Law. 

But notice—

Jesus’ whole point to Nicodemus about the Kingdom of God and your admittance into it is that the bar COULD NOT BE LOWER. 

Jesus doesn’t say anything about any steps or conditions or techniques. 

There’s no earning or deserving. 

There’s not even any adverbs like sincerely or contritely or genuinely.

Jesus doesn’t say a word about anything you need to take on or give up. 

Your delivery is one-sided, God-sided. 

And the only thing more impossibly miraculous is the means by which you access it. All you have to do— no, all you can do— is simply trust that it is so. 

As Jesus says to Nicodemus, “God loved the world so much that he gave his One and Only Son so that every single individual who simply trusts into him would even now have eternal life.”

That’s good news. But that doesn’t loosen the scews Jesus tightened down on Nicodemus because in the end you’re left with the same choice Jesus leaves for Nicodemus. You can either believe OR not believe. There’s no other other way. 

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Episode #245: Will Willimon: Separation Sadness

“Separation is tragic because we thereby shut out some of our most challenging interlocutors.  When the IRD (in those rare moments when they talk theologically) tells me that I am soft on scripture, they are right.  Who among my progressive buddies is going to challenge my biblical interpretation?  (And who is the IRD going to have fun kicking around once I’m gone and they are hunkered down with their boringly homogeneous buddies in Good News and the WCA?)  

Go ahead. Get your church all cleaned up. Have everyone swear to your cherished ideology. What are you going to do about Jesus? Our Lord refuses to keep reaching out and bringing in the ‘wrong’ people making my church more complicated than I would like it to be. Just wait until the progressive UMC pastor discovers that she’s got folks in her congregation who are just as sexist, racist, and homophobic as the people who walked out? Cure them of their homophobia; next Sunday Jesus will demand that you work on their greed.

If I know anything about Jesus, he’ll show up at the inaugural Sunday of the doctrinally-sound, Bible-believing. WCA-approved congregation with the nicest same-sex couple and their two children. Then what?”

Friend of the podcast and mentor in mayhem, Bishop Will Willimon joins Jason and Teer to talk about the most recent divorce proposal in the UMC, the Protocol for Reconciliation through Grace— a proposal that manages both to sound like a creepy measure in a dystopian science fiction novel (“protocol”) and like a sad euphemism for a break-up.

To read more about the protocol: https://www.umnews.org/en/news/divers...

Willimon’s piece, “Separation Sadness,” will be available soon at Ministry Matters.

 

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Preachers, Diagram Your Sentences

I’m working on a journal article with Dr. Johanna Hartelius, cohost at Crackers and Grape Juice, on the apocalyptic rhetoric of Fleming Rutledge. Reading again Karl Barth’s Homiletics and reviewing Fleming’s sermons, it has struck me once again her insistence that the grammar of our preaching betrays our theology.

I remember one occasion from homiletics class when I was in seminary. This belligerently confident, hyper-evangelical classmate preached his sample sermon before the class. His sermon was frenetic. He clearly thought he was the superior preacher to all of us and, admittedly, his delivery was effective.

However, our professor, Dr Kay, looked restless and irritated through the entirety of the 20 minute sermon. Once the student finished Dr Kay breathed out his exasperation and declared to the preacher:

‘Do you realize not one of your sentences had God as their subject.’

The point seemed lost on the preacher. But it hit me hard.

The preacher from my introductory homiletics class is but an extreme example of a mistake I think preachers, myself included, commit all the time.

God is seldom the subject of our verbs.

Guess who is?

That’s right. We are.

We speak of seekers instead of the sought.

We speak of our purpose instead of God’s purposes.

We speak of our questions about God instead of God’s questioning of us.

Too often our preaching is the sermonic equivalent of bad contemporary Christian music: I long for you. I hunger for you. I want more of you.

Will Willimon, in his book on preaching and Karl Barth, comments on Barth’s belief that all preaching is a reenactment of the primal miracle ‘And God said…’ Yet frequently our preaching is a less urgent, pale imitation: ‘This is what I have to say about God today.’ We preach as though God is not the one speaking to us through the text and gradually, without such urgency of the Living Word, we imply that God never spoke.

