Jason Micheli's Blog, page 97

Episode #232: Sarah Condon —We All Get to Go Home with Beth Moore and Jesus

Fresh on the heels of evangelical preacher John MacArthur saying that evangelical preacher (*a woman*) Beth Moore should “Go home,” we have our friend Rev. Sarah Condon back on the podcast to reflect on what it’s like to be a clergywoman, her recent essay at Mockingbird Ministries, and how inclusion of women in pastoral ministry requires inclusion of LGBTQ Christians.

To check out the clip which provoked the conversation, you can find it here.

For Sarah’s writing and talks for Mockbird, check out this.

Before, during, or after you listen…

Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and click on “Support the Show” to become a patreon of the pod for peanuts.

Or, get your very own Stanley Hauerwas “Jesus is Lord and Everything Else is Bullshit” t-shirt.

 

 

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Episode #231– Dr. Johanna Hartelius: Conversations with Barth on Preaching

Dr. Johanna Hartelius, Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Texas: Austin, is working with Jason on an article on apocalyptic preaching and, for it, has recently read Will Willimon’s book Conversations with Barth on Preaching. She demanded, as she does, to talk about it with Jason for the podcast and refused, as she does, to find any of my responses to her questions satisfying.

Be on the lookout for our next podcast series hosted by Johanna Hartelius, You Are Not Accepted: Engaging Holiness with Hauerwas, where every other week Johanna will join Stanley Hauerwas and the podcast posse to discuss one of Stanley’s essays.

Speaking of Stanley, you can get your very own Stanley “Jesus is Lord and Everything Else is Bullshit” t-shirt from our online store. Go to www.crackersandgrapejuice.com and check it out.

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(Her)Men*You*tics — The Final Episode

That among Jesus’ own disciples were members of the Zealot Party indicates that his preaching and teaching were more political than Christians today often appreciate.

That’s right, we’ve made it to the end of the alphabet and instead of doing two ‘Z’ words, we’ve opted to give you 2x the conversation about ‘Zealot.’ Zealot is a word that has gone out of common usage but like all things ancient, this word has much to offer the us today. Buckle up because we are closing out this season of (Her)Men*You*Tics with a bit of zealously.

Now that we’ve wrapped our conversations through the theo-alphabet, be on the lookout for the next iteration of our podcast. Dr. Johanna Hartelius will be hosting a podcast called “You Are Not Accepted: Engaging Holiness with Hauerwas” where each episode she’ll discuss with Jason and Teer a short essay by the theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Bonus: Dr. Hauerwas has eagerly agreed to join us for many of these conversations. It’ll launch next month.

 

 

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In Spite of Ourselves

John Prine has released a 20th Anniversary edition of his legendary duets album, In Spite of Ourselves. For Ali and I, the title song is “our” song. Below is an excerpt from my most recent book wherein I write about the song and how it’s a good lens into Christian marriage. You can get the book here.

The last black card we played for Cards against Humanity that long weekend away prompted us with: “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with _____________.”

The whiskey glasses were empty and our heads were tipsy and the candles were burnt down to nubs. Gabriel had gone up to bed, smiling a goofy grin in his sleepiness; if only for a while he was just a boy again. Alexander had fallen asleep on the floor, flipping channels, one TV huckster preacher turned into another, different faces but the same fear.

Ali was again the card czar. It was her turn to choose. She turned over the possibilities we’d tossed onto the table. I looked at the answers the others had offered (“Tasteful Sideboob,” “Cud- dling,” “Letting Everyone Down”).

And I knew she’d choose mine: “Neil Patrick Harris.”

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with Neil Patrick Harris.

Ali doubled-over, giggling, and couldn’t stop.

“It doesn’t really make sense, but . . . Neil Patrick Harris just makes it funny,” Ali said, pulling my card toward her with her long, thin index finger as her knowing eyes locked onto mine.

I could’ve played the other card I still had in my hand. It would’ve fit better, and it would’ve been perfect in a way, not to mention true. It read: “God.” This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with God.

For my money, I bet it ends with music.

I like to think the music for Ali and me is that John Prine song

about a wife at her wits’ end and an unimpressive, exasperating husband reaching their rainbow in spite of themselves and, by

sheer grace or dumb luck, discovering that they are, the two of them together, “the big door prize.”

And they have been all along.

Ali will tell you: it’s our song.

The end of everything is God, sure enough. But the God who

shows us his ass rather than his glory, who kills with words, and who hides behind suffering is a God whose end just might sur- prise us and sound like a corny country song about sinners sit- ting on a rainbow that they manifestly do not deserve.

In the meantime, I can’t predict what’s in store for us.

The house always wins. Sooner or later, the floor boss will come tell me I’m longer comped my stay here. I’ll lose this hand I’ve been dealt. But I do not fear what I believe another has paid for me, gratis. I fear what the wages of my end will mean for Ali and the boys, but I do not fear the end.

I worry now as a father, but Ali and I are free of the burden of needing our marriage to merit the temporary miracle we’ve been given. It’s not like make-up sex all the time, and it doesn’t have to be (nor, at forty, could I muster that much energy). In the process, we’ve realized just how, as a miracle, my temporary one doesn’t much measure up to the miracle that we found each other in the first place. And both miracles pale in comparison to the miracle that we’re learning, in fits and starts, to tolerate the person we’ve found and love.

The house always wins, but it’s sure as hell fun to play while you can. So why not play with the piled-high stack of free grace you’ve been given and stop worrying when your dice will run cold?

Ali and I are free now from the accusing oughts we felt in the days and months after my reprieve from death. We’re free to love one another in marriage and mess up along the way because, unlike the Bachelor, we both believe the Bridegroom has already given us the rose for his wedding feast from before the very foundation of everything. He has already outfitted us for it with the garment bestowed on us in our baptisms. So, we’re free to love and live, awaiting the end, unafraid.

We can spite the noses right off of our faces in stubborn love, but nothing we do to one another can frustrate forever the stub- born love of God who is the end to every one of our silly, sin- filled, choose-your-own-adventure stories.

