“Gift and Gifts of the Spirit”

A sermon from 1 Corinthians 12:3-13

The anniversary of the Day of Pentecost in our celebration of the church year … a momentous day … is also the one day in the church year we get to wear red as a liturgical color. That’s exciting for those of us whose favorite color happens to be red … although also a little sad, because there’s only one Day of Pentecost in the church year!

Actually, there is one other time we get to wear red as a liturgical color, and that’s for a ceremony of ordination. That ceremony includes the laying on of hands, because we sense that the Spirit connects us, and is passed on personally, from person to person; and people wear red, symbolizing the connection we see between the Holy Spirit and flame – that is, an element of the natural world that seems alive to us. All that seems to have become part of ordination because we want to call our attention, ritually, to the presence and the activity of the Holy Spirit in calling and equipping and empowering people for ministry.

And that equipping and empowering is, of course, also what is happening on the Day of Pentecost. The assembled people of God, in the form of the first century CE church, were being empowered by that outpouring of the Spirit for the momentous ministry on which they were about to embark: living the life of witnesses to the presence and the power of the risen Jesus Christ, in their own lives and in the life of the world.

And just as an aside, hopefully not too much of a complain-y one, we often say that every Sunday is a “little Easter,” because we are always celebrating the resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ; but if that’s the case, we could just as well say that every Sunday is also a “little Day of Pentecost,” because we are, also, always, celebrating the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the assembled people of God, and the gift that the Holy Spirit is to each individual believer and to the Church as the whole body of Christ.

We could do that, and maybe we should do that a little more often, because then we would have more reminders during all the other weeks of the church year that the gift of the Holy Spirit is always with us, as the gift of the personal presence of the Holy Triune God in the life of each Christian, actively drawing that person into the ongoing life of God, and into the already and eternal life of the kingdom of God. In which the many gifts of the Holy Spirit are for the common good, the good of all – given to be shared.

That really is one way to think about the central truth of the Christian faith, that we Christians have been affirming since the earliest days of the church: that God is love, living love; and wants to share that life of love with humanity, so much so that the Living God Who is Love comes into the fallen world, in the person of Jesus Christ, to clear away the obstacles that prevent our sharing that life, the obstacles of sin and death and all the distortions that come with all that, and to make God’s life freely available to anyone who wants to be part of it. So that God – in the person of the Holy Spirit – is the life that is alive in and through the life each individual believer, and in and through the life of the people of God, shared in worship, bringing us together with God around the table of communion …

Plus, if we did start thinking of every Sunday as a “little Day of Pentecost,” as well as a “little Easter,” then maybe we could wear red a little more often. Some of us would like that.

And, if we did pursue that idea, of every Sunday as a commemoration of the Day of Pentecost as well as a commemoration of Easter, we might be less likely to wonder whether our own experience of the Holy Spirit is as real, and as authentic, as the experience of those early Christians, the ones who experienced that first Day of Pentecost.

The events of that day strike us as having been so dramatic, and so public, that we’re tempted to think they must have been “unambiguous” – unquestionable, not “open to interpretation” the way our own experiences are.

We think that, despite being able to read, right in the Bible, that even all that – the wind, and the fire, and the speaking out in different languages – wasn’t unquestionable at all. Right there in the book of Acts (Acts 2:13) are those “scoffers” who dismiss the whole commotion as being caused by a bunch of people who’d had too much to drink.

Nevertheless, the worrisome question does come up for us from time to time – just a few weeks ago, as a matter of fact, in our weekly Bible study group, we were reading in Acts 10 about how the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household during Peter’s sermon, and one of the participants said “Doesn’t it seem like back then when the Holy Spirit fell on you it was something everyone knew …?’” Could see, hear, point to … And we know that most or all of the time, for us, even when we’re deeply touched by a word from God, the only evidence seems to be that we tell someone about it …

Although, for that matter, that’s also how the folks knew in Acts 10 – that the members of Cornelius household were extolling God – and some of them were speaking in tongues, according to the text, but some were presumably doing that extolling in their own language, extolling God because they’d suddenly realized that they were thoroughly convinced that yes, Jesus really is the Christ, the Son of the living God and the Savior of the world, convinced enough to stake their lives on it … and as our Reformed tradition would tell us, and as Paul tells the Corinthians and all the believers of every time and place (1 Corinthians 1:2), that conviction itself is an unmistakable trace of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Still, when that question arises, we can be glad that the apostle Paul wrote what he did to the people in Corinth, and to us, about the many different gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows on the individual members of the body of Christ.

Because one of Paul’s points here seems to be: there really are a lot of those gifts. We shouldn’t be too quick to think we’ve got a complete list, all due respect to the folks who market “spiritual gifts inventories” and questionnaires on the internet [and there are a bunch of those]. Paul’s list in these verses of 1 Corinthians – the wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, deeds of power, prophecy, discernment, tongues and their interpretation – is pretty clearly not meant to be a complete inventory, but is there just to give people a few examples. And one of the ways we know this is that Paul comes up with different lists in other different places.

In Ephesians, he comes up with a list of what we might call “offices” in the church that are the gift of Jesus Christ, through the Spirit – that “some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ …” (Ephesians 4:11-12) [And there’s that equipping and empowering again, by the way.]

In Romans, when he’s coming back to this theme of the church being like a body that has lots of different parts, doing different things, but all working together as a single living being, he comes up with another list of gifts, that includes some of the same examples he gave the Corinthians, plus some other different ones: “prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; [notice, that’s pretty wide open gift, by the way …] the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness” (Romans 12:6-8)

The list he gave the Corinthians seems to have been drawn on a much older list, given to the people of God by the prophet Isaiah, who described the coming Messiah as someone who would have “the Spirit of the Lord,” that is, still maybe “for example,”

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:1-2

We still use that list, too, when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism, in our conviction – again, we think, a conviction given to us by that same Spirit – that the newly baptized does receive that gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit …

Because we understand that presence to be a gift that God deeply desires to share with people … and indeed, longs to share more and more with people, and for that reason is constantly at work in us and on us, prompting us to make more room for the work of the Spirit in our lives, and encouraging us to undertake practices that will help us make that room, like prayer … and like turning to prayer more regularly … and like reading scripture, and then thinking about it, and letting it work its way into our minds and hearts and thereby start to change the way we think and feel about things … and like saying “yes” to the next opportunity for service … and … and …

That is, many things we think of as “ordinary” and undramatic elements of our lives as Christians are, we believe, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and means the Holy Spirit uses to work in our lives, to change us over time from the kind of people who have a hard time loving our neighbors into the kind of people who have an easier time loving our neighbors; changing us from the kind of people who have a hard time trusting Jesus when he says “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) into the kind of people who know it to be true, because we’ve actually done some of that giving ourselves, and have experienced some of that blessedness; from the kind of people who routinely put ourselves first, and into the kind of people who routinely, or at least more routinely, put ourselves and our preferences a little farther back, and think first, or at least sooner, about what would benefit others, and what we might be able to contribute to that.

All of which will hopefully lead us to start to recognize that the Holy Spirit is a lot more active than we often give credit for, and has many more and more varied gifts to distribute to the various members of the body of Christ than we often think to count.

The apostle Paul, for instance, never mentions window painting as a spiritual gift. But if he had been organizing a Vacation Bible School one summer in that church in Corinth, and had wanted to do something to energize the members of the congregation who were hosting that Vacation Bible School, and to delight the 100 or actually as it turned out 150 elementary school children who showed up for that week-long afternoon opportunity to experience the joy of the Lord and the love of God in the form of songs and games and stories and just being with people who cared about them in a place that was safe and delightful and fun … which was itself an expression of the love of God that really was something like the kingdom of God … then surely Paul would have identified being able to empower and equip the members of the body of Christ for their work of ministry by painting colorful pictures of dolphins and coral and fish on the windows of the narthex as a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good of the body of Christ.

Because it sure seemed like a spiritual gift at the time. As inspired as any prayer in an angelic language. And many times more colorful.

Because the one gift of the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ. And the gifts of the one Holy Spirit, given to us, to be shared, are limitless.

