Exposed and Naked: We are Not in Control

“‘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

Today is about being reminded of death—death in general and death in specific. Ash Wednesday is our sacred and religious memento mori (remember to die); Ash Wednesday brings to the fore the very thing we push back: the reality that all life streams toward death even for those of us who feel very far above and beyond death’s long, cold, bony reach. with the application of ashes on our vulnerable skin, we not only hear with our ears but see with our eyes and feel with our senses the command to remember that we will die. Dying is part of our life in this world where death is not only around us in fits and spurts, but is very much a part of our life cycle.

But it seems that lately we are held hostage by death. We are powerless to the death caused by human beings who have long forgotten that power must be wielded rightly and mercy is more potent than fear. Through the barrage and onslaught of headlines streaming in from around the globe, the national ones decorating our minds like billboards on a highway, and the local ones hitting too close to home, we are made very aware of how much death seems to accompany global and national leaders who are curved in on themselves consumed with their own ego. And even if we turned off televisions, radios, computers, podcasts, and phones, we would not be able to escape the approach and encroach of death. Over the past few months, death has taken loved ones from us (both family and friend) and if not death, then death’s best friends, fear and rage, have stolen people from us in their own way. And if that wasn’t enough, our own bodies remind us about the cool shadow of death lurking closer; whether through the onset of age or by our own hands, things fall apart, breakdown, and come to naught. We are held captive by death; we have do not have access to the keys to this prison we are in.

Thus, we are brought to the only confession we have, we are not in control. We are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. Is there any hope for such as these?

Psalm 103:8-14

Yes, there is hope for such as we. Our psalmist writes,

Abba God is full of compassion and mercy,
slow to anger and of great kindness.

Our Psalm is a hymn celebrating God’s steadfast posture towards God’s people and is a commentary on portions of Exodus and Isaiah.[ii] Specifically in our short portion, verse 8, just quoted, is asking the reader to remember Ex. 33:13, “Now, If I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor.” And if they are to remember Exodus 33, then 32 and 34 must be recalled, too. Exodus 33 marks Moses’s pleading on behalf of the people before and to God in the Tent of Meeting. Why is Moses pleading on behalf of the people? In Exodus 32 he broke the tablets upon his return from communing with God on the mountain when he saw the people worshiping the golden calf that Aaron crafted. Thus, in Ex. 33, is eager to plead to God for God to relent of God’s anger. So, Moses goes to God in the Tent of Meeting carrying the sin of Israel and wondering what God will do with the people whom God has called “stiffnecked.” (33:5). Thus, In Exodus 33:13, Moses wants to know God’s own way in dealing with the sin of his people;[iii] how does God deal with the fault and guilt, the hurt and being lost, the fragility and unsafety of God’s people? Reference to Exodus 34 gives us the answer: God does not abandon Moses nor the people; God is present. This God who is present is a God who is compassionate and forgiving, steadfast and patient, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed: ‘The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…” (34:6-7a). God does not abandon God’s people. God is faithful to the covenant even when God’s people are not; God is magnanimous and just even when the people are not.[iv] Our psalmist is intentional here in v. 8 (and v.7) in calling to mind the God of Israel who is faithful and just while the people are unfaithful and unjust.

Thus, why the psalmist can go on, singing the praises of God further elaborating on God’s character and posture towards God’s people:[v]

Abba God will not always accuse us,
nor will Abba God keep anger for ever.
Abba God has not dealt with us according to our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so is God’s mercy great upon those who fear God.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has Abba God removed our sins from us.
As a parent cares for their children,
so does the Abba God care for those who fear God.

Both Exodus 34:7b ff and Isaiah 55:16 (hinted at by Psalm 103:9) are in view here. In the second part of Ex 34:7 God promises that God will visit the punishments of the iniquities of the people on their children and grandchildren, etc. But Moses intervenes in 34:8-9, “‘If I have gained Your favor, O Lord, pray, let the Lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!’” And Isaiah 57:16 reads,

“For I will not always contend,
I will not be angry forever:
Nay, I who make spirits flag,
Also create the breath of life.”

Moses’s plea from Exodus 34 is met in Isaiah’s prophecy and promise that divine anger and displeasure have a time limit; even in spite of the way the people have acted—insatiable for debauchery and injustice—God will be unselfish and just.[vi] And as the prophet speaks from God’s own pathos toward and for God’s people, these words are as good as done. God’s words are like rain watering parched soil, turning it from a place of death into a source of life, just like God’s own being and breath.[vii] Under and with and by God’s Word, the people will come alive again and will be liberated from death and in justice, from their self-imposed notions of being in control, from their hurt, guilt, lostness, fragility, and unsafety; they will participate with God in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. God will condescend and transcend God’s self to bring God’s ways to the people so that their ways reflect their divine genetic inheritance (like parent, like child).[viii] Where they used to bring injustice they will bring justice, where they were self-consumed they will be consumed by divine passion for their neighbor, God’s beloved.

The psalmist concludes,

For Abba God themself knows whereof we are made;
Abba God remembers that we are but dust.

God knows God’s people. God does not hold them to a standard that is beyond their fleshiness, their fragility, their creatureliness but, rather, holds them to be such creatures who are fragile and fleshy, those who must hold each other gently and kindly as God does.[ix] According to the psalmist, God knows not only where we are and what we are, but of what we are made. This is surely good news and every reason to have hope that God is for God’s people even when things look bleak and is coming for them to liberate them to life by God’s love.

Conclusion

Thus, even as God’s people are trapped and held captive in their sin, iniquity, and transgressions, God knows just how vulnerable and susceptible they are and none of that knowledge dissuades God from God’s covenant. But first the people must come to terms with their own situation and status before God: for they are not in control, they are hurt, they are guilty, they are lost, they are fragile, and they are unsafe. If they continue forward without acknowledging who and what they are before God, they will continue to participate in and perpetuate the rampant injustices of the kingdom of humanity, forsaking the justice of the reign of God and being harbingers of death and not life, of indifferent and not love, of captivity and not liberation.

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

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our determined and slow descent into the tomb of Good Friday. This movement from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday is the season of Lent, and it demands an honesty and exposure that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like a complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control; we are hurt, we are guilty, we are lost, we are fragile, and we are unsafe. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word will liberate us out of death into life by God’s love. And not back into your old life, but caused to be new creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, brining 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] Adele Berlin and marc Zvi Brettler, “Psalm 103,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1396. “A hymn of praise for God’s nature (divine attributes) and for His acts on behalf of Israel; it contains quotations from and allusions to Exodus and Isaiah.”