I believe the problem with most sermons is not one of delivery, style, rhetoric or technique (though there’s plenty of room for improvement there too).

The problem is theological.

Probably this sounds obvious but I wouldn’t say it if weren’t true and a desperately needed reminder: it’s about God.

The deficiency in many sermons, my own included, is that they’re not about God. They’re about our needs, our questions or our issues. They’re anthropological not theological. We’re the subject of the sentences. We preach the parable of the prodigal son as an allegory from which we can take lessons of family relationships. We turn the story of the woman from Samaria into a moralism about inclusivity. We take the transfiguration and preach on the need to return to the valley and serve the world’s hurting. Of course, each of those passages can have those implications but fundamentally they’re passages about God. All too often it’s the revelation we leave out.

Dr. Kay’s comments to my cocky classmate have always stuck with me, but truthfully if you go back through my old sermons and diagram the sentences you’ll find that God is the object of my sentences not the subject.

The majority of homiletics resources focus on the mechanics of the sermon process, on technique, rhetoric and sermonic forms; meanwhile, discussions about preaching primarily focus on the appropriate role of media in sermons. Others speculate if the preaching task will remain a viable exercise in the future.

What’s absent from the standard, available fare is the kerygma. There’s little awareness of preaching as fundamentally an announcement, an event of the Living Word that provokes a crisis in the listener and demands a decision.

I’m enough of a closet Calvinist to take seriously the Second Helvetic Confession’s stipulation that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” I believe- I depend on- that when the Word is faithfully preached and faithfully received it is the Living Word. This is one reason why debates about the authority of scripture are so very boring. The question is never just did God say that because we have a God who continues to speak today.

What’s more, if the Second Helvetic Confession is correct, then preaching which merely uses scripture as an illustration of an argument arrived at by others means risks malnourishing its listeners. Preachers can literally starve their listeners on a steady diet of propositions, points and helpful hints.

I listen to a lot of sermons. Sometimes I think it’s a best practice sort of exercise. Other times I think it’s masochistic. So few of the sermons I hear are animated by the conviction in the Living Word that emerges in the Helvetic Confession. They’re a message about Jesus. They’re lessons drawn from what Jesus said. They do not pulse with a God who says.

To be honest, this is the problem I have with much of the topical series preaching that’s common today. Sermon series like ‘Antidotes for the Out of Control Life,’ ‘Difficult Decision’ or ‘Fearless: Live Your Life without Fear’ can be effective and helpful to listeners, I know, but they’re also inherently anthropological.

And don’t think I’m wedded to the revised common lectionary because I’m not.

My wariness about topical sermon series is that it’s our questions or felt needs that drive the sermon. Indeed they’re imposed upon the scripture text from the start of the planning process. The topics of the series predetermine what the Word can and cannot say. They constrict God’s speech.

Once a year I preach just such a sermon series. It’s always carefully planned and promoted to attract young unchurched families. Every year, without question, these are my very worst sermons. I mean just awful.

I used to think they’re terrible because I’m no good at the quasi-Dr. Phil ‘how-to’ propositions such sermons require. That may be true but even more I think its because these sermons aren’t really about God. God is a device, an object or a means to my preconceived end. God’s not the subject, and I’ve found that if God’s not the one speaking then I literally have nothing to say.

Don’t be mistaken. I’m not saying that faithful proclamation needs to be accompanied by a Geneva collar and a mahogany pulpit the size of a C37. Preaching can be deductive or narrative, rationalistic or impressionistic, from a pulpit or the sanctuary floor, with or without PowerPoint slides. But it needs to have God as the subject.

Henry Emmerson Fosdick famously said that folks don’t come to church to hear about the Jebusites. Karl Barth famously said that folks come to church with anticipation, wondering ‘is it true?’

They were both right.

People do not come on a Sunday morning for the arcane or the minutiae. They do not hunger for facts. They do hunger for a Word from the Lord.

I can’t help but wonder sometimes if the popularity of topical preaching today has less to do with the utilitarian nature of our culture (though that has to be a large part of its appeal) and more to do with our Enlightenment-bound lack of confidence in the Living Word. Perhaps the lack of confidence that afflicts preaching isn’t a lack of confidence in our skill, ability or call but a lack of confidence that the God who became incarnate in human flesh can today inhabit our words.

