Herod and Figuring out What Drives Us

In Matthew's account of the infancy of Jesus, when Herod finds out from the three wise men that a king has been born that will rule Isreal, he orders that all the children under the age of two be killed, out of fear that the new king will grow up and take over from Herod.

What Herod does is not only monstrous, but stupid.  Fast forward twenty years.  With the average life expectancy in the ancient middle east at around 25 years or so, the years when an adult male would be available to work in the fields and serve in the army would be few and fleeting.  Consequently, Herod's genocide would have drastic consequences for Herod in the future, particularly in the reduction of males able to create products to be taxed and to strengthen Herod's armies.  Herod's genocide actual makes it more likely in the long run that his fears of losing power will come true.

There is in each and every one of us an underlying nature that causes us to do what we do.  It is the engine that drives us.  What drove Herod is the engine of fear.  We are all afraid, but when fear becomes the engine that drives us, we turn into dumb monsters like Herod and can commit terrible things.

We are all afraid.  But through God's grace, our underlying nature can be transformed.  The engine that drives us can be the engine of joy and service to others.  Our underlying nature can be holy.  As always, our example is Jesus, who as the Son of the King of Kings, was driven only to bring about the redemption and reconciliation of the world.

Pruning Trees and God's Plan for Us

When I was growing up, my parents built a home on a two acre piece of land in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Part of the lot was heavily wooded, with lots of beautiful trees.  For the first few years, there was a lot of work to be done with the cultivation of the trees.  Many of the trees were dying because their own branches and vines were inhibiting the trees' growth.  I was taught how to prune the trees.  I learned that pruning trees was all about figuring out the parts of the tree that were killing the tree, and removing those parts.

Every day after school, I picked up an axe and went to work.  To the casual observer who didn't know what was going on, it would have appeared that my agenda was to destroy the tree.  I was, after all, holding an axe, and hacking away at the tree.

What I was doing was the opposite of destroying the tree.  I was giving new life to the tree.  I was saving the tree.  In order to save the tree, I had to remove the parts of the tree that were destroying it.

John the Baptist uses the imagery of pruning to describe the nature of repentance.  God's agenda in us and in our world is not to destroy us and bring destruction to the world.  That is, unfortunately, often our own agenda for ourselves.  God's agenda is to bring us new life and to bring about a new creation.  In order for us to become a new creation, there are parts of our behavior and our nature that have to die.  We must allow God to enter into our souls and into our world so that we can find new life.

The Necessity of Forgiveness

While on the cross, Jesus asked for forgiveness for the Roman soldiers that had nailed him to the cross, and who were now mocking him.  Jesus' forgiveness of the soldiers mirrors other radical statements that he made about forgiveness, particularly his statement that we should forgive those who have wronged us seventy times seven times.

We are uncomfortable about forgiveness because we think that it means we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of.  Our first instinct when we are wronged is to seek retribution and vengeance. 

Forgiveness in a biblical context is a different concept than holding persons accountable or taking steps to ensure our own safety.  Forgiveness simply means setting aside anger and resentment.  Ultimately, forgiveness is about recognizing that those who wrong us have no power over us.  Forgiveness is something internal that happens within ourselves.

Forgiveness is always associated with self-denial, but it is actually the most self-indulgent thing that we can ever do.  There will always be persons in this world who wrong us.  We can refuse to forgive, hold onto the resentment and anger, and let it damage us and make us miserable.  Or we can forgive and get on with our lives.

Forgiveness is necessary for our own redemption and the redemption of the world.  God needs us focused upon making this world the world that God wants it to be, and to make us holy.  Jesus had a job to do on the cross; to bring about the redemption of the world.  He didn't have time to hold resentment about those who, out of their own ignorance, had placed him there on the cross.  We don't have time for resentment either.  We have more important things to do.

Overcoming our Fear of Death

Our culture has an extreme fear of death.  This fear is not a fear of the actual event of death, but rather an understanding of what death is.  Death is perceived as the end of our existence and a separation from the persons and things that we are attached to.

In the Church we know better, or at least we should.  In the Christian tradition, the term "death" is really a misnomer because we know that we are eternal.  We literally do not cease to exist, but simply pass along from one form of existence to another.  And the great news is that the God of eternity has all power and authority on earth, and all power and authority in the next world.  Death does not separate us from those that we love or from God.  There is nothing that can ultimately separate us. 

Jesus reveals this in a discussion with the Sadducees.  The Sadducees did not think that people could be resurrected.  In support of this position, then turn to a text in the Hebrew Bible that says that if a man dies married but childless, the man's brother was required to marry the widow.  The Sadducees present Jesus with a hypothetical: what if there were seven brothers, the first brother marries a women and dies childless, and then the other six brothers, in turn, marry the women and die childless.  The Sadducees concluded that if there was an afterlife, this would mean that the women would have seven husbands, which violated the Hebrew Bible.  Consequently, this raised the inference that there was no afterlife.

