The Bible and the Constitution II: Amendments

A while back, I wrote about the need for Biblical interpretation, and used The U.S. Constitution as an example. Here’s a snippet:

“The United States Constitution was written 223 years ago (I confess, I had to look that up). It was written in English. It is fairly short – seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. You can easily get through it in an afternoon. It is the shortest constitution still in use by a modern nation (thanks, Wikipedia). It is one genre – a legal document. Its language is purposely straightforward - meant to be clear and easy to interpret. It is the supreme law of the United States.

Yet…
As the supreme law of the United States, it requires interpretation. We have nine people whose only job is to interpret those seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. And we don’t let just anybody do that job. We prefer to have people who have experience with law to interpret the supreme law of the land.

Now think about this:
The books that make up the Bible were written somewhere between 3000 to 2000 years ago. They were written in Hebrew and Greek (and a little Aramaic). It is composed of 66 books (more if you are Catholic), of varying genres, including historical narrative, legal material, parables, poetry, prophecy (a much misunderstood genre), letters, gospels, and one apocalypse (the most misunderstood genre of all). And believers assert that through this book it is possible to hear the eternal message of God Himself, the supreme Guide to human life.

Can you see how it might require interpretation? Life isn’t as simple as “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it,” anyway, but especially so if you haven’t understood what the Bible says in the first place.”

With that said, there is another correspondence between the constitution and the Bible. But first, an observation.

There are two groups of people that talk about the Bible as though God sat down at a typewriter and said “Lo, I shall write The Book of Everything,” and then, as one of my professors used to say, threw it down from heaven and knocked a monk off a donkey.

The first group are (usually) well-meaning Christians who approach the Bible that way because they believe it to be the inspired word of God, and believe that is the only faithful way to manifest that belief. The second group are atheists and agnostics. Both see the Bible as speaking with one voice, the first as proof of the will of God on any given issue, the latter as proof that evil and idiocy march about in the world under the mask of being the will of God.

The trouble with both views is that the Bible is more complex than that. But first, the constitution.

In their wisdom, the forefathers planned a system for amending the supreme law of the land. They were smart enough to know that they didn’t know everything, and couldn’t predict the future. So they came up with a way for succeeding generations to alter the supreme law of the land, while still holding to the basic framework of what had gone before – in this case, representative democracy.

And, get this. Unlike most national constitutions, when an amendment is made, the original text is not changed. The 18th amendment (alcohol bad!) is still in the constitution. It is superceded by the 21st amendment, but not cut out. There are other examples we could find, but that’s the easiest, most familiar one. Why do we do it that way? To remind us where we came from? To remind us who we were? To remind us of what we thought was a good idea at the time?

I propose to you that the Bible contains within itself a form of amendment. Take, for example, the Levitical law, the popular whipping boy for atheist and agnostic observers of the Bible. This is the nuts and bolts of the covenant with Israel. The supreme law of the land. And then there’s the prophets. Leviticus makes a BIG deal about the Sabbath day, festivals, and all kinds of offerings. Then Amos comes along and says (speaking on behalf of God) “I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and grain offerings; I will not accept them…But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:22, 24)

Both Leviticus and Amos are answering the question “What does God require of us?” They give different, but related answers. Amos doesn’t suggest that God wants to abolish Jewish festivals – but he suggests that there are things that God desires more. The supreme law is re-interpreted, while still holding to the basic framework of what had gone before.

And for Christians, things really get interesting in the New Testament. The Word becomes flesh, and starts amending things left and right like some sort of super-prophet. “Moses said this, but I say…” and all sorts of other disturbing things. Flipping over the tables in the temple was an acted-out amendment (You won’t need THIS old dump anymore!) Quite scandalous – but always maintaining the basic framework, and leaving the original text in place.

A very old Christian heresy was that there was the mean old God of the Old Testament and the nice God of the New. Jesus, the walking Amendment, doesn’t let us do that. Jesus came, He said, not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Jesus is the climax of the story that God has been telling from the beginning (and before the beginning). His story is the story of Israel. And Israel’s story is the story of God in the world. And both stories still matter. But not all pieces of the whole still hold the same authority over the people of God that they once might have - because of the amendments.

As much as we might like it to be, for whatever reason, the Bible is not a one-shot, one-size fits all document. It is complex and involved – like the God we believe speaks through it.

The Feast of St. Augustine

August 28th is a good day, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s my birthday, and this year I turned 31.