Only a God whose glory is shame and whose grace often looks like the belly of a whale could appreciate the irony:

The trick to making marriage work between “I do” and death is trusting the good news that there is no work your marriage needs to do.

The hilarious good news of grace means your marriage is free to be whatever you want it to be. Your marriage is even free to fall short of what you wish for it.

Knowing we’re free to fail has made our marriage more suc- cessful than it’s ever been.

Whenever it comes for me, it’s true. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with God.

But I didn’t play the card.

It would’ve been too serious. Ali would’ve rolled her eyes at the earnestness of it and not picked it exactly because she would’ve known it was my card.

I didn’t lay it on the table but, turning off the lights and turning down the bed, “God” was soon on both of our lips, his name taken not in vain, sacred not profane, for on the free lips of every married lover it is the very groaning and moaning of his new creation.

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Sermon Illustration

Exodus 20, Matthew 5.38-48

Christian de Cherge was a French Catholic monk in charge of a Trappist abbey in Algeria. A veteran of the French army, de Cherge grew up in an aristocratic family. 

After the rise of Islamic radicals in 1993, de Cherge and his fellow monks refused to leave their monastery, because they refused to cease serving the community’s poor.

Held hostage for two months, de Cherge and his fellow monks were executed in 1996. Their heads were discovered inside a tree. Their bodies were never found. 

Anticipating his murder, Christian de Cherge left a testament with his family to be opened upon his death. 

Published in newspapers all over the world, his letter is a moving exemplification of the Gospel. In it, he wrote:

“If the day comes, and it could be today, that I am a victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all of Algeria, I would like my community, the Church, to remember that I have dedicated my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

If the moment I fear comes, I would hope to have the presence of mind, and the time, and the faithfulness, to ask for God’s pardon for myself and to ask it as well for he who would attack me. I pray that I am able to love my enemy even in my death….” 

The reason his note grabbed headlines and inspired a film, Of Gods and Men— Christian de Cherge then concluded his letter by addressing his would-be executioner: 

“And to you too, my dear friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you too, I wish this thank-you, this ‘A-Dieu,’ ‘[go with God] in whose image you too are made. May you and I meet in the kingdom of heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our Father.”

No doubt, on any other day but today, I expect that you would find Christian de Cherge’s witness not only edifying, but inspiring. 

If you heard the story of his martrydom on a different occasion, say All Saints Day, then in all likelihood you would understand, intuitively, how his exemplification of the Gospel is exactly the sort that first attracted pagans to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Don’t forget— 

Christianity converted the heart of the Roman Empire before there was anything called the “New Testament,” and they did so at a time when nearly everyone was illiterate. 

And in those first centuries of the Church, not only was the sacrament of holy communion off limits to outsiders— not only was the table closed to the unbaptized— so, too, was the Sunday worship gathering. 

Unbelievers didn’t become believers by having been invited to the worship of Christians. 

Unbelievers became believers by being attracted to the lives of Christians.

That’s just a fact of history. 

The ancient Christians did not pass out tracts to people who could not read. 

The lives of the ancient Christians themselves were the holy texts. 

The saints were the scripture and the sacraments that persuaded pagans to the truth of what Christians professed.  

That is, the Church in the ancient world grew by Christians daring to live in an odd, counter-intuitive manner that made no sense if God had not raised the crucified Christ from the dead and made him Lord of heaven and earth. 

Christian de Cherge’s story is the kind of story that exemplified the story of Jesus and, in the ancient world, stories like de Cherge’s story made the story of Jesus more than a short-lived rumor from a backwater place called Galilee. 

And for that reason, we rightly admire a story like Christian de Cherge’s story. 

Yet, if you’re like me, not today.

Because, today, admiration alone isn’t an option. 

Admiration is off the table.

———————-

Today, you might find the monk’s story unsettling— accusing, even— because today we’ve just heard his story in conjunction with the Sermon on the Mount where Christ teaches that we are to love our enemies. 

We’d prefer to think the witness made by those French monks was the exception rather than the expectation. 

We’d like to make their example remarkable, but today Jesus makes it the rule. 

Moreover, Jesus putting this teaching (on how his disciples are to love their enemies) at the very outset of his ministry, implies that following Jesus will make for us enemies— enemies we would not have were we not following Jesus. 

Our sentimental assumptions to the contrary, Christianity is not about having no enemies. Christianity is about loving the enemies we’ve made by our being Christian. 

Jesus is not referring here to the enemies you had before you met Jesus, (he’s not talking about your mother-in-law or your ex-husband). Jesus is, instead, preparing his disciples for the command he will give them later in Matthew’s Gospel: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

To follow the Crucified One is to anticipate that there will be those who wish to nail you to a cross, too. And like the Crucified One, Jesus teaches today, you are to suffer your persecutors in patience and love. 

This part of the Sermon on the Mount is particularly problematic for people like us. 

After all, if we have any conviction, it’s that God is nice. And, because we’re a sanctificationist people, we think that the conviction, “God is nice,” ought to come with a correlative; therefore, we believe that we should be nice, too. 

It seems a contradiction that nice people following a nice God should discover that they’ve made enemies for themselves precisely by being Christian— enemies to whom we’re required to be more than nice. 

We’re required to love them, Jesus says, going so far as to offer them another cheek to strike, giving them the coat off our back, and walking an extra couple of miles in their shoes. 

It might not be any credit to us if we love the people who love us. 

But it sure sounds smarter. 

And safe.

But—

Christ’s command to love the enemies we’ve made by following him— the unavoidable implication to Christ’s command is that if we’ve made no enemies by following him then we’re likely not following him. 

We’re admiring him, maybe. But we’re not obeying him. 

John Wesley called those who admire Jesus but who dare not obey Jesus “almost Christians.” “Almost Christians” want Jesus to secure for them life after death, but “almost Christians” do not want to offer Jesus the kind of life that could mean their death. 

———————-

Listen up—

Let me make it plain. 

This is what is at stake in the sermon Jesus preaches today:

If your account of Christianity is such that it makes no sense whatsoever why anyone would want to kill Jesus or his followers (or you)— if we’re just a club of nice people admiring a nice God— then, it’s not Christianity. 