Jesus responds to the Sadducees by referring back to the story of Moses and the burning bush.  God, in that encounter, revealed Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the present tense: God was not the God who was the God of these three Patriarchs, but still is.  In God's eyes, all are alive because God is the God of the Living.

In God's eyes, all are alive, because we are all eternal.  Consequently, death is not something to be afraid of.  It is just a passage from another form of existence to another.

Our Perception of Ourselves and of God

In a story known as the parable of the unjust judge, Jesus compares Israel to a widow who pleads for justice to an unjust judge against an unnamed opponent.  The unjust judge eventually relents and grants the widow what she is seeking to stop the widow's incessant nagging.

The central prayer of the Israelite faith for many centuries had been one that mirrors the plea of the unnamed widow--that justice be granted against Israel's adversaries.  Despite the fact that Israel prayed for centuries for liberation, Israel remained subject to one foreign power after another.  Israel was frustrated that God did not grant Israel the justice that it wanted.

Through the ironic message of this parable, Jesus tells Israel that its self perception is wrong as well as its theology.  As God has all power and authority, God could grant Israel the relief that it seeks, and yet God chooses not to.  On this basis, Israel saw itself as a powerless widow whose only hope was to keep repeating its petitions. And Israel saw God as an unjust judge who has chosen not to grant Israel's request, but might do so simply to get relief from Israel's incessant petitions.

In Jesus, God reveals that God is the opposite of the unjust Judge in the parable, and Israel is the opposite of the widow.  God had a new vision for the world, which was a plan for the redemption of the world.  God did not grant Israel's prayer because God had a greater vision in mind.

Too often our prayers are petitions for what we want here and now.  When our prayers are not answered, we see ourselves as the widow in the story, and we see God as an unjust judge who might eventually relent if we keep repeating our petitions.  What we should be praying about is discernment about the greater plan that God has for us and for the world, and for the diligence to fulfill God's purposes.

The Church As the New Covenant Community

Ancient Israel's faith, like most ancient cultures, was about distinguishing between who was included in the covenant community, and who was excluded.  This was revealed in the literal design of the tabernacle, which was later represented by the temple in Jerusalem.  The greater your connection and place within the community, the closer you could get to the inner sanctum, the holiest place.  Your inclusion or exclusion in the community depended upon gender, whether you were ritually clean, and your behavior.

The story of Zacchaeus reveals Jesus' radical vision for a new covenant community.  Zacchaeus is definitely "out" when it came to Israel's understanding of inclusion and exclusion.  He was the chief tax collector, who acted as an agent of Rome.  As a tax collector, he vocationally worked through handling money, which was considered profane.  Tax collector's were considered borderline criminals, both because they handled money and because of the perception that they used their power and influence to defraud people.

The community is thereby shocked and offended when Jesus seeks admission to Zacchaeus' home.  It would have been surprising enough if Jesus had accepted an invitation from Zacchaeus to enter Zacchaeus' home.  Instead, it is Jesus that extends the invitation.

In Jesus, God has turned the nature of the covenant community inside out and upside down.  In ancient Israel, God was at the center of God's house, and the entire preoccupation of the community was to petition admission to God's house through seeking places in the community that were considered ritually clean and holy.  Now, God petitions and seeks admission to the house of the one who would have been considered the most profane and the least ritually clean.  In Jesus, when we were lost in sin, God sought us out and petitioned to be in relationship with us for our redemption.

Too often the Church has forgotten this amazing vision and has adopted and appropriated the game that was played in ancient Israel of seeking admission to God's house, distinguishing between who is worthy and who is unworthy.  We have changed the standards for defining worthiness and unworthiness, but the game remains the same.

Stumbling Into Reconciliation By Accident

Luke 16: 1-13 contains what is perhaps the most enigmatic parable in the gospels--the parable of the fraudulent manager.  What is surprising about the story is that the protagonist is a local manager of a large estate who has been caught defrauding his boss.  The local manager recognizes that after being terminated by his boss, he is going to need to rely on the goodwill of the locals, who all owe money to the boss.  So the manager negotiates a favorable settlement on all the debtor's accounts in order to gain their goodwill.  The master, rather than being infuriated at the local manager, applauds him for acting shrewdly.