It’s also the Feast Day of Saint Augustine. He is one of the most interesting and influential people who have been followers of Christ. He lived from 354-430 B.C. And he became a Christian at age 31.



He was born in North Africa when it was part of the Roman Empire, an Empire making the transition to a “Christian Empire,” after Constantine declared that Rome wouldn’t be killing Christians anymore, and in fact, if you wanted to get ahead in politics, you might want to look into becoming one. He was likely of the ethnicity of the people who would eventually be called Berbers.

Augustine’s mother was a Christian, his father a pagan. He learned early on that he had a gift for oratory, and he became a student and later a teacher of rhetoric. He also learned he liked the company of women. He had kept a mistress for many years, with whom he had a son. He grew up thinking the Christian faith to the refuge of imbeciles and superstitious ninnies (with the exception of his mother), and preferred the more exclusive, high-sounding teachings of the group called the Manicheans. They had secret knowledge that had to be worked for and wrestled with – not this ‘gospel for all’ the Christians preached.

Through the good preaching and good company of a bishop named Ambrose, Augustine slowly came around to the idea that you could be smart and a Christian, as well as the realization that the Manicheans were full of crap, to use a theological term.

But an intellectual conversion isn’t a full conversion – knowing all the right answers had always been important for Augustine, but God had more in store for him. At a moment of great personal crisis, he heard the voice of a child singing ‘Take up and read.’ So he picked up his copy of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and did the thing that Bible teachers, myself included, tell you not to do, which is just open it up randomly and see what it says. He opened to Romans 13:13-14 “13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” He says in his Confessions, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

He and his son were baptized by Ambrose on Easter Sunday the next year.

He became a priest, then a bishop in the North African town of Hippo. He wrote a LOT. Confessions, his most famous work, is often credited as the first autobiography, or at least the first spiritual autobiography. And he was no slouch as a philosopher. A good chunk of Confessions is his philosophy of the nature of time, and how our perception of it entirely depends on the nature of human memory. I told you he was smart.

He has been described as the last of the great ancient thinkers, and the first great medieval thinker. He wasn’t perfect, even after his conversion. You might find things objectionable about his theology, his harsh approach to heretics, his theory of just war, or other things. But the beautiful thing about Augustine is that he admitted he wasn’t perfect. He wrote a book about the topic, as a matter of fact.

Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and yes, St. Augustine, Florida. He is often symbolized in iconography by a pierced heart. And my favorite band wrote this song about him.

August 28th is his feast day because, like all saints, it is the day that he died. It is cause for feasting, not mourning, for he is with the One he loves, and we anticipate the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.

And at the risk of making this post way too long, some of my favorite parts of Confessions, with my comments in parentheses:

“You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.”

“It is not the infant’s will that is harmless, but the weakness of infant limbs.” (All the parents holla back!)

On the untimely death of his best friend: “My heart was made dark by sorrow, and whatever I looked upon was death. Whatever I had done together with him was, apart from him, turned into a cruel torture. I hated all things, because they no longer held him.”

“Unless we could weep into Your ears, no trace of hope would remain for us.”

“To me then You were not what You are, but an empty phantom, and my error was my god.”

“Blessed is the man who loves You, and his friend in You, and his enemy for Your sake.”

“More beautiful than all those things I desired to know is the modest mind that admits its own limitations.”

“Manners I did not want for myself as a student I was forced to endure in others when I became a teacher.” (All the teachers holla back!)

“That sin was the more incurable where I judged myself to be no sinner.”

“I did not think it possible to defend the things in Your Scriptures to which men had objected. Sometimes I desired greatly to discuss individual points with someone highly trained in those books and find out what he thought of them. [The Manicheans] would assert that the New Testament writings were falsified by some unknown persons who wished to implant foreign ideas into the Christian faith. However, they themselves did not produce any uncorrupted copies.” (There is nothing new under the sun.)

On Ambrose: “I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in Your Church, but as a man who was kindly disposed toward me.”

On preparing a speech in praise of the emperor: “In it I would tell many a lie, and for my lies I would be applauded by men who knew that I was lying.”

“Just as fawning friends pervert us, so also quarrelsome enemies often correct us.”

“Caught fast in a disease of the flesh and its deadly sweetness, I dragged along my chains and was fearful of being loosed from them.”

“I asked, ‘What is iniquity?’ and I found that it is not a substance. It is perversity of will, twisted away from the supreme substance, You, O God.”