As Jesus tells the disciples later in the Gospel, following his peaceable way in the world will make the world more violent, not less: 

“Do you think that I will bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, I will produce division! Even households will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother…”

Which means— pay attention now— 

Christ’s command to love our enemies is not a strategy. The point of Jesus’ preaching here is not, “Give peace a chance,” or “Love is all you need.” Christ does not promise us that through our love of the enemy our enemy will cease to be our enemy and will one day love us. 

No.

Christianity is not naive. 

Jesus does not promise us that our nonviolent, cruciform love is a strategy to rid the world of violence. 

Rather, in a world of violence Jesus has called his disciples to be a particular people who love their enemies, because that is the form God’s care for us became incarnate in the world. 

This is what we do, not because it works, but because this is who He is.

“While we were yet his enemies,” the Apostle Paul says, “God-in-Christ loved us.”

“Let that same mind be in you,” St. Paul writes, “that was in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Love of enemy— 

It’s not about what works in the world. 

It’s about our witness to the world. 

Our witness to what God has worked in Jesus Christ. 

He has conquered. 

He has overcome the crosses that we build with resurrection. 

———————-

And, then—

Just before this, Jesus forbids his followers from swearing oaths. 

That sounds innocent enough until you think about it and realize that Jesus forbids his followers from swearing oaths because an oath is but an exception to lies, and every word out of his followers mouths should be “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” 

Meanwhile, here we are in America, where we can no longer even distinguish the truth from the lie, much less speak nothing but the truth.

You gripe about some of our sermons. 

Jesus preaches a hard sermon, and then he ends this section today with “Be perfect.” Actually, in Greek, it says, “There should be no limit to your goodness.”

Jesus preaches a hard sermon. 

Just before the command about oaths, Jesus teaches that we are to live visibly in the world— like salt, like light— in a manner that substantiates our message. 

And, let’s be honest, most of us live in the world in a manner that corroborates our sin, not our having been saved from it.

Even if you could take a red pen and redact this part of Christ’s preaching, this part where we are commanded to love the enemies Jesus has managed to make for us, even if you could cut out today’s passage, it doesn’t make the rest of the sermon any less convicting on nice, Jesus- admiring, “almost Christians” like us. 

So, what are we to do with this Sermon on the Mount from which, on any number of counts, we all fall so short? 

I mean, I can barely manage my inbox, let alone love all the people who love me, much less cover all the law Jesus lays down in this sermon.

What do we do with this?

———————-

When we treat Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as an impossible ideal to be realized only in some future kingdom, when we regard it as a collection of generalized principles that anyone can follow whether or not they’re following Jesus, when we interpret the sermon only as overwhelming law meant to convict us of our sin and compel us to Christ’s grace— when we interpret the Sermon on the Mount in any of those ways, we neglect to notice how the Sermon on the Mount is a sermon. 

That is, it’s not directed to unbelieving individuals. 

Nor is it meant for believing individuals. 

It’s a sermon. 

It’s addressed to a particular congregation. 

It’s intended for that community to act out and embody. 

This is why Matthew tells you at the top of Chapter Five that the twelve disciples have visibly left the crowd on the mountainside and drawn close to Christ. 

They are the ones for whom the Sermon on the Mount is meant, because they are the ones through whom Jesus is reconstituting Israel and relaunching Israel’s vocation to be a light unto the nations. 

Twelve tribes.

Twelve disciples. 

And like Israel’s Law, Jesus’ Torah on the Mount is meant for the particular people that Christ has called, and that Christ is putting into the world to witness to the new age inaugurated by his resurrection. 

The Sermon on the Mount is not meant for everybody. 

The Sermon on the Mount is meant for his Body. 

The Sermon on the Mount is meant for his Body of disciples. 

So, the good news is that the command to love our enemies is not a command for everyone to obey. 

The bad news is that, by virtue of your baptism, it is a command— just like all the others in the sermon— that claims you. 

But, that burden is not all bad news for you are just a part of the Body, and, as St. Paul tells us, the Body of Christ is made up of many different members where no part of the Body can say to another part of the Body, “I have no need of you.” Which is but a way of saying, “I need you.” 

I need you.

We need each other. 

We need each other if we are, as a community, to be Christ’s sermon illustration.

You see, the object of Jesus’ sermon is that it makes us dependent on one another if we are to exemplify it. 

Some of you speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but you do not know how to pray well. 

Others of you are skilled at prayer, but struggle with gossip. 

Some of you are open about your faith, while others of you hide it so far under a bushel basket your closet friends would be surprised to discover that you’re a Christian. 

Many of you hunger and thirst for justice, but you do not pray for those who persecute the victims of injustice. You advocate for vicitms of oppression, but you do not pray for the victimizers. 

We need each other if we are to be Christ’s sermon illustration. 

The point of the sermon isn’t that each of you, individually, need to be like Jesus Christ. 

The point of the sermon is that Christ’s Body, collectively, bear witness to him.

You might be weak on sanctification.

But, taken together, Christ’s Body spread through the world— there is no limit to the goodness. 

And so, perhaps you aren’t very compassionate on the poor, yet here you are today a part of a people who will package thousands of meals for them. 

Maybe you can’t imagine ever being capable of loving your enemies in any risk-taking ways, yet by baptism you belong to a Body with members that include witnesses like Christian de Cherge. 

———————-

Brother Paul (Favre-Miville) was another Trappist monk martryed at the abbey in Algeria in 1996. He came from a family of blacksmiths in France, a family of cultural Christians who had Paul baptized as a baby, but who did not practice the faith with any real commitment. 

Paul’s family did not welcome his decision to become a monk, nor did they understand his insistence on remaining at the abbey after it had become dangerous. 

When his unbelieving friends and secular, skeptical family would ask him about his life in Algeria amidst enemies, Brother Paul would often joke to them, “Well, my head is still on my shoulders.” 

In a letter to his friends and family, Brother Paul wrote:

“Becoming a monk is a choice, like the choice to become a follower of Christ….  Our sins are not the same nor are our gifts the same and in this way the calling Christ places upon us as his Body compels us to live in such a way as to be dependent on one another. The faithfulness of his Body is bigger than the failures of its individual members.”