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#1Corinthians12313 #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #HolySpirit

“Spirit of Power”

A sermon from Acts 1:1-14

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you …” Jesus says. And then, he outlines what they’ll be able to do with that power: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

People have often pointed out that this sentence works as an outline for the book of Acts, which begins in Jerusalem, with the waiting church, and then follows the members of the newly-empowered church, like Peter and then Philip the Evangelist, into Judea and Samaria, and then goes on to trace the missionary journeys of the last apostle, Paul, all around the Mediterranean and finally to Rome. And if it’s true that all roads lead to Rome, then it’s equally true that Rome leads to all roads, and so, on to the whole world. By the end of the book of Acts, that early church has gotten really active, successfully so, in fulfilling Jesus’ commission.

And they get the power for all that activity from the Holy Spirit.

Or maybe we ought to say “through” or “in,” since the power that the Holy Spirit provides to the believers isn’t anything other than the power of God, or the power of the risen Jesus Christ; and for that matter, it isn’t unrelated to the event we celebrate on the Feast of the Ascension, the event in which we affirm our trust regularly in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, when we say we believe that Jesus Christ our Lord “ascended to heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty …” Where, as the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 8 [v34 to be precise], he reigns in power for us and also prays for us.

Christians, as members of the body of Christ, have been incorporated into the life and power of the risen and ascended Jesus Christ, communicated to us by the Holy Spirit, who as the apostle Paul also tells us [in his second letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:7)] is “a spirit of love and of power and of …” … of self-discipline, as the NRSV translates it. But a fuller translation of the Greek word there would be more like “of the developed wisdom and sound judgment that makes for well-balanced self-regulating virtuous people.” Sadly, we don’t have a single word in English for that, as they do in Greek.

In other words, the Spirit powers the Christian life – the life of the individual believer, as well as the collective life of the body of Christ, the church.

This is something we know by faith, and hopefully also from our experience of the Christian life. Which we hope to know more and more as we live this life.

But here again, as with so much of the language we learn in church, the New Testament’s language of “power” can confuse us, especially if we try to make it fit our customary 21st century and secular understanding of “power.”

Because, from that perspective, we often think of power as great force, that’s seen or felt dramatically; power is what lets people tell other people what to do, lets them win, get their way, get results. We often add to that the idea that we all know what kind of results we want: whatever feels better, less painful and more pleasant, at any given time …

And sometimes the power of the Holy Spirit does play right in to those images of power. Think about the dramatic manifestations of the Day of Pentecost, the gale force winds and the fireworks, along with the flamboyance of speaking in tongues, miraculous displays of healing or jailbreaks or death-defying feats of adventure – all of those things are recorded in the book of Acts. If the work of the Holy Spirit always took those forms we’d probably never wonder whether it was going on.

But we start to get confused about the kind of power Jesus is talking about, the kind of power the Holy Spirit more often exerts in believers’ lives, individually and collectively, when we forget that the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives isn’t always that spectacular. Sometimes we don’t even perceive it as “power” – much the way we barely register that we’re using plenty of electricity – right now, in fact; when all we’re doing is switching on the computer, or opening the refrigerator door, or glancing at the digital alarm clock that works away in obscurity literally all the time.

To add to our confusion, the work of the Holy Spirit doesn’t always make us feel better. We encourage each another to “rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit,” as we should, but our Reformed tradition reminds us that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to convict us of our need for Jesus Christ, to wake us up to the presence of sin in our lives, and to move us to repent, to turn away from being “conformed to the world” and to turn towards being “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” (Romans 12:2)

That feeling of conviction isn’t known for being particularly comfortable. It’s a cliché that “God’s address is at the end of your rope,” but it’s a cliché for a reason. The 12-Step people often describe it as “hitting bottom,” which is about as painful as it sounds.

When people “hit bottom” they’ll often start to ask questions like … where is God and why is God letting me suffer all this misery? Can’t God do something about all this?

And sometimes the answer is … maybe this, whatever it is, is exactly what God is doing … bringing hope in a moment of desperation, convincing us that what seems impossible might just be possible, and also worth the pain and struggle it will take to … go to rehab, for instance, or restructure that crushing debt, or get the counseling we’ve resisted, or whatever hard practical steps we might need to take to, as people say, “turn our lives around.”

The Reformed tradition also tells us that the power of the Holy Spirit is manifested in what’s called, classically, “regeneration.” That’s something we’re more likely to hear about in stories from the mission field, where people make decisions for Jesus and the community of Christ’s followers that include giving up a former way of life or other religious commitments. Accepting baptism, trusting in the gracious mercy of God, turning from the ways of sin, renouncing evil and its power in the world, accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, pledging to be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his word and showing his love … we can see that as empowering, and exhilarating.

In our culture and time and place that’s the stuff of receptions in the Fellowship Hall and congratulations all around. But in some contexts, historically and still in some places today, “regeneration” like that brings worldly peril along with its eternal joy. It exposes the believer to conflict with family members, friends, or colleagues; it closes off professional opportunities, and social connections; it can even invite state persecution. Then, the power of the Holy Spirit takes the form of sustaining believers through those hardships and trials – not removing them, but giving believes the strength to persevere through them.

Our Reformed Tradition most of all tells us that the power of the Holy Spirit shows up in the believer’s “sanctification” – that is, in the lifelong process through which a person’s life comes more and more to resemble that of Jesus’, to display more and more clearly that famous “fruit of the spirit,” (Galatians 5:22-23) as the person cultivates love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness and goodness and self-control – specifically, the kind that requires effortful self-restraint, on purpose – because we’re actively trying to do what Jesus says to do, and to stop doing what Jesus says not to do.

In other words, the practices that characterize regular Christians’ regular lives are works of the power of the Holy Spirit. When we get up earlier in the morning than is absolutely necessary and take some minutes to begin the day with prayer, to orient ourselves to the reality of God’s presence and claim in our lives – that’s the power of the Holy Spirit. When we set aside some portion of the day to read scripture, to listen for the message of that scripture and to let it roll around in our minds, sometimes seeing with a sudden flash of recognition that this really has some bearing on our lives – that Jesus’ warning about calling our brothers names, for instance, means right now at this intersection about that careless driver, for instance – that’s a manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit.

When we turn some pressing concern over to God in prayer instead of trying to solve the problem all alone … that’s the Holy Spirit at work.

At work in power, that gives us cause for rejoicing. And yet, we may not even recognize all that work as power at all, because it seems so … ordinary, so everyday, so incremental and undramatic.

We might be able to see more clearly for what it is if we’d think about “power” the way it’s defined in physics and engineering, as “work accomplished” or “energy transferred” across a specified interval of time. When we do that, when we look back at the progress of our lives as Christians, we can see how much work God has accomplished in those lives, how much energy has been transferred to us, to help us grow in our love of neighbor, to empower us to undertake deeds of service, to enable us to loosen our grasp on the things of the world, and to move us away from our passionate commitment to having things our own way, and closer to passionate commitment to the welfare of others. We can begin to appreciate the kind of power the Spirit has been bringing, all along this way, to the transformation of our lives and characters.

When we start to recognize this energy in our lives for what it is, we might find ourselves rejoicing in it more.

And beyond that, we will find it easier to ask for more of it. Because the power of the Holy Spirit is not in short supply. We can always ask for, and we can always receive, more of that power in our daily lives, all the more once we know what it is we are asking for, and looking for.

One final note in this regard to take away from the beginning of the book of Acts is that Jesus tells the apostles and the other disciples to wait to receive this power.

And it must seem obvious to them that they need to wait together, because that’s what they do. They don’t wait passively, either, they wait actively: they devote themselves to prayer, they worship together, they share their stories about Jesus and about Jesus’ impact on their lives with each other. All in all, they are at work forming themselves into a community that – as it turns out – is capable of receiving the fullness of the Spirit that will be poured out so dramatically on the Day of Pentecost. A community that will not be shattered, but rather energized and mobilized, by that surge of power.

So, much as we want to cooperate with the Spirit in our individual lives, and to appreciate the work of the Spirit in all its forms individually, we too are urged not to stop there. If we are really to take the beginning of this Spirit-filled adventure story that is the book of Acts as a message to us, today, then we too will want to pursue the ways we have to invoke the Spirit together, in the life of our communities, confident that the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ has work for us to do, and is eager to turn on the power we’ll need to do it.

