The Unity of Blood and Water

https://youtu.be/K73rnYM_f3k

Psalm 97:11-12 Light has sprung up for the righteous, and joyful gladness for those who are truehearted. Rejoice in Abba God, you righteous, and give thanks to Abba God’s holy Name.

Introduction

Unity. This is a word that’s thrown around a lot, but we never quite grasp it. We’re definitionally caught between polarized ideas like total and complete acceptance and the bare minimum of tolerance, caught in a torturous, cosmic game of monkey in the middle. The issues here are two-fold, respectively: 1. if unity is about total and complete agreement in all things, then when there is disagreement or friction of some sort, the other person/place/entity becomes “toxic”, and 2. If it’s about the bare minimum of putting up with someone, then this will breed animosity rather than unity because tolerance never demands tangible understanding or the need to change oneself (not to mention that the demand for tolerance often creates a situation by which the victim is yoked to her victimizer, the hated with their enemy). If this is all we have to define unity… well, aren’t we up a creek without a paddle.

Yet, Jesus expects the community of believers, his disciples, to live in unity not only with God and Jesus (by the power of the coming Spirit) but also with each other (here and also by the power of the coming Spirit). And the goal of this unity (real, tangible, material unity) will be the means by which the world (out there) will not only know the disciples are followers of Christ by their love, but that Christ is God’s child, sent into the world to love the world and make it thoroughly human.[1] This level of unity is oneness and is more than niceness and politeness and tolerating or agreeing all the time on all things. It’s something otherworldly; it’s the very heart of our triune God.

John 17:20-26

John writes, Now, not on behalf of these only [here with me right now] I pray, but also on behalf of the ones who believe in me through their word, (v. 20). The subject of this prayer by Jesus is “the unity of the community.”[2] The community is both the community of believers existing immediately in that history and all the ones to come who believe through the proclamation of the gospel from these disciples into the world.[3] We—you and me—are addressed in Jesus’s prayer because it extends through time.[4] What’s really fascinating to me is that we are being directly addressed and are now the ones being immediately prayed for so that future people may hear the word of God in the proclamation of Christ and believe. In other words, we are—right now—the gathered community to whom Jesus is currently speaking and is yoking to an unknown group of Christians who will believe because of our witness (in word and deed and by our unity).[5]

Knowing about whom Jesus is praying, we come to the content of the prayer: the “essential unity” of the community, their “oneness.”[6] John’s Jesus says, … so that all [who believe from here on out] may be one just as you, Abba, are in me and I in you (v.21a). According to John, the oneness Jesus is expecting among the community of believers is of the same essence that is the oneness between God the Creator and God the Reconciler (between Abba God and Jesus the child). By doing theological math, if the Creator and the reconciler are one through the mutuality of Love, then the community, too, will be one through love (ἀγάπη). Concurrently, this love between Jesus and Abba God didn’t remain between Jesus and God but contained in it and extended from it the love of the cosmos, according to John (3:16). Thus, the community—formed and informed by the love of God made known in Christ—will be about and participate in this containing and extending the love of God for the cosmos because Jesus’s love of Abba God was also his love for those whom God loves.[7] This love and mutuality is the foundation of the community’s oneness and unity.

Here we get to the essence of the unity: the mutuality of responsibility and dependence. The community’s mutual responsibility and dependence reflects the mutual responsibility and dependence existing between Jesus and God. Jesus does not do Jesus’s own will but what Jesus sees Abba God do, thus to encounter to Jesus is to encounter God which then verifies that God sent Jesus (Jesus is dependent on God and is responsible for representing God to humanity through his words and deeds). This type of mutuality of dependence and responsibility is to be reflected in the community’s representative role in the world so that their unity—which is of the same essence of God and Jesus’s unity[8]—is manifested in such a way that others are brought into an encounter with God through their witness, which witnesses to Christ in their unity, as John writes, so that also they may be in us so that the cosmos may believe that you, you sent me (v.21b). It is through the community’s mutual dependence on and responsibility for the other (in the community and, we could argue, those outside of the community) that will be the thing that emphasizes the divine origin of Jesus.[9]

In other words, the unity of the community will be based on faith, love, and solidarity and not on things like doctrine, dogma, ritual, and traditionalism. The unity of the community is built on and from the unity of God and Jesus and thus is not something that is built with wood and stone, but through blood and water[10]. The community’s unity is a reality of the reign of God[11] and supersedes, transcends, and challenges the unity that is of the kingdom of humanity built on principals reflecting adherence to a specific ideology and a status quo. The unity of the community that is of the reign of God always and forever moves forward and defies and denies the ability to solidify it in a code or a static algorithm. It can happen again and again and again[12] and in new and different ways that always keeps God and God’s beloved in view. This is why the unity of the community becomes the task of the community, so that it can remain participant in the way Christ is proclaimed into the world[13] and brings others into an encounter with God by the event of faith.[14] As John writes, And the glory which you have given me I, I have given to them, so that they may be one just as we [are] one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to an end as one, so that the cosmos may know that you, you sent me and loved them just as you loved me (vv. 22-23).

