Suffering Evil to Resist Evil

https://youtu.be/UopM_DSx2fg

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

There’s a malignant and pervasive feature of Protestant Christian social and political ethic that goes like this: faith has nothing to do with the temporal realm, preaching is never supposed to be political, and obedience for obedience’s sake is law. Faith is only of and for the spiritual realm and has no activity in the temporal realm. There, in the temporal realm, the Protestant Christian is to, simply put, abide in obedience to temporal leaders and authorities, getting along nicely with others, and—if it so fits—proclaiming Christ in word to those who are without Christ by faith. There might be some room for actions of charity toward those less fortunate than we. However, when it comes to social action, even political response including resistance, the Protestant Christian is summoned into quietness and socio-political abstinence—our job is to obey whatever and whomever is in charge, bearing badges of model citizenry. The Christian is to endure passively all the actions of the temporal realm, no matter how gross and offensive they are; and not only endure but to advocate for such wayward temporal leadership and calling others into obedience. The tl/dr: faith is only about being saved from some future hell and has no legs, no arms, no hands, no words or deeds to act in the temporal realm; such action is only for those selected by God to lead, however they see fit.

I understand the impulse behind this notion of socio-political quietness and hyper-obedience. However, I also know that it’s an impulse built from a partial and thus inadequate understanding of Christian endurance in the face of violence and abuse. How we got to this quietness and hyper-obedience stems from an impoverished reading of Luther himself, a relentless influence from late 16th and early 17th century protestant and Lutheran scholars trying to further establish Protestantism and Radical Protestantism after Luther’s death, and, sadly, a corrupted reading of biblical texts like our passage from 1 Peter. While the first two are interesting and about which I would be more than happy to wax ineloquently, it’s the last one that is our focus.

1 Peter 2:19-25

For Peter, the important thing in Chapter 2 is that those who are stuck in the captivity of the institution of slavery with non-Christian masters,[ii] abide their unjust[iii] suffering when they do good.[iv] They are to direct their reverence to God and not to their earthly masters,[v] who might be taking perverse pleasure in unjustly punishing a slave for doing good.[vi] Peter writes, For this [is] grace if, through consciousness of God, one endures the unjust suffering of pain of body and mind. For what sort of fame [is it] if you endure when missing the mark and being treated harshly? But if doing good and suffering you will endure, this [is] grace in the presence of God (vv.19-20). Peter encourages his audience—people who are in slavery—to endure being mistreated when they do well. Peter credits this endurance under unjust suffering to the grace of God and the consciousness tuned in and toward God and God’s will.[vii] This endurance under unjust suffering won’t get one saved; this endurance under unjust suffering is evidence of being saved, for it is evidence that the grace of God is present and the one who has this grace of God by faith in Christ is in the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. While the phraseology is exhausting and difficult,[viii] Peter is not emphasizing suffering as salvific; Peter is centering the idea that to endure is God in you enduring through you, thus, it is grace and God bearing the unjust suffering. Concurrently, this endurance of unjust suffering is not only a benefit to the person so enduring[ix] (tangible experience of the grace of God with them in this unjust suffering[x]), but it becomes a point of witness to and an exposing of the perpetrator of the unjust suffering.[xi] Patient endurance by the grace of God in the face of unjust suffering renders both the unjust suffering and the one committing it exposed and guilty.

Peter then brings up Christ’s suffering and death. He writes, for into this you were called, because Christ also suffered on behalf of you, leaving for you an example to be imitated so that you might devote yourself to his footprints, ‘he did not miss the mark and he was not found with deceit in his mouth’ (vv.21-22). For Peter, not only did Christ set an example for believers to follow, but Christ’s innocent suffering on behalf of becomes paradigmatic for believers, too. In other words, yes, Peter is making a correlation here between Christ’s work on the cross as “enduring unjust suffering” as participation in God’s mission in the world to save the world from captivity, indifference, and death—for these are present when one embarks on dolling out unjust suffering on an innocent person (or on any person). Peter yokes the believer not only to Christ, but in Christ underscoring that since their newborn[xii],[xiii] location is in Christ (like an address) they will—by God’s grace and with faith—walk in Christ’s footsteps, imitating them like a young child copies and traces over letters.[xiv] Refusing to make suffering itself salvific, Peter is practical in addressing his audience of slaves to pagans: beloved, you, too, are going to suffer unjustly…fear not, for you are not alone or lost; God not only goes with you but has gone before you.[xv] Peter is emphasizing that by enduring unjust suffering for doing good, they will reinforce their identification with Christ.[xvi]