[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 187-188. “Your ways in dealing with humankind, meaning…the principles by which you deal with human sin. God had said that the angel would be unforgiving…What is God’s own way?…What is Your way, considering that Israel is Your own people?”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 189. “God grants both of Moses’ requests, passing His presence before him …and proclaiming His ways (33.13). The name Lord [YHVH], that is the attributes it represents. These attributes include both magnanimity (vv. 6-7a) and justice (v. 7b…)…extending Himself to those in covenant with Him…”

[v] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “Interpreting or elaborating on the meaning and current application of Exod. 34.6, quoted in v. 8.”

[vi] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 794. “The second complaint: parties instead of piety. Appropriately, the people whose appetite is insatiable will feed the insatiable appetite of Sheol, the underworld…”

[vii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 895. “Deutero-Isaiah pics up the metaphor of water … in a new way to emphasize a favorite theme: God’s promises and the prophesies God issued through the prophets never fail to come true…The metaphor is significant: God sends rain, which inevitably falls to the ground; then it is absorbed by soil and nourishes vegetation. Humans in turn harvest the vegetation and transform it into food. Similarly, God’s word is sure to have series of effects, the most important of which are indirect and involve human input.”

[viii] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The relationship between God and his worshippers is here portrayed as that between a father and a son…The compassionate father also figures in Jer. 31.20.”

[ix] Berlin and Brettler, “Psalm 103,” 1396. “The creaturely and ephemeral status of humanity…and the permanence of God’s covenant with those who fear Him.”

When New Life Begins to Breathe

A Day in the Life

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

When I walk with Jesus through the Gospels, I am repeatedly struck by how often He speaks not of improvement but of birth. He does not invite Nicodemus into a refined religious system; He tells him, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). That word “see” matters. Jesus is not describing behavior modification but a transformed capacity to perceive reality itself. To be born again is not to add Christ to an already established life; it is to receive a life that did not previously exist. Paul later gives language to this reality when he writes that anyone “in Christ” is a new creation. The Greek phrase kainē ktisis signals something altogether new in kind, not merely new in degree. This is where the Christian life truly begins.

As I reflect on a day in the life of Jesus, I notice that He consistently lives from this place of secure identity. Jesus does not strive to become the Son of God; He lives because He already is. His obedience flows from belonging, not anxiety. This is why the new birth is essential. Christianity is not entered by asking Jesus into one’s heart as a sentimental gesture, but by being acted upon by God Himself. As Jesus told Nicodemus, birth is something that happens to us. Paul echoes this when he says that, at the moment of salvation, old things pass away. This includes guilt, condemnation, and the legal power of sin. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Forgiveness is not partial or progressive; it is decisive.

Yet the pastoral tension emerges when voices—sometimes well-meaning, sometimes harmful—suggest that while forgiveness may be immediate, freedom must always be delayed. The study rightly confronts this. It is common to hear that although one is born again, they should expect to remain dominated by sin or unresolved wounds for years. This mindset subtly relocates authority away from the finished work of Christ and back onto human effort. Dallas Willard once observed, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.” The danger is not effort itself but effort detached from faith in what Christ has already accomplished. Scripture testifies that the blood of Jesus is sufficient not only to forgive but to liberate. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

Walking through Jesus’ life, I see this freedom embodied. He engages sinners without absorbing their shame. He confronts evil without being defined by it. He heals not only bodies but identities, restoring people to community and hope. When Paul writes that healing for every hurt is available, he is not denying the need for growth or wisdom, but he is declaring that the resources of heaven are already present in Christ. The enemy’s strategy, as Scripture consistently shows, is not merely temptation but accusation. Satan seeks to convince believers that their past still owns them. Revelation describes him as “the accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10). The question, then, becomes deeply personal: whom will I believe?

A day in the life of Jesus teaches me that faith is not pretending pain never existed; it is trusting that Christ’s work addresses it more fully than my self-effort ever could. Paul writes elsewhere, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). This is not metaphorical language meant to inspire optimism; it is ontological language describing a transfer of life. The old self, defined by Adam and marked by separation, has been put to death. The new self lives by the faithfulness of Christ Himself. Healing, growth, and maturity unfold within this secure reality, not as prerequisites for acceptance but as fruits of it.

As I internalize this truth, my discipleship begins to change. I no longer wake each day trying to fix what God has already redeemed. Instead, I learn to present myself to Him as Paul exhorts: “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life” (Romans 6:13). That posture reshapes prayer, repentance, and obedience. Repentance becomes a return to truth rather than a negotiation for mercy. Obedience becomes cooperation rather than compensation. The life of Jesus invites me to live from newness, not toward it.

For further reflection on the meaning of being born again and living from new creation identity, this article from The Gospel Coalition offers helpful biblical depth:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/born-again/

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“Salvation will come”

https://youtu.be/4oGRuMJnviE

“‘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.’”[1]

Introduction

It’s mid-November, and we’re coming to the close of our liturgical year. It’s been a long year. Our socio-political landscape is marked by tumult and chaos, no matter what voting party you ascribe to. The ups and downs, the wins and losses, the intermingling of hope and despair are exhausting. We’re tossed about on the waves caused by those who tromp about leaving bodies in the wake, those who have more power, more money, more authority, more status than we do; we’re left wondering if we, the ones being represented, actually matter in this battle for who has the most toys (read: money, weapons, prestige, etc.). It’s hard to feel the ground under our feet when truth feels downright elusive; anyone else feel more and more skepticism toward anyone claiming to tell the truth? A diet of chaos and tumult with a big glass of skepticism never nourishes and always depletes. Humans are not meant to run on fumes for so long.

I don’t know about you, but I’m existentially and physically fatigued.

And that’s not even including our own personal lives and the things that have come and gone. Over the course of a year, we gain a lot, that is true. However, over the course of a year, we lose a lot, too. Some of us have lost family members, partners, and friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Whether to the cold hands of death or the firey fingers of derisive and divisive ideologies demanding cult-like adoration and adherence, there are people who were in our lives at the start of the year who are no longer darkening our doorways. Sadness, sorrow, grief, and regret are pretty wretched snacks; none of which actually satisfy our hunger and only leave a really bad, lingering aftertaste.