Thus, the goal and completion of the community is its unity which is its representation of Christ in the world. The glory that is communicated from Abba God to Jesus (and vice-versa) is the same glory communicated from Jesus to the community (and vice-versa) that finds it’s unity in its Christocentric mutual dependence on and responsibility for the other. Glory is brought to God when the community –united by faith in and founded on the love of Christ—gives the world reasons to glorify God through their word (Christ) and their deeds (unity and love).[15] The unity of the community is a result of Christ’s presence with the community; as Christ is present with the community—united by faith and works and speaks in love and deeds—those outside the community not only see but experience the love of God in Christ via the community.[16] This isn’t a social club or a lunch bunch; these are things of the kingdom of humanity mimicking what the disciples of Christ should be. Rather, this community is built on deep identification with each other, an acknowledgement and celebration of difference, and a solidarity that unites stronger than genetic material; this is an “otherworldly” level of community, a divine yoke transcending all human made lines that divide.[17]

Conclusion

Unity isn’t something we manufacture; it’s something that happens through us when we take another person seriously. Our unity as this church isn’t because we all think the same, act the same, or speak the same. Our unity as this community is built on the invisibility of the unconditional, never stopping, always and forever love of God made known to us in the proclamation of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our unity as this community is built on our faith in Christ and our mutual assertion that because of Christ, God is truthful and trustworthy. And it doesn’t stop there. Because of our faith in Christ and our union with God through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are caused to see our neighbor as ourselves and to build deep and mutual dependence on and responsibility for our neighbor, especially those sitting here in the pews alongside us. But this faith and love that is the foundation and essence of this community is not to be contained only within the walls of this community because Jesus’s mission—which is now ours by the power of the Spirit in and among us—was to go into the world bringing God’s mission of the divine revolution of love life and liberation to the beloved. Our love for each other, our union and solidarity together, is the foundation of our task in the world; from this unity and oneness, God’s name will be hallowed and God’s will done on earth as in heaven.

[1] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context, “keeping human life human”

[2] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) 512. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966).

[3] Bultmann, John, 512. “And at this point (v. 20) we are told explicitly that Jesus’ intercession does not just relate to the historical situation, in which the Evangelist makes him speak it, but is made for all believers, now and in the future.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 512. “…the prayer for the community’s unity consciously embraces its extension through time.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 512.

[6] Bultmann, John, 512.

[7] Bultmann, John, 513. “The unity of his own is to be of the same kind as that between the Father and Son; i.e., therefore, just as the Son’s being is a being of the Father, and vice-versa, so the being of the individual believers must be a being for each other—in the bond of ἀγάπη…”

[8] Bultmann, John, 513. “Such unity has the Father and Son as its basis. Jesus is the Revealer by reason of this unity of Father and Son; and the oneness of the community is to be based on this fact. That means it is not founded on natural or purely historical data, nor can it be manufactured by organization, institutions or dogma; these can at best only bear witness to eh real unity, as on the other they can also give a false impression of unity.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 513. “And just as the Father is encountered in the Son, because the Son is nothing by himself individually, so within the community no one ought to see, or cherish, or criticize the individual character of his fellow believer, but ought to look on him only as a member of the community. It is not personal sympathies, or common aims that constitute the unity, but the word that is alive in them all and that gives the community its foundation; and each member represents the demand and gift of the word over against his fellow believer, in that he is for him.”

[10] Bultmann, John, 514. “…the community is united, in that it no longer belongs to the world but is totally orientated on the revelation event that takes place in Jesus and is an eschatological phenomenon.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 513-514. “Because the authenticity of the proclamation cannot be controlled by institutions or dogmas, and because the faith that answers the word is invisible, it is also true that the authentic unity of the community is invisible—even if it should testify to itself …in the ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾶν. It is invisible because it is not a worldly phenomenon at all; this the meaning of the second ἵνα-clause, which picks up the first…”

[12] Bultmann, John, 514. “Christendom is not a dimension withing world-history…Rather, this unity takes place again and again in the proclamation of faith.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 514-515. “Vv.22f provide fresh motivation for the prayer for the unity of the community; once again on the part of the world is stated to be its ultimate goal (v.23b), but in addition to that the unity is described as the purpose and fulfilment of Jesus’ work of revelation.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 514. “If there is such an eschatological community in the cosmos, in history, then there is always the possibility of faith for the world. The community is of course always a cause of irritations for the world, and can inflame its anger…But this means that the possibility of deciding for the Revealer is also always given to it, and this was and always will be the means of overcoming the offence….and that is why the prayer for the community is at the same time an intercession for the world, in which…the community has been set its task.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 516. “In fact one can say: that he has given them his δόξα means that after his departure they are to represent him in the world. It means that the ‘history of Jesus will not become an episode in the past, but will remain continually present in the world as the eschatological event in the eschatological community.”