“I sought for a way of gaining strength sufficient for me to have joy in You, but I did not find it until I embraced ‘the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,' who is over all things, God blessed forever.” (1 Tim. 2:5, Romans 9:5)

At one point, Augustine prayed the most honest, hilarious prayer ever: “Give me chastity and continence – but not yet!”

“The unlearned rise up and take heaven by storm, and we, with all our erudition but empty of heart - see how we wallow in flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow, because they have gone on ahead of us?”

On remembering: “Men go forth to marvel at the mountain heights, at huge waves in the sea, at the broad expanse of flowing rivers, at the wide reaches of the ocean, and at the circuits of the stars, but themselves they pass by.”

“What thing within me could be hidden from You, even if I would not confess it to You? I would be hiding You from myself, not myself from You.”

On Jesus: “For us, He is before You both victor and victim, and therefore victor for the reason that He is victim.”

“Your best servant is he who looks not so much to hear from You what he wants to hear, but rather to want what he hears from You.”

“You first healed me from the passion for self-vindication, so that You might also forgive all my other iniquities.”

“I can find no safe place for my soul except in You. In You may my scattered longings be gathered together, and from You may no part of me ever depart. Sometimes You admit me in my innermost being into a most extraordinary affection, mounting within me to an indescribable sweetness. If this is perfected in me, it will be something – I know not what – that will not belong to this life."

Lift Up Thine Eyes

Take a good look at the picture below.

Don’t just scan – really look. Notice.



That’s “Lift Up Thine Eyes” by Norman Rockwell, published in 1969. The title is an adapted quote from Psalm 121:1-2 – “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills; from whence shall come my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”

The title also appears on the little church sign at the front of the cathedral. This picture is a great example of the ironic spirit of a lot of Rockwell’s work, but this one is more serious than whimsical, or at least it seems so to me.

What did you notice about the picture? Which way were your eyes drawn? My guess is you first saw that horizontal line of people, then were drawn up into the opening of that great gothic arch, and finally followed that line of birds all the way up to the right corner of the painting. That my friends, is composition at work!

Did you notice the hunched and harried look of the passers-by? The spectacular tail-fin on that car? The apostles gathered in the alcoves?

My favorite thing about this picture is something that I DIDN’T notice till the third or fourth time I looked at it. The passers-by of course are not noticing the beauty around them, but they also are not noticing EACH OTHER. Most of them are looking at the next step they are about to take. The only people in the picture who are looking at each other are the minister and the man on the ladder, and the lady on her way down the steps, who at least has the potential to see the other people around her. We’ll come back to that.

This picture also reminds me of this song.

This was, according to the composer, Walt Disney’s favorite song. And it isn’t about birds. The line right before this song starts is “Some people can’t see past the end of their nose.” And again, not only is there a message about not noticing the beautiful cathedral, but about not noticing the people outside the cathedral, either. And how a very little bit can make a big difference to someone.

Now, a thought exercise. If you were to update Rockwell’s picture to the modern day, what would change? That great tailfin would be gone. The people’s clothes would different – all those great hats would disappear. And, as one of my youth astutely pointed out, there would be cell phones in all their hands and bluetooths in their ears. But would their posture be changed? Have all the technology and doo-dads that fill our lives really helped us notice one another, or are they just more sophisticated ways of NOT noticing what is actually around us?
And what would be unchanged, 40 years later? The face of the cathedral. Built to last, and with an enduring purpose – to remind people to lift up their eyes. Not just to scan, but to SEE, to NOTICE.

Richard Foster, in his classic “Celebration of Discipline,” lists “Study” as a discipline of the Christian life, and defines it like this: “Study is a specific kind of experience in which through careful attention to reality the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction.” He adds, “Remember, the mind will always take on an order conforming to the order upon which it concentrates.”

And this brings us back to the people in the picture, those who are not noticing each other and those who are. If we lift up our eyes and see, look at, and notice the things that endure, that inspire, that remind us of Another, we will then be in a better place to see, notice, and CARE about ONE ANOTHER – the people we don’t see when we are just looking at the next step in front of us.

There’s one more thing I love about this picture. The mighty counter-cultural weapon of the minister and his assistant is a black sign with those little white stick-on letters. In the shadow of a great gothic arch and surrounded by a great crowd of witnesses, they do the best they can with what they’ve got. And that’s ministry.