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#Acts1114 #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #HolySpirit

Studying Ephesians 6 5-9 and 1 Timothy 6 17-19

This week we’re studying three texts, two of which are Ephesians 6:5-9 and 1 Timothy 6:17-19. These are two brief excerpts from Pauline instructions, to the church at Ephesus, and to their young pastor, Timothy. [Some notes on the other text, Deuteronomy 24:14-21, are here.] Here are a few notes on these verses:

Ephesians 6:5-9 – BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

The letter to the Ephesians is one of the Pauline letters whose authorship is often disputed, due to the different style of the letter’s prose from that of the undisputed letters. The most noticeable feature is the long sentences that crop up in Ephesians. But there’s some difference in vocabulary, too, and arguably some difference in the theological concepts included. Not so much, however, that Ephesians doesn’t fit comfortably into the Pauline collection.

In any case, the larger text is a letter, addressed to an early Christian church in Asia Minor, which begins with praise of God and an eloquent prayer for the congregation, and then moves on to discussion of their unity in Christ, and instruction in the new life they are to lead as Christians – in particular, as gentiles who have renounced pagan ways. That brings us to the famous household code, and then to the instruction to “put on the whole armor of God” – along with an inventory of that armor – which closes out the letter.

The instruction in our text – “slaves, obey your lords in the flesh with fear and trembling” – would be something we wouldn’t know was in the Bible if all we knew were the lectionary. Whether the fact that yes, it is in there is something we’d really like to forget or not might be an open question, but either way, Bible Content Examinees, be warned.

CLOSER READING

The longer instruction to slaves / servants (vv5-8) is neatly structured rhetorically, setting up a parallelism between the way they should serve their according to the flesh lords and the way they should serve Christ. In both cases, the author urges them not to please men in appearance only, but substantively, and ultimately with an eye to do the will of God and to please the Lord (i.e., Christ).

The word translated “heart” in v6, in the instruction to servants/slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, is the Greek psyche, from which we get our word “psychology.” It refers not so much to a physical organ, but to the whole inner person.

V8 then goes on to remind the servants of what they know (here, the eidō kind of knowing, arguably, leaning to the kind of knowing based on observation): that there will be a reward for whoever does anything good. Whether the doer of good is slave or free.

Then there’s a verse of instruction to lords or “masters,” to reciprocate (“the same do with respect to them, i.e., the slaves/servants), and specifically giving up threatening. That wouldn’t need to be said if it weren’t happening. This probably reminds us that it’s hard to start acting like a Christian in real life. The lords are reminded to know something, too: they themselves have a lord, the same one their servants have, in heaven, and partiality is not in his repertoire. So their high social status on earth will have no bearing on their status before Christ.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 – BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

The pastoral letter to Timothy is also, we think, written into the Ephesian context, and is less disputed as to its authorship than the letter to the Ephesian congregation. The instructions to Timothy range from theological to practical, and include instructions for the congregation as a whole, and various categories of members thereof, that will need to be given by Timothy, as well as instructions for Timothy about how to conduct himself as a minister of Christ. The instructions Timothy is to give to “those who in the present age are rich” are among the last.

These verses show up in the lectionary, perhaps reflecting the consciousness that most contemporary western Christians fit the description of “those who in the present age are rich.”

CLOSER READING

Timothy is to command or perhaps warn the rich not to be high-minded – presumably something like arrogant – and not to have hope on riches, which are uncertain. The word translated “uncertain” has an interesting etymology, coming from the kind of uncertainty we experience when we can’t make out exactly what we’re seeing. Which might remind us that the uncertainty of riches is not only that they can be mighty impermanent, but also that we might not be able to see all that clearly whether they are a good thing or not, or are as good a thing as they look to be to our warped senses.

The rich [implicitly, as well as the poor] are to set hope on God, who provides all richly unto enjoyment. Then, the rich are to do good, to be rich in good/lovely work, to be generous in distributing things, ready to share – a word we tend to associate with community or fellowship, but which here reminds us that it includes the practical kind of sharing of food and clothes as well as time and conversation – treasuring up for themselves a good/beautiful foundation in the future. So that they may take hold of the real life. The word that describes life here is related, by having the same root, to the word for “being” that gives us our English word “ontology.” That is, there is the life that really IS, that has the substance of life. That’s the life to get.

The number of times the word or root for riches shows up in these three verses is remarkable, and the message is clear: real riches are not what we think they are; they are from God, and they are seen in, and gained by, what is done to provide for the well-being of others.

All in all, we’re seeing in these two short texts a set of instructions being given to people who are – at this moment in history – in the minority of their community, living in a world characterized by social arrangements that have not been shaped by hundreds and thousands of years of Christian consciousness. The slavery and the extreme inequality of the ancient world are facts of life. How are these new Christians going to live, as Christians, in a world like that? Answer: as generously as possible – whether as the victims of the injustice of the world, or as those who have benefited from it, and are in a position to ameliorate some of its consequences.

Some questions on these texts are here.

Image: “Casa de Convalescència, arrambador ceràmic” Enfo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

#1Timothy61719 #BibleStudy #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #commentary #Ephesians659 #exegesis #meaning #readingTheBible #textsThatArenTInTheLectionary

“Spirit of Love”

A sermon from John 14:15-26

Isaiah 59:15-21 reminds us that the Holy Spirit was not unknown before Pentecost, or even before Christ. The people of God had known of the Spirit of God as long as they had known God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the liberator of Israel, the God who spoke by the prophets. But in bad times, people longed for more of the Spirit, more continually, more permanently … longed for God’s personal presence.

Fast-forwarding five or six hundred years from the prophet Isaiah to the gospel of John, this portion of Jesus’ farewell speech to his friends and disciples brings back to mind that long-awaited promise of God’s spirit – already in Jesus’ time, we think, part of a complex of ideas that had become first century “messianic expectation.”

The gospel of John is known for its mysterious, mystical qualities. It differs, famously, from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry and passion and death and resurrection in a way that’s governed by the plot, of the concrete events of Jesus’ life, and who emphasize a lot of Jesus’ practical teachings, like “don’t pray on street corners, pray in private” (Matthew 6:5) and “forgive people so often that you’re bound to lose count of how many times you’ve forgiven them” (Matthew 18:22).

John’s gospel takes a different approach. John tells a few long stories with long, long speeches by Jesus, that are full of deep, deep symbolic language, like “living water” and “bread of life” and “light and dark.” Symbols that keep getting deeper and more meaningful the longer we live with them.

This “farewell discourse” of Jesus’ is a good example of this. It forms much of the story of the last night Jesus spends with his disciples. It begins in chapter 13 with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and then giving them that new commandment to “love one another; as I have loved you so you ought to love one another” and ends five chapters later in chapter 17, with Jesus’ long high priestly prayer for his disciples, and in between we have Jesus’ long speech to his disciples preparing them for what’s about to happen, which includes his words about being “the way the truth and the life” and “the vine” that they need to abide in, and many many references to the Spirit … including in particular the short excerpt that constitutes the text for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (year A).

That text does include some of that mysterious, thought-stopping language, but it begins with a saying that is really not mysterious at all: “if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.”

Not mysterious at all, because that probably strikes all of us as pretty obvious, just from what we know about ordinary human relationships. Even more obvious if we think of all the many things the Greek word that’s translated here as “commandments” can mean. Things like “instructions” and “directions” and “prescriptions,” all of which are the kinds of … things someone tells us to do because doing those things will lead to the end result we want.

The way following the step-by-step directions on the back of the package of pancake mix will actually produce pancakes, or something like them, for that breakfast in bed we’re making for Mom as a Mother’s Day present. Just as not following the instructions, thinking we can leave out the eggs and double up on the milk, will not get us pancakes. (Some of us have had to learn that the hard way.)