[16] Bultmann, John, 516. “…that he is present in the community as the Revealer, is to find its crowning glory in the oneness of the community…”

[17] Bultmann, John, 517. “Without doubt…the community’s oneness expresses the fact that it is the eschatological community, in which the world is annulled, and in which the differences of human individuality, that are typical of any human association and in fact help to make it up, are simply excluded. This unity stands for the radical other0worldly orientation of the community, that binds all individual believers and every empirical association of faith into a supra-worldly unity, across and beyond all differences of a natural, human kind.”

#Beloved #ChristianCommunity #Community #CommunityInUnity #DivineLiberation #DivineLife #DivineLove #GatheredCommunity #Jesus #JesusSFarewellPrayer #Liberation #Life #Love #MutualDependenceAndResponsibility #Proclamation #Representation #RudolfBultmann #TheGospelOfJohn #Witness

#proclamation : official or general notice

- French: Proclamation

- German: die Proklamation

- Italian: proclamazione

- Portuguese: proclamção

- Spanish: proclamación

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Word of The Hour's Annual Survey @ https://wordofthehour.org/r/form

Pyromancer – Absolute Dominion by Fire Review

By Mark Z.

When you get down to it, hell doesn’t seem like such a bad place. It’s warm. The decor is probably pretty metal. And presumably, you get to witness some of the worst people you’ve met in your life getting tortured. As for music that makes you feel like you’re in hell, let me introduce you to Absolute Dominion by Fire. This is the debut album of Pyromancer, a new-ish band out of Kentucky whose two members bring experience from numerous other groups, including Tombstalker and Apocryphal Revelation. With nothing previous to their name other than a 2015 demo and a split last year with the fukkin fantastic Perversion from Detroit,1 I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this record, but I figured it would probably be war metal.

Lo and behold, I wasn’t quite correct. While there are certainly bestial war whiffs present here, Absolute Dominion by Fire feels more like a trve black metal album that forgoes Nordic frost in favor of the sweltering air of the Bluegrass State. The overall sound here is hot and tortured, with a raggedy guitar tone serving as the foil for short, simple riffs that feel suffocating in their bluntness and yet entrancing nonetheless. Adding to the hellish feel is the dual vocal approach, with drummer “Master of Graveyard Torment” and guitarist “Conqueror Horus” trading off garbled rasps and monstrous roars. Other than the “hot” sound, perhaps the biggest difference between this and more traditional black metal are the varied tempos. While blast beats do appear on songs like “Hellish Visions,” Pyromancer more often choose to lurch forward on mid-paced beats that feel both commanding and inexorable. Combined with the occasional ominous synthesizers, the overall approach is like the bastard child of Profanatica, Fornicus, and Mystifier.

Absolute Dominion by Fire works because it stays within its comfort zone while exploring every nook and cranny of it. In other words, the album offers plenty of variety while maintaining thematic unity and avoiding misguided experimentation. While the first proper track, “Ancient Hatred,” is probably the most typical example of Pyromancer’s sound, “Unholy Cremation” soon mixes things up with its lurching groove and hammering half-time stomp that sounds a lot like the Australian black metal band Hunters Moon.2 The aforementioned “Hellish Visions” and the closer, “Volcanic Rapture,” use bouts of battering fury that evoke the war metal of Proclamation, while “Alchemical Red Death” employs a slow, anguished guitar line to drag your stupid fucking ass straight to hell. Later, the title track unleashes staccato, breakneck riffing that could pass for thrash in a different context, while “Perverse Immolation” serves as an early highlight with its searing tremolos and staggering, stompy midsection.

Though primitive black metal is rarely considered a nuanced style, Pyromancer have a keen sense of how to make it work. The largely instrumental opener “Igniting the Sacrificial Fire” sets the stage well with its brooding synths, blunt mid-tempo riffs, and wailing leads, while the interlude “Fireborn Witchery” serves as a nice respite with its crackling hellfire and looming ambiance. While the riffs may occasionally feel a little too rudimentary, the album’s 39-minute runtime keeps it from overstaying its welcome, and the fact that you get 12 tracks in that time means that no one idea lingers around too long. The raw and trebly production job is also commendable, as it helps conjure an infernal and cavernous atmosphere while keeping the riffs wholly discernible.