The Other Sermon

This is a true story.

Linda was a preacher's kid. That didn't summarize her entire identity, you understand, but ask any preacher's kid – it's kind of a big deal. Linda, fortunately for her parents, was the good kind of preacher's kid. Her older brother was the other kind. The hellion. She was the angel. Well. She WAS the angel. That had been many years ago, when she still lived under her parents' roof. She went off to college – a Christian college, of course – and had plenty of ups and downs in a lot of areas in her life, and she discovered a few things about herself. Things she had never discovered as the good preacher's kid. She discovered that she liked to drink. And that she liked to smoke. She discovered that the people that drank and smoked seemed to be pretty good company, and she discovered that lightning didn't strike her when she didn't go to church.

She graduated from college and moved to West Texas. A good friend of hers from college moved with her and they became roommates. Life was pretty good. She was thinking about graduate school, and better paying jobs.

Thanksgiving came along one year, and Linda asked if she could bring her roommate to the big family dinner. "Sure," the folks said, "The more the merrier." Little did they know. On the way from West Texas to East Oklahoma Linda and her roommate picked up Grandma. Trouble brewing. When Linda's roommate lit up a cigarette in the car, Grandma went ballistic. Words were said. Grandma asked to be let out on the side of the highway, refusing to travel any further. A truce was reached. The journey continued with simmering hostility between roommate and Grandma, and Linda on edge. See, Grandma was the reasonable one.

Thanksgiving holidays! A time for feasting, reunion, and animosity. Linda's roommate took her smoke breaks outside. This gave Linda's parents and Grandma a good opportunity to talk to Linda about the low character of the people she was associating with, and what did that mean about Linda anyway? Did SHE smoke? Did SHE drink? Well as a matter of fact, she did, Linda exclaimed. And that was the point where tension escalated into all-out war.

The day after Thanksgiving, Linda and her roommate took their stuff and left the house and went to a motel. Linda's dad drove around town the next day looking for them. Linda's mom called around town trying to locate them. Linda's mom found them first. Mom told Linda her father wanted to meet with her at his office. "No way," Linda said. She wasn't going to meet him in the seat of his authority. We need neutral ground. They met at the bowling alley. Linda's dad didn't exactly apologize, and neither did she, but they made steps toward peace. The next day was Sunday. Linda's dad asked her to come to church, and he offered her a concession. What sermon would she like him to preach? Linda had grown up with this, remember. Week in and week out, she heard her dad's sermons. She knew them all. "Joshua Adams," she said. 'Joshua Adams' was her dad's 'what if Jesus came today?' sermon. It imagined a prophetic figure coming into a town and sharing grace and forgiveness with the cast-offs and the lowlifes. Sharing grace in such a way that the high and mighty and holier-than-thous were offended, and ran him out of town. "Okay," Linda's dad said.

On Sunday morning Linda and her roommate sat in the pew of her father's church, sang the hymns, and watched as he got behind the pulpit. He preached a sermon about....the evils of smoking and drinking. In eloquently condemnatory terms he warmed to the topic. It took Linda's roommate grabbing her arm and forcing her to sit down to keep Linda from leaving the sanctuary.



It wasn't the last time Linda ever spoke to her dad, but it was pretty close.

Oh, it might also be good for you to know, if you haven't already guessed, that Linda's roommate was also her girlfriend. That was one of the other things she discovered at college – she was gay. Linda doesn't know if her parents ever knew that – she suspects Grandma knew, but never said anything. Grandma was the reasonable one.

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Linda is a real person, but her name isn't Linda. Through an interesting set of circumstances we met and she got to tell me her story. This is the part that has affected me most, and that I wanted to share, with her gracious permission.

There are no words I can muster to express to you the heartbreak of learning that Linda's dad preached the sermon he preached instead of the one Linda asked to hear. The story speaks for itself.

What I can tell you, what I KNOW in the deepest, most sincere part of myself, is that the Other Sermon is still true. Jesus comes and preaches good news to the lost –that there is grace and forgiveness in the arms of the Father. And He does it today as surely as He did it then. Just because the Other Sermon went unspoken doesn't mean it isn't true.

Brothers and sisters, preachers and teachers, fathers and mothers, please preach the Other Sermon as often you can. Linda ASKED for the Other Sermon because she had heard it, and though she was far from where she started, she still wanted to believe that it was true. She was already well aware of the content of the sermon that she actually got that terrible Sunday.