As a result, what often suffers is our urgency. It was said of George Whitfield that he ‘preached as a drowning man to other drowning men.’ The waters must have receded because the problem today with much anthropological preaching is just this lack of urgency. Sermon topics such as ‘Antidotes for the Out of Control Life’ ask for listeners’ consideration not their decision. Its aim is for listeners to apply ‘principles’ to their lives; its aim is not to let the Word loose to provoke a crisis or event in the listeners’ lives.

The danger behind anthropological preaching is that as long as God is the object of my preaching and not the subject then I, as the preacher, set the pace. Not God. This is very different than God calling me today, speaking to me now, through the text in a way I could not have anticipated 18 months ago when I planned my sermon series.

It’s not only the sermon’s urgency that suffers. Anthropological preaching is very often boring too, boring not because of its mode of presentation or skill in delivery but boring because God is not allowed to say anything unexpected. The Word needs to service the predetermined topic; there’s no room for the Word to speak anything contrary, unexpected or counter-intuitive. The Word needs to fit into our prearranged categories. Practically speaking, this can be deadly for a listener’s sense of anticipation. It can bore them. Speaking theologically, it’s a problem because any God who takes up residence in a peasant Jew from Nazareth is a God who refuses categorization or easy deduction.

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Wine into Water

Isaiah 62.1-5 and John 2.1–11

“Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons…”

Six stone jars. 

Let’s round to the middle, say twenty-five gallons. 

Unlike my boys’ homework, this is the sort of math I know how to do. 

If, or when the United Methodist implodes over the sexuality issue, I could get a gig in a restaurant kitchen. 

Back in Middle School, I was the Doogie Howser of Home Economics. 

My Italian grandma was a chef. 

I’m got knife skills. 

I’ve got all the mother sauces memorized. 

I’m a pretty good cook. 

So, that’s four quarts to a gallon. 

One quart equals roughly six glasses (cabernet glasses) giving you a minimum grand total of 2,160 glasses of wine-that-had-been-water. 

That’s a lot of wine. 

Even if you’re hanging out at a cigar bar with Rudy and Lev Parnas, that’s a prodigal amount of booze.  

And Jesus makes not Three Buck Chuck, Jesus transforms water into top shelf Pinot. 

Pretty impressive party trick, Jesus. 

But, not to be outdone, Jesus’ friends— you and I, the Church, especially the United Methodist Church— we’ve somehow managed to pull off the more difficult feat of transforming the Gold Medal wine of Grace into the tasteless, odorless, joyless, ordinary, everyday water of the Law. 

We’ve turned the Gospel into Iocane Powder! (poison)

Jesus kicks off the salvation of the world by turning water into wine, but we’ve pulled off the more impossible trick of turning his wine back into water. 

Jesus can turn water into wine, sure, but look at us. 

We’re like David Copperfield walking through the Great Wall of China. 

We’re able to turn Christ’s wine back into water.

And, Jesus just did it at Cana that one time— that’s it. 

We turn his wine into water, again and again and again and again…

I’m sorry. 

I apologize. 

I realize this is like a rookie’s mistake, beginner’s stuff. I know it’s bad rhetorical strategy to give away my main point right at the get go. Wine into water— what the hell was I thinking? 

I was on vacation. I haven’t preached since Christmas. I’m out of practice. 

So, forget all about that phrase “wine into water.” 

Think about anything other than “wine into water.”  

Pretend I never said anything about how we turn wine back into water. 

Whatever you do, don’t think at all about how we revert his wine into water.  

———————-

One hundred and fifty gallons for drunk people to drink— that’s a pretty impressive sleight of hand. Still though, it’s a queer way for Jesus to begin his redemptive work. 

In John’s Gospel, Jesus begins his ministry not by preaching or teaching, not by casting out demons or curing disease. 

Jesus doesn’t lift up a single, lowly poor person or speak one syllable of truth to power. 

Instead, in John’s Gospel, Jesus kicks off his redemptive work by being Mary’s plus one at a wedding party, a celebration where Jesus, in a pinch, proves he’s an even better bartender than Tom Cruise in the 1988 film Cocktail. 