The calling Christ places upon us as his Body compels us to live in such a way as to be dependent on one another. 

I’ll tell you what that means—

It means faith does not name your own inner commitments, your own private beliefs, or your own interior feelings.

No, faith names making your life vulnerable to a people who will hold you accountable to what you think is true, a people through whom, by belonging to one another, each of us is made more than we otherwise might be. 

That is the hope we call the Gospel. 

And it is the hope that takes flesh in these creatures of bread and wine; so that, we might taste and see here and now what, one day, we shall become. 

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Episode #230: David Bentley Hart— Once Upon a Time…

David Bentley Hart is back on the podcast to talk about his recent review in the NY Times of the new Tarantino film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” as well as the irrefutability of his new book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, guns, and baseball.

Don’t forget to check out our website, www.crackersandgrapejuice.com, where we’ve added a new online store for you to purchase your very own Stanley Hauerwas “Jesus is Lord and Everything Else is Bullshit” t-shirt. And click on support the show too and become a patron of the pod for peanuts.

Enjoy!

 

 

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Episode #229: David Meyers: Of Light and Shadow

Our guest for episode #229 is my friend David Meyers— along with his fantastic wife, Nicole.

David is a fireman in Albequerque, New Mexico. But that’s just his day job. David is a singer/songwriter. He’s been a worship leader and rock band frontman for groups like Old Man Shattered, and he’s the curator of a project you should check out called A More Beautiful Gospel, dedicated to the goodness of the God who looks like Jesus.

David has a new album project called Of Light and Shadow that I urge you to check out and support to make happen. Check it out here.

You can also go to www.crackersandgrapjuice.com and check out the new online store our producer Tommie has created where you can buy your very own Stanley Hauerwas “Jesus is Lord and Everything Else is Bullshit” t-shirt.

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Letter to My Godson: On the Third Anniversary of Your Baptism

Happy Baptism Day, Elijah— 

By now, this being the third letter I’ve written for the anniversary of your drowning day, you’re old enough and smart enough to be thinking to yourself, “I didn’t choose you, Jason, to be my dogfather.” And, because you’re at that wonderfully honest age where you’re still unpracticed in the lies we grown-ups call “manners,” you’ve probably also embarrassed your parents by observing out loud how you didn’t get to choose me. 

Of course, if you have muttered something along the lines of “I wish Uncle Teer was my godfather instead,” then it’s time your parents taught you some damn manners. 

Besides, you wouldn’t have gotten to choose him either. Just as your Mom and Dad baptized you without your consent— I was there, kid, they did it against your will even— so too did they stick you with me, hoping that I would aid and abet the Holy Ghost’s work of affixing the way of Jesus onto you. It’s an odd job to be sure. Don’t let my collar fool you, it’s work for which I am wholly inadequate to the task. The more you get to know me, Elijah, the liklier it becomes that I’ll be but one reason you grow to suspect your parent’s judgment, for I’m neither an exemplary father nor am I particulary holy when it comes to God. Nonetheless, if you learn anything about Jesus in the years ahead, Elijah, you should know that he delights in calling losers like me to impossible tasks in order to make their lives more interesting than they deserve. If God had a fraction of the hiring standards as your church preschool, then the gospel would’ve become but a rumor by the first anniversary of Easter. Christianity, I hope you’ll one day discover, is neither a religion nor a club. It’s an adventure. 

Stanley Hauerwas, a mentor important to both your Dad and me who preached your baptism, says in his memoir, Hannah’s Child, that he thinks he had to become a theologian in order to be a Christian. Trust, belief, and the habits necessary to sustain a Christian life simply came too unnaturally for him. He needed the obligation of a vocation to hold him accountable to the implications of his baptism. I think I needed to be a pastor in order to be a Christian. Without an every Sunday deadline looming over me and forcing me to engage God’s Word, Jesus Christ, my discipleship would’ve remained shallow and unthinking. I would’ve remained content to live a life of functional atheism. My life still fails to meet the measure I think Jesus sets for us; that is, I do not sufficiently live in a manner that makes no sense if God has not raised Christ from the dead. But, thanks to being a pastor, I’m at least haunted by the possibilities I’m too much the coward to venture. Ministry forces me to recognize there’s more to life than that for which we settle. 

Like Stanley, I needed the burdens of my vocation in order to live into my baptism. Maybe you’ve noticed already, Elijah, a large part of being a pastor is working with words. I’m a skeptic in remission, Elijah, and working with words is how I make sense of the God who makes sense of us. It seems to me, then, that working with words— writing you these letters— is the only sensible way for me to attempt your parent’s silly gambit of making me your godfather. 

Of course, all of my consternation is unnecessary because, right about now, your baptism is not the calendar date heavy on your mind. After all, this is October, and the leaves have turned.  That means it’s nearly Halloween. Despite my suggestion that with your crazy curls and your shit-eating grin you should dress as Gene Wilder from Willy Wonka and the Chocalate Factory, you insist on trick-or-treating this year as Spiderman. My son Gabriel, whom you adore more than Uncle Teer or myself, went through his own Spiderman craze at your age, shooting make-believe webs at unsuspecting bystanders and would-be villains. Perhaps the anniversary of your drowning day and All Hallowed’s Eve aren’t so far apart, Elijah. 

Even a novice theologian like yourself might be able to work out the ways in which Spiderman is the perfect doppleganger for the life of the baptized. Peter Parker is just an everyday kid at Midtown High School. Moreso than any other superheroes, Peter Parker struggles with the burden he feels from the mantle that has been placed upon him. Though he did not choose it for himself, Peter wants to live up to the life he’s been given; at the same, Peter wants to be ordinary, freed in the world from his calling to be different. 

Elijah, if he hasn’t already, your Dad can tell you the Bible word for different.

It’s holy. 

My boys are obsessed with comic books, Elijah, so I know of what I speak. What makes Peter Parker extraordinary is not his spidey-sense or his superstrength. It’s the candid and genuine way he wrestles with the easier life he’d prefer versus the peculiar life providence has placed upon him. You can’t shoot webs or swing from skyscrapers, Elijah (sorry, pal), but, like Peter Parker, God’s great power has placed upon you great responsibility. 