Jesus is pointing to a basic principle of human relationships: when we love someone, we do try to do what they ask us to do. It’s why many of us have gotten in the habit of doing things like … taking time to rinse our dishes instead of just leaving them sitting on the counter after dinner to get dried up and hard to wash, for instance; or stopping to put gas in the car we borrowed instead of leaving it almost on empty so Mom has to stop to get gas on the way to work, or refilling the ice cube tray (if anyone even has ice cube trays these days) when we take the next to last ice cube, or writing thank you notes – because someone we loved and cared about, someone we wanted to be happy instead of sad and frustrated and disappointed, told us to do those things.

That same principle, that when we love people we make the effort to do what they like, instead of only what we like all the time, governs the relationship Jesus’ disciples have with Jesus: if they love Jesus, they’ll keep Jesus’ commandments – instructions – directions – prescriptions – like the one he just gave the disciples in chapter 13. That one to “love one another.”

And although we know Jesus is speaking to the very first disciples here, we believe that, through them, he’s speaking to all later disciples, too … including us. So we take Jesus’ words to that group in the upper room as being meant as much for us as for them. That commandment about love is addressed to us.

And we probably know that Jesus’ command, or instruction, or prescription, points us toward the outcome, the end result, of a community that looks and acts like Christ himself. A community that looks like and lives like the body of Christ, which is living Jesus Christ’s kind of life in the world. “Loving God with all our heart and soul and strength” – that is, with everything we’ve got – and “loving our neighbor as ourself” and “loving one another as Jesus loved us” and “washing each other’s feet” and even “loving our enemies” …

All of which, as we also know, is still really difficult for us to do. Every Sunday morning we’re confessing to God and to one another just how difficult that is, in practice, and how unsuccessful we’ve been over the past week or so, at living the way Jesus told us to live … It’s still so easy for us to have other end results uppermost in our minds, like getting our own way, or taking it easy, or making a profit, or … whatever it is, that distracts us from our devotion to Jesus, that diverts our attention and makes us want something else a little more, or a lot more, than we want to be Jesus’ people, doing what Jesus told us to do, and doing it now and not putting it off till later.

We get so busy loving so many other things that we forget to love God.

It might be less difficult for us, though, if we could just be more aware of God, more of the time. If we had someone in our lives whose task it was … or at least, whose effect on us was … to remind us of what really matters … of what’s really good, instead of only relatively good; of how we really want to be living our lives, instead of how we automatically live them … someone who would remind us of what we really love, or should …

Which brings us to Jesus’ very next sentence, the one about the “other Advocate,” the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. Now Jesus is starting to sound more like the gospel of John, because Jesus says the Spirit will “abide with you, and be in you.” That is, as theologian Dallas Willard defines “spirit,” will be a persistent “unbodily personal presence” – which is what “spirit” means, essentially – within you. More than a bit mystical, that. And Jesus goes on to promise that this Spirit, this indwelling unbodily personal presence, this Spirit of truth, will “teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

And right about here, we sometimes get very confused. Because when Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of truth,” we often get into our minds that Jesus is talking about the kind of truth that is “2 + 2 = 4” or that is some historical fact, like that “abolitionist Julia Ward Howe was an early proponent of Mother’s Day, and in 1870 issued a proclamation urging a Mother’s Day for Peace.” Which is a true fact, by the way.

But that seems not to be the kind of truth Jesus is talking about here, because he also says the spirit is someone “whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him …”. And over the years Christians have thought, over and over, that this means the Spirit witnesses to a different kind of truth, not the kind of truth of the science lab or the history book, but the kind that we know from the inside out, the way we know that a work of art or a sunset is beautiful, or know that we love our parents, or our children.

The kind of “knowing” that we do with our hearts, more than the kind we do with our intellects. That kind of truth.

And the vital truth of this kind that the Spirit of truth keeps teaching us and keeps reminding us of is that profoundest of all truths, namely, love. The love that God is, first and above all.

And then, the truth of the creative and redemptive love God has for the world – including, amazingly, us – and so, the truth of God’s Word of love to the world, the Word made flesh who is Jesus Christ.

The truth that this divine love is the loveliest thing we know or can know.

So lovely that catching a glimpse of it, a taste of it, works on us, tugs at our hearts, even when they have grown cold and stiff, calling to us, inviting us, and drawing us … more and more … into the deep truth that is God’s love for us, and into the way of life that responds to that love by loving, and by keeping Christ’s commandments.

So that the more we go along with, or perhaps allow ourselves to be carried along by, this Spirit of truth, the more we find ourselves loving Jesus, because the more we recognize the love of God revealed in and by Jesus, to which the Spirit bears witness.

And then, the more we find ourselves doing what Jesus says to do … and then, finding ourselves loving it a little more … and then, finding ourselves loving Jesus a little more, who got us into this life that we’re more and more loving to live … and then …

It’s hard to put this dynamic into words – which may be why the gospel of John strikes us as being so mysterious and mystical, and why Christian thinkers down through the centuries have struggled to get the verbs right.

Because on one hand, at every point in this process we recognize the work of God, doing for us what we can’t do and can’t imagine doing for ourselves. But at the same time, all along the way it seems to us, has always seemed to Christians, that we find ourselves making choices, and that those choices matter. That it matters whether we say “yes” to the Spirit of truth at work in our hearts and lives, or say “no” this time around …

John Calvin would tell us that we ultimately can’t resist the allure of God’s work of love, can’t ultimately resist God’s transforming grace. Even so, it persistently feels to most of us like we could cooperate with it more.

And in light of that feeling, we could think of our task as the church, as Christians, individually and collectively, as the task of cooperating more with the Spirit. The task of watching and waiting and listening for, and then paying attention to, and then following, and then celebrating and rejoicing in, Christ’s promised Spirit of truth, which is the Spirit of love.

Which, practically speaking, seems to mean that we want to learn to say every kind of “yes” there is to say to the Spirit, every time and every way we get the chance: Yes to that first inkling that we want to know more about Jesus; Yes to that first vague desire that we’d like to be part of this whole thing; Yes to the idea that maybe we ought to get to know the Spirit better; Yes to actually praying for the gift of the Spirit; Yes to waiting and watching for some sense of the Spirit; and then Yes to following that sense when it arises, to where it takes us; Yes to the desire to follow Christ’s instructions, and then Yes to actually following them, whenever the opportunity presents itself, and then Yes to doing that more and more faithfully and joyfully; Yes after Yes after Yes …

Yes to the Spirit of truth who is the Spirit of love, who is even now leading us further and further into the eternal life of Jesus Christ, whom we are learning to love more and more, as we keep Jesus Christ’s commandments, in the Spirit of love.

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#ChristianIdeasAndPractices #John141526

“Participant Observation”

A sermon from Acts 7:55-60

During the season of Easter, the lectionary gives us readings that call us to reflect on the impact of Christ’s resurrection on the earliest Christians. Usually that’s pretty upbeat reading, but this Sunday, we’re shown the last recorded scene in the life of Stephen, an early Hellenistic Jewish Christian, one of the first deacons of the church, and also the first recorded martyr for the Christian cause.

To set the context for this scene: Stephen has been serving as a deacon, “doing many wonders and signs among the people,” and also participating in religious debates, in the course of which he’s made some enemies. Those enemies have riled up a crowd that drags Stephen before “the council,” the religious judicial body, charging blasphemy. The proceedings have been what we could call inflammatory. And then this happens …

We’d no doubt agree that this is a tale of “judicial process” gone completely out of control, in which the passions of a worked-up mob of people overwhelm whatever clearer thinking and norms of civility and institutional restraints were in place, allowing violence and its dreadful dynamics free rein.

We can leave it to the scholars to sort out, if that’s even possible, how much of the story reflects the historical details of First Century institutions, Roman administrative effectiveness – or lack thereof, the influence of Luke’s literary genius, shaping his account of Stephen’s death to mirror Jesus’, etc., etc., etc. As readers of sacred text, we’re clearly meant to see that there is something wrong with what happens to Stephen.

And one of the things that’s really wrong with it, by the way, is the glaring violation of the holiness code laid out in Leviticus. Because according to Leviticus 19:16 “You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake: I am the HOLY ONE.” So those “false witnesses” who start all this, and that “young man Saul” who just stands there guarding the coats while blood is being shed, are actively betraying their consciences here.

And yet, we’re also meant to see something right in all this, to join the Christians down through the ages who have seen Stephen’s story as, genuinely, a story of victory.