Peter drives this idea home by making the point[xvii] that this isn’t promotion of blind endurance to suffering but actively resisting revenge and retaliation.[xviii] Peter writes, When he was being abused, he was not abusing; when suffering he did not threaten; but he was handing [himself] over to the judge who judges justly (v.23). And this is the point of it all: foregoing retaliation and revenge while trusting in Abba God who is the just judge, the Judge who was judged in our place.[xix] Peter’s audience—familiar with just and unjust violence due to their station in life[xx]—is to see their endurance under unjust suffering as a way of mimicking and following in the example of Christ that has, like Christ’s work, tangible application and implication in the world. To seek revenge or to retaliate[xxi] is to take matters into one’s own hands and determine that both God is untrustworthy as judge and deny the efficacy of Christ’s work on the cross.[xxii]

Thus why Peter then adds, [xxiii]

He himself he carried up our sins/missing the mark in his body upon the wood/cross, for the purpose and result of removing/causing to be dead sins/missing the mark that we might live for righteousness; for by his wounds you were healed. For you were as sheep being misled, but now you were returned towards the shepherd and over seer of your souls (v.24-25).

It is not by the wounds endured in temporal unjust suffering that the slave is saved,[xxiv] but by the wounds of Christ who suffered on behalf of Peter’s audience[xxv]—Christ who suffered a death reserved for rebels and slaves (Peter drives home Christ’s identification with his audience).[xxvi] Thus, for Peter, they can endure for Christ’s sake and to the glory of God because Christ is the foundation of their salvation.[xxvii],[xxviii] For they were lost like sheep, says Peter, and found and returned to the fold of God, given new life, divine love, and enduring liberation—things denied slaves, people considered not to be people worthy of saving at all.[xxix] Through them, God will work to expose unjust suffering and the person causing the unjust suffering because God is a trustworthy and just judge; Christ’s resurrection is the demonstration that unjust suffering does not go unnoticed and unvindicated by God.[xxx]

Conclusion

So, what do we make of what Peter has written to his audience? There’s wisdom to be had here that resonates with both faith and socio-political praxis (these two are not in opposition). Can we not have faith and endure suffering and be an advocate against injustice without retaliating?[xxxi] I believe Martin Luther can help us here. In his treatise, Temporal Authority: To What Extent it Should be Obeyed, Luther writes about this very tension in the life of the Christian in the world,

…at one and the same time you satisfy God’s kingdom inwardly and the kingdom of the world outwardly. You suffer evil and injustice, and yet at the same time you punish evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time, you do resist it. In the one case, you consider yourself and what is yours; in the other, you consider your neighbor and what is his. In what concerns you and yours, you govern yourself by the gospel and suffer injustice toward yourself as a true Christian; in what concerns the person or property of others, you govern yourself according to love and tolerate no injustice toward you neighbor. The gospel does not forbid this; in fact, in other places it actually commands it.[xxxii]

We—you and I—can turn the other cheek when unjust violence comes our way, enduring, as Peter exhorts, patiently by God’s grace and in faith and trust that God is who God says God is. What we cannot abide by, though, is when our neighbor is under attack—spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, psychologically, etc. We can let injustice directed toward us roll off our backs especially when it is for doing something good (and, these days, that “doing something good” is a rather low bar!), but we cannot let our neighbor suffer so. Just as Peter encourages us to walk in the way of the suffering Christ, he, without words, encourages those of us who are not immersed in and held captive by modern institutions of slavery to expose senseless and unjust violence for the sake of our neighbor and to the glory of God. We can suffer in a way that brings release from captivity, life where there is death, and love where there is indifference. In this way we walk in the footsteps of the Christ who redeemed us and liberated us through his death and resurrection. We love because God so loved us first (1Jn 4:19).

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 87. Peter is addressing a crowd very familiar with overt slavery

[iii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 88. “This advice cannot have been easy to accept. Slaves could well suffer at the hands of their masters. Peter calls it unjust suffering. This contrasts with the view of many people who would have argued (like Aristotle) that, strictly speaking, one couldn’t be unjust to slave because slaves were not persons, but chattels and workhorses. This view was not universal (the Stoics repudiated it, for example). And naturally Christians recognized that slaves were people.”