Actually, I hate that word responsibility, Elijah. It makes God sound like the lunch lady who shushes all the kids trying to swap their string cheese for oreos. And Lord knows there are plenty of Christians who specialize in making the God of Grace sound like an IRS auditor. God’s not a librarian reminding you of your overdue books, little man; God’s a librarian who throws her job away forgiving all the fines. 

So let’s say it this way:

God’s great power over words and water has placed upon you great opportunity.

Like Peter his webs, your baptism has thrust upon you a life that would not be possible apart from your incorporation into Jesus Christ. 

And like Peter, this isn’t necessarily a choice, even now, you’d make for yourself. Honestly, I suspect the Church baptizes babies because too many adults would run the other way if they got wise to the fact that they weren’t actually inviting Jesus into their hearts but Jesus was instead conscripting them into his kingdom. Elijah, the irony is that while you didn’t get to choose your baptism your baptism commits you to struggling with some inconvenient choices. In other words, by baptizing you against your will, Elijah, your parents have done a fanatical perhaps even cruel act. They’ve said yes to the possibility that you will one day have to suffer because of their convictions. They’ve burdened you with choices you would not need to negotiate if you knew not Jesus Christ exactly because to be a Christian is not to be someone who assents to the articles of the creed. That would be easy. Rather, the articles of the creed make intelligible the way Christians act in the world. 

Christians act in the world as though Jesus Christ really is Lord, and that presents us with no end of choices to navigate. 

     “Will you serve God or Money?” is one such dilemma. 

     “Will you study hard to get as far up the ladder as you can or will you live the posture of servant?” is another. 

     “Will you trust that happiness is what can be captured in a filtered, homogenized Instagram pic or will you cross your fingers and trust that happiness is found among those who hunger and thirst for God’s justice?” is still another choice. 

They’re inconvenient choices because in every case the choice your baptism commits you to goes against the grain of both country and culture. 

Therefore, your baptism— if done rightly— will make you not just a Christian. 

It will make you different.

Holy.

And by the time you’re able to read and comprehend this letter, Elijah, you’ll be the age when “odd” is about the last thing you’ll want to be. Like Peter Parker, what you’ll want most is to conform, to blend in, to be normal. Once such a desire settles in us, we seldom recover. Rightly understood, Elijah, your baptism may be the most counter-cultural act your parents ever commit, moreso even than they’re support for Bernie Sanders. By baptizing you into the way of the cross before you can make up your mind for yourself, your parents prophetically, counter-culturally acknowledge that you don’t have a mind worth making up. You don’t have a mind worth making up; that is, not until you’ve had your mind (and your heart and your habits too) shaped by Christ. 

How could you possibly make up your own mind, Elijah? Choose for yourself? 

After all, what it means to be free, to be fully human, is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself just as Jesus loved. So how could you ever make up your own mind, choose for yourself, until after you’ve apprenticed under Jesus? 

Elijah, I realize telling you you don’t have a mind worth making up on your own sounds offensive. I no choice but to be offensive, for we live in a culture that thinks Christianity is something you get to choose (or not), as though it’s no different than choosing between an iPhone or a Droid. But notice, Elijah, no one in our country thinks it unusual to raise their children to love their country, to serve their country and even die for it. Your Dad hasn’t even given you the choice about whether or not you’ll follow Washington’s NFL team. As the son of your father, you will be a fan. And so it goes for all sorts of the features that constitute our lives. But people do think their kids loving God, serving God, and possibly suffering for God should be left up to their own personal “choice.” As the aforementioned Stanley likes to point out, it’s just such a prejudice that produces nonsense like the statement: “I believe Jesus Christ is Lord but that’s just my personal opinion.” 

When engaged couples tell your Dad or me that they’re going to let their children choose their religion for themselves when they’re older, we often reply to those couples that they should raise their kids to be atheists. In addition to being more honest, straight up, unapologetic atheism would at least require their children to see their parents held convictions. Our (pagan) culture teaches us to think we should get to choose the story of our life for ourselves, which, in itself, is a story none of us got to choose. This makes it not just a story but a fiction, a lie. 

And a lie is a very serious thing if you are a Christian, Elijah.

Listen up, kid. 

Ours is a loquacious God, as Karl Barth said— a God who reveals himself through speech. Indeed the name the gospel gives to the Father’s Son is Word. We are made, says the Bible, by the Word wording us into existence. Therefore, there can be no graver and no more fundamental betrayal of our faith than the lie. Gene Wilder, the dude whom I think you should go as for Halloween, once said, “If you’re not going to tell the truth, then why start talking?” I don’t know if Gene Wilder realized it but in saying “If you’re not going to tell the truth, then why start talking?” he was speaking Christian. The Creator, Genesis tells us, creates by a speech-act. Gpd’s saying it makes it so. As creatures of this Creator, we reflect the image of God most proximately by our speech. The commandments “Thou shall not bear false witness” and “I am the Lord your God, thou shall have no other gods but me” are redundant, for the lie is a form of idolatry. To open your mouth and speak a true word is to imitate the God who declared, “It is good;” whereas, to open your mouth and lie is pervert God’s creation to other ends. This, no doubt, is what Jesus’ brother is after when he warns, “The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity.”

Here is one implication of the life into which we’ve baptized you, Elijah. 

You must not lie. 

I wish it were hyperbole, but the third anniversary of your baptism is a time of moral anarchy in America.

You’re still too little to notice, perhaps, but there are liars all over the news.
We grown-ups call them “leaders.” 

The fact that that previous sentence will be taken by many as a partisan polemic, Elijah, is but an indication of how complicated is the path of the baptized onto which we’ve set you. If Christians are not mindful, our lies will deliver us into the same inconvenient truth as Caiphas, who confessed, “We have no King but Caesar.” 