While Absolute Dominion by Fire may not be for everyone, this is an impressive debut for those who dabble in this kind of music. Pyromancer are clearly veterans of the scene and know how to take a style that could easily be a repetitive snorefest and turn it into one of the strongest black metal albums I’ve heard this year. The band’s use of different vocal approaches, tempos, and riffing styles keeps things engaging, and the dense atmosphere makes everything all the more captivating. If this is what hell sounds like, sign me the fukk up.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Adirondack Black Mass | Bandcamp
Website: facebook.com/pyromancerblackdeath
Releases Worldwide: May 9th, 2025

#2025 #35 #AbsoluteDominionByFire #AdirondackBlackMass #AmericanMetal #ApocryphalRevelation #Bathory #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #Fornicus #HuntersMoon #May25 #Mystifier #Perversion #Proclamation #Profanatica #Pyromancer #Review #Reviews #Tombstalker #Vomitor

Being a #Christian inevitably means discomfort in this world. #Jesus proclamation of the kingdom entailed #tribulation and the #cross bearing (John 16:31; Matt. 16:24). He offers comfort, but never says we won’t suffer. Why?Because following him means #Nonconformity with the ways of this world (Matt. 24:9). This is a missing element in much Gospel #proclamation today.

@theologidons @theology #theology #theologidon

#StillAvailbaleForSale
#Goatkraft Sulphurous Northern Bestiality

#BlackDeathMetal #BestialBlackMetal

FFO: #Proclamation #Archgoat #Blasphemy #Revenge #Conqueror

Order here 👇 👇
warproductions.bandcamp.com

#WarProductions
#SupportTheUnderground

#StillAvailbaleForSale
#Goatkraft Prophet of Eternal Damnation
#BlackDeathMetal #BestialBlackMetal

FFO #Blasphemy #Archgoat #Beherit #Conqueror #Proclamation #Profanatica #Revenge

Order here
👇 👇 👇
https://warproductions.bandcamp.com

#WarProductions
#SupportTheUnderground

#Trump 🤷‍♂️ wird hier für „ #Frauenrechte“ gefeiert, doch seine Politik trifft vor allem:

- Transpersonen

- reproduktive Gesundheitsversorgung

- Geschlechter per Dekret definiert

- Militärverbote für Transgender Personen

- Abtreibungshürden

#WomensHistoryMonth #usa #proclamation

La Vérité Éblouissante sur le Christ ✨ – Découvrez !

Plongeons ensemble dans la question essentielle de notre salut et discernons la singularité du véritable Christ. Nous analyserons les écrits pour éveiller les esprits et éviter toute confusion sur cette question primordiale de foi. #Christ #Vérité #Salvation #Foi #Eternité #Proclamation #Discernement #Miracles #Révélation #Jésus from Christic Academy

https://christicacademy.wordpress.com/2025/03/01/la-verite-eblouissante-sur-le-christ-%e2%9c%a8-decouvrez/

By This Word Alone

https://youtu.be/JOeau_XJgA0

Psalm 138: 7, 8a, 9b-c: Though God be high, God cares for the lowly; God perceives the haughty from afar. Though we walk in the midst of trouble, you, Abba God, keep us safe; Abba God, your love endures for ever; do not abandon the works of your hands.

Introduction

Last week I referred to the reality that we have been exposed for having lost our voice in the world thus our place and relevance in the world because we’ve forsaken the message of Christ in word and deed and have traded our spiritual authority of the reign of God for the acceptance and amicability of the kingdom of humanity. In our pursuits for intellectual validity in an age ruled by the rational and reasonable, we’ve whittled down the gospel into something easily digestible as post-enlightenment, (now) post-modern, scientific, fact and data driven, educated people. Few people (if any) are currently running to the church for help or find themselves desperate to hear what the church will do or say. The church may be stepping in to help here and there, but being a “force to be reckoned with” in the temporal realm? Nah. The mainline non-denominational, big-box churches are already in the pocket of the rulers and authorities of the kingdom of humanity eager to uphold the status-quo and gain their bit of power and prestige. And the mainline denominational churches desperate to make traditional spirituality great again were seduced into the siren song of ambiguous statements of love to make sure they kept the few they had in the pews. And let us not forget the overwhelming amount of toxicity and violence that has come from the hand of those charged to do right and keep safe the beloved of God. So, fam, we’ve achieved exactly what we were desperate to avoid: we’ve lost relevance.

To find that relevance once again, we must return to the age-old yet intellectually awkward proclamation of Jesus Christ—the one who was crucified and raised by God, the one who sets the captives free by word and in deed, flips tables, yells at winds and waves, exposes people, calls the least of these his friends and family, and has absolutely no problem confronting rulers and spiritual leaders of all stripes and types in the kingdom of Humanity. And by getting in touch with this weird, pre-modern, mythologically laden message, find ourselves (re)oriented to God, faces brazen with God’s glory and presence. In returning to the proclamation we’ve been given, we will also step in under the gracious, merciful, beautiful, light yoke of God’s expectations for us as the church—love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.