[iv] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 106. “Thus the motive for the submission and service is not their respect for their masters, but their respect for God, who receives the service as if it were done to him and whose name is honored by their good behavior. Therefore their submission is not bounded by their masters’ actions…but extends ‘to the unjust’….”

[v] Davids, First Epistle of Peter, 106. Slave’s “reverence or fear is directed to God, not to the masters, is indicated by the facts that (1) the phrase comes before the reference to the masters in the Greek word order, and (2) fear or reverence…in 1 Peter is always directed toward God, never toward people, whom Christians are not to fear…”

[vi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 106. “Peter…is writing in a time of persecution in which slaves, who were under almost total control of their masters, would be especially vulnerable. He can make no assumptions that their masters will not take perverse delight in torturing a slave for his faith. Even in such a case the slave is to follow the teaching of Jesus and submit…”

[vii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 107. “..it is more likely that ‘of God’ is to be understood as describing the character of the conscience, that is, one conscious of God and his instruction, as in the normal connection of God with conscience in the NT…even if Peter makes this connection in a grammatically difficult way. What he means, then, is that God is pleased with Christian slaves who bear up under unjust suffering, not because there is no other option or because of their optimistic character, but because they know this pleases God and conforms to the teaching of Jesus.”

[viii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 88. “Nevertheless, Peter says, it is possible to bear unjust suffering in a different way. When a person puts up with suffering because he is conscious of God, this is commendable. These two phrases are difficult to understand even if their general sense is clear.”

[ix] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 108. “This endurance is an act that finds favor with God, on which he smiles with approval. It is a deed of covenant faithfulness to the God who has extended grace to them…and as such leads to the paradoxical joy already mentioned in 1:6-7.”

[x] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 89. “It stands to reason that if slaves receive a physical beating or lashing because they have committed some misdemeanor or crime, there is no particular credit to them for it, even if they bear it patiently….However, if a slave endures suffering  that is undeserved—in deed, punishment actually inflicted for doing good—then this is a different story. This is commendable in the sight of God.”

[xi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 108. “….there is a type of fame if one does good and suffers. In this situation one can show true endurance because it is wrongful suffering.”

[xii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 91. “…right from the opening phrase it is apparent that Peter is presenting far more than an example. He briefly tells the story of the Christ who suffered for you and develops a doctrine of Christ’s death that shows how Christians can be transformed to live for righteousness.”

[xiii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92. “Christ has called them to a new way of life which involves patient suffering like his. As his followers, they must share his lot.”

[xiv] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 110. “…we are like a child placing foot after foot into the prints of his father in the snow, following a sure trail broken for him. But this trail of Christ includes suffering, not for our sins (he has already suffered ‘on your behalf’ in that respect), but as part of the pattern of life to which he has called us.”

[xv] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 114. “For slaves this was good news. They might be suffering; indeed, they might be suffering because of their faith. But they were not lost. Christ was with him, and they were under his care even if their present physical experiences were unpleasant.”

[xvi] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 111. “This teaching fits well as an encouragement to suffering slaves, for they are concerned about suffering for doing right. Jesus their lord was perfectly innocent in every way, they are reminded, and yet he suffered. Thus their innocent suffering can be part of their identification with Christ.”

[xvii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 111.

[xviii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 90.

[xix] Ref. to Karl Barth’s CD 4.1

[xx] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 87-88. “Unlike Paul, who taught mainly slaves with Christian masters, Peter is concerned here with slaves working in the homes of pagan masters. In a Christian household the close contact of slaves and masters could lead to brotherhood ….In a pagan household this familiarity increased the possibilities of friction, especially if Christian slaves, who now believed themselves spiritually equal to their masters, tried to force their position. Whatever their situation, Christian slaves should fulfill their obligation to be subject to their masters. Whether their masters are gentle or perverse is not the point; the relationship demands obedience.”

[xxi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 96. “Peter’s teaching also clearly states what is involved in following Christ. The pattern that must be followed is his refusal to retaliate when he was attacked.”

[xxii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92-93. “Jesus modeled patient suffering for Christians to follow. The way in which he endured his suffering is the binding pattern that those who have been saved by the death of Christ must follow.”