Many of those we come into contact with don't know to ask for the Other Sermon. They may be only vaguely aware of the Other Sermon – the gospel of grace and the far-fetched story of a God who loves self-sacrificially. They likely already have quite concrete ideas about what sermons usually sound like – they anticipate the kind that Linda got. They get it. It's not hard to understand.

The Other Sermon is a different matter. The grace of God is deep. It is profound, and likely will need to be talked about multiple times. And it will need, in some concrete way, to be seen to be believed.

I got the chance to tell Linda that the Other Sermon is still true. Would you please do the same for those that need to hear it?

Working Outside the System with Jesus

In the gospels, there are a lot of people who get saved in strange ways. A woman sneaks up behind Jesus, touches his cloak, and gets healed from a chronic condition. Jesus says to her, “Your faith has saved you.”

Jesus heals 10 men from leprosy, and one former leper, unlike his 9 similarly healed friends, comes back to thank Jesus, and Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you.”

A man is told by Jesus to climb out of a tree, because he’s coming over for dinner. On the way, he promises to give away half his stuff, and repay 4 times anyone that he cheated. Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

A paralyzed man’s four friends carry him up to the roof of house, dig a hole in the roof and lower their friend down, and Jesus (“seeing their faith”) tells him “Your sins are forgiven.”

In Luke chapter 7, there’s another, particularly gripping set of actions that leads to salvation:

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner."

Jesus tells the Pharisee a little parable about two debtors whose debts were canceled, and the Pharisee correctly deduces that the one who was forgiven the larger amount would be much more excited about the debt cancellation.

Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Now there’s a plan of salvation! Crash a party at a Pharisees’ house where Jesus is eating, pour perfume and cry on his feet, and then wipe his feet with your hair. Don’t say a single word the whole time. And bingo, your sins are forgiven and you’re saved.

Interestingly, the Pharisee is more offended at Jesus than the spectacle going on at his dinner table. Miracles and wise teaching aside, letting prostitutes touch you clearly indicates that you are not speaking on behalf of God, in this Pharisee’s informed opinion.

And then Jesus forgives her! It’s important to note that there was already a system in place for this woman to seek forgiveness – and this wasn’t it. Sacrifices would need to be made. Made at the temple, administered by officials, everything checked and dated a recorded in the daily log. This effusive, bizarre offering is way outside the ‘normal’ way of being saved. I think it would still be considered outside the boundaries of polite society for prostitutes to interrupt a religious leader’s dinner party to cry on someone’s feet.

It’s very interesting to me how many of these acts of salvation in the gospels occur not only on the initiative of the people seeking salvation, but on their invasion of Jesus’ personal space. Sneaking up behind people and grabbing their clothes is rude. A gang of ten lepers coming at you would normally send people the other direction. Digging a hole in someone’s roof is not typically acceptable behavior.

These stories excite me – I still believe Jesus is powerfully attractive to those who we would normally consider outsiders. The sick, the unclean, the immoral – even the godless fatcats. But they challenge me as well. What if these people try to reach Jesus in a way that’s outside my preferred system? What if Jesus tries to reach them outside my preferred system? What if they invade MY personal space, expecting by some miracle to meet Jesus through me? What if they dig a hole in MY roof, or my churches’ roof? How will I explain that to the finance committee?

Will we be able to see Jesus working outside the system?

God's Scandalously Bad Economics

God’s going to go out of business if He keeps this up!

I mean, look at this ridiculous behavior:

1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a day’s wage for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 About 9am he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5 So they went. "He went out again about noon and 3pm and did the same thing. 6 About 5pm he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' 7 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.'

8"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' 9 The workers who were hired about 5 came and each received a full day’s wage. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a day’s wage. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.'

13 "But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a day’s wage? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?' 16 So the last will be first, and the first will be last." – Matthew 20:1-16

This is no way to run a business! You can’t just throw your money to the wind that way, and you certainly don’t want to alienate your most faithful workers.

And make no mistake. The landowner is intended to be God. How you take this parable probably depends on whether you feel like a worker who’s been bearing the burden of the work and the heat of the day, or whether you identify more with the 5pm crowd (in Greek “the eleventh hour”). It's not a huge revelation to think of God as merciful, but Jesus here puts it into such concrete terms that it makes us scratch our heads, and start thinking of exceptions to a pretty exceptional picture of God.