In other words, the foundation of the church is completely and totally dependent on the whacky and far-out stories of Jesus of Nazareth whom faith declares is the long-awaited Messiah of God and who is God—God of very God. It is precisely in and on these stories, these myths, where the church finds its unique identity to live and its concrete truth to speak into the world.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

For I make known again to you, siblings, the good news which I preached to you, and which you received, and in which you have stood, through which you are being saved by what words I preached to you if you holdfast, except if you believed at random. (1 Cor. 15: 1-2)

Paul gives us a clear and crisp definition of the “good news” on which, through which and by which the Church stands or falls and finds its unique identity and its concrete truth.[1] This is not some story that Paul came up with, but the very story that started the tradition of the church and will keep the church embedded as a force in the world for good and God’s glory and the wellbeing of the neighbor. Paul says clearly to the Corinthians, I am telling you all again, my siblings, the good news I (have already) announced to you (v. 1a-b). In other words, Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the word of God that is the good news that God has proclaimed and promised from the beginning of the cosmos. He’s keeping this story very straight and clear and expects the Corinthians not to veer—in any way—from this tradition they’ve received from him. Thus, why Paul then says, and which you received (in turn[2]) and in which you have stood, and through which you are being (and will be) saved by what words I preached to you (vv. 1c-2b). They must remain on course because it is the ground under their feet. According to Paul, it is important for the Corinthians to hold fast to this particular message and not one of their own or a hodge-podge from what he said. Otherwise in straying and believ[ing] incoherently[3] (v. 2c), the Corinthians are not on solid ground and are not being saved.

For I handed over to you first and foremost what I also received… (v. 3a-b). What is the message that Paul preached and handed over and received and the Corinthians are being exhorted to hold fast to and not stray from? Each part of the crazy and whack story about Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. That Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas and then by the twelve[4] (vv. 3c-5). This is the good news, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (the gospel) Paul referenced back in v. 1, this is what he received and handed over[5] and through which the Corinthians are being saved;[6] this message, not part of it, not the comfortable bits, not another rendition. And it’s this message and its coherent grasp that is the foundation and the means by which the Corinthians are coming into an encounter with God by faith through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by this message and this alone that Christian faith and identity have its foundation, substance, and truth.[7] For Paul, the way this all works out is more than dogmatic (forced) confession and adherence, but the truth and actuality of a personal confession that is born of experiencing the summoning to life out of death of this good news.[8]

Paul then tells the Corinthians that Jesus in his resurrected state was seen by more than 500 siblings once for all, many of whom many remain until now, though some fell asleep. Afterward, he was seen by James [Jesus’s brother[9]], then by the all the apostles (vv. 6-7). Affirming the actuality of Jesus’s resurrection, Paul then presses in on the reality of the theme of Corinthians 15: God is God[10] and it’s this God who is God who is the one who brings the dead to life by grace and promise.[11] Paul writes, Then lastly as if one miscarried he was seen by also me, for I, I am the least of the apostles, of whom I am not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God; but by the grace of God I am who I am, and the grace of God toward me has not become fruitless, but to a greater degree I worked harder of them all, but not I but the grace of God in me. Through Paul’s confession and witness, those who are stuck are liberated, those who are afflicted are comforted, those who are untimely born are reborn in time, and those who are dead are made alive. According to Paul (by confession and experience), it’s the unmerited grace of God that is the breath of new life. [12] Thus, if for Paul than for the Corinthians[13]—individually and as the community.[14] It’s the promise of God fulfilled in and through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ that is the word of God that brings the dead to life,[15] gives authentic identity in the place of a sham identity, and replaces falsehood with truth.[16] It’s the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is, according to Paul, the firm foundation of the church; [17] apart from this there’s nothing to stand on, nothing to substantiate, nothing of relevance for the Christian community, the Church. Every part of Corinth’s existence is by God or not at all.

Conclusion

When the church fails to adhere to this message, when it decides what parts are worthy, reasonable, and rational at the expense of the other parts it will lose itself. In that moment, as it steps out from under and out of God’s grace and God’s word, the very thing it fears will happen: the church will cease to be relevant. But, according to Paul, the Church, sits precariously balanced on the solid word of God found in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; when the church stands on this word, proclaims this word, believes this word—as scary as that can be at times—the church finds itself square in the grace of God and supplied with God’s grace to carry on.[18] It is in adhering to this ancient claim that creates the timelessness of the church—it is the very essence of the invisible church, the ties that bind beyond human-made boundaries randomly drawn in the ground, beyond separations of generations of time, and beyond seemingly uncrossable expanses of space. It is this word that brings light where there is darkness, love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death. It is on and by this divine word—the word of Christ crucified and raised—and this word alone that the church is the church in the world to the well-being of the neighbor and to the glory of God.

[1] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1169. “The cross…remains ‘the ground and criterion’ of Christian existence and Christian identity.”

[2] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “The readers have in turn…received it. This is a happy rendering…to indicate transmission of a tradition for which the thrice-repeated καί is scarcely accidental.”

[3] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Here Paul envisages the possibility of such a superficial or confused appropriation of the gospel in which no coherent grasp of its logical or practical entailments for eschatology or for practical discipleship had been reached. Incoherent belief is different from believing in vain.”