It seems like a strange way for John to begin the story of our salvation. 

And then John interrupts the party play-by-play to report to you that, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory…”

And notice—

John doesn’t call the wine that had been water a miracle. 

John calls the wine that had been water a sign. 

Miracles are momentary intrusions by God into the natural order. 

Miracles are ends in themselves. 

But signs point beyond themselves. 

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus performs miracles. 

But in John’s Gospel, Jesus does signs— seven signs. 

Signs signify. 

We’re meant to see more here than a miracle. 

We’re meant to see more here than a marriage supper. 

And there’s so much here to see! 

———————-

Take the six stone jars— they’re a sign. 

This wedding at Cana, it isn’t the sort of wedding where your Aunt Becky buys credentials online for $69.99 in order to be able to officiate the I dos. 

This wedding at Cana is a worship service; therefore, you can’t just show up with your invite, black tie, and gift from Williams Sonoma. 

To come to this wedding is to come before God and, according to the Bible, God is not like Mr. Rogers. 

You’re not acceptable before God just the way you are. 

You have to be made acceptable. 

You have to be purified. 

You have to be justified. 

And so, as the guests would arrive for the nuptials, before they’d get handed their programs, they’d dip their hands into the stone jars to wash away their sin and render themselves ritually clean. 

The jars were made of stone, not clay, because clay is porous, and the water would get dirty in clay jars. 

The whole purpose of these jars is to remove impurity. 

     The water in the stone jars was to justify you, to make you blameless before a holy God. 

But, it didn’t work.

Not only are these stone jars standing empty and idle, John tells you there were six stone jars, and six (being one less than seven) is the Jewish number for incompleteness and imperfection. 

It’s a sign. 

And with this sign John’s showing you that this whole system of making ourselves acceptable before God by dint of our own good deeds and religious doings— it didn’t work. 

There’s so much here to see. 

Giving in to his mother’s grumblings, Jesus tells the caterers at Cana, “Fill the stone jars with water.” 

Do you see? 

Jesus is taking this system of making ourselves blameless and acceptable before God and transferring it to Himself. 

Jesus is taking these means by which we’re able to meet God and He’s making Himself in charge of it. 

It’s a sign. 

John wants you to see here at the get-go of his Gospel what you’ll hear later in his Gospel— that the only way you can meet God is by the gracious doing of Jesus Christ for you. 

He is “the way, the truth, and the life.”

He is your justification. 

And it’s on the house. 

By His Grace.

And for those who are not perfect and without blemish, that’s good news. 

There’s so much good news to see here. 

Notice the amount of water, one hundred and fifty gallons. 

It’s a sign.  

The Jewish Talmud specifies how much water is necessary for the ritual of purification. 

According to the Talmud, one cup of water— that’s eight fluid ounces— is enough water to purify and justify one hundred men. 

This is 19,200 ounces of water. 

My boys are better than me at that sort of math, but that’s enough water to justify almost two million people, which is more people than a first century Jew like John could imagine. 

You all have ears enough to see here, don’t you?

This is John showing you that Jesus Christ is able— able by dint not of your own doing, but by nothing but His own merit— to bring the whole world to his Father. 

It’s a sign, and John wants you to see what you’ll hear Jesus say to the woman at the well, “I am Living Water. 

Everyone who drinks of me will be thirsty again, for the water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to Eternal Life.” 

     . 

There’s so much good stuff to see here. 

Like the wine— 

Jesus takes the water that was necessary because of sin, and He transforms it into two thousand glasses of the finest vintage vino. 

It’s a sign. 

According to the prophets Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, the arrival of God’s cosmic work of salvation will be occasioned by an abundance of the best wine. 

John wants you to see that the incarnation of Jesus Christ into our world is God making good on God’s promise to the prophet Isaiah today. 

When Israel languished in exile, convicted of their sin and convinced God had abandoned them for breaking their vow to him, God chooses a marriage supper, a wedding party, as the image for how God would redeem his sinful people and reconcile all of Creation. 

John wants you to see that with the arrival of God-in-the-flesh in our world the not yet of God’s redemptive work is here and now.

It’s a sign. 

With all these wine glasses, John wants you to see that the future promised to Isaiah is present tense in Jesus Christ; therefore, water is only the beginning of what he’s about to transform. 