I don’t know about you, but I think I really need an intervention, a divine intervention, a good-news intervention. I need a light to pierce this darkness threatening to consume me, you, us, God’s beloved. I need to be interrupted and divorced from the dominant narratives of fear and anger. I need to be relocated in something new, something firm, something that is steady when everything else is rocky. I need a divine “normal” when nothing is normal anymore.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.

Isaiah’s words are a warm comfort to the parched soul. Ancient words to a people eager to know God is still their God; a need to know that they’re still seen by their God, that they’re still heard by the God who led them out of captivity in Egypt into the liberation of the reign of God. Through Isaiah, God proclaims that what was will be eclipsed by a new thing God will do in both heaven and on earth; the world will be changed when God shows up.[i]

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

Isaiah declares to the people that God’s joy and delight will be with God’s people. Not only will God take delight and have joy in God’s people, God’s joy and delight will be with and among the people; they, the children of God, will have access to and participate in that divine joy and delight. Weeping and distress will be no more. Isaiah’s comments about death highlight that life will be lived to the fullest, celebrated with joy and delight, with mercy and grace, by faith and love. For the one who dies when it is time to die will be the one who has lived well and has been alive all their days and those days will be many. They will also be the one who die in God’s delight and joy and will be taken further into God’s delight and joy; those who survive will celebrate such a one, for there will be no need to mourn.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord–
and their descendants as well.

Isaiahs’ imagery turns to the work of the people when God shows up, and the reign of God takes over. It will no longer be toil; it will be work that’s pleasing not only to God’s eye but to the eye of the one who works. What Isaiah is describing here is a lack of exploitation of the laborer; the fruit of their hands will be the product of their own work, and they will enjoy it.[ii] Children will not be born into systems that steal human dignity, reducing them to things that toil to make others rich and some even richer. Isaiah’s words also point to a satisfaction and satiation. There’s an emphasis on a distribution of satisfaction in the work of their hand and a feeling satiated is hinted at. It’s not about grain silos and treasury vaults to store up for one’s self and keeping it from others. Rather, it’s about everyone receiving what they need all the days of their life, each day blessed by God. And even further, it’s about letting the surplus go to those who lack. All are cared for; none go hungry, thirsty, naked, or unhoused.

Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent– its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

God’s people wonder if they’re heard, and they are heard; God’s people wonder if they’re seen, and they are seen. God not only sees them and hears them, God’s presence, Isaiah prophecies, will be so close to them that even before they pray their prayers will be answered.[iii] The people of God will be seen and heard intimately and vulnerably because God will be accessible by all who are seeking God.[iv] Isaiah tells the people, “Salvation will come…”[v] God comes for God’s people, the curse from long ago will be undone, the exile of recent will be terminated forever. Prey and predator will lie down together, they will stop hunting and being hunted, anger and fear will depart; the new heavens and the new earth will even be a place of refuge for animal-kind. But not for the serpent who is, according to Isaiah, reduced to eating dust; while the world, humanity and animal kind will feel relief from the burden of the curse in God, the serpent will bear it out as was long ago promised by God,[vi]

The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.[vii]

Conclusion

Isaiah tells Israel, “salvation comes,” and it will. Isaiah tells Israel, “God comes,” and God will. Isaiah tells Israel, “help comes,” and it will. Because their God is a God of the people, of the humble people who are at their wits end, hanging from the very bottom of the rope, the ones ready to give up. As Isaiah says elsewhere, “a bruised reed [Abba God] will not break, and a dimly burning wick [Abba God] will not quench; [Abba God] will faithfully bring forth justice.”[viii]

We are not abandoned, forsaken, or alone. We are not ungrounded, destabilized, or uprooted. We are not consumed by grief, sorrow, or despair. We are not ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. Isaiah’s words to Israel become words to us today, where we are and as we are. Beloved, God comes; Beloved, salvation comes; Beloved, help comes. For, behold, Christ Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us will be born to us, to identify with us, to dwell with us, to be God close to us, and he will be the light that pierces the darkness forever.

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

[i] Benjamin D. Sommer, The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 913. “This passage recalls the initial prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah in its exuberant tone and literary style, but the nature of the prediction goes beyond those found in chs. 40-48: The world itself will be transformed in the new age that God brings.”

[ii] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 538. “The imagery of joy and absence of weeping is set in contrast to the sorrow through which the community of faith has come. The planting of vineyards and the enjoying of its fruits is simply the converse of Israel’s experience of exploration and conquest.”

[iii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 913. “In 51.9-11 and chs 63-64, the people wondered whether God listens to their prayers. God answers this question here: In the future, God will answer prayers before the people even utter them.”

[iv] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “Verse 24 once again repeats the theme of chapter 65 of God’s utter accessibility in his calling and answering those who seek his presence.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 158.

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “The line ‘dust will be the serpent’s food’ is a play on Gen. 3:14, which describes the curse of the serpent at the Fall.”

[vii] Genesis 3:14

[viii] Isaiah 42:3

#AbrahamHeschel #Beloved #BenjaminDSommer #BrevardChilds #Darkness #DivineLiberation #DivineLight #DivineLove #Genesis3 #GodSLove #Hope #Isaiah #Jesus #Light #MartinLuther #NewCreation #NewHeavensAndNewEarth

No Place with What Was

https://youtu.be/5yF-pRdRTqU

“‘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.’”[1]

Introduction

We get accustomed to the way things are. At times it feels like we’re in a groove; at others, it feels like we’re in a rut; in both there’s comfort. This comfort is built on knowing what’s coming, being able to predict what each day will look like. Our calendars and task-lists look the same from week to week, even when there’s a surprise event added or something expected subtracted. There’s a real comfort in the familiarity of the day to day.

One of the problems of this familiarity and comfort is that it can blind us to the new. A bigger problem is when this familiarity and comfort causes us to reject the new. When you have a system down, a routine established, it can be hard to see and receive something new, something disruptive, something that slices through that (either beloved or dreaded) monotony. To maintain our comfort, to keep moving in that groove, embedding down another layer of that rut, we will shut down and run from anything new that is trying to intervene because we see it as a threat. The something new will send our nervous systems into a frazzled state, propelling us to lurch and lunge backward to what was. Rather than finding ourselves curious (yet cautious) and intrigued (though skeptical), we raise our defenses against that which is breaking in and, In the meantime, try our best to swim back to comfortable and familiar shores.

However, God isn’t back there. God is ahead in the something new.