[4] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1205. “…the twelve became a formal title for the corporate apostolic witness of those who had also followed Jesus during his earthly life, and who therefore underlined the continuity of witness to the One who was both crucified and raised.”

[5] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1185. “Paul declares the gospel as that which is not only revealed (cf. Galatians 1 and 2) but is also ‘both transmitted and received’ and therefore in principle constitutes ‘the premises of the audience’ which provide the foundation on the basis of which Paul will develop his argument about the resurrection of the dead.”

[6] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1184-1185. Both italics and bold are part of the original text; when my emphasis, it will be noted in the footnote. “We must understand the gospel in 15:1, therefore, to denote more than the message of the resurrection, but not less. It denotes the message of salvation; in vv. 3-4 Paul endorses the shared pre-Pauline tradition which both proclaims the death and resurrection of Christ and interprets it in terms of the saving and transforming power of the God as this receives explanation and intelligibility within the frame of reference provided by the [Old Testament] scriptures.”

[7] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1186. “Paul does, however, refer to a continuity of handing on and receiving which constitutes, in effect, an early creed which declares the absolute fundamentals of Christian faith and one which Christian identity (and the experience of salvation) is built.”

[8] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1188. “There is a very close relationship between the dimension of proclamation or kerygma which declares a gospel truth claim and the dimension of confession or self-involvement which declares a personal stake in what is asserted.”

[9] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1207-1208. “…we have independent evidence that. Paul clearly regards James the Lord’s brother as an apostle…’…Paul certainly indicates that he regarded James as an apostle.’ This anticipates the point that for Paul the term apostle is always wider than the Twelve.”

[10] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[11] hiselton, First Corinthians, 1169.

[12] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1208. “The emphasis lies in the undeserved grace of God…who chooses to give life and new creation to those reckoned as dead, or, in Paul’s case, both a miscarried, aborted foetuswhose stance had benhostileto Christ and to the new people of God.”

[13] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1213. “‘Ecumenicity’ is not the lowest common denominator in a miscellany of individual experiences. For Paul it is defined by the common kerygma of a shared, transmitted gospel tradition, anchored in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as ἐν πρώτοις.”

[14] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1194. “…the promise of God which remains steadfast…depends entirely on God’s sovereign will and gift of grace to give life to the dead…, who as the dead have no power to create or to resume life as God’s chosen community.”

[15] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1210. “Given Paul’s association of this encounter with the resurrected life as one of new creation…it seems most probably that Paul perceives himself as one who was unable to contribute anything to an encounter win which God’s sovereign grace was all, even to the extent to giving life to one who was humanly beyond all hope. This precisely reflects the theme of resurrection as God’s sovereign gift of life to the dead…”

[16] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1195. “…the transfer ‘from death to life’ thereby provides a new identity for a new community: God can ‘raise up’ children of Abraham from the stones….hence Paul uses this figure of the ‘nothingness’ of death to expound the establishing of the divine promise of life and identity  to the nothings, to the disinherited, to the Gentiles.”

[17] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1211. V. 10 “We come to the heart of Paul’s point Underserved, unmerited grace (χάρις) which springs from the free, sovereign love of God alone and becomes operative in human life not only determines Paul’s life and apostolic vocation but also characterizes all Christian existence, not least the promise of resurrection and the reality of the activity of Christ as Lord.”

[18] Thiselton, First Corinthians, 1212. “The emphasis on labor reminds us that difficulty and cost in Christian work, far from suggesting an absence of God’s grace, presupposes the gift of such grace to prosecute the work through all obstacles…The theme of grace in and through ‘weakness’ is one which Paul constantly urges to Corinth.”

#1Corinthians #1Corinthians15 #AnthonyThiselton #Beloved #ChristCrucified #ChristCrucifiedAndRaised #ChristRaised #ChristianCommunity #Church #DeathToLife #DivineLove #Encounter #Event #GoodNews #InvisibleChurch #τὸεὐαγγέλιον #Jesus #JesusTheChrist #Love #Proclamation

We Are Exposed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Tc9x6m0Rs&authuser=0

Psalm 84:3,5: Happy are they who dwell in your house, Abba God! they will always be praising you…Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.

Introduction

We are in times that are exposing who we are and what we stand for. We are in times that are exposing what we believe and how those beliefs inform our actions. We are in times, as a church, where we have been exposed and have been found lacking.