[xxiii] Davids, First Epistle or Peter, 114. “For slaves this was good news. They might be suffering; indeed, they might be suffering because of their faith. But they were not lost. Christ was with him, and they were under his care even if their present physical experiences were unpleasant.”

[xxiv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92.

[xxv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92. “Jesus suffers as the Servant of Yahweh and fulfills his destiny to bear the sins of others and so bring them to God.”

[xxvi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 94. “….Peter simply drives home the fact that Jesus really suffered physically. On the cross  may well allude to the fact that Christ shared the kind of execution which was normally reserved for slaves and rebels.”

[xxvii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 91. “….Christ cannot be an example of suffering for us to follow unless he is first of all the Savior whose sufferings were endured on our behalf.”

[xxviii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 92.

[xxix] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 95.

[xxx] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 94. “The purpose of this sacrificial act, however, is not simply that we should be set free from the consequences of our sins. Perter sees it as an act which is meant to set us free form sin itself….”

[xxxi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 90. “One can take actions against injustice and unjust structures in society without engaging in personal retaliation.”

[xxxii] Luther LW 45 96

4 de abril de 1968.Asesinato de Martin Luther King #efemérides #abril #martinluther #mlkjr #mlk

https://zurl.co/9n8dc

Exposed and Naked: We are Guilty

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

Introduction

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And the worst part is
there’s no one else to blame.
Be my friend, hold me
Wrap me up, unfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up and breathe me[i]

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are guilty; and we detest it. To be out of control is one thing, but to be guilty, too? Repugnant. Why is it repugnant? Because we like to—nay—need to see ourselves as good and irreproachable. Anything falling short of that is inadmissible. Our person and being, our existence and identity is formed and conditioned on being right and good. Our ideologies must be right so we can see ourselves as good; our actions must be good because we are right. Anything that challenges this association collapses the fragile worlds we’ve built around us where we are king and queen, self-enthroned monarch. We’ve conflated our existence with our actions and thoughts; we are what we do, we are what we think, we are what we say. Thus, admitting we are out of control or, worse, we are guilty is an existential problem. So, we must avoid that confession at all costs.

I wish I had better words. I don’t. I know we’d like to blame something else or someone else for being out of control and guilty. The sheer terror we feel in confessing being out of control and our guilt makes us eager to displace this repugnant feeling somewhere else; someone else is toxic, someone else is the problem, that group over there, that generation above us or that generation below us. It can’t be us ever because that will undo us, unravel us into nothing. Sadly, the very bad news is that we have no one to blame but ourselves. We’ve done this. We’re the issue. Hi, it’s us, we’re the problem. In our inability to be honest—really, truly, terrifyingly honest—we cause problems for ourselves, for others, and for the world. We are out of control, and we are guilty. We are undone; this makes us ruthless.

Ouch, I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Yeah, I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe
Be my friend, hold me
Wrap me up, unfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up and breathe me[ii]

We’ll do anything but confess that we are out of control and guilty. Think of our tendency to resist offering someone a true apology when our actions have negatively impacted them. Oh, I was just joking, why are you so serious…Oh, I didn’t mean it… If you hadn’t _____, then I wouldn’t have____, I’m sorry you feel that way…. Or we let ourselves off the hook completely by blaming supernatural forces, The Devil made me do it… We will do whatever it takes to avoid the humiliation of being wrong. Because if we are wrong, then we must be bad, too.

Look at our national situation. We would rather spin tales and myths than admit we backed the wrong horse. We would rather sacrifice our dignity on the altar of Molech than walk back an ideology that is clearly causing not only pain and suffering, but death. We’d rather keep straining forward and pouring valuable resources—specifically other human beings—into systems that are visibly broken and destructive to all existence on earth than embrace deconstruction and Demythology of the self and start anew. We’d rather cut off friends and family (who have loved us) to reinforce our own chosen narratives defending violent people who don’t even care for us a little bit. We would rather lose ourselves to our fear and anger than make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”[iii] We’d rather shrug and keep enduring chaos and tumult than confront anyone especially ourselves and our captivity and complicity in all this death and destruction around us. We’d rather die than admit defeat. We’d rather kill than declare our guilt.