This parable is an indictment about Israel's perception of its own holiness; particularly the arrogance of the religious leaders, and is a call to humility.  It is, by extension, an indictment about our own culture's perception of its holiness, and particularly the arrogance of religious leaders today, and a call to humility in the Church.  Notice that all of the characters in the story think of nothing but their own self interest; the local manager, the boss, and the locals who all owe the boss money.  This is a theme that runs through the parables of Jesus.  Jesus was calling on Israel, and particularly the religious leaders who had a very high opinion of themselves, to be humble.  Jesus is making the same message to the Church today.

The parable also suggests that when reconciliation occurs, it occurs despite our narcissism.  That is, we don't set aside our sinful nature and then bring about reconciliation with one another.  We remain narcissists, stumbling from one crisis to the next, and yet somehow, in spite of our narcissism, reconciliation happens.  In the parable, there is reconciliation between the boss and the local debtors, the boss and the manager, and the manager and the local debtors, all due to nothing but the actions of the manager that were brought about by his attempts to obviate the results of his own fraudulent conduct.  We don't become holy and then start doing good.  We strive to be holy but remain sinful and yet are somehow able to do good in spite of our sin.

Subversion of the Banquet

Ancient Israel, just like most ancient Middle Eastern cultures, had specified roles that people were expected to play.  These roles were fixed.  There was no social mobility.  If you were born a peasant, you were expected to conform to society's expectations about peasantry.  If you were born a women, you were expected to conform to society's expectations about gender roles.  Honor, in ancient Israel, was not based upon success and moving up the figurative ladder, but instead in accepting one's role and place in the system.  Similarly, shame was found in a failure to conform to your expected place.

This system of honor and shame was played out in the place that one sat in a banquet.  If you were at the bottom of the figurative social ladder, you sat in the lowest place.  If you were at the top, you sat in the highest place.

Jesus' advice for disciples in ancient Israel was to subvert this system by sitting in the lowest place.  In so doing, Jesus was calling his disciples to mirror what God was accomplishing in Jesus.  God, in Jesus, intentionally took upon Himself the form of a servant, the one in ancient Israel at the lowest rung of the social ladder.  In so doing, God, the King of the kings of the earth, revealed both the idiocy and violence inherent in the system itself.  Jesus called on the disciples not to merely act ethically in the system, but to subvert the system and reveal that it was the product of our sin.

Contemporary Western culture has abandoned the notion of stratified social roles.  Western culture recognizes the inherent rights of the individual to move up (or down) on the social ladder.  Honor, in Western culture, is in being at the top of the ladder, and shame is being at the bottom of the ladder.

Jesus' advice to disciples today is the same as ancient Israel.  The system may have changed from one of stratified roles to roles of relative mobility, but the system itself is the product of our sin.  Too often in the Church we think that the role of the disciple is to merely act ethically and with virtue in the system (i.e. to move up the ladder through hard work and virtue rather than fraud and deceit).  God, in Jesus, is calling us to do something more interesting than that.  We are called to subvert the system itself and reveal its idiocy and violence by intentionally taking upon ourselves the form of a servant.  Rather than falling all over ourselves trying to be at the highest seat in the banquet hall, we should be falling all over ourselves to be the servant of one another, taking the lowest place.  In doing so, we model and mirror what God accomplished in Jesus, who took upon Himself the form of a servant.

Creating Division in the Right Places

Jesus says in Luke's gospel that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  This is a statement that has puzzled Christians throughout the years, given Jesus' focus on peace and non violence.  It is also a statement that has been used to justify the use of violence in Jesus' name, including in the crusades during the Middle Ages.

The key to understanding this text lies in Matthew's gospel, where the saying is put in a slightly different way.  In Matthew's gospel, Jesus says that he did not come to bring peace, but instead division.  Jesus goes on to say that families will be divided from one another in his name.

In the early Church, Christianity created authentic divisions in the family and in the larger Roman culture due to the revolutionary way that Christians believed that they were called to live in Jesus' name.  Christians called into question the central principle of Roman rule; the Pax Romana, which held that peace and stability was created through subjugation of Rome's enemies and loyalty to Rome alone.  Christians held that loyalty to God alone, as revealed in Jesus, was what would bring peace on an individual and collective level.  Christians rejected all the unspoken norms and rules in the Mediterranean world about gender roles and class distinctions.  Christianity brought a cultural revolution.

Today, the Christian tradition still brings division, but often we get the dividing lines wrong, which essentially means we have forgotten what is at the heart of Christian belief and practice.  Until very recently, major voices in the Christian tradition were adamant that reading novels, for example, was inconsistent with Christian belief and practice.  Christian traditions wasted thousands of pages in creating division between themselves and non Christians on this issue.  Jesus says that if our discipleship is authentic, there will necessarily be division between us and those who do not follow Jesus.  Let's make sure we place the dividing line in the right place and remember what matters about discipleship and what doesn't matter

Discipleship and the Cultivation of Wisdom

Discipleship is normally thought of today solely as a dialectic of right and wrong, of reward and punishment.  That is, we do what is right and avoid what is wrong in order to seek eternal reward and to avoid eternal punishment.