I’ve watched the last week and a half unfold; I’m an observer, it’s my preferred mode through the world. So, I’ve watched as things were said, actions taken, and when an Episcopal bishop preached. Focusing in on the last part of this abbreviated list of events, I listened to the bold and biblical sermon by the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, DC, Bp. Budde and watch it take over the stage that was to be reserved for a new president taking oath and office. What caught my attention, though, wasn’t the sermon itself. From what I can tell and conceive to be the event of proclamation and preaching, Bp. Budde was well within her sphere—as a bishop in the Episcopal church—in explicating the scriptures in the way she did, preaching Christ, and offering a humble plea to an incoming leader in the way she did.[1] (Church history is literally filled with such sermons.) What caught my attention was how people reacted: either people were astounded by such a sermon, or they were angered. Hmmm, such drastic responses; seems somethings afoot…

Why? I kept wondering. Why were people so flabbergasted for well or for ill? Why were people stunned by the sermon or clutching their pearls over it? Then it dawned on me. Ah, we don’t expect a denominational preacher, let alone a mainline, liberal leader, to be so bold and confident to, figuratively, stand toe to toe with a leader of the temporal realm and assert her spiritual authority within her spiritual realm. We’ve stopped expecting this level of proclamatory confrontation because it has ceased to be given to us. We’ve stopped expecting this boldness of preaching because we’ve grown lukewarm over the decades—preferring our own comfort while fearing the power of big donors in our churches. We’ve opted to sacrifice the radical Word of God’s revolutionary love for the beloved on the altar of our intellectualism in the name of demythology. We’ve allowed the gospel of Christ to be stripped of its power to summon the sleeping awake and the dead alive, sending into the world empty and vacuous notions of good news. We’ve been exposed; we’ve forgotten what preaching is about: comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, awaking the sleepers, called the dead into new life, and bringing Christ close to God’s beloved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Malachi 3:1-4

Our First Testament text is from the book of Malachi; it is situated in the Persian period when the temple was rebuilt and sacrificial worship was underway.[2] Malachi means “my messenger;”[3] according to rabbinic sources, Malachi was considered not only one of the last prophets (along with Haggai and Zechariah) but a sage, too.[4] This prophet-sage messenger came to the people of Judah, those who seemed to have everything back in order and brings God’s message and word of judgment. Malachi is holding up a mirror to the people of Judah and asking them to take a long look; is everything as great as it seems? Malachi asks the people to consider how they fail God and themselves—day in and day out, personally and publicly.[5] Unlike other prophets who focused their attention on the leadership of Israel allowing God’s word of judgment to illuminate the sickness and decay, the violence and death embedded deep in the leadership, Malachi is exposing the people. According to Malachi, everything is not great even with the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinvigoration of sacrifices; Malachi’s people have grown comfortable while ignoring their own spiritual malnourishment wreaking havoc on their relationship with God and with themselves: they’ve neglected Torah, the hearing of Shema; they’ve ceased to hear so deeply that they follow God and God’s word of Torah.[6]

So Malachi comes and exposes the people for who and where they are; Malachi exhorts the people back to Torah, which has just been canonized.[7] One of the neat things about the text, the nitty-gritty exposing parts of the text, is that the exposure is not strictly built from the fear of God’s judgment, but rather getting the people to identify with the “evil-doers” within the text[8]—just as the prophet Nathan did with King David. In this “identification” not only do the hearing and reading people find words to say to God (for the “evil doers” speak and are heard in the text), but they are also asked to examine themselves, to see where they fall short, and to repent.[9] When we speak along with the characters of the story, we, effectually become and identify with those characters and their words become our words and that can be exposing, especially here for Malachi’s people.

Thus says the Lord, See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight– indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? (Malachi 3:1-2)

While we don’t really know who the messenger is in our passage (v. 1), we Christians tend to see this messenger not as Malachi himself (though he is a type of messenger here), but as Jesus the Christ, this person who is God.[10] With this in mind, the “prepare the way” is a reference to the preparations needed in the heart of the people. This heart need preparing because it’s this heart that is calcified and looks for God in many places (even the Temple) but never finds God because the seeking is oriented toward that which resonates with the kingdom of humanity and not with the reign of God. God works in and through the heart of God’s people, causing them to hear so deeply that they heed and harken to God’s Word by faith and in action.[11] For Malachi, this heart must be prepared to receive the messenger.

These two verses emphasize that the messenger of God is coming to the people.[12] The messenger comes, and the messenger represents God to the people. Considering this messenger coming, the human question is asked: who can endure? Rightly, our response, when looking around and taking honest stock of our captivity and complicity in and to the kingdom of humanity, is: no one! No one will be able to endure; and this humility is part of the desired preparations mentioned earlier—preparation that reorients the creature to their creaturely status before and to their Creator.[13]

But humility isn’t the only form of being prepared mentioned by Malachi; he goes on:

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

The people will be humbled, and they will be purified by fire and cleansed with a “sharp cleansing agent” (think: lye). The messenger, the one who comes as God’s representative, is both the “Purifier” and the “Purification”, the people will be stripped of their complacency and comfortability.[14] It is here, at this point of exposure, humility, and purification where God can, once again, work through and with the people. God’s exposure brings life to God’s people; they are found wanting and God provides.

Conclusion

I know it’s uncomfortable to be exposed; but exposure leads to healing and health. Being exposed allows us to locate ourselves in the mess and then find a way out of it, the path out is illuminated by the light of the Word of God that is the calling of our names in the proclamation of Christ. To be exposed by this messenger, by the Word of Malachi, by our Christ is to be exposed and accepted and received and not exposed and condemned and sent away.