Reminding us that what Christians mean by “victory” can strike outside observers as peculiar. Observers who would argue that a pretty basic requirement for a “victory” story is that the main character be alive at the end of it, and who wouldn’t recognize, or appreciate, the heroic and victorious elements that are there in this story.

Like, for instance, that dramatic vision Stephen shares, of seeing the heavens opened and the Son of Man – Jesus himself – standing at the right hand of God. That had to have been exhilarating! What follower of Jesus Christ wouldn’t want to share that vision? On top of which, if we know our Old Testament prophets, we’ll recognize that Stephen here is sharing a visionary experience with the prophet Daniel (see Daniel 7:9-14), meaning Stephen has now been made part of an elite group of individuals who’ve enjoyed the heights of spiritual experience. Once we put it that way, we can recognize that as a victory.

And like the way Stephen has fully succeeded in following Jesus’ instruction to “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me,” to its ultimate conclusion. He’s fully accepted Jesus’ admonition that “those who lose their life for my sake will save it,” and has not backed away from that. (Luke 9:23-24) He has completely risen above whatever resentment we might have expected him to have, at the injustice of this situation, and instead has managed to fulfill Jesus’ command to love his enemies, and to pray for those who persecute him. (Matthew 5:44-45) So that Stephen gets the highest possible grade for being a disciple, a student, of Christ’s, and for practicing Jesus’ teaching and example, even when put to the test in this most extreme way.

That makes the victory in the story the fact that Stephen stays true, faithful, to his commitment, as a man of God and a worshiper of the God of Israel no less, to Jesus, as the Christ, the Risen One, the one to follow into new and eternal life, even to and through death, to this world.

It’s that very steadfastness – that insistence on sticking with his story as a follower of Christ – that makes Stephen a martyr. That is, literally, in Greek, a “witness.” That Greek word martyr would be used for someone who testifies in a court of law, for instance, or who tells a friend about something they’ve seen or heard.

This witness aspect of Stephen’s story seems to be vital, because Luke, the narrator of the story, has pointedly contrasted Stephen’s kind of witness with the other, different, witnesses in this story.

Those “false witnesses,” who’ve been recruited and egged on by Stephen’s riled-up opponents, who are high on outrage, but who are at best misinterpreting what they’ve heard, and at worst purposely twisting and sensationalizing it.

Or that silently approving witness of “the young man Saul,” who by not speaking up for what he must know to be the right ends up supporting the forces that aim to silence Stephen and his disruptive testimony.

Stephen is an importantly different kind of witness: a faithfully fearless witness to a truth he’s encountered himself, as a participant observer, from within the body of Christ.

That “participant observation” language will sound familiar to the anthropologists, or anthropology majors, in the congregation. It’s a method for learning about people, their ways of life, and the meaning of those ways of life, that was pioneered by the likes of Bronislaw Malinowski, who lived among the Trobriand Islanders, and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, who lived among the Nuer people of E. Africa. The method calls for immersion in the life of the people one wants to come to know, learning their language, listening deeply to their descriptions and explanations of themselves and their lives, experiencing their reality from the inside.

The participant observer becomes an insider witness … someone who can even bridge two different worlds, because they have deep personal experience of both.

Which is, for that matter, very much the way Christians come to know the truth that God loves us: because God shows us that, in the person of Jesus Christ, by coming into our human world and its way of life, and immersing that divine life in this human one, becoming a fully participant observer of our humanity [apart from the sin, of course] – for the purpose of making redeemed and renewed life possible, and to invite us into participation in the abundant eternal life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And that participation is, most profoundly, how Stephen can say, as a witness, “Christ is alive. I know it.” Not as a witness to the kind of “faith” that – as the outside observers like to have it – “believes something without proof.” But rather to the tenacious kind of “faith” that is “conviction, based on warrant or compelling evidence” – warrant gained by what people have seen, heard, trusted, lived, for themselves.

Because Stephen would have, we trust, heard the apostles themselves bear witness, to what they’d experienced, firsthand, of Jesus Christ, of his life, ministry, death, risen life. And been moved by that witness.

He’s been baptized. We must know that. So, he’s been personally inducted into the life of dying and rising with Christ that is represented by and enacted in baptism. He has already died to a past life, and risen to a new one, personally, in that way.

He has experienced the enlivening impact of the power and the communion of the Holy Spirit in his own life.

And, he has been participating fully and enthusiastically in the new life of the early Christian church. He’s been worshipping with this growing body of believers, he’s been sharing the Lord’s supper, recognizing the risen Christ in that communion – which, by the way, we understand was more substantial in those early days, something more like a good southern Indiana pitch-in lunch, so he would have experienced very concretely the way the spiritual presence of the risen Christ concretely feeds the hungry and breaks down what were no-longer-insurmountable social barriers …

In other words, Stephen himself would have experienced firsthand the transformative impact of this way of life of following Christ. Would have known it to make a difference in his life, would have seen it make a difference in the lives of others. Would have known that difference and that transformation as the work of the Holy Spirit, communicating the living presence of the risen Christ in the church.

Plus, he’s been actively serving others in the name of Jesus Christ, experiencing “wonders and signs” in the conduct of that ministry. We don’t have to imagine those as “miracles” that defy the laws of physics [not to rule that out]. They could have been the more ordinary miracles of seeing hungry people become full, and people who were full share what they had and grow even fuller in the process. Maybe something like what happens when people fill up sacks of weekend food for kids in their community every week.

Stephen is a “hero of the faith,” but not because he “believed without proof” the grace of Jesus Christ and the steadfast love of God and the power and communion of the Holy Spirit. He was a hero of the kind of faith that bears witness: to the kind of personal knowledge that made him unable – certainly, unwilling – to do anything other than insist on the truth of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ, at work in the world, and available in the present to anyone who will accept it.

Which, to be honest – is the kind of witnesses we ourselves will, ideally, be … be able to be … as disciples and students of Jesus Christ. The kind of witnesses who can, and will, be able to say, with complete integrity: this is what we’ve learned, and known, about the grace of Jesus Christ; here is where we’ve heard and read, what we’ve trusted, and why; this is the experience we’ve gained … of speaking the truth in love, of forgiveness, of kindness, of welcome and welcoming … and on and on … as participant observers … in the body of Christ.

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#Acts75560 #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #faithHopeAndLove #witness

Thus Far

Woke up this morning to realize that it was April 30, an anniversary. Still a surprise.

That was fast. And slow. To be continued …

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

A note on the prayer

Image: “Path marker,” Path marker by Jonathan Kington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

reissued; originally published May 1, 2023

#anniversary #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #ordination #personal

“Difference of Perspective”

A sermon from Psalm 23 and John 10:1-10

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Based on my own unofficial and unsystematic research, namely, on what I’ve heard people say over the years, this is one of Jesus’ best-remembered and best-loved sayings. People hear and hang on to this very clear declaration, that Jesus’ mission in the world is bringing people life, and not just any old life, but abundant life.

This word “abundant” can mean a lot of different things in the New Testament, but it always signifies something more: more than expected, more than ordinary or usual, more than the bare minimum. That could mean a lot of different things when it comes to life, of course, and Jesus isn’t specifying whether he’s telling his skeptical audience that he’s come to give people long life, or good life, or rich, deep, vibrant, meaningful life, or … what, exactly. Maybe all of the above.

But whatever that more really is, that Jesus’ mission is to give his people, we know for sure that it’s the opposite of stealing and killing and destroying. It’s the opposite of taking life away from people, or taking people away from life.

So people hang on to this clarity, as a promise.

Also, hang on to is as something of an indicator, a signpost. Because if Jesus promises life, and abundant life, we think we can use what we know about what gives life, and what doesn’t, to help us stay on track. When we start to sense that someone or something … some piece of advice, for instance, or some set of rules and regulations, or some habit or practice … is taking us or people we love in the direction of less life, or worse life, we tend to start asking questions. To start looking for a place to turn around. Sometimes, even when the advice-givers keep insisting “This is something Christians MUST …” or “Christians absolutely positively can NOT … ,” we’re likely to protest: “Really? Because … this isn’t looking all that abundantly lively to me …”

At least, we are likely to do that if we’ve gotten a taste of the kind of abundant life that the good shepherd Jesus is leading us into.