What we have marginalized and forgotten in the Christian tradition is the equal significance and importance of wisdom.  Discipleship is about the cultivation of wisdom so that we make good choices in this world for ourselves and for the world, and seeking the intercession of God's Spirit to enhance our wisdom and understanding of ourselves, of God, and of the world.

The parable of the Rich Fool in Luke's gospel illustrates the importance of the cultivation of wisdom.  In this simple story, an unnamed rich man is preoccupied with hoarding grain.  He has filled up his existing barns, so he devises a plan to build bigger barns.  At some point, his life is taken from him.  Significantly, the story is not framed in terms of reward and punishment, or even in terms of right and wrong, but instead in terms of wisdom and foolishness.  The rich man wastes his life through his preoccupation with "stuff".  He is called a "fool" at the end of the story, not wicked or evil.  There is no indication about whether he is otherwise virtuous or not.

What makes the rich man a fool is his ignorance or denial of life's transience.  Those who are wise understand how transient life is and act accordingly.  If we understand life's transience, we will act accordingly.  We will understand what matters; our soul.  And we will understand that all our "stuff" is fleeting and can vanish in an instant. 

A New Way to Peace

Paul's letter to the Colossians contains a well known litany describing Jesus as the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation.  The litany ends with the statement that God has brought peace through the blood of the cross.

Paul's litany is a response and challenge to Rome.  The Roman Empire in Paul's time ruled the Colossians in Asia Minor along with pretty much everyone else in the known world.  The Roman Empire promoted a sort of civic religion and the focal point of that religion was adoration of Roma, the very embodiment of the Roman state.  All the citizens of Rome were required to worship the image of Roma and swear allegiance to Rome and everything Rome represented: power, dominance, progress, economic security, and order.

Rome perpetuated and ensured conformity to Rome by terror.  Crucifixion was the central element of Roman terror.  Crucifixion was used only for political dissidents; those who challenged Rome's sovereignty and the rationality of Roman rule.  Crucifixion was all about control.

Paul conceptualized the emerging Jesus movement as set against Rome and everything that Rome represented.  The Church was also centered in the cross, which became through Christ, not an instrument of terror, but an instrument of reconciliation.  God used the cross not to destroy Rome, but to seek Rome's reconciliation with God.  And through the cross, God reveals the inadequacy and idiocy of Rome's notions of rationality and progress.

Looking at the Commissioning of the Seventy from the Other Side

In Luke's gospel, Jesus commissions seventy missionaries to proclaim Jesus' message.  The seventy are sent out two by two to places where Jesus had not yet gone.  The seventy later return with positive results.

Sermons on the commissioning of the seventy normally looks at the story from the perspective and role of the seventy, remarking on the need for courage and diligence in responding to God's call and proclaiming Jesus' message.  Another way to look at the commissioning is from the perspective of the townspeople who hear the message from the seventy proclaimed.

Consider yourself from the perspective of the townspeople.  You have no prior exposure to Jesus' message.  You have never met the two individuals who enter your town.  Remember that this is in a cultural setting and a time in history where it was rare to travel very far outside your birthplace.  If you were a devout Jew, the message would have sounded heretical and would have stood in the face of everything that you had ever been taught.  Similarly, if the town where the seventy entered was outside the boundaries of Israel, the teachings of Jesus, grounded in Judaism, would have seemed even more strange and alien.

The willingness of the townspeople who heard the seventy to listen to the message of Jesus and embrace it required greater virtue than then willingness of the seventy to be commissioned.  Embracing Jesus' message would have required open minds and open hearts that were willing to set aside everything that had previously been known, practiced, and embraced, and hear something new.

I don't think that Christian people today would have done very well with the seventy.  We have become extremely set in our ways of thinking about God.  We are sure that we have it all figured out.  At best, we are willing to listen when the message comes to us in a setting that is well established for the proclamation of God's word (i.e. Church), and when the message is delivered in a way that conforms with our preconceived understandings of God using language that we are familiar with.

As the Church, we have to be willing to listen for God's Word that will speak to us outside of our preconceived notions of where, when, and how God is supposed to speak.  If we are willing to listen, there is no telling what wondrous things God has to share with us.

An Amazing and Unexpected Responsibility

One of my favorite parables of Jesus is the parable of the talents in Matthew's gospel.  The ancient equivalent to a One Percent-er entrusts three servants with his fortune (sorry--it was definitely a he, given the gender roles at the time).  The three servants are given, respectively, five talents, three talents, and one talent.  The servants that are given five talents and three talents invest the money and double it, while the servant who is given one talent buries the talent in the ground and returns the money to the master when he returns.  The master praises the two servants who invested the money and gives them greater responsibility.  The master punishes the servant who buried the treasure in the ground, claiming that he wasted a great opportunity.