Just as Malachi held up a mirror to his audience (reader and hearer), asking them to take a long and hard look, we too are being addressed and being asked to do the same by God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit found here in these ancient words. If we take this moment seriously, we will see that we’ve lost our focus, we’ve lost our words, we’ve lost our orientation toward God, taking on everything else we’ve deemed to be good and right. If we’ve allowed our spaces to be acquired by the kingdom of humanity, we’ve forfeited our voice and have forgotten what God expects of us as God’s beloved children. Hope is not lost though, because exposure has come and we can rejoice because we were blind, but now we see, we were deaf but now we hear, we were dumb and now we speak. We can find ourselves relocated before God, oriented to the Creator as their creatures, we can reclaim our space in the world as the manifestation of the spiritual realm, and we can, once again, find our voices to speak into the darkness of the kingdom of humanity and remember exactly what God expects of us as followers of Christ baptized by fire and the Holy Spirit. If we don’t hear our names called by Bp. Budde when she addressed President Trump, then we’ve missed the entire point of that sermon. And what does God expect/”require” of us? To love Mercy, to do Justice, and to walk Humbly with our God.[15]

[1] It was quite good, appropriate, and within the rights and privileges vested in a consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal church. Briefly, this vocation—the vocation of Bishop—has been, is, and always will be principally about two things inspired and informed by the Holy Spirit, faithfully and prayerfully: caring for the beloved of God in Christ as Christ (directly and indirectly through their priests and deacons) and protecting the faith of the church by maintaining the proclamation of God’s Word made known in Christ and pointing the church to Christ.

[2] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1268. “The book of Malachi is set in a period when the Second Temple was rebuilt and sacrificial worship was resumed. It was composed in the Persian period, and is addressed originally to the inhabitants of the Persian province of Yehud (Judah).”

[3] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. Malachi = “My Messenger”

[4] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. “Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are all understood by the Rabbis as the last of the prophets, and the Talmud mentions rulings and saying s by this prophet that seem to characterize him as an early sage, in addition to his being a prophet.”

[5] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268. “The readers of the book of Malachi are asked to look at some pitfalls in everyday life and in the cult of the Temple, and particularly at how they affect the relationship between the Lord and Israel, resulting in a lack of prosperity.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1268-1269. “Messages of cultic reform and proper worship are deeply interwoven with the conviction of the coming of a future day in which the Lord will trample all evildoers. Such optimism about an ideal future is typical in prophetic works. Further, the book asks its readers to identify proper behavior in these and all matters with following the Torah (or Teaching of Moses.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1269. “As a whole, the book is aimed at persuading its readership to follow the Torah of Moses, or at strengthening their resolve to continue to do so. This message must be understood within the book’s historical setting, soon after the canonization of the Torah.”

[8] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1269. “The use of disputation format in much of the book contributes rhetorically to that purpose, for it allows the arguments of evil doers to be heard, in order to be countered and neutralized. Further, it allows the reader some limited form of self-identification with the actions of the evildoers, and as such serves as a call for them to examine themselves and repent.”

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Malachi,” 1273. “The identity of the messenger in 3.1 has been highly debated. Is My messenger (Heb ‘malakhi’) Malachi? Or is there at least a pun on the name of the prophet? Is the messenger the angel of the covenant, a zealous, powerful enforcer of the covenant who is like a smelter’s fire and like fuller’s lye (i.e., a purifying, caustic treatment)? Is he Elijah (see v. 23)? Does the text indicate an expectation of a priestly Messiah? …The New Testament merges this v. with Isa. 40.3 and identifies the expected messenger is John the Baptist (Matt. :0; Mark 1.2; Luke 7.27).”

[11] Martin Luther, “Lectures on Malachi,” in Lectures on the Minor Prophets I: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi. LW 18, trans. Richard J. Dinda, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1975), 409. “That preparing, then, is to make humble and to arrange things so as to allow God to work in one. You see, the way of the Lord is where He himself walks. The prophet mentions nothing about our ways except that we should abstain from them.”

[12] LW 18:409. “Behold, He comes! The repetition indicates certainty.”

[13] LW 18:410. “2. But who can endure the day of His coming? In Hebrew this reads: ‘Who will regulate or control the day, etc.?’ or, ‘Who will provide?’ It is as if he were saying: ‘Remain in your fear, then. Stay humble. Let that Messenger prepare you.”

[14] LW 18:410. “Blazing, or purifying….[Hebrew word] means a sharp cleaning agent or soap that washed great stains out of garments…The kingdom of Christ is a mystical smelting furnace that purges out the impurity of the old Adam. …Christ is not only the Purifier but also the purifying agent. He is not only the blacksmith but also the Fire; not only the Cleaner but also the Soap.”

[15] This is an adaption of Micha 6:8, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” NRSVUE

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