Do you see? 

It’s a sign of what He promises later in the Gospel, “I have come so that you may have life and have it abundantly.”  

There’s so much good news to see here. 

Take the timing. 

John tells you that Jesus and the disciples arrive to this wedding party at Cana on the third day. The third day since when, exactly? 

It’s an unhelpful, extraneous detail unless what John wants you to see is a hint of when Mary Magdalene will arrive at the empty tomb on the third day, the first morning of a New Creation. 

Speaking of a New Creation, this third day in Cana is actually the seventh day thus far in John’s Gospel. 

John, who begins his Gospel with a deliberate echo of the Genesis Creation story, numbers the days in his Gospel just like Genesis, too. 

If you turn to John 1.19, you’ll see John says on the “first day.” 

And then in verse 29, John tells you “on the next day,” and then in verse 35, John says, “on the next day.” 

So, that’s three days, and then in chapter 1, verse 43, John again says “on the next day.” 

That’s four days, and then when you turn to chapter two and the wedding at Cana, John tells you “three days later.” 

On the seventh day. 

This marriage supper at Cana where Jesus arrives as a guest but ends up acting as the host (“Do whatever he says,” Mary orders the caterers), it happens on the seventh day. 

Translation, this is no ordinary wedding party at all. 

It’s a sign. 

It points beyond itself. 

You’re supposed to see here at the beginning of Christ’s work a glimpse of the end of Christ’s work, the consummation of all things. 

This marriage supper where Jesus ends up acting as the host— it’s a sign of salvation. 

At the very end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, the occasion for John to announce the arrival of a new heaven and new earth, the occasion for John to announce that Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more— is a wedding party. 

John calls the end of all things, Salvation and New Creation, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. 

The date of the wedding matters, because it’s a sign. 

John wants you to see a glimpse of your destiny. 

And when you realize this wedding party at Cana is meant to point to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, New Creation, Heaven, Eternal Life, the whole kit and kaboodle of everything God ever spoke into existence— only when you see that this wedding is a sign of that marriage supper can you begin to laugh at the outrageousness of God’s indiscriminating grace. 

Jesus makes the best wine for drunk people to drink. 

He pours bottomless glasses of top shelf wine for people too drunk to appreciate drinking it. 

He takes the water from the stone jars and transforms it into gold medal wine for people too drunk to know what He’s done.

     As the master of the feast says to the groom, “Everyone brings out the best wine first and then the cheap wine last, but you have saved the best wine for now when they’re drunk.” 

     Even more crazy, the bridegroom and his family, who failed to purchase enough wine for the celebration, they end up getting the credit for what Christ has done.

     The party planner tastes the wine that had been water, John says, and he chalks it up to the bridegroom’s extravagance. 

They get the credit that Christ alone merits. 

As though, they had done it themselves. 

It’s a sign. 

Surely, you can see its meaning?

———————-

Earlier this week one of you emailed me an article you found online. I clicked the link and quickly praised God it had nothing to do with the LGBTQ issue in the UMC (at least, not obviously so). In fact, it was an obituary in the Des Moines Register. 

I realize it might sound odd to mention death in the context of a wedding story except (a) every married couple will appreciate the irony, and (b) even Jesus interrupts this wedding with talk of crucifixion. “Woman, what concern is that to me? My hour has not yet come.”

The obituary was for a Nebraskan named, Ken Fuson. 

And it’s one of those obituaries that’s more than just an obituary. 

It’s a, well, it’s a sign. 

Ken Fuson’s sons wrote:

“Ken Fuson was born June 23, 1956 and died Jan. 3, 2020 in at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, of liver cirrhosis, and is stunned to learn that the world is somehow able to go on without him.

Ken attended the University of Missouri-Columbia’s famous School of Journalism, which is a clever way of saying, “almost graduated, but didn’t.” Facing a choice between covering a story for the Columbia Daily Tribune or taking his final exams, Ken went for the story. He never claimed to be smart, just committed.

In 1996, Ken took the principled stand of leaving the Des Moines Register, because The Sun in Baltimore offered him more money. Three years later, having blown most of that money at Pimlico Race Track, he returned to the Register, where he remained until 2008. In his newspaper work, Ken never won a Pulitzer Prize, but he’s dead now, so get off his back.