In the ancient Middle Eastern world, when your master entrusted you with a large treasure, the only prudent, responsible thing to do was to bury the money in the ground.  Think about it.  There were no banks or financial institutions.  Even paying for an armed guard over the treasure is risky; if someone knows about the treasure and the master's absence, they could try to overpower the guards. More importantly, it was considered sinful and profane in Jewish culture to invest money.  Investing money would have brought shame and dishonor on the master and the master's family.  Everyone listening to Jesus tell the parable would have been appalled and shocked at the two servants who invested the money, and shocked even more by the master's response.

God has entrusted us with a treasure that is greater than anything that we could possibly imagine.  The treasure that God has given us is our life; free will, choice, and consciousness.  We were not responsible for earning this gift.  We are just given it, unexpectedly and surprisingly.

God does not want us to play it safe with our gift.  God wants us to do daring, surprising, even shocking things to maximize God's investment in us.  God doesn't want us to be concerned with what is considered prudent, responsible, or socially acceptable with our life.  God wants us to do amazing things.  Like the servants in the parable who invest the money, there is no limit to the amount of good that we can do in this world if we aren't afraid to invest our lives in something that will maximize God's investment.

Fleeing from Freedom

It is fitting that one of the first Sundays in the Season after Pentecost is from Paul's Letter to the Galatians.  The problem that Paul addressed in his letter was symptomatic of one of the greatest problems with Christian Church, both in Galatia and down through the centuries.  Paul's answer similarly crystallized and clarified a central motif to his own theology.

Let's begin with stating the heresy that Paul addressed.  When Paul established the Christian community in Galatia, he stressed that Jewish and Gentile Christians could and should co exist peacefully.  That is, it was acceptable, but not necessary, to express one's discipleship by practicing Judaism.  After Paul left, the Church in Galatia had begun stressing the necessity of complying with all the rules and regulations of the Jewish religion in order to be a follower of Jesus, including dietary restrictions, circumcision for males, and other rules regulating personal conduct. 

What is surprising about the Galatians' insistence about embracing a strict Jewish expression of Christianity was that the Galatians were not Jewish.  The Galatians were Gentiles.  Specifically, they were an ethnic group with Celtic roots that had settled in Asia Minor centuries before.  They had no connection with Judaism.  So the problem was not persons refusing to turn away from Jewish roots and traditions, but Gentiles with no prior connection to Judaism choosing to be bound by it.

Paul responds to the problem in Galatia by making the first written articulation of his radical antinomian theology: being a disciple is about freedom from "religion" as the term was understood.  The very notion of religiosity in Paul's day (and, I would argue, in our own) was associated with following a detailed set of rules and regulations.  For Paul, Christ brought a revolution that was all about freedom from religion itself.  The fact that the Galatians were embracing Judaism is incidental--what they were really embracing was an understanding of religiosity.  The Galatians were literally choosing to flee from freedom.

Paul reminds the Galatians, and us, that in Christ, we are bound only by following the winds of God's Spirit.  However, this does not make our discipleship less strenuous and challenging.  It makes it more so.  It means that we are not given an exact blueprint for what our discipleship will be about.  It means that we are given the example of Christ and asked to make a blueprint that is unique for us.  That is a terrifying and wonderful freedom to embrace.

A Bazillion Expressions of Discipleship and Counting

The key to understanding the story of Pentecost in Acts 2, which is a story that the Church tells to describe the advent of the Holy Spirit, is in focusing much more on what is not said or revealed than what is said or revealed.  What happens is that the Disciples are empowered with God's Spirit.  What doesn't happen is specific instructions.  They are not told exactly what to do.  God's Spirit did not provide a detailed set of regulations.

We are not given specific instructions about how to live out our calling as disciples.  We have scripture, we have the example set by Christ, but beyond that, it is up to us.  Every person is different.  We have different skills, different perspectives, different experiences.  Consequently, there have been a bazillion expressions of discipleship

Religious institutions have,  ironically, tried to establish uniformity in discipleship.  We think that every disciple should think the same and act the same and live out their discipleship in the same way.  Based upon Pentecost, this is the exact opposite of what God intended.  Pentecost happened in the way that it did because God wanted it that way.  People express themselves in this world in a bazillion different ways because God wants it that way.  Each and every person who has lived in this world is unique and every day is unique, and God wanted it that way. 

God wants each and every one of us, as we live according to Christ's example, to make our discipleship our own, based upon our own unique experiences and perspectives.  Our story will be a unique story.  It's a little like a bunch of disciples all speaking in different languages at the same time.  Its a wonderful baffling cacophony.