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Jeremiah exhorts the Judeans in exile to look forward. What was is going to be overthrown, pulled down, uprooted, destroyed; it has no place with what is to come in God coming to God’s people.[2] And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord (v28). Jeremiah promises God’s people that God will be close to them, so close that their tendencies to toward evil will become tendencies to good. All that was will be destroyed; God beckons Judah and Israel to look to the rising of the sun of a new day and onto new terrain, to build and plant anew.

Jeremiah then promises that retribution will fall on the one who sins. In those days they shall no longer say: “‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,’” (v29). No longer, says God, will one person’s sins be the downfall of the group; accountability will be placed on each person’s shoulders. But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The Judeans and Israelites are to look forward to the day that will come where only the guilty one will be punished rather than the group at the expense of the guilty one.[3] The accountability here becomes personal and individual; future exile is being excluded. Why? Because God will be closer than ever before.

Jeremiah then proclaims the coming of a new covenant and indicates there will be a break with the old one. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they…(v32). Something new is coming that will render each person responsible and dependent in their relationship with God. God does not say that the law of Moses (the one given in Exodus after the liberation from Egypt) will go away, but that God will put that law in each of their hearts.[4] But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (v33). Keeping in mind that the law of Moses is a self-revelation of God, Jeremiah promises a time when God will be revealed in the heart of each of God’s people.[5] Thus God’s people will not be able to run or hide from God; they will—individually and corporately—know God intimately, being yoked to him by faith and love.

Jeremiah then says, No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more (v34). Jeremiah brings it back full circle to the comment above where every individual is held accountable for their own sins. Not only will each person be held responsible, but each person will be dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness. Here, God is declaring that there is nothing that will divorce God from God’s people. Absolutely nothing. God is also indicating that there will be a time where sacrifices will no longer need to be made save the sacrifice of ourselves by faith working out in love. This is the basis of the new covenant that God promises to make with God’s people. And it is an everlasting covenant; one that no one can take away or break because it is being written on the heart of each person of Israel and Judah.[6] As God has been ever faithful in the promise to and covenant with Israel and Judah,[7] now Judah and Israel, by the indwelling spirit of God,[8] will be the ones who also keep the covenant and cling to the promise of God: I will be your God and you will be my people and we will be one. 

Conclusion

God desires to do new things. We desire to go backwards, to cling to what was, to grasp at the sand of shores we are most familiar with. But God’s love propels God toward us even as we are desperate to go back to what was. Even as we are actively swimming away from the current of God’s momentum forward, God yolks God’s self to us, so desperately in love with us as God is. God promises Judah and Israel that they will have God’s spirit with them, forever, in their hearts, that God’s self-revelation will be written on their hearts forever sealing their union; and nothing can pluck one of God’s people from God’s hand of promise.

For us, as Christians, this being sealed as God’s own is done through the life and work, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit. For us, this passage from Jeremiah points to the new covenant that comes in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This new covenant is defined by faith, faith that clings to the promises of God, accounting to God that which is God’s: truthfulness and trustworthiness. In and by faith, the law of God—to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbors in the same—is written on our hearts. Our hearts become circumcised; formerly calcified, our hearts by faith, beat with a vim and vigor, signs of robust new creation and new life empowered by the Holy Spirit, signs of our representative incarnational presence, those who carry God with them in their heart and spirit.

We, ourselves, are new creations, born anew every morning by faith and God’s mercy. Therefore, we have no place with what was, the way back is barred, the comforting and familiar shores are forbidden to us. Daily, by faith and God’s mercy, we enter a divine journey into the new, faith whisking us into the dark clinging only to the light of the promise fulfilled in Christ. The new is nothing to run from, turn a blind eye toward, or reject; it is in the new and unfamiliar that the familiar and known voice of our God in Christ Jesus calls us. We are called to move forward into new life in union God, dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness, leaning on our beloved, Christ, and comforted by the Comforter, even in the wake of chaos and unfamiliar. We are God’s people, and God is our God, forever.

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

[2] Marvin A. Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 990. “The prophet’s depiction of the future employs the verbs uproot, pull down, overthrow, destroy, build, and plant from his call narrative in 1.10 to portray both the punishments and the restoration of the people.”

[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 990. Proverb quoted, “…to illustrate his view that only the guilty should be punished for their own sins…” it is future oriented for Jeremiah.

[4] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 991. Promise of New Covenant, “…here it refers to the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile and the reconstruction of the Temple. According to this passage, it is not the content of the new covenant which will be different, but how it is learned.”

[5] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 991. “God places the Teaching, i.e., the Torah, in the inmost being or heart of the people so that the covenant cannot be broken again. This idea is developed in later Lurianic kabbalah, which maintains that all persons have a divine spark within. Since it is so inscribed, there will be no need for the Torah to be taught.”

[6] Rabbi Dr. H. Freedman, Jeremiah: with Hebrew text and English Translation, ed. Rev. Dr. A Cohen. Soncino Books of the Bible. 6th Impression (London: Soncino Press, 1970), 211. “God will make a new covenant with Israel which, unlike the old, will be permanent, because it will be inscribed on their hearts. There is nothing here to suggest that the new covenant would differ in nature form the old. No new revelation is intended, nor was it needed. The prophet only makes the assertion that unlike the past, Israel will henceforth remain faithful to God, while He in turn will never reject him.”

[7] Freedman, Jeremiah, 212. “The implication is that God will be what He has always been in His relationship to Isreal; they, on the other hand, will now likewise permanently acknowledge Him and be His people. Permanence is the essence of the new covenant.”

[8] Freedman, Jeremiah, 211. “I will no longer be something external to them, but so deeply ingrained in their consciousness as to be part of them. This, indeed, is the aim of all religious teaching.”

#DeathToLife #HFreedman #Jeremiah #Jesus #Liberation #Life #Love #MarvinASweeney #NewCovenant #NewCreation

Heavenly Reign Earthly Kingdom: Understanding the True Millennium

Explore the truth about the millennium! We reveal the biblical perspective: a spiritual reign with Christ, not an earthly kingdom. Discover your heavenly inheritance beyond this world's deceptions. #HeavenlyReign #TrueMillennium #BiblicalTruth #SpiritualKingdom #ChristianEschatology #FalseKingdoms #EternalLife #NewCreation #RevelationExplained #ChristianLiving from Christic Academy

https://christicacademy.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/heavenly-reign-earthly-kingdom-understanding-the-true-millennium/

"Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule – to the Israel of God."