There are those who would suggest that becoming a free-lance writer in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression was not a wise choice, but Ken was never one to be guided by wisdom. He wrote the book, “Heading for Home” with Kent Stock, about the 1991 Norway baseball team that won the state championship in its final season. Good copies are still available.

Ken was diagnosed with liver disease at the beginning of 2019, which is pretty ironic given how he never drank, never a drop of beer, whiskey, or wine. Eat your fruits and vegetables, kids.

Ken had many character flaws – if he still owes you money, he’s sorry, sincerely – but he liked to think that he had a good sense of humor and a deep compassion for others. He prided himself on letting other drivers cut in line. He would give you the shirt off his back, even with the ever-present food stain. Thank goodness nobody asked. It wouldn’t have been pretty. He also was a master Jumbles solver.

For most of his life, Ken suffered from a compulsive gambling addiction that nearly destroyed him. But his church friends, and the loving people at Gamblers Anonymous, never gave up on him. Ken last placed a bet on Sept. 5, 2009. He died clean. He hopes that anyone who needs help will seek it, which is hard, and accept it, which is even harder. 

Miracles abound.

Ken’s pastor says God can work miracles for you and through you. Skepticism may be cool, and for too many years Ken embraced it, but Jesus Christ transformed his life. Faith was the one thing he never regretted. Jesus Christ transformed everything for him. 

For many years Ken was a member of the First United Methodist Church in Indianola and sang in the choir, which was a neat trick considering he couldn’t read a note of music. The choir members will never know how much they helped him. He then joined the Lutheran Church of Hope. If you want to know what God’s transformative love feels like, just walk in those doors. 

Seriously, go right now. We’ll wait. Ken’s not going anywhere.

Yes, this obituary is probably too long. Ken always wrote too long.

So we’ll close by saying, God is good. See you in heaven. Ken promises to let you cut in line.”

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory…”

There’s so much top shelf vintage stuff at this marriage supper in Cana for us to serve.

How about: 

You are justified, not by anything you do, but by the gracious doing of Jesus Christ. 

That’s here at this marriage supper. 

So is:

Not only are you blameless before God and acceptable to God— no matter what you’ve done or left undone— by grace through faith you are credited with what Jesus Christ alone has done, as though his singular faithfulness is your very own. 

That’s in here, too, at this marriage supper for you to see and for us to serve.  

Ditto Christ’s promise to give you life, abundant life, because water is the least of what Jesus Christ can transform and is transforming and will transform at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. 

That’s here at this marriage supper for us to serve the guests of the Bridegroom. 

And that BridegroomNot only is he happy to lavish high dollar wine on drunk people to drink, in the crazy good fun of His Grace, He’s happy to let us all cut in line at Heaven’s Gate. 

Miracles abound. God is good. Jesus Christ, who is not dead, can transform anything. 

And, it’s all available to anyone at the rock bottom price of absolutely “free.” 

OUR SHELVES ARE STOCKED!

WE’VE GOT SO MUCH GOOD VINTAGE FIVE STAR STUFF TO SERVE THE BRIDEGROOM’S GUESTS! GLASS AFTER GLASS AFTER GLASS AFTER GLASS AFTER GLASS…

And yet— 

These days, in the United Methodist Church, we’re more interested in arguing over who deserves an invitation to the party. 

It’s an impressive feat, turning “wine back into water.” 

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Episode #244: Fleming Rutledge— Help My Unbelief

“There was no good for the Episcopal Church that came from the schism over the LGBTQ issue. None at all.”

That’s almost as good as her line about the Enneagram being astrology for Episcopalians.

Back on the podcast at last, the peerless Fleming Rutledge joins me to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of her book, Help My Unbelief. In addition to her book, Fleming reflects on the conservative/progressive divide in the Church, the LGBTQ debate in the UMC, the Christianity Today editorial advocating for the removal of President Trump, praying for social justice issues and preaching that incorporates current events. Oh, she also prays at the end.

Fleming’s my favorite and she should be yours too.

Don’t forget— go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com to support the pod, get some swag, subscribe to get the next episode automatically.

 

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