Maybe you can sense, Elijah, how truth-telling, for Christians, isn’t merely about honesty it’s about witness. To tell the truth entails telling the truth about Jesus Christ; that is, truth-telling requires the insistence that what God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ— despite all evidence to the contrary— is the true story of the world. This means in part, Elijah, that to live out your baptism is to call bullshit on all the other lies by which the Principalities and Powers attempt to narrate our world. Our mentor Stanley likes to tell the story of how, during the period when America illegally bombed Cambodia, he trained his young son that whenever President Nixon’s name was mentioned in school he was to raise his hand and ask, “You mean, the murderer?” Likewise, your godmother and I trained our boys to stand respectfully but otherwise refrain from participating in the pledge of allegiance at school. “You’re Christians,” we taught them, “You can pledge allegiance to no one else but Jesus.” 

This did not go over well with teachers. 

And, among their peers, it made them odd. 

But we had baptized them, Elijah, and, in baptizing them, we were prepared to make them suffer for our convictions, which is how it should go, I suppose, for that word holy can just as easily be translated odd.

In no small part, faith is the trust that what seems odd to the “real world” is, in fact, reality. Faith is trusting that the patient, peaceable way of Jesus’ cruciform love reveals the logic of creation. This is what the Bible means by calling Jesus the Second Adam. In the incarnation, God has broken through all our obfuscations and, in Jesus, given to us a new definition for what is truly human. And in baptism God’s killed off the Old Adam in you so that, in the New Adam, you might live according to the grain of the universe. 

Truth-telling, you see, requires more than avoiding the lie whilst living however you will. Even the President manages occassion to avoid lying but that does not make him a truthful person. To tell the truth, Elijah, is to live according to the truth that is Jesus Christ. To so live is harder even than it sounds, for it will require you to refuse letting the “real world” determine for you what is real. You’re already a natural at not taking the real world as a given, but— the Bible tells me so— grown-ups are good at keeping children from coming to Jesus. Grown-ups will work to convince you that Christ’s Kingdom is an impossible ideal or an accusing burden, but the water speaks a different word. Your baptism, Elijah, has commissioned you to live as though Christ is Lord. 

Christians do not welcome the stranger because we think, in welcoming them, the stranger will cease being strange to us. We do not attempt to love our enemies because, in attempting to love them, our enemies will cease to be our enemies. Nor do we feed the poor because we believe, in feeding them, the poor will express gratitude or because we think the watching world will be inspired by our example and end hunger. The way of Jesus isn’t a strategy to make the world come out right. The way of Jesus is the way those who believe Jesus has already made the world come out right live. Christians practice such work because we believe, for example, the giver of the sermon on the mount is our King and, in a world of violence and injustice and poverty, he has, by water and the Spirit, made us the peculiar people who witness to his authority. 

Will God still love you if you fail to live in a way that is commensurate with the truth who is Jesus Christ? Will God still accept you if you live a lie? 

Yes, of course. But that’s not what your baptism is for.

We’ve baptized into death, Elijah, so that you will live as though Jesus matters when it comes to matters that matter.

If you insist on trick-or-treating as Spiderman instead of Gene Wilder, then I hope you’ll at least watch Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In last line of the film, Willy Wonka smiles a smile like yours and says, “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted….He lived happily ever after.”

It’s not easy to live truthfully in a world that refuses to be the world— that refuses to live as God’s gratuitous creation. I pray, Elijah, that in baptizing you into this odd way of life, you will look back and discover that, despite the challenges, this odd way of life gave you everything you ever wanted precisely by Christ giving you desires you would not have had had you not been baptized. 

Love, 

Jason

    

   

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On Yom Kippur: Rethinking the Theology of the Cross

Because today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement, I thought it appropriate to reflect on the cross wherein Christians believe Yom Kippur gets worked out perfectly for all time by the Father through the Son, Jesus Christ.

Very often, in order to avoid depictions of the cross where God the Father appears as a sort of “cosmic child abuser,” Christians will insist that it’s God’s own self suffering the onslaught of Sin and Death upon the cross.

The eternal Son who is God dies upon the cross not an innocent carpenter from Nazareth scapegoated by our sins. 

Certainly, the doctrine of the Trinity frees the Church so to speak of the cross; however, putting God on the cross instead of the human Jesus is but one way our theologies of atonement leave the text and its context behind.

The problem I can’t ignore though is that everywhere and always in scripture, the son who dies is precisely the son who is not the father, and is nowhere the God who, as Godself, is dying to save us. Instead, there is always the son who is not the father who is dying out of obedience to the father. There is always the father who is not the son who is not sparing his son but delivering him up for us all.

I don’t reject the divine on the cross interpretation— I don’t think the grammar of the Trinity allows us to jettison it— yet I can’t help but think it problematic that the only way to get God on the cross is by reading the texts in a way other than how the first Christians read them or to ignore the form in which they gave their witness to us, abandoning the theo-logic of the NT writers and replacing it with— or projecting onto it— a particular and later way of working out the logic of the Trinity.

Is the need for it to be God who dies so profound that we simply have to abandon the suffering Human One of the Synoptic Gospels, or the obedient Second Adam of Paul? Or do we simply need to return to the question of why Jesus died to shore up a better answer of why this man (man!) goes the way of the cross?

And if we put it all in the divinity, what then of the calling to take up our cross and follow Jesus? Does God love us less than the Son because what God would not call another to do, but does Godself, God nonetheless demands we do?

And what about the bit of the father not sparing? “Not what I will but what you will?” do we throw it out?

In trying to absolve God of appearing less nice than we think God ought to be, do we ignore God as the New Testament bears witness to God?

 

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The Cure for Atheism

Genesis 32, Romans 9

     I like Jacob. I like Jacob even though it’s not clear from the biblical witness why I’m supposed to like Jacob. 

     In a culture that prizes the eldest son, Jacob isn’t. 

     In a religion whose exemplar, Abram, leaves everything behind to follow by faith when God calls, Jacob doesn’t. 

     I like Jacob, but in a tradition where names mean everything, convey everything, foreshadow everything, its not clear from the name, “Jacob,” that we’re meant to root for this character. 

     When he was yet unborn, Jacob, who wrestles God in the dark along the riverbank, for nine months wrestled his twin brother in the dark waters of his mother’s womb. 