Revelation's Perspective on the Nature of the Principalities and Powers of this World

The Book of Revelation has a lot to say about the nature of human culture, or what Revelation refers to as the "principalities and powers of this world."As always, Revelation is both a commentary about John's own first century Roman world, and a vision of the world that always has been and the world that now is.  The word that is translated as the title of the book is literally "unveiling." Revelation removes a veil that has covered our eyes from the foundation of the world to reveal something that was always evident.

The veil that covered the eyes of John's age was the nature of Rome.  Rome presented itself as a servant of God, the Lamb who sacrifices Himself for the sins of the world.  Rome is characterized as a noble animal, like the other nations of the world.  Rome's public relations machine spent bazillions to convince its conquered and subjected territories of Rome's virtue.  But underlying the facade that Rome presented was the truth that Rome was the servant of the tempter, who is caricatured in Revelation as the dragon.  The veil that Rome placed over its own eyes hid Rome from itself and its subject territories from its cruelty and domination.

John's vision is both a snapshot of the nature of the principalities and powers of John's own age, and an unveiling of the nature of the principalities and powers that have ruled this world from the beginning and still rule the world.  This is a scathing indictment of the nations.  But John's vision is also one of radical hope and optimism, because Revelation also reveals that God's vision for the nations is that they will come to God's light and be redeemed.  Revelation ends, in fact, with an image of the nations of the world and God's kingdom being one, and the world being so full of God's light that there is no darkness at all.

Rethinking Revelation

One of the ironies about being raised in a churched environment is the impact of this on our engagement with the Bible.  Regular church goers who have always been regular church goers often think that they read the Bible objectively, rather than subjectively.  That is, that they are drawing their conclusions about its meaning from the words themselves and the words alone, rather than reading the text through interpretations of meaning that have been taught to them.  In fact, by the time that most church goers hit puberty, they have already been told what they are going to find when they read the Bible, the meaning and significance of the words that they are going to read, and even more dangerously, that there are particular texts that have greater meaning and significance than other texts.

An important task in our engagement with the Bible is to try to be aware of our subjectivity--the traditions of meaning that we have been taught, and to challenge these traditions of meaning when we read the text.  Most importantly, our discipleship requires that traditions of meaning be abandoned when we don't see any support for these traditions in the text.  Its not a problem to draw upon the resources of commentators who give advice about what a text means.  Its only a problem when we think that a particular way of reading a text is the only way to read a text simply because we have been taught to read the text in this way.

The season of Easter has a lot of lectionary readings in the Book of Revelation.  Churched Christians in America have been taught all sorts of things about the nature and significance of Revelation.  In particular, they have been taught that the primary focus of Revelation is about the end of the world, and a description of what will happen in the last generation.  Commentators have, generation after generation, saw in Revelation signs of things that they thought were happening in their own generation, and their commentary consisted of a theological connect the dots of current events to the symbols and images in the book.  Every generation, it goes without saying, has been wrong.

There is another way to read Revelation.  Rather than being about one single generation, it is a description of the nature of human society from the beginning.  The word revelation literally means an "unveiling".  It uses symbols and images to bring into focus who God is, the nature of the "principalities and powers" that have run the world from the beginning, and God's vision for what this world can become if we turn to God.  It is a scathing indictment of the kingdoms of this world, because it shows that while the principalities and powers of this world present themselves as being aligned with God and might even believe that they are, they are actually the source of the violence and suffering in this world.  It applies to every generation, and so every commentator who has believed that Revelation applied only to their generation has been both right and wrong.  However, Revelation is also a book of hope in the sense that God's vision for the world is to wipe away every tear and eradicate suffering and violence. 

Here is a suggestion for Easter: read Revelation for yourself and try to draw your own conclusions.  Draw upon commentary, but in the end, make up your own mind.  Recognize that any commentary is just that: its an interpretation of the text and not the text itself.

The Prodigal Son Revisited

After the crucifixion, the disciples are gathered, huddled in a little room, terrified of the Romans, the Jewish leaders, but mostly, terrified that God will seek retribution and vengeance.  After all, they abandoned Jesus when Jesus needed them most and turned away from their calling.  Peter even denied that he knew Jesus three times.

Perhaps as they were sitting in this little room, they figured that they had two choices: either beg God for forgiveness, or figure that God had given up on them and try to melt back into the crowd and go back to their lives before they began following Jesus.