Galatians 6:15-16 #Bible #NewCreation #salvation

False Hope: Exposing Modern Christianity’s Deception

We delve into how modern Christianity has been misguided. Millions await a false Jesus, temple, and earthly kingdom. The true hope lies in the resurrection and new creation, not earthly politics. Reject the deception; embrace the true Gospel. #ChristianEschatology #FalseGospel #EndTimesDeception #TrueHope #BiblicalTruth #NewCreation #ResurrectionHope #ApostasyExposed #CounterfeitChristianity #EternalKingdom from…

https://christicacademy.wordpress.com/2025/06/14/false-hope-exposing-modern-christianitys-deception/

Heavenly Reign Or Earthly Kingdom: Understanding the True Millennium

Explore the truth about the millennium! We reveal the biblical perspective: a spiritual reign with Christ, not an earthly kingdom. Discover your heavenly inheritance beyond this world's deceptions. #HeavenlyReign #TrueMillennium #BiblicalTruth #SpiritualKingdom #ChristianEschatology #FalseKingdoms #EternalLife #NewCreation #RevelationExplained #ChristianLiving from Christic Academy

https://christicacademy.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/heavenly-reign-or-earthly-kingdom-understanding-the-true-millennium/

Like Paul and Peter

https://youtu.be/o3XEHIrkQlk

Psalm 23:3-4 Abba God revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for their Name’s sake. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Introduction

My favorite thing about the book of Acts, is the way the narrative camera focuses on the human beings left behind to participate in God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation without Jesus by their side. As human as the Gospels can be, they still feel—to me—just outside of my experience in the world. As far as I know, I’ve not been—literally—summoned by Jesus to come follow him and leave my—literal—net behind. I’ve not witnessed with my own eyes the healing miracles and the awesome casting out of demons. I did not run and hide with fear on Good Friday, nor feel the warmth burn in my heart as Jesus taught me on the way in his resurrected state. I didn’t witness the ascension or suddenly speak in a foreign language (no matter how much my charismatic evangelical background wants to think I have). I am just an audience member from 2025, listening to these ancient stories mixed up with a healthy amount of faith and doubt, skeptical and hungry.

So, this is why I love acts. Watching Paul get knocked off his donkey and onto his donkey through the proclamation of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit—having his misdirection redirected—brings the story home. I too have needed to be knocked down a peg or two, put in my place, reminded of my creaturely status before the Creator. I have thought myself to be so right and on point that I was completely misdirected toward what God was doing and celebrated the tendency of the kingdom of humanity to perform acts of violence and needed to be redirected. Witnessing Peter’s rapid exposure to the new movements and actions of God made known first in Christ and made real in Peter’s heart through the power of the Holy Spirit, is something I can confess to, too. I, too, have been graciously, generously, and patiently reinstructed that all are in and none are out, relearned God’s merciful divine activity that extends beyond skin, sex, and superficial boundaries, (re)experienced (manifold times) the pathos of God for the Beloved, and have stumbled about while desperately trying to walk in this new way, talk with new words, love with a new heart, think with a new mind, and see through new lenses all crafted and created by a God who so loves the cosmos that God won’t spare Gods self to save it.

I read something somewhere that said the best way to explain the book of acts is to see it as the movement and activity of the Holy Spirit rather than of the disciples. Are they central to this story building in the book of Acts? Yes, they are. But they are not the only performers on the stage. The Holy Spirit takes up their role and whisks and moves these human forms, destroying notions of autonomy and free-will, taking them hither and tither, bringing them into contact with those whom they would never ever be in contact with, reducing them through exposure, and building them up through love and liberation into new life defined by the reign of God. Last week we received the story of Saul and his “conversion”; this week, we are exposed to Peter walking in the way of Jesus, doing the initial things that will become some of the hallmarks of what it means not only to be Christian, but also Church.

Acts 9:36-43

We jump quite a bit forward in Acts 9. We move from Paul’s conversion to the beginning of Peter’s radical exposure to the law of God which is the law of love for all God’s beloved, transcending national and religious boundaries rather than creating them. Starting a bit earlier in the chapter than our lectionary suggests, we find Peter in Lydda, having been brought there by the Holy Spirit to the those who are called “living saints”.[1] By using the word “Saints” Luke highlights that the divide between the secular and the sacred is diminishing; every day regular people are indwelled with divine holiness, a holiness that will not fade away and creates a new way of being in the world as God’s vessels bringing divine life, love and liberation to others like themselves.[2] (This is very good news for regular people like you and me!) So, Peter is with these everyday saints, and he is there to heal a man who was paralyzed for 8 years. Through Peter, the Holy Spirit heals this man, and the story of his healing becomes a source for those in Lydda and the surrounding area (Sharon) to praise God and turn to Christ in faith (vv. 32-35).[3] In Lydda, Peter is doing as Jesus did: healing and liberating the oppressed and bringing glory to God.[4]

While Peter is in Lydda, over in Joppa there was a certain disciple by [the] name Tabitha, which [in Greek] is translated as Dorcas, she was full of good works, and she was doing acts of mercy. But it happened in those days she [became] sick and died; when she died, they washed her body, writes Luke, and they placed her body in an upper room (vv. 36-37). The saints of Joppa are grieved over this loss. Rightly so. Tabitha was a woman and a representative of Christ[5] in spaces too often neglected by both human and divine presence (read the prophets!). Not only is Luke elevating the role of women in the work of the gospel and in his narrative about the movement of the Holy Spirit (which should expose us in our own context),[6] he is also highlighting that losing this one who brings well-being to her neighbors and glory to God, leaves a massive gap in bringing God’s presence to those who need God’s presence the most: the widows…whom God cares about very much! So, the disciples having heard that Peter was in Lydda, and Lydda being close to Joppa, they sent two men [to Joppa] beseeching Peter, “Do not hesitate and pass through [and] come to us immediately!” (v. 38).