And when she gives birth to them, Esau first, the youngest comes out clutching at the leg of the eldest. 

     As if to say, “Me first.”

     So, Rebekah names him ‘Jacob.’ 

     Which is a little like naming your kid, “Rudy.“

In movies and television, “Jake” is always the name of the hunky, altruistic hero. 

     But, in Hebrew “Jacob” means heel-grabber, hustler, over-reacher, supplanter, scoundrel, trickster, liar, and a cheat. 

     In a religion where names signify and portend everything, it’s not clear that I’m meant to but, nevertheless, I like Jacob. 

 

     

It’s true, scripture gives us plenty of reasons to dislike Jacob. 

     More than twenty years before they meet face-to-face on the banks of the Jabbok River, Jacob took advantage of his brother. 

     One afternoon Esau had returned from the fields, dizzy and in a cold sweat from hunger. Jacob pulled some fresh bread from the oven and ladled some lentil soup from the stove. 

     When Esau asked for it, Jacob demanded his elder brother’s birthright in return. 

     As Jacob knew it would, Esau’s birthright seemed an intangible thing compared to hunger. Esau accepted the terms of his brother’s extortion. 

     And, even if Esau knew not what he’d just done, Jacob certainly did. 

     But, I still like Jacob. 

     It’s true that his birthright isn’t the only thing Jacob poaches from his brother. 

     It’s true that when their father, Isaac, was weighed down by age and his eyes were cobwebbed by years, when Isaac was dying and wanted to bless his eldest son— a blessing to be the most powerful of all, a blessing that couldn’t be taken back— he old man lay in his goat-skin tent waiting for his eldest son to appear. 

     After a while he heard someone enter and say, “My father.” And the old man, his eyes darkened by blindness, asked, “Who are you my son?”

     The boy boldly lied and said that he was Esau. And when the old man reached forward to the touch the face he could not see, the boy lied a second time. 

    And when the boy leaned over to kiss the old man and the old man sniffed the scent of Esau’s clothes, just as Jacob knew he would, Isaac blessed him. 

     Jacob lied to his father to steal from his brother the birthright that he coveted. 

     If you’re counting at home, that’s 3 out of 10 commandments, broken in one fail swoop. 

      Still, I’ve got my own reasons. 

I like Jacob. 

     It’s true that soon after Esau’s rage made Jacob a runaway, God spoke to him in a dream— gave him a vision of a ladder traveled by angels— it’s true that when Jacob awoke from the dream and marked the spot with an altar stone and prayed to God, Jacob didn’t pray for forgiveness. 

     He didn’t confess his sin. 

     He didn’t express any remorse or give any hint of a troubled conscience. 

     

     Instead, Jacob prayed with fingers crossed and one eye opened, a prayer that was really more of a deal: 

“If you stand by me God, if you protect me on this journey, God, if you keep me in food and clothing, and bring me back in one piece to my house and land, then you will be my God.”

God revealed God’s self to Jacob. 

And, afterwards, Jacob is still the same Jacob— the same sinner— Jacob was before. 

Like a lot of us (most of us?),  Jacob’s encounter with God leaves Jacob completely unchanged. 

     So, it’s hard for me not to like Jacob. 

    I know it’s true that when he had nowhere else to go, his mother’s brother, Laban, took Jacob in and gave him food and shelter and work and, eventually, a wife and family. 

     I know it’s true that after over 14 years of Laban’s hospitality Jacob became a rich man- but not rich enough to satisfy Jacob who returned Laban’s good deeds by cheating his father-in-law out his wealth. 

     I know it’s true that God, in his compassion, gave children to Leah, because Leah’s husband, Jacob, gave her neither a thought nor a care. 

     If you’re still counting at home, that’s another couple of commandments broken (which still gives him a winning percentage better than the Miami Marlins are likely to have this season.)

     Jacob’s a liar, a cheat, and a thief. 

     Jacob’s got a wandering eye and a fickle heart. 

     Jacob’s got shallow scruples and fleet feet. 

     Jacob’s always ready to run away from his problems. 

     

    Jacob’s not a bible hero. 

He’s not holy. 

     He’s a heel.

    Still, I can’t help it. 

I like Jacob. 

 

You might not. 

     You might not like Jacob. 

     You might not be like Jacob. 

     

Maybe you’re batting perfect when it comes to the commandments.      

     Congrats.

     Maybe you’ve never lied to your mother or your father, or your husband or your wife. 

     Maybe you’ve never watched idly by as a sibling or a friend, or a neighbor wanders out of your life, gets into trouble and then beyond your reach. 

    Maybe you’ve never betrayed someone you should’ve honored and obeyed. 

     Maybe you’ve never returned a good deed with a petty one, or turned to God only when you needed him. Maybe.

     Maybe your family never suffered such bad blood that it threatens to hemorrhage, or maybe you’ve never let the wounds of a broken relationship fester through years upon years. 

     Maybe you’ve never withheld forgiveness, because clenching that forgiveness in your fist was the only control you possessed. 

     At every point, from his mother’s womb to Jabbok’s river, Jacob has worried about Jacob. Jacob has only ever cared about Jacob. Jacob has looked after no one else, but Jacob. 

     Maybe you’re not like that. Maybe you’ve never been like that. 

     Good for you. 

Gold star to you.

     Go ahead and turn your nose up at Jacob. 

 

     

Just because I like him doesn’t mean you should. 

     Not everyone can relate to Jacob. 

     Not everybody can identify with someone who suspects his sins are eventually going to sneak up on him from the shadows of his past. 

     Check the text— Jacob sends his wife and his kids and his possessions packing before a stranger jumps him in the dark and fights dirty until dawn. 

     Jacob ships them off across the Jabbok and then he just waits in the dark for a shadowy struggle he apparently anticipated, but had no actual reason to expect. 

     In other words, the stranger in the shadows doesn’t surprise Jacob, because Jacob was expecting that, sooner or later, the other shoe would drop, the bottom would fall out, and his ill-gotten gain would get him. 

      Maybe you can’t identify with someone like Jacob. 

      Maybe your rap sheet is clean. 