Let me add a little more fuel to this fire. Why were the 5pm people unable to get hired to work before?

Two possibilities spring to mind (and there are likely more – the beauty of a parable):
1. There was something wrong with them. Potential employers came and went and passed this group by, mentally moving their resumes to the bottom of the pile. Whether physical infirmity or just an unsavory look about them, nobody was hiring – at least not them. If this is the case, then God in this parable is the one who accepts the otherwise unacceptable – and treats them as equals with the fittest and the finest. The last shall be first.

But there’s another possibility.

2. The 5pm crowd is lying. When asked, they tell the landowner they were ‘standing around all day’ because no one hired them. What if that’s because they weren’t trying very hard to get hired? Are they trustworthy narrators? What if they slept till noon, had a leisurely lunch, watched ‘Days of Our Lives,’ ‘Jeopardy,’ and ‘Oprah’ and THEN decided to try to find some work? And they get hired and paid a full day’s wage! If this is the case, then God is …what? Beyond merciful? Ridiculously redemptive? Rewarding bad behavior? In a more famous, but similar parable, that was the older son’s take on the situation when his wasteful, wanton brother got a celebration feast for dragging his butt back to the home he never should have left. It’s scandalous!

Is it unfair to the early morning crowd? I asked the youth “If the early morning crowd sued the landowner for unfair labor practices, and you were the judge, how would you decide the case?” They all said for the landowner. One astutely said “There was a verbal contract!” Yet there is something about this that makes us shift in our seats.

And verse 15 is the crux of the matter. That last sentence, “Are you envious because I am generous?” says in literal Greek “Is your eye evil because I am good?”

Brothers and sisters, I am afraid we have not yet realized the depth of the mercy of God. We create systems and schemes and detailed criteria to determine who’s in and who’s out. If we were running the vineyard we’d have flow charts and sliding pay scales, and we probably would decide it wasn’t worth the effort to hire anyone at the eleventh hour!

But God doesn’t think like we do. Apparently God wakes up in the morning, stretches His Almighty arm and His Righteous right hand, and asks Himself “What undeserving wretch can I shower my blessings on today?”

God, may our preaching and teaching and lives and ministry do justice to Your scandalous grace. Help our eyes not to become evil because You are good

The Alphabet of Suffering

“It organizes grief, patiently going over the ground, step by step, insisting on the significance of each detail of suffering. The pain is labeled – defined and objectified.” So says Eugene Peterson, describing the effect of the structure of one of the often neglected Biblical books – Lamentations. The structure is acrostic poetry. Each of the chapters of Lamentations has 22 verses, each beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The 3rd chapter has three verses for each letter. It takes suffering from, so to speak, A to Z.

Peterson, in his book “Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work,” suggests that this repetition of the form has a specific meaning – the one mentioned above which “guarantees that the grief and despair are expressed completely. One of the commonest ways to deal with another’s suffering is to make light of it, to gloss it over, to attempt shortcuts through it. Lamentations provides a structure to guarantee against that happening.”

What would that look like in English? This is not an acrostic poem as much as an alphabetical list, but I think it might be something like this:

A is for awful, agony, apathy, ashes to ashes, AIDS, addicted, abandoned, aborted, abused,
accused, Alzheimer’s, anger, adultery, amputated

B is for back-stabbed, bankrupt, bereaved, beat-up, blasted, bruised, broken, betrayed,
burned, broken, broke up, blind

C is for crushed, cancer, caught, cheated, coma, convicted, coffin

D is for destroyed, debased, dead, dust to dust, delayed, depressed, distressed, down-
sized, disabled, deaf, disordered, diseased, divorced, damned

E is for entropy, embarrassed, exploited, estranged

F is for failed, fear, forgotten, false, funeral

G is for grieved, given up, gone, genocide, guilty, graveside

H is for helpless, hopeless, harassed, holocaust, HIV, homeless, hungry, humiliated, hurt

I is for ignored, incurable, inoperable, imperfect, infertile, illegitimate, irreversible, ICU

J is for justice (looking for), jealousy

K is for killed

L is for loser, lonely, last, lost, least, loveless, listless

M is for maligned, malignant, mute, miscarried, mistake, murdered

N is for never, “no,” nursing home

O is for oppressed, overlooked, obese, ostracized

P is for passed over, prejudiced, paraplegic, poor, PTSD, pain, pornography, paralyzed