Because, as we probably know, maybe all too well, there are different perspectives on what makes for “the good life,” different perspectives on what people are looking for out of life.

The life of that little sheep whose voice we hear in the 23rd Psalm – the contented little sheep [at least that’s how I can’t help but picture him, or her], who is happily munching on that green clover and drinking out of pools of cool, still water, and who is getting plenty of rest and restoration and who isn’t scared of the dark valley because the Lord is on the job … that kind of abundant life doesn’t appeal to everyone.

Does it appeal to me, personally, yes. And is it the kind of life I’d like to abound for the people I love? Yes, again.

But is it rock star fame and fortune? From what I’ve heard about rock stars, no, definitely not.

This Psalm 23 life seems kind of short on action, too. It doesn’t sound much like climbing Mt. Everest, or breaking a speed record, in anything, or making it onto the list of the twenty richest men in the world, or being the person other people come to begging for favors, like the Godfather in The Godfather. And as we must know, there are people in our world who do measure the goodness of their lives in all those ways.

Just as we know there are people in our world who are not particularly interested in having the Lord or anyone else prepare a table before them in the presence of their enemies. Because they are a lot more interested in crushing and destroying their enemies, and the more explosively the better. People for whom at least some of their gratification in life comes precisely from stealing life from their enemies.

But it seems clear that none of that is what Jesus has in mind when he promises abundant life.

Whatever abundant life is in Jesus’ mind is presumably going to be compatible with the kind of life Jesus himself lived, and taught his disciples to live.

A life of using his extraordinary gifts to help other people live their own lives more happily, like at that wedding in Cana; or with deeper understanding, like in that late-night conversation with Nicodemus; or with more purpose, like his invitation to that Samaritan woman at the well; or with more wholeness, like his effect on that man born blind. Or even, to live, period – as in the case of his friend Lazarus.  

And, a life of telling the truth, and of standing up against corrupt practices, even when doing that made people angry, including some powerful and dangerous people. A life of washing his students’ feet. A life of facing death for the sake of love, laying down his life for his friends.

Admittedly, not all of that sounds as peaceful and pastoral as the life we hear described in Psalm 23, either …

But we think Jesus’ perspective on abundant life is one to take mighty seriously.

And of course, the shepherd is bound to have a very different perspective on life from that of the sheep.

Because admittedly, we humans may not know a lot about sheep psychology, but from what we do know, sheep are fairly near-sighted animals, with a restricted range of vision.

They are pretty intelligent. We know they can learn things, like how to get through mazes and find rewards. We know they are very social animals, who form relationships with each other and with humans who take care of them.

But they don’t read newspapers or surf the internet. They seem to be entirely focused on what’s going on right around them, and on what’s affecting them, right this minute. They’re not known for “seeing the big picture,” for “planning ahead,” or for “taking a larger perspective.”

Sheep depend on shepherds for that kind of thing. It’s the human shepherds, for instance, who are capable of being alert to the danger of overgrazing, and then who can guard against that by moving their herds around – whether the herds like that or not – and who also can think ahead about what conservation efforts to take, and how to balance those with the demands of their sheep’s day-to-day life.

It’s the human shepherds who can research and learn the conditions for keeping sheep healthy, who can study the microbiology and parasitology and chemistry etc. behind sheep diseases and figure out how to prevent them, or how to cure them when prevention fails. Even if the medicine turns out to be bitter for the sheep.

It’s the human shepherds who are capable of recognizing that there’s a larger social and political environment, in which sheep and their wool play a very small part, however significant. Who can think up ways, as part of their shepherding vocation, to respond to and possibly to influence that much larger environment. Who can create organizations like the National Wool Growers Association – founded in 1865, and which became the present-day American Sheep Industry Association.

Sheep themselves, as far as we know, are completely unaware that anything like the American Sheep Industry Association even exists.

So we shouldn’t be too surprised that the good life as seen from the perspective of the sheep, in Psalm 23, differs from the life as seen and proclaimed by the good shepherd, Jesus.

And with all due respect to the psalmist, we can be sure we need to trust Jesus’ perspective.

We can bet that Jesus must know a lot about life, and specifically about human life, and about human life in relation to God, and about what it means for that life to be abundant. Must know a lot that we don’t even begin to know. Because if we are anything like sheep to Jesus’ shepherd – and we think we are, something like sheep, not that that’s meant to be an insult at all – we know that what we’re able to perceive of life, and of the conditions and parameters and requirements of the good life, and of the source of goodness in life, as well as the source of trouble and woe in life, all of that, has got to be limited.

People are pretty intelligent. We’re capable of learning even more than sheep. We do read newspapers and surf the internet and organize ourselves for the purposes of exploring and investigating our world and points beyond. We’ve even managed to send cameras and research missions into outer space. People are known – some of us, anyway – for “seeing the big picture,” for “planning ahead,” for stepping back and “taking a larger perspective,” for aligning our short term activities with our longer term purposes, etc. etc.

Nevertheless, all of our human science and much of our human philosophy is, purposefully, entirely focused on what we can perceive and understand within strict material, empirical limits. We literally cannot see past the boundaries of human experience.

So whatever reality lies outside those boundaries we honestly can’t speak to very well. Some people refuse to speak of it at all. Some people refuse even to consider the possibility of such reality. [Although, admittedly, that position can’t help being something like the sheep insisting that the whole world has to be one big meadow, or that the very idea of such a thing as an ocean is obviously fantastic nonsense.]

So we can see how different from our own Jesus’ perspective, which is no ordinary human perspective, but a human perspective thoroughly informed by God’s perspective, must be.

Trusting Jesus as the good shepherd can give us the kind of peace that comes from … relaxing, putting our welfare, our lives, our next steps, into Jesus’ care and protection. Which doesn’t mean that we’ll never experience pain, hardship, the equivalent of cold winters and hot summers and other kinds of sheepish discomfort. What it does mean, however, is that we can count on Jesus for ultimate security, knowing that Jesus knows the big picture, the cosmic picture, that we can only imagine, very imperfectly. We can count on Jesus’ assurance that he is gathering up the people of God, and leading them into the abundant life God wants to give us. We can trust Jesus’ knowledge of the way, no matter what happens to us as we walk through green pastures and alongside still waters and even through the valley of the shadow of death.

We know we aren’t literally sheep, and that Jesus isn’t literally a shepherd. But until we are in a position to see reality more accurately from Jesus’ eternal perspective, that’s a good way for us to think about things. Because when we can, and do, embrace the perspective of sheep following the good shepherd Jesus, it helps us remember: no matter where we go, no matter what happens to us or around us, we are ultimately completely secure, because we are being led by someone who sees farther and knows more than we possibly can, and who is leading us into life … and that more abundantly.

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#ChristianIdeasAndPractices #John10110 #Psalm23 #theology

“Signs”

A sermon from Luke 24:13-35

The gospel for the Third Sunday of Easter this year may be a familiar one to some. Not only because it’s the gospel text one out of three years on this Third Sunday of Easter.

Also because it’s widely regarded as presenting a kind of model for how people come to faith in Jesus Christ. The plot of this story really lays out some big important steps in people’s, lots of people’s, journey of faith. So we may have been talked and walked through that sequence more than once.

A couple of points of information to begin with: first, it makes complete sense that these disciples are walking back to their village on a Sunday morning, after having spent Passover in Jerusalem. This would have been their first opportunity to travel, after the events of Friday, and then after the Sabbath, which began Friday at sundown and lasted through sunrise on Sunday morning. Because on the Sabbath, they couldn’t travel any farther than about 1 km, about 2/3 of a mile; any more than that would have been the kind of work that couldn’t be done on the Sabbath. So a 7-mile walk, like the one they’re taking to Emmaus, simply had to wait until after the Sabbath, just like the women who wanted to prepare Jesus’ body properly for burial, with spices, had to wait until the daybreak on Easter morning. That detail reminds us that these disciples, like all of Jesus’ disciples at this point, are faithful, Torah-observant worshippers of the God of Israel.