Maybe your conscience is clear.

      Maybe your past really doesn’t stink and so whenever it hits the fan, it never occurs to you that you had it coming.

     Maybe you’ve never clutched the covers at night convinced, “This is happening to me for a reason. God’s doing this to me, because of what I’ve done (or left undone).”

     Maybe you’ve never wondered that this sickness or struggle is because of that sin. 

     Maybe you’ve never harbored the suspicion that the darkness that’s enveloped you is what you deserve. 

     Lucky you if you can’t relate to Jacob. 

     Lucky you. 

     

Lord knows, I can. 

     I can. 

     But, that’s not why I like Jacob.

 

    

     No, I like Jacob because Jacob is not the sort of guy who would ever send a Hallmark card that says, “God never gives you more than you can handle.”

     I like Jacob, because Jacob, whom God leaves lame and limping and bruised,  knows that the good news is NOT, “God never gives you more than you can handle.” 

I like Jacob, because Jacob knows that God is to be found up at the top of that ladder God showed him, and Jacob knows that the good news— the Gospel— is not that God is there at the top of that ladder to meet u,s if we but climb our way up to him. 

     Jacob has the scars to prove it. 

The ladder was not for us to journey up to God. 

The ladder was for God to come down to us. 

Jacob has the scars to prove it. 

The good news is that God meets us in the very midst of that which we cannot handle.

 

    Chris Arnade is a photojournalist who published a book entitled Dignity earlier this year. 

Arnade used to be atheist. The book started out as an essay he wrote for The Guardian entitled, “The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes.”

Arnade was an unbelieving, French-cuffed financier on Wall Street. 

When the market crashed in 2008 and he lost his job, he began travelling through urban America, interviewing homeless addicts and prostitutes and squatters and taking their pictures. 

“I had always counted myself an atheist,” Arnade writes, “I picked on the Bible, a tome cobbled together over hundreds of years that provides so many inconsistencies.”

“When I first walked into the Bronx, photographing homeless addicts, I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be. None of them are. Rather, they are some of the strongest believers I have met.”

Arnade writes about a forty-something woman named, Takeesha. She talked to him for an hour standing against a wall at the Corpus Christi Monastery in the South Bronx. 

When she was 13, Takeesha’s mother, who was a prostitute, put her out to work the streets with her, which she’s done for the last thirty years. 

“It’s sad,” Takeesha told Arnade, “when it’s your mother, who you trust, and she was out there with me, but you know what kept me through all that? God. Jesus. Whenever I got into [a guy’s] car, Jesus came down and stuck with me and got into the car with me.” 

Takeesha has a framed print of the Last Supper that she takes with her— a moveable feast— wherever she goes to sleep for the night. 

She’s hung the image of it above her in abandoned buildings and in sewage-filled basements and leaned it against a tent pole under an interstate overpass. She’s taken it with her to turn tricks.

“He’s always comes down and meets me where I am when I need him the most,” she told Arnade. 

 

     I don’t just like Jacob; I think we need him. 

     Martin Luther said that, from Adam onwards, you and I are addicted to the “glory story.”

That is, we’re hard-wired by sin to imagine that God is far off in heaven, up in glory, doling out rewards for every faithful step we take up towards him and doling out chastisements for our every slip-up along the way. 

     The “glory story” prompts those kinds of questions and clichés, because it gets the direction of the Gospel story backwards. 

The Gospel story, the story of the Cross, is not the story of our journey up to God, but God’s journey down to us. 

     The story of the Cross is a story of God’s condescension, not our ascension. 

     And, the story of the Cross isn’t a story that starts with Jesus. 

     Rather, the God who comes to us in the crucified Christ is the God who has always condescended. 

Indeed, that’s why the first Christians believed it was the pre-incarnate Christ Jacob wrestles here in the dark of the night. 

This angel in the darkness is the Second Adam (Jesus) who has the authority to (re)name God’s creatures. 

     The God who snuck up on us in Jesus is the God who crept up on Jacob in the shadows. 

     The God who jumped Jacob in the darkness of his guilt and sin is the same God who comes down and finds us in our own struggles. 

     And so I don’t just like Jacob; I think we need him. 

     We need Jacob to inoculate us against the “glory story.”

     We need Jacob to remember that:

If we are to find strength from God, it starts with searching for Him in our weakness. 

If we hope to find wholeness from God, it begins by seeking Him out in our woundedness.  

If we dream of finding healing from God, we first must look for God not up in glory, but down into the pit of our nightmare. 

     Without Jacob, when we cry out to God for help, we’re liable to point our mouths in the wrong direction. 

     Up into glory, rather than down in to the darkness, and out into the shadows that surround us. 

    So, I don’t just like Jacob; I think we need him. 

     Because, it’s not just that the power of God is revealed in the weakness of Jesus Christ. 

It’s that the grace God gives to us in Jesus Christ can only be received in a weakness like Jacob’s. 

     Only in our weakness and woundedness do we realize our true helplessness, and only in helplessness can we discover the healing power of his blessing— that’s not just the Jacob story, that’s the Gospel. 

     That’s what we mean when we say that you are saved by grace alone through faith alone. We mean that you alone— by your lonesome— do not have the strength to save yourself. 

     You are as helpless as Jacob, hobbled over with his hip out of joint. NOTE: poor guy.

     That’s why the bread is broken. 

And it’s why you come to the table with the open, empty hands of a beggar. 

     Knowing you have nothing to offer is the only way to receive what God has to give. 

 

Chris Arnade writes in Dignity:

“On the streets, with their daily battles and constant proximity to death, they have come to understand viscerally the truth about all of us which many privileged and wealthy people have the luxury to avoid: that life is neither rational nor fair, that everyone makes mistakes and often we are the victims of other people’s mistakes.” 

“Meeting people like Takeesha,” Arnade writes, “I soon saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well. We don’t believe in God because, with our cash and comfort, we don’t need to believe in God, which is but another way of saying “God only meets us in our need.”” 

The cure for atheism, in other words, is found not at the top of the ladder, but at the bottom. 

Or, in the middle of Jacob’s wrestling ring.

    

    

    

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