Isaiah 53:1-9

He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Using the voice of one of the Isaiahs, God brings us to trial, and we are found guilty. God sent God’s self in God’s son, Jesus Christ, and this one is deemed, by us, unattractive to our sensibilities, unworthy of our care and consideration, and only qualified for our repulsion.[iv],[v] Humanity, hook line and sinker, rejected this one who was of God and who was truly good; and not simply a spiritual rejection, but a physical one, handing him over to painful suffering[vi] and death.[vii] Rather than strip ourselves of our clothing, we stripped him; rather than bear the pain of reproach, we reproached him; rather than endure the discomfort of being guilty, we made him the guilty one and sentenced him to death. We are ruthless when threatened with guilt

What was he guilty of? Exposing us…to the core. Jesus exposed our inability to judge between good and evil correctly. The very thing we craved back in Genesis 3, to discern and judge good and evil, comes back to haunt us and we are exposed in our failure. We sent an innocent man, one who upheld the law every minute of every day, to die the death of one who broke the law while releasing the one who did (literally) break the law: Barabas. But not just Barabas; we also released ourselves. In exposing our inability to judge between good and evil, Jesus exposed our guilt, so we condemned him as the guilty one to let ourselves off the hook.[viii] As Luther writes, “His suffering was nothing else than our sin.”[ix] Jesus exposed not only that we did not understand the law but that we also broke it by forcing it to do what it wasn’t intended to do: condemn the innocent and acquit the guilty.[x] In this way we are the ones who caused Jesus to suffer and to be bruised.[xi] But it isn’t only his life and work that exposed us; his death also exposes us. His agony on the cross becomes our agony.[xii] We are exposed, we are naked, we are guilty, and our ruthlessness bears its teeth. Crucify him!

Isaiah’s prophetic prayer highlights that whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, we are in agony and are guilty. We are guilty because we believe the mythology that we are in control, because we refuse our creaturely status, because we would rather be ruthless than merciful, we’d rather be right than risk even being a little bit wrong. Thus, this agony is not the product of divine chastisement; it’s the product of our own hands.[xiii] We are caught up in the muck and mire of the tension between being held captive and being complicit. Isaiah says, all have gone astray, we have all turned to our own way. Each of us is called to account for our complicit and captive actions against God’s mission of the revolution of divine life, love, and liberation in the world.

Conclusion

We are exposed naked and we are not in control; [xiv] we are fragile; [xv] we are unsafe;[xvi] we are hurt;[xvii] we are lost;[xviii] and we are guilty; we are stuck and captive, in need of intervention.

However, we’d rather kill than let someone else help us out of our own ideological and mythological quicksand.

Rather than let Christ’s voice call us, Christ’s actions challenge us, Christ’s presence change us, we clamored for Jesus’s death, and we got it. Because we hate being exposed and being guilty, hate being naked and fragile, hate having to be wrong, confessing our being lost and unsafe; the judgment of God is surely upon us. Today, in this story, we are reminded that Jesus bore our iniquity…because he bore our very, very bad judgment informed by the doctrines and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and not the kingdom of God. The weight of that judgment, as we watch and witness the death of God by our hand, renders us to our own death. Today, our incarceration to our own comfort, to what makes our own selves feel safe, our hardheartedness and stiff-neckedness comes to a cataclysmic head-on collision with God; none of us survive.

Today, we get what we want, we get to let ourselves off the hook and continue down deadly paths of ignorance and denial; by our own hands we realize and affirm our captivity to our ruthless, hopeless, helpless, lifeless, and groundless self-centeredness while we parade about as God proud of ourselves as the world burns down around us. Today, we are dead where we are as we were, stuck in ourselves, curved all the way in. Because, today, we killed God.

[i] Sia,”Breathe Me,” verse 1 and chorus.

[ii] Sia,”Breathe Me,” verse 2 and chorus.

[iii] Step 4 of AA’s 12 Steps

[iv] LW 17:220, “‘There was nothing to attract us, nothing that we might care for. Everything about Him was repulsive.’ See how the prophet toils as he describes His contemptible appearance. It is as if he were saying, ‘The people treated Him in a most horrible way.’”

[v] LW 17:220, “There was a revulsion of seeing.”

[vi] LW 17:220 “He is a man wounded and beaten…”

[vii] LW 17:220, “rejected by men” “…‘one for whom there is no concern whatever, one from whom all turn away.’ This is not an easy suffering. These words cannot be understood as referring to the glory of the Kingdom, nor do they speak of a simple and spiritual suffering. They speak rather of a physical, open, and extremely shameful suffering.”