Second, we don’t know the identity of the other disciple …

Which is brilliant writing on Luke’s part, btw, because that anonymity makes it all the easier for us to picture ourselves as part of this story, on the road, having this conversation.

But … it has become more and more common for people [including people who are kind of famous in Christian circles, like theologian NT Wright, or prayer-movement leader and author Pete Grieg] to suggest that the other disciple would in all likelihood have been Cleopas’ wife … for several reasons, including Greek grammar, and some other textual evidence, in particular John 19:25, which names “Mary, the wife of Clopas” – which sounds a lot like Cleopas – as one of the women who stayed near the cross during Jesus’ crucifixion, supporting Mary, the mother of Jesus through that long, harrowing day.

And actually these new interpreters are not so much inventing this, as they are reviving an idea that was already circulating in the 2nd century.

And if that is what Luke, the author of this gospel, assumed we would think, it adds some extra literary depth to this story, because remember, Luke’s gospel begins with good news coming to the world through the husband and wife couple of Elizabeth and Zechariah, who become the parents of John the Baptist.

Now, with this story, the gospel concludes with good news coming to the world through this husband and wife couple, who meet Jesus together … on their way, at first without even knowing it, but then through the scriptures of Israel, and then in a special shared meal of bread broken by Jesus himself, when they see Jesus for the risen, living Christ he is.

And because that’s such good news, and they’re so overjoyed by this truth that’s been revealed to them, they can’t sleep on it, they turn around and run back to Jerusalem to tell their friends – a lot like those shepherds back in the Christmas story at the beginning of this gospel who went running all over Bethlehem – sharing this fantastic experience and the news that’s behind it: Jesus is alive! We’ve seen him! This changes everything!

That is, there’s a pattern here in this story, that Luke has purposely called to our attention. Which is the kind of thing authors do, on purpose, especially great ones like Luke: work recognizable patterns like this into their stories, to call our attention to the important points, to emphasize the themes they want to make meaningful for us.

And to build meaningful connections with other important stories we know. Because another commentator has pointed out that, assuming Jesus IS speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, it links all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, where there’s a story about a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, who have their eyes opened – but tragically, in a way that leads to death! So this conversation with God in the person of Jesus Christ reverses that earlier one, when this couple has their eyes opened in a way that leads to life! Hallelujah!

[It’s almost like someone planned it that way.]

Because the Bible IS literature, and it DOES work, and work on us, the way all great literature works – through the vivid, recognizable images and themes and patterns we find in it.

For that matter, this probably helps us understand how Jesus could have interpreted all the scriptures of ancient Israel as containing things about Jesus. [When there’s no specific mention of Jesus at all in those scriptures, as we may have noticed …] That is, by calling their attention to patterns and meanings, showing them ways to understand their familiar scripture in a new way, in light of this new gospel of resurrection that they’re only now barely beginning to grasp … showing them how what had just happened in Jerusalem could fit right into, and even deepen, the themes and patterns of the sacred scripture that they already knew – but would now be understanding in some new ways.

A lot like the way sometimes we’ll watch a movie, maybe, and we’ll think we know what’s going on, when suddenly right at the end there’s a twist in the plot that makes us reinterpret everything we’ve seen up to that point … we think back and realize … oh … so, when he went there … and then when she said that … they were already planning to … and kapow … we have a whole different picture of what’s been going on this whole time.

Which brings us around to the problem of recognition; of how people – how we – become able to recognize Jesus, the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ, when he is right there with them – with us.

One of the continuing mysteries at the heart of this story is how these disciples, Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas, who have spent so much time with Jesus, don’t recognize him when he meets them on the road.

[Although that might not be a deeper mystery, really, than the one of how we ourselves don’t recognize the presence of the risen Christ more often than we do, when we’re assured and when we trust that God is everywhere, and that Jesus Christ is always here in the midst of us whenever two or three of us are gathered in his name, and that the Holy Spirit accompanies us throughout our Christian lives.]

We read that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him,” and we’re probably inclined to think it was something in them that did that keeping.

One suggestion being, that they were still thinking of Jesus through an image they had in their mind’s eye, of the way they’d seen him last: that dreadful vision of their friend and teacher suffering through the crucifixion. We know even from our own less dramatic everyday experience, say from visiting our friends and relatives in the hospital or the nursing home, that people look different on bad days and good ones. So they had to be led past that image, and into the living present.

Another suggestion, is that their expectations kept them back. Who could expect something as unbelievable as meeting Jesus, alive, to happen? Who can expect to experience something that radically reorganizes their understanding of reality? So, Jesus himself had to lead them to see all that, first as possible, and then as real, and then as actually happening to them …

And what that seems to mean for people like us, that is, for every Christian in every generation after that first one – like us, who never had the benefit those first Christians had, of having at least met Jesus … before, in the usual, material, face-to-face human way – is that if even Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas had to be led, taught, to recognize the presence of the risen Christ, that must be at least as true for us.

And that Luke, in this story, and particularly in the way he’s constructed the plot of this story, has given all later Christians a pattern of telltale signs that can help us recognize an encounter with the risen Christ for what it is.

Because, we think, Luke wants his readers to see how their own road, whatever that particular literal “road” turns out to be, is likely to have a lot in common with that “road to Emmaus.” Wants them to see a pattern, of recognizable experiences, that people have, over and over again, as they come to the point where “their eyes are opened,” and they know for themselves that Jesus is alive and on the move in the very world they themselves are living in. Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas in this story are standing in, in a way, for … all Christians, in every time and place.

Standing in, first of all, when Jesus listens to them, hearing them out, with compassion, coming along side them when they are hopeless, crushed by loss, and defeated, meeting them with a word of hope offered to their hearts. [So that, whenever someone listens, with care and compassion … a best friend, or a relative, whoever it is … that listener starts to look a lot like Jesus.]

And then when they notice the heart-warming effect scripture has on them … an experience we, too, will have shared whenever we’ve been touched deeply by a word or phrase or story. Even, sometimes, one we’ve heard over and over before, but suddenly see from some new place in our lives, or from a new perspective. Whenever we feel the truth, the beauty, the astonishing promise, the depth … scripture shows us …

As Henry and Richard Blackaby and Claude King, the authors of the book Experiencing God, remind us, experiencing scripture is an experience of the presence of God.

And then, they offer hospitality – offer someone they are thinking of as a stranger in need something he needs, a meal, shelter …

And when they do that, it brings them to that moment of crystal clarity … when they recognize that it’s Christ himself, alive, who breaks this bread and shares it … [which we ourselves no doubt recognize as the pattern of our sacrament of communion, in which we recognize the spirit of Christ nourishing his people, and also sending us out to offer that sustenance to others.]

There’s a pattern in all this: a pattern of seeing or sensing something Christ-like … in a moment of love, of care, of kindness, of open-hearted connection … even including when we notice that arising in ourselves … leading to the recognition, and the joyful awareness … oh, yes, Jesus really is alive, we’ve seen …

A pattern we are being led to recognize, over and over again, whenever and wherever we encounter those telltale signs of resurrection life …

Image: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

#ChristianIdeasAndPractices #experience #Luke241335

Reflecting on Deuteronomy 6 3-9 and Matthew 19 3-9

This week we’re studying Deuteronomy 6:3-9 and Matthew 19:3-9, under the rubric of “the Christian home in a modern world.”

Given that guiding theme, and given that we are working our way through a series of reflections on “Social teachings of the church” [an overarching topic taken from the lessons of 1929-30, which may themselves have been inspirited by the 1912 publication of Ernst Troeltsch’s now-classic work The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches], and given that one of the texts is arguably even more closely associated with Judaism than with Christianity, perhaps we will want to give some thought to what connects these two texts to each other, and then to what connects both of them to the reality of “the Christian home.”

Some notes on the Deuteronomy text are here (from 2018), and some notes on Matthew 19:3-9 are here. Here are a couple of additional questions we might want to think about, or to discuss in class:

Research shows that the number and frequency of religious practices engaged in by parents has an enormous effect on the later religious practice of their children. (See Ryan Burge and Lyman Stone, “Secrets of the Vanishing Church” in Plough, March 2026.) What connection or connections do we see between that fact and these texts?