Peter’s response? Now, after rising Peter went to them (v.39a). Peter doesn’t waste a moment to help these saints over in Joppa who lost a beloved representative of Christ. Luke tells us more, After he arrived, they brought him up into the upper-room, and the widows stood by him weeping and showing [him] tunics and many cloaks Dorcas was making being with them (v.39b-c). These poor and too often neglected widows lose the one who cares for them, the one who made them feel seen and heard and loved; this is what Peter enters when he arrives.[7] But it’s more than comfort Peter is bringing. For Luke (and Peter) in this moment a massive (divinely inspired) statement is occuring: women matter, their works matter, their bodies matter.[8] Luke tells us, Now, after Peter cast everyone out [of the room], he also placed [his] knees [on the ground] and prayed, and turning to the body, he said, “Tabitha, rise!” And she does. Now her eyes opened, and after seeing Peter she sat up. Peter acts like Christ and commands the dead woman to rise. Those held captive to death (both Tabitha and the widows) are not held captive anymore; they’re liberated, by this regular person through the power of the Holy Spirit who works in them and through them to overturne the kingdom of humanity and establish the reign of God.[9] Just as the women were the first to hear of the resurrection of Christ from death, so too did a woman first experience the life out of death that is characteristic of the reign of God wrought by the Holy Spirit moving through regions bringing God glory![10] Luke tells us, Now, after giving her his hand he raised her, and after calling out [to] the saints and the widows, he presented her [to them] living. Now it became known throughout all of Joppa, and the many believed in the Lord. And the Holy Spirit is not only moving through acceptable regions but is breaking down false boundaries[11] originally demarcating clean and unclean: the glory of God and God’s divine mission to liberate the captives know no walls and barriers. Luke concludes, Now it happened [Peter] stayed a sufficient number of days in Joppa with a certain Simon the Tanner. Just like Paul, Peter is in the clutches of a God on the move, caught up in the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation.[12]

Conclusion

Peter and Paul present to us the two best examples of regular, human beings—like you and me—who are caught up in the transcending and unyielding resurrection life that starts with Christ and continues with his disciples by the power of the Holy Spirit. I think Peter and Paul are intimidating to us. I think it’s easier to ask WWJD rather than WWPD because their recorded actions bring the divine pathos down to our level. It’s safe when Jesus does something because we can kind of dismiss it: well…he’s like the Son of God…so… But when it’s the former know-it-all and the former fisherman, the flames of those actions burn close to our skin. Because, as it turns out, like Paul and Peter, we have skin in this game and this game participates in the divine passion for the cosmos. Peter, a regular guy, calls Tabitha into (new) life from death and liberates Aeneas from the captivity of being paralyzed; this puts us on the hook as we begin (again) to walk in the way of the ascended Jesus and the Spirit that is to come. Both Peter and Paul ask us to think about what it means to be Christian and to do Church. Beloved, like Peter and Paul, we, too, by and in Christ, get to bring love where there is indifference, liberation where there is captivity, and life where there is death.

[1] Willie James Jennings, Acts, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 99. “He is on the road and comes to Lydda to be among the living saints.”

[2] Jennings, Acts, 99. “Jesus is God drawing the everyday into holiness, into God’s own life. Everyday people are made holy in Christ. Everyday people are made holy by Christ, and this is a holiness that will last, not be episodic, and constitute a new space for living life and knowing ourselves.”

[3] Jennings, Acts, 99-100. “Once again a marvelous act, a touchable miracle, will turn people to the Lord (v. 35). This is repetition that illumines the inexhaustible riches of Gods love for the fragile creature and Gods desire to constantly touch us, hold us, and announce the victory over death. There is yet more for Peter in this journey as he is approached by two disciples form another city (Joppa) for the sake of one disciple who has died.”

[4] Jennings, Acts,99. “Peter returns to center stage and engages in a bit of wayfaring life, echoing again his history of following Jesus and doing as his savior had done.”

[5] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha’s life even in the fragments we gain in this story, hangs together beautifully as someone devoted to helping people, especially widows.”

[6] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Tabitha, the disciples of Jesus—Luke opens her story inside of Peter’s journey and in so doing makes a point more powerful for us in our time than probably for him in his time. Tabitha, a woman, is a disciple of Jesus. Whether this vignette is evidence of Luke’s positive view of women or not he has certainly gives us a plateau from which to view a new future in which men and women in Christ have a different way of seeing themselves—as disciples.”

[7] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Widows, that group of people vulnerable in ancient and current time, made vulnerable by death’s sting, have always been a special concern for God and here for Tabitha as well. …So the widows weep. They weep for her and maybe for themselves. We do not know if Tabitha was in fact one of them, but we do know that they claimed her as one of whare for them. Here glory joins strong grief because to lose someone who cares for the weak and vulnerable, whose life is turned toward making a difference in the world and who is making a difference, is a bitter loss. The widows have lost Tabitha and a disciple is gone. This is what Peter steps into in Joppa.”

[8] Jennings, Acts, 100. “Peter’s presence declares an unmistakable truth: women matter. This woman matters, and the works she does for widows matters to God. It matters so much that God will not allow death the last word. Others had been raised form the dead in the Gospels and in Luke’s Gospel…but this is different. This not a little girl or the brother of a friend of Jesus; this is a disciple raised from the dead. Tabitha is not finished in life or service.”

[9] Jennings, Acts, 100-101. “‘Tabitha, get up.’ Peter repeats Jesus. Tabitha is an activist who lives again in resurrection power. Her body has been quickened by the Spirit, and her eyes are opened again to see a new day. She has work to do and joy to give to the widows: you have not been abandoned, dear widows, God has heard your weeping and returned her to you.”

[10] Jennings, Acts, 101. “It is not accident that the first disciple to have this little tase of the resurrection isa woman, because it was a woman who gave birth to the resurrection. And Peter is there once again to see a miraculous sign point to faith’s direction—many who found out about this believe in the Lord (v. 42).”

[11] Jennings, Acts, 101. “The story, however, does not end there with Tabitha, because Peter stays in Joppa, and who he stays with points to an earth-shattering future.”

[12] Jennings, Acts, 101. “He stays with Simon, a tanner. Tanners worked with death flesh—the skin of animals and tanners were, theologically speaking, unclean. Few if any pious Jews would normally or easily stay with a tanner, but here was Peter with Somin the tanner. Peter is indeed moving from saints to saints, and soon he will find out just how far the generosity and mercy of a holy God reaches. Soon he will see just how far God will extend holy place and holy people. Peter is with a man who touches the unclean, and soon he will see God do the same.”

#Beloved #DeathToLife #DivineLove #Encounter #Jesus #Liberation #Life #Love #NewCreation #Paul #Peter #PeterAndPaul #Tabitha #TheBookOfActs #TheHolySpirit #WillieJamesJennings #WWJD #WWPD

“Rescued from Danger…Sealed for Thy Courts”: The Path of Easter!

https://youtu.be/x2zGfRLQj6Q

Psalm 118: 14-16a Abba God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!

Introduction

Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!!