[viii] LW 17:221, “It was not for Himself and His own sins, but for our sins and griefs. He bore what we should have suffered.”

[ix] LW 17:221

[x] LW 17:221, “The law is that everybody dies for his own sins. Natural reason, and divine as well, argues that everybody must bear his own sin. Yet He is struck down contrary to all law and custom. Hence reason infers that he was smitten by God for His own sake. Therefore the prophet leads us o earnestly beyond all righteousness and our rational capacity and confronts us with the suffering of Christ io impress upon us that all that Christ has is mine.”

[xi] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 414. “…the confessing community bears testimony to what it has seen and now understands. It was for ‘our sins’ he was tortured; it was for ‘our iniquities’ he was bruised.”

[xii] Heschel, Prophets, 149. “Deliverance, redemption, is what the lord has in store or Irael, and through Israel for all men. Her suffering and agony are the birth-pangs of salvation which, the prophet proclaims, is about to unfold. In answer to the prophet’s servant invocation (51:9), the Lord is about to bare His arm or His might before the eyes of al the nations.”

[xiii] Abraham Heschel The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962), 151. “Suffering as chastisement is man’s own responsibility; suffering as redemption is God’s responsibility. It was he Who had chosen Israel as his servant; it was He Who had placed upon Israel the task of suffering for others. The meaning of her agony was shifted from the sphere of man to the sphere of God, from the moment to eternity.”

[xiv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[xv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[xvi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[xvii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[xviii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

Exposed and Naked: We are Lost

https://youtu.be/Fv9Im8YqKaQ

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are lost to ourselves, to others, and seemingly within history; this makes us anxious. To be out of control is one thing, but to be immersed in a fog not knowing where we are or what to do, too? Distressing. Why is it distressing? Because human beings are built to be seen and heard, to be found not only with others in family and community, with friends and peers, but also within our own minds and bodies. When familiar ground is ripped out from underneath us, everything comes tumbling down like some sort of bad cosmic trick gone horribly wrong. Losing a sense of place in the world doesn’t just impact that particular sense or place; it impacts the entire person from head to toe. Lost a job or retire from one? Well, who are you now when said occupation and work no longer offers you a stable and consistent sense of place and being, a tangible sense of purpose? Losing this singular piece of footing bleeds into your relationships with others; insecurity knows no boundaries and oozes into the cracks and crevices you didn’t even knew existed. Ultimately, you begin to question your own self, you own worth, your own existence.

So, our lack of control wedded to our being lost makes us feel groundless. Having a front row seat to the chaos and tumult of our world—local, national, and global—adds to our feeling lost. It’s one thing when our own personal worlds are impacted by a personal event, another when it’s quite possible that World War III is about to or has started and when our own country feels utterly confused and divided. (Let’s not even mention the confusion of our seasons locally as Summer outbids Spring for position after Winter.) The leadership we turn to—global, national, and local—provides no comfort since those in power seem to be dead set on appeasing the relentless appetite of their own egos. No one is listening to our cries; no one is even listening for them. We are unseen in the collision of nationalism and privilege, as the very few battle against each other for more power and possession ignoring how many of us are waving our arms begging for it all to stop! The weight of embracing the reality that we just don’t matter in all of this adds insult to existing injury of insecurity and instability. (It’s not like human beings are paragons of self-assurance and confidence; we are fragile creatures, don’t forget!) So, our lack of control bothers us; our being lost causes us to be anxious.

Exodus 12:1-14

We find Moses and the Israelites encased in a crucible of utter need and dependence. They are stuck under the strong arm of Pharoah; nothing will change this man’s heart. He is hardhearted and stiff-necked, refusing to liberate the Israelites so that they may go their own way to worship their God. There have been nine plagues to strike the land thus far and none of them have moved Pharoah one inch toward releasing the Israelites. And even when Pharoah’s magicians and sorcerers were found inept to reduplicate the latter curses, Pharoah remained steadfast in his determination not to liberate God’s people. The Children of God, the people of Israel, are stuck having no recourse of their own to find liberation from enslavement and oppression.