What relationship would we say any of this has to what we could describe as the purpose of the Christian home? What would we ourselves say is the purpose of the Christian home? And why would we say that?

[More personal] How well would we ourselves say our own home(s) and families, whether or origin or later, fulfilled that purpose? What would we do again/keep doing? What would we change or do differently? Why is that?

The text of the Bible is indisputably pre-modern, as are its prescriptions for household arrangements (insofar as the Bible makes prescriptions household arrangements). What does this mean for people living in the modern [or even post-modern] world, who also seek to take the Bible seriously as an authoritative text? What do “modern people” mean when they say “the Bible is an authority” or “the authority” in matters of faith and morals? What can they mean? What do we ourselves mean when we say that? Or, if we don’t say that, what do we say instead, and why?

Another way of asking this question, perhaps: what “modern practices” or “modern ideas” inform our own homes, households, and families, would we say? How do those seem to us to fit with Biblical prescriptions and proscriptions? Where, if at all, would we say difficulties arise for us in adjusting “modern” practices and ideas to Biblical ones? How do we deal with those difficulties?

Overall, what we might be being asked to give particular thought to this week is how these texts seem to inform our own lives, especially as lived in our homes and families – and even to how, perhaps, they may not inform them as well as they might. And then, overall, how we think all that affects, or has affected, the way we ourselves live our lives. That is, how do we see ourselves living out the message of these texts, or trying to, or refusing to, and for what reasons? And what are our thoughts and feelings about all that?

Image: “Frukost under stora björken,” Carl Larsson, 1896, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

#BibleStudy #ChristianIdeasAndPractices #commentary #Deuteronomy639 #Matthew1939 #meaning #meaningForUs #readingTheBible #thinkingAboutTheBible

Studying Matthew 19 3-9

This week we’re studying two texts that arguably speak to the topic of “the Christian home in a modern world.” The texts are Deuteronomy 6:3-9 – the shema and the ve’ahavta, a text we’ve studied before [with some notes here from that time] – along with Matthew 19:3-9, which is Matthew’s record of Jesus’ response to a question about divorce. We might have to do some thinking about how these texts work together to build up a picture of “the Christian home in a modern world.” But in the meantime, here are a few notes on the Matthew text:

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Since we’re in Matthew’s gospel, we’ll want to remember that the overall context is a presentation of the life of Christ that emphasizes Jesus’ teachings and authoritative interpretation of the law and the prophets, as well as his organization of a community of disciples who will pass on what they themselves have learned and are learning. [Because, “remember, I am with you always …” (Matthew 28:20).] Matthew’s gospel has the reputation for being heavy on references to Jewish customs and practices, which it seems to assume the readers will be thoroughly familiar with – that is, without much translating or explanation. That may be relevant for our reading of this particular text, as it happens.

By the time we get to this particular teaching on divorce, we are nearing the end of the story. The Transfiguration has taken place; Jesus has gathered his group in Galilee, briefed them on the trip to Jerusalem and its upcoming events [not to say they have grasped the import of the project], and now he’s made his way to “Judea beyond the Jordan” (Matthew 19:1) – that is, where John the Baptist was conducting his inaugural ministry and where Jesus began his own public ministry (Matthew 3). The teaching and healing that takes place in Matthew 19 and Matthew 20, then, is immediately preparatory to Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem in Matthew 21. This context may point us toward a deeper meaning in Jesus’ remarks here.

We probably need to be aware of a couple of raging controversies of Jesus’ own day that seem to be embedded in or pointed to by this text. One was the status of divorce, and the grounds for divorce, in rabbinic interpretation. In Jesus’ day, the leading rabbis would have been Shammai and Hillel, the last of the zugot, or “pairs,” who contributed to the rabbinic interpretive tradition. One of their well-known differences of opinion specifically concerned divorce. [Here’s more on this, along with some information on where that difference went, and why, in later rabbinic tradition.] This seems likely to have been the background for the question in v3.

The poster children for wanton divorce – as well as for flouting other laws, like those against marrying one’s close relatives – were Herod Antipas, the current ruler of the territory, and his former sister-in-law but now wife, Herodias. Their sensitivity about the problem had already led to the execution of John the Baptist, who’d railed against their marriage as unlawful. (See Mark 6:17-18.)

This fact presumably makes Jesus’ remarks politically sensitive, as well as religiously meaningful. That’s if we’re thinking of “religion” the way “modern people” do, as something separated – divorced, if you will – from every other aspect of daily life.

The lectionary includes the related synoptic text Mark 10:2-16, but not this one, and not Luke 16:18, which presents a word from Jesus on divorce as an out-of-the-blue commentary on Pharisaic inclination to soften the requirements of the law. That makes Jesus’ limited allowance of grounds for divorce, namely the cause of sexual immorality, something we wouldn’t know was in the Bible if all we knew were the lectionary.

CLOSER READING

When the Pharisees “come” to Jesus “to test him” they are presumably aware of the religious and political controversy surrounding the question of divorce, and have some agenda related to that controversy when they pose their test question.

In v4, the word translated read – “have you not read” – would in many other contexts be translated “recognized.” It might be worth thinking about any difference in meaning we detect between reading and recognizing.

What Jesus is asking the questioners to recognize, or to have read, is the action of God in creation, making humanity “male and female” (Genesis 1:27), and then saying – in what we now think of as a second, slightly different account of creation from the first – “on account of this a man will leave his father and mother and be joined [literally, glued] to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”

That God-made union then becomes the basis for Jesus’ reasoning: what God has joined – paired together, the Greek word that gave Hebrew the word used to describe the relationship between the schools of Hillel and Shammai, by the way – man should not separate.

The questioners persist, by asking why Moses included a command, to issue a paper of divorce and to send her away.

Jesus responds that this was because of their hardness of heart – using the Greek word that gives us our terms sclerosis and sclerotic. That is, permission to divorce at all is already a concession to a problem people have. Or maybe we should say, a problem men, specifically, have, since the issue in question is men divorcing their wives, and not at all the other way around. [Although for that matter, we probably don’t actually think women never have the problem of hardness of heart themselves. In this legal environment, however, they’re forced to deal with it differently.]

In v9, then, Jesus sums up his teaching: a man who divorces his wife, except because of sexual immorality, commits adultery; a man who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery. That exception to the “no divorce” rule, for sexual immorality, tracks along with the school of Shammai. And the teaching is, in effect, an indictment of the reigning Herod Antipas.

Some extra thoughts …

In the ancient world, we think we know, most women depended on men for the basic necessities of life. Women’s options for securing basic survival independently of a husband or male relative were extremely limited. Reciprocally, most men depended on women, and the specific kinds of work women specifically did, for basic elements of their daily lives. The pressure to marry was enormous, and practical, if nothing else.

The world we live in is different – to a degree, at least. It’s still the case that single women with dependent children are at much higher risk for poverty. The poverty rate for single mother households is approximately 28-30%, compared to around 17% for single father households, and around 5% for married couple households. Single life may not bear the same stigma it once did, nor widowhood the same life-threatening perils. Nevertheless, even in our modern or post-modern world, we recognize people are made for connection and community of life. Pursuing that connection through marriage is still a privileged means to that end; losing it through divorce still feels traumatic.

But among the things we ourselves recognize are the many ways human hardness of heart can manifest itself, and the imperative to make a way of escape for those on the receiving end of that hardness of heart. In particular, we no longer – I hope – insist that faithfulness to God demands that people continue to expose themselves and their children to violence and abuse in their own homes. Surely, the abundant life Jesus Christ came to make possible for people includes not having to be continually on guard against assault and grievous bodily harm, especially from their own intimate partner.

As one author has said,

Divorce is a fire exit. When a house is burning, it doesn’t matter who set the fire. If there is no fire exit, everyone in the house will be burned!

Mehmet Murat-Ildan, quoted in Adrian Warnock, “Christian views on divorce and remarriage – a spectrum,” April, 2024

And as we know in the “modern world,” while we’re not supposed to prop the fire exits open, we’re also not supposed to block them up. Much as we hope no one will ever need to use them.

Some questions on this week’s texts are here.

Image: “Feuchtwangen Pfarrkirche – Vorhalle Fresko Evangelist Matthäus” (cropped), Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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