This morning, our calcified hearts prone to wander from God find rest in divine sealing made known in the unsealed, empty tomb. We who are enticed and attracted to the shiny bobbles and fluffy lures of the kingdom of humanity are now ushered into something truly new, truly beaming, truly spectacular, truly built of the divine, eternal, never tarnishing substance that is the love of God for you, the Beloved. This morning, despite our wandering, we come face to face with God in Christ, the one who lives and doesn’t die.

Even when we decided to wander from God, to turn our backs, to forget the ancient and good story, to tread and tromp on everyone and everything, to estrange ourselves, to misjudge and prejudge others unto their condemnation, and even when we preferred acts of violence and death, God sought us and found us as we were wandering “from the fold of God”[1] and set us right. This morning, the exposure we felt on Friday becomes the warm light of the risen Son, bringing us into himself, into the lap of Abba God, and wrapping us up like newborn babes in the warm blanket of the Holy Spirit. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING stands between God and God’s beloved, not even death.

Today we’re a people set back on course, eyes lifted, faces turned, fleshy hearts thumping with divine love, hands and feet eager to spread the liberation we have received, and voices ready to call forth life even when all that surrounds us in the world is death. Today we become a people who dares to believe this crazy, far-out story because today become a people brought to life by this good and ancient word of God.

Luke 24:1-12

Now after the women were made full of fear they bowed their faces to the earth; [the two men in clothing shining like lightening] said to the women, “Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead?” (Luke 24:5)

At the end of chapter 23, Luke mentions that the women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, and some other women (24:10a)—saw, from a distance, where Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’s body (v.55).[2] It’s these women who now take center stage in the reception of the good news that Jesus is raised. As the men fled, the women held their ground initially in the distance and now the first ones on the scene in Luke’s resurrection story.[3]

Having seen where Joseph placed Jesus’s body (23:55), and it being the first day of the week and still in the depths of early morning, these women went to the tomb bearing the spices they prepared on Friday night (v.1 and 23:56). Keeping in mind that they prepared spices on Friday night, these women are not examples of blind faith despite the facts; for them, as well as for the men, Jesus was dead—very dead. They planned to anoint his body,[4] which wasn’t done in the rush getting his body down from the cross and into a tomb before the sunset and curses arrived (cf. Dt 21:23).

Now, when they arrived at the tomb, they found the stone having been [mysteriously[5]] rolled away from the tomb (v.2). Curious to see what happened, the women entered the tomb. And after entering the tomb they did not find the body of Jesus (v. 3). Luke then writes, while the women were perplexed/in doubt about what had happened, behold! two men approached the women [dressed] in clothing shining like lightening (v.4). The women were confused, and now they became full of fear; upon being approached by two men in dazzling clothing, Luke tells us, they bowed their faces to the earth (5a). In other words, they suddenly dropped to the ground because they were full of terror. While this is a natural and biblical response to angelic visitors, it’s also a human reaction. These women came to anoint Jesus’s body, and not only is it missing (stolen, maybe?) but now two men show up and approach them (Are we in trouble? Are they going to harm us?). Luke does a marvelous job wedding together the spiritual and temporal realities of this story growing in dramatic tension.

Luke then writes that the two gleaming men said to the women, “why are you seeking the one who lives with the dead? He is not here but was raised” (v.5b-6a).For one moment, suspend your judgment and how well you know this story. Stay here with the women hearing, for the first time, that Jesus—whom they saw crucified on Friday and sealed up in a tomb—is not dead but alive because he is risen! Instantaneously, your world is turned upside down…again! As they looked at each other (now more in astonishment and less in fear) they begin the journey of faith as it dawns on them (in their hearts and minds) that death itself has a mortal weakness: God…Is it possible? Is  Jesus alive? Imagine the grief they carried giving birth to hope…hope daring to rise to life in the depths of a tomb meant for the hopelessness of death…

Then Luke tells us that the two men exhort them, remember what he spoke to you while he was still in galilee, saying it is necessary that the son of humanity be betrayed into the hands of sinful humanity and to be crucified and on the third day to be raised up.” And as the men remind them, these women remembered [Jesus’s] words and after returning from the tomb they announced[6] all these things to the twelve and to the all the remaining people (vv. 8-9). That which they hadn’t fully grasped they did as the celestial men spoke to them;[7] they heard,[8] they believed, and they went.[9] If there were ever three phrases that sum up good discipleship, these are they.[10] The women didn’t linger, tarry, hesitate, debate, and didn’t dismiss because this message didn’t align with their social, political, or religious status-quo. They ran home and immediately told the disciples what they heard. Good news arrives!

And then it’s dismissed. Luke informs us, [the women and their words] appeared before [the men] as if silly, idle nonsense; they were disbelieving the women (v.11). The good news the women brought falls flat at the feet of the men they told; [11] save one. Peter is the only who listened and is intrigued enough to run to the tomb, and after stooping to look he saw only the piece of fine linen and then he departed toward home marveling at what had happened (v.12). According to Luke, Peter not only denied Jesus but then didn’t tell the others that the women were correct; he just remained silent and amazed. [12]  Here, Luke draws purposeful attention to the faithfulness of the women who proclaimed the good news even when it sounded ludicrous.[13] They didn’t linger among the dead; inspired by faith,[14] they ran straight into (new) life, spreading the good news of the one who is living, the risen Jesus the Christ. In this moment filled with swelling divine life, the women were resistant to wandering. They ran toward the risen Christ boldly entering a new reality and order where death succumbs to life.[15]

Conclusion

For us who are prone to wander because we forsake and forget the way of the reign of God, this morning we are given Christ himself—all of him—so that we never forget or forsake the way. For us who are addicted to treading on and tromping about the land and on others, we have received a new way to walk in the world demonstrated by the running feet of the women: swift and sensitive, eager to bring good news rather than pain! For us who find ourselves estranged by our own doing and having become strangers to God, to our neighbor, to creation, and to ourselves we are beckoned out of the oppressive col of self-imposed tombs of isolation and are given a community with God, with others, with creation, and with ourselves built on and by the love of Christ. For us who know the pain of being caught in the captivity of misjudging and prejudging others according to our own human standards, we are refused that plumbline and, instead, we are given divine love, life, and liberation as our new metrics of good and right. For us who are drunk with violence and death, we receive what we do not deserve this morning: peace and life eternal.