So, God steps in one more time.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. (Ex. 12:1-4)

Israel’s liberation depends on this banquet[ii] built from the flesh and blood of a young, spotless lamb slaughtered and thoroughly fire-roasted, eaten in haste with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, while its blood dries on lintels and doorposts (Ex. 12:5-11). To protect their firstborns and gain liberation, the Israelites must trust Moses and this word “from the Lord,” and do as Moses says (unwaveringly). To secure their passage through this passing over—where God will Passover the land of Egypt, striking dead all firstborns in houses without lamb’s blood decorating lintels and doorposts—the Israelites must proceed exactly as Moses describes; in this trust and faith, they will avoid God’s executed judgment coming for Egypt and Pharoah.

But are the Israelites really escaping it? The Children of Israel must stand under the lintel and between the doorposts covered in blood, they must rest and trust that this blood sacrifice is enough to spare them from the angel of death gearing up to surge through all of Egypt. Moses tells us,

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (Ex. 12:12-13)

They must voluntarily fall under another divine judgment: they are not in control, and they are lost without divine intervention. They cannot embrace comfort in this moment but only immense stress and strenuous anxiety; being out of control and lost is the perfect recipe for such stress and anxiety.[iii] Unable to keep believing they are the masters and mistresses, authors of their own destinies, the Israelites must submit themselves to the judgment of God that God is God and they are not. They must confess that Pharaoh will not let them go unless God steps in. They may escape the judgment ending in death of the first born, but, in this moment of deep trust and faith, they do not escape the judgment resulting in their own deaths to their notions and mythologies that they are gods unto themselves. As they wait with bated breath, hoping against hope, it’s this judgment that will actually save their lives and be their “protective covering,”[iv] now and forever. In fact, this very event will be commemorated and will mark the new year (Ex. 12:14).[v] But it will also be so much more than that. It will be the beginning of their new life with God as God’s children, humbled before God, trusting God, and found in God.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their lostness and anxiety because everything around them is chaos and tumult and only getting worse. They are trapped in their anxiety, and the only way out from such anxiety and lostness is to throw themselves into what feels like an anachronistic “Hail Mary” and dare to trust God and have faith in God. They have a choice: submit to God’s judgment that they are lost and not in control, that they are groundless or reject God and keep believing that they are in control and not lost. One will result in finding themselves on the new and firm ground in God grasping new life, sure love, and divine liberation forever secured under divine protective covering; the other will find themselves and their firstborns swallowed up by the old ground of captivity, indiference, and death. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, this utter lostness and oppressive anxiety born from the human tendency to dethrone God and throne oneself in God’s stead.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Holy Week continues Lent’s commanding us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are lost creatures bearing crippling anxiety, utterly distressed, and groundless. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our bond with God even when we feel the most lost and the most anxious, and when we are at our most exposed and naked; it is the new and sure ground under our feet. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the “protective covering” of the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the fear and anxiety within themselves and from others, to confess our own lostness and notice the lostness of others. And in doing so, becoming the people who bring love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 125. “Preparations for the exodus” “Israel is to prepare for the coming redemption with a sacrificial banquet while the final plague is occurring and is to commemorate the event in the future on its anniversary by eating unleavened bread for a week and reenacting the banquet. This banquet became the prototype of the postbiblical Seder, the festive meal at which the exodus story is retold and expounded each year to this day on the holiday of Pesah (Passover), as explained below.”

[iii] LW 9:154-155. Bread of Affliction, “He calls it ‘bread of affliction’ because of the past affliction which they suffered when they first ate this bread. He explains by quickly adding, ‘Because you came out in a hurried flight,’ that is, with anxiety and fear, just as those who are in straits will make haste and be in distress, so that they flee as fast as possible. For this is the force of this word…which does mean simply to hasten or tremble but…to try to flee out of distress…”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “In most European languages, it is also the name of Easter (as in French ‘Paques’). The translation ‘passover’ (and hence the English name of the holiday) is probably incorrect. The alternativity translation ‘protective offering’ is more likely…”

[v] Tigay, “Exodus,” 125. “Since the exodus will be commemorated on its anniversary every year…the preparatory instructions begin with the calendar. Henceforth the year will commence with the month of the exodus, and months will be referred to by ordinal numbers rather than names….Since the number will mean essentially ‘in the Xth month since we gained freedom,’ every reference to a month will commemorate the redemption.”