At this point, the most remarkable thing happens: they experience the presence of the risen Christ in that room.  And Jesus does not demand repentance and forgiveness from them.  Instead, Jesus renews his call to the disciples to follow him and to continue in their relationship with him.  In Jesus, God does not arrive in that moment with vengeance or even with a demand that before the relationship can continue, that the disciples ask for forgiveness.  Instead, God seeks out the disciples with no thought in mind other than the relationship continuing.  God seeks out the disciples with nothing but reconciliation.

The nature of the God revealed in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is revealed again in this story.  The disciples, like the Prodigal Son, had done what they considered, rightly, to be irreparable harm to their relationship with God.  Their mistakes were so egregious that they figured that they had two choices, like the Prodigal Son--to prostrate themselves and seek forgiveness, or to figure that the relationship was irretrievably broken.  But God, like the father in the parable, isn't interested in contrition; only in the relationship continuing.  The only thing that will sever our relationship with God is when our guilt leads us to think that our acts and omissions have severed the relationship.  They can't, no matter what we have done or not done.  God will continue to show up in the little rooms where we hide from ourselves, others, and God, with no thought but that the relationship continue.  This is Easter.  This is new life.

The Other Prodigal Son

Readings of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which is the gospel lesson in this week's lectionary reading, typically see the older son who remains in the father's household as the good son, juxtaposed with the younger, "prodigal son" who wastes his father's inheritance and has to rely upon the father's mercy to be reconciled to the father and his household.  The good son is seen as having earned his father's approval though his hard work, diligence, and faithfulness to his father and his household responsibilities.

When we read the parable closely, however, we see that the older son is as lost as the younger son.  They both have the same nature, and that nature is narcissism and selfishness.  Significantly, when the younger son makes the outrageous and inappropriate demand that the father immediately divide his inheritance, the older son is complicit in the younger son's demand and makes no effort not to accept his half of the inheritance.  The younger son displays less self control than the older son.  The older son has a stronger work ethic and is willing to play by the father's rules and societal norms, but the older son wants exactly the same thing as the younger son: the father's inheritance.  In fact, we can say that the younger son is acting out the older son's desires.

Sometimes we are like the younger son, when we make serious mistakes and errors in judgment.  Sometimes we are like the older son, when we are diligent and hard working and play by the rules.  During this Season of Lent, which is ultimately a season of self examination and preparation for Easter, we must confront our nature.  During those times that we behave like the younger son, we know that we must rely upon God's grace.  Let's remember that during those times that we are like the older son, with our regular tithing and church attendance, we are just as narcissistic and self indulgent.  We are concerned with our temporal well being and our eternal well being.  And the father of the household  knows our nature.  Whichever son we emulate at the moment, we rely wholly upon God's grace for our place in the household.

The Cure for Our Collective Insanity

I have come to conclude that the human race suffers from a collective insanity.  This insanity manifests as abuse and anger, which is ultimately driven by the engine of fear.  We all suffer from this collective insanity, and as a result, we inflict enormous abuse to ourselves and to each other.

The same was true in Jesus' time.  Jesus prescribed a solution in Luke 13-.1-9, the parable of the fig tree.  The owner of a garden discovers a fig tree that is dying, so he tells the gardener about it.  The gardener replies that manure will be spread on the fig tree, and that it will be cut down in a year if no fruit grows from the tree.

It speaks volumes about our theology that most sermons on this text identify God as the gardener, and interpret the gardener's agenda as destroying the tree because the tree has not born fruit.  If we read the text carefully, we see that the gardener's agenda is to save the tree.  More importantly, if the tree fails to bear fruit, the tree is dying, and the act of cutting down the tree is redundant because the tree is already dead.

God is not the gardener or the owner.  God is the soil and the water.  God's role in this story, and in our story, is to bring us life, and God wants nothing more than for us to stop hurting ourselves and each other.  The last thing that the human race needs is more violence and death.  If there is more violence and death in this world, it is a product of our insanity, not God's acts or omissions.

Here is the good news of the story: it is the nature of the tree to grow fruit, just as it is our nature to live as God's people and overcome our insanity.  The human race is lost, but all it needs to do to be found is for us to look at ourselves, see that our collective insanity is causing us to hurt ourselves and each other, and do what is natural to us, which is to live in peace with ourselves and with one another.  God is eager to be in relationship with us and to impart grace to us so that we can be holy.

How the Church Persecutes Jesus

If you are trying to destroy a prophet and the prophet's message, you would think that the most effective way to accomplish this is by killing the prophet.  This is what the residents of Nazareth tried to do unsuccessfully.

Rome learned the hard way that killing prophets not only isn't the most effective way to silence them--it actually has the opposite effect.  Look at Jesus.  Jesus is executed by the Roman state by the most cruel and humiliating manner imaginable.  Killing Jesus failed to silence Jesus and the emerging movement that arose around him.  In fact, it empowered and energized the movement.  Rome learned the hard way that by killing a prophet, you actually send the opposite message intended.  You send the message that the prophet's message is important enough that it has to be removed.  You reveal your own inadequacies and powerlessness rather than the powerlessness of the prophet.