This morning we’re given something completely new, completely different, completely strange to the kingdom of humanity. We are given life, love, and liberation. And while we benefit from this, we are given these things specifically so we can participate in God’s divine mission of the revolution of love, life and liberation in the world for the God’s beloved. We are refused the option of living as if we’ve not heard, seen, felt, tasted, smelled the good news. We are charged to take up the way of Christ and live as if the Cross isn’t the end of the story but the beginning. The women who were encountered in the empty tomb were charged to stop looking for the living among the dead; their lives were never ever the same.[16] So it is with us: our call to be disciples taking up their cross and follow Jesus isn’t gone, it’s the only way we have because the path we learned from the kingdom of humanity is forever blocked off.[17] This morning, we’re not the same as we were yesterday morning; this morning, we’ve encountered an empty tomb and heard the announcement from the celestial realm: he is not here he is risen! How could we ever live in the old way? Everything is now new.

Today, our willful and chaotic wandering collides with the steady path of Christ that is dangerous and not careful, that is risky and not safe, that is radical and not status quo, that will afflict and not always comfort.[18] Today we live under the weight of the question, Why are you seeking the one who lives among the dead? (v. 5). Go, Beloved, and live radically and wildly in the name of God and for the well-being of your neighbor and do so in a way that brings God glory and might get you in a little bit of good trouble. You’ve been summoned into life not death, into love and not indifference, into liberation and not captivity.

[1] Fom the hymn “Come Thou Fount”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 272. “In 23:55 Luke directed our attention to the women who were present at the burial, and now he continues telling us about the activities of these women once the Sabbath rest had passed.”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 272. “It is interesting to note that here again Luke will tell parallel but different stories about the women disciples and the men…These women have been present, but have remained mostly in the background of the story, even since Luke introduced them in 8:2-3. In the narrative of the passion and burial, even while others deny Jesus or flee, these women stand firm, although at a distance. Now they come to the foreground as the first witnesses to the resurrection.”

[4] Gonzalez, Luke, 272-273. “They, no less than the rest, believe that in the cross all has come to an end. It is time to return home to their more traditional lives. But before they do that, they must perform one least act of love for their dead Master: they must anoint his body.”

[5] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 837. “How was the stone removed? Luke’s account neglects such detail, for he wants to move quickly to the pivotal discovery of an empty tomb.”

[6] Gren, Luke, 838-839. “‘Luke underscores the faithfulness of their testimony by noting that they announced ‘all these things’—that is, what they had observed, what they had been told, and the new significance they attributed to Jesus’ passion and the absence of his corpse.”

[7] Green, Luke, 837-838. “These women come looking for Jesus, but they want to minister to him, and as they quickly discover, because they lack understanding, they are looking in the wrong place. The angels first admonish them, employing language that is reminiscent of Jesus’ rejoinder to the Sadducees in 20:38: God is not the God of the dead but of the living! That is, in spite of their devout intentions in coming to anoint Jesus’ body, these women have failed to grasp Jesus’ message about the resurrection and, thus, have not taken with appropriate gravity the power of God.”

[8] Gren, Luke, 838. “The antidote for this miscalculation is remembrance. The women are addressed as person who had themselves received Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and the angel’s message fuses Jesus’ predictions during the Galilean phase of his ministry…Thus they are reminded that the career of the Son of Man blends the two motifs of suffering and vindication, and that in doing so he fulfills the divine will.”

[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The women do not see the resurrected Jesus. The two figures at the tomb (presumably angels) simply tell them that he has risen just as he had foretold, and they believe. Luke does not even say, as do Matthew and Mark (Matt. 28:7; Mrk 16:7), that they are instructed to tell the rest of the disciples (an injunction they follow in Matthew, but not in Mark). They simply hear the witness of the two men at the tomb, and apparently on their own initiative go and tell the others.”

[10] Gren, Luke, 838. Seim qtd in. “Their reception of the resurrection message ‘confirms their discipleship and the instruction they have received as disciples.’”

[11] Green, Luke, 839-840. “The gap between male and female disciples widens, as the faithful account of the women falls on the cynical and unbelieving ears of the men. Nothing more than useless chatter—this is how their announcement is evaluated and discarded. This can be explained in at least to aways. First, the earlier situation of the women disciples is being repeated int eh case of their male counterpart; failing to grasp Jesus’ teaching regarding his suffering and resurrection, they cannot make sense of the news share d with them. At the same time, however, Luke’s ‘all this’ (v 8) cannot but include the message they had received form the angels, so that the men were given access to the significance of recent events. The dismissive response of the men is therefore better explained with reference to the fact that those doing the reporting are women in a world biased against the admissibility of women as witnesses.” Peter’s response is all the more positive.

[12] Green, Luke, 840. Amazement is not faith nor does it hint at the eventual genuine faith. “Unlike the women, [Peter] returns home with no new message to share.”

[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 273. “The contrast is such that one cannot avoid the conclusion that it is purposeful, and that Luke is stressing the faith of these women who have traveled with Jesus from Galilee, and who were the only ones who remained true throughout the entire story of the betrayal. Even though the later course of church history, with its expectation of entirely male leadership, would lead us to think otherwise, it is they who bring the message of the resurrection to the eleven, and not vice versa.”

[14] Green, Luke, 836. “The Evangelist has repeatedly noted the incapacity of the disciples to grasp this truth…but now he signals a breakthrough on the part of the women. If the male disciples continue in their obtuseness, and thus lack of faith, at least Peter response to the witness of the women by going to the tomb. His behavior portends at last the possibility of a more full understanding of Jesus’ message on their part.”

[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 274. “The resurrection is not the continuation of the story. Nor is it just its happy ending. It is the beginning of a new story, of a new age in history.”

[16] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “But the truth is that the resurrection of Jesus, and the dawning of the new with him, poses a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story. The women on their way to the tomb were planning to perform one last act of love for Jesus, and then would probably just return home to their former lives. Peter and the rest would eventually return to their boats, their nets, and the various occupations. But now the empty tomb opens new possibilities. Now there is no way back to the former life in Galilee. Even though Luke tells us that Peter simply went home after seeing the empty tomb, we will soon learn that this was not the end of it: Peter himself would eventually die on his own cross.”

[17] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The resurrection is a joyous event; but it also means that Jesus’ call for his disciples to take up their cross and follow him is still valid. The road to the old ways in Galilee is now barred. The resurrection of Jesus impels them forward to their own crosses, and indeed, we know that several of the disciples suffered violent death as the result of their following and proclaiming the Risen One.”

[18] Gonzalez, Luke, 276. “The full message of Easter is both of joy and of challenge. It is. The announcement of unequaled and final victory, and the call to radical, dangerous, and even painful discipleship.”

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