Q is for quiet (too quiet), quadriplegic, quit

R is for racism, raped, run down

S is for sin, stillborn, stalled, slandered, stolen, sexually harassed, schizophrenia, stroke

T is for terrified, troubled, trembling, terminal, tortured, tumor

U is for unloved, unattractive, untouchable, unfaithful, ugly

V is for vegetative state, vicious, violence

W is for wasted, war, wrath, wounded

X is for ex-wife, ex-husband

Y is for yearning, yelling

Z is for zero percent chance

This is not an exhaustive list. I don’t know if you have the same reaction I do to a list like this, but I find that there are many of these that sort of wash over me, and some that catch and stick in my soul. At first, it seems like a list of context-less words. But all of these have a context – either in your life or in the life of someone you love. All of these words have a picture – and wouldn’t that be the worst children’s book ever?

Another function of Lamentations, Peterson declares, is to ground suffering in history. In its particular case, the situation was the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylonian exile in 587 B.C. But in a general sense, the idea is “to locate suffering. Names, places, buildings, dates are ways of tethering suffering, holding it within the framework of history.”

Suffering, for the vast majority of us, has less to do with vague existential angst, and more to do with things that happened or are happening in our lives.

A final meaning for the acrostic of suffering is that it also “puts limits upon the repetitions. If there is a beginning of evil, there is also an end to it. Sorrow and suffering are not infinite. Ministry to the sufferer must establish the significance of what is suffered; it must not concede its ultimacy.”

At the end of suffering, or in anticipation of its end, can we find an alternative vocabulary? It might look like this:

A is for adopted
B is for born again
C is for compassion
D is for deliverance
E is for eternal life
F is for forgiveness, freedom, found
G is for grace
H is for hope, help, healing
I is for invited
J is for justice
K is for kindness
L is for life
M is for mercy
N is for new creation
O is for overcome
P is for purified
Q is for quieted
R is for redeemed, reconciliation, resurrection
S is for salvation, sanctified
T is for triumphant
U is for united
V is for victory
W is for washed clean
X is for exodus
Y is for “yes”
Z is for Zion

Are these more context-less words? We can clearly picture the suffering in our lives – it is linked to our history. How will this alternative vocabulary come to us? How do you picture hope? Salvation? Victory? What does that look like?

We may have to wait and see. But I have good news. Whatever particular form redemption takes in your life, it has already begun in history. Victory has a date, a name, and a place. Hope has a picture. We know what it looks like.

It looks like an empty tomb.

The Singular Case of the Second-Guessing Prophet

John the Baptist was the second most important person of his generation. The angel Gabriel announced his miraculous birth. He lived a life that distinguished him from his contemporaries. Sinners came to him to repent. Pharisees came to argue with him. Roman soldiers came to hear what he had to say. He attracted a committed group of disciples who stayed faithful to him and to his teachings for years after his death. The Gospel writers have a tendency to look to Old Testament prophecy to explain his life. Everyone in Israel knew who he was, and had some opinion of him. People wondered if he was the reappearance of the prophet Elijah, or even the Messiah.

He wasn’t the Messiah. He was the Forerunner. He was the man who bridged the eras. He was the B.C. man who prepared everyone for the A.D. He was the MC of Israel, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of excited expectation before the main act. He was the last Old Testament prophet – he just happens to be in the New Testament.

And like all prophets, he ended up persecuted. In this case, imprisoned by Herod Antipas, son of Herod “the Great.”

In prison, he has time to reflect. His life’s purpose was to prepare the way – to announce the main act – to call the people to repentance in anticipation of The One Who Is to Come.

Matthew 11:1-6
After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"

Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not stumble on account of me."

The imprisoned prophet can preach no more. No more baptizing. His only audience is curious king, who at a moment’s notice might take his life. He must depend on his disciples for any contact with the outside world. His life’s work is essentially over.

And he had fulfilled his role. Or had he? Matthew, Mark, and Luke are curiously quiet about John’s reaction to Jesus’ baptism. There is his statement that it is Jesus, his cousin, who needs to baptize him. But they don’t really go into detail.

So the prophet needs to know, straight-up, no messing around, from Jesus – is Jesus the The One Who is to Come? Is he the one we have set our hopes on since the times of Abraham, and David, and the never-quite realized glorious return from exile? Is he The One who will change everything and set things right? John is nearly at the end of the line. He needs to know if he has backed the winning candidate. He needs assurance that what he had done mattered. He needs to know that his