Over the centuries, Rome decided that it had to do something about the emerging Christian movement as it gained influence and numbers.  Everything about following Jesus cut against everything that Rome believed.  In Rome's worldview, there was nothing as important as the Roman State.  In fact, there were a number of rituals that were practiced that required citizen's to affirm the supreme importance of the State.  Roman society was built upon established standards of behavior in terms of class and gender. 

The emerging Christian movement was challenging all these understandings.  Followers of Jesus followed Jesus first and Rome second.  Followers of Jesus, paraphrasing Paul, believed that as Jesus had initiated a new Kingdom and new order of creation, there was no longer slave or free, and no longer male or female.

Rome silenced Jesus by doing something much more insidious than murder.  Rome silenced Jesus by endorsing Jesus and making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Or more specifically, by re-framing Jesus' message to one that was palatable to everything that Rome represented.  Jesus became the mouthpiece of Rome.  Christian leaders started dressing and acting like Roman politicians.  Churches started being built consistent with the architectural style of Roman seats of government.  Jesus' radical teachings about the Kingdom of God, loving our enemies, and concern for the outcast was downplayed if not outright ignored.

Here is a lesson for the Church.  Let Jesus speak with all his power and glory.  Let the teachings of Jesus transform us and make us a new creation.  The way to kill a prophet is to transform the prophet's message to one that simply parrots our preexisting beliefs and values.  Let me put it this way: if the Jesus that we believe in does not require us to radically change our lives, we are not believing in the real Jesus.

God as the Silent Actor Who Sustains the World

The story of Jesus' transformation of the water into wine in John's gospel is a great lectionary text for the season of Epiphany, because it is in indicative of the nature of the God who is revealed in Jesus and known to John's community.  This story is not found in the synoptic gospels and is found only in John's gospel.  In fact, also significant for Epiphany, it is the first manifestation of Jesus' power in John's gospel.  In the story, Jesus and the disciples are at a wedding feast, and the host of the feast is about to run out of wine.  This would be a great disappointment to the guests who want to continue the celebration and an embarrassment to the host.

I am often asked by persons who are agnostic or atheist why they believe in God, and I usually respond by first asking them about their understanding of God's nature.  After they finish telling me who they think that God is, I normally respond that I don't believe in the god that they don't believe in either.  Answering the question about who we think that God is is just as important as the question of whether we believe in God.

John's story of Jesus' transformation of water into wine tells us two significant things about God's nature.  First, it tells us that God's primary agenda is to create joy and celebration in the world.  The guests are about to run out of wine and Jesus creates more so that the celebration can continue.  For John's community, this evoked God's larger agenda in spreading joy and celebration everywhere.  It also tells us that God isn't interested in getting the credit.  Jesus' disciples in the story are the only ones who know that the water has been magically transformed into wine.  Jesus doesn't do anything to correct the guests' misconception that the host of the celebration has actually strategically withheld the best wine until the end of the celebration.

The Church is called to mirror what God does.  As God is not interested in taking credit for the transformation of the world, the Church is called to be the silent actor who is present in our communities quietly transforming lives and making the world a better place.  There is no limit to the good that we can do in this world if we are not interested in who gets the credit. 

The Secret Hidden from the Foundation of the World

In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that Christ revealed a secret that was hidden from the foundation of the world.  The secret that was revealed was God's nature.  In the Christian tradition, we inherit the affirmations of the ancient Church Fathers who proclaimed that God and Christ were of the same nature and the same substance.  If we hold that God  Jesus have the same nature, then in the life and ministry of Jesus, we see a reflection of the nature of the God of all eternity.

God's nature, as revealed in Jesus, is ultimate concern for the creation.   This is what ties the story of Jesus together--the manger, the sermon on the mount, the Last Supper, and the final week of Jesus' life all reveal that Jesus lived as the servant of all people, putting the needs of others over his own needs.  This is the nature of the God who lives and reigns forever and ever, and in the life of Jesus, the veil is lifted and we see God's nature revealed.

God did not place a veil over our eyes preventing us from seeing God's true nature.  We were inhibited from seeing God's true nature because of our own sin.  The veil that prevented us from seeing God's true nature was our own darkness.

The Church is the community that is the repository of this great secret that was hidden from the foundation of the world.  As such, the Church is simply called to act as if it knows and believes that secret.  If the Church truly believed that the nature of the God of all eternity was to life as a servant and to give His life for the life of the world, and that as God's children, we as human beings are called to do the same, there is no limit to the light that the Church could bring to the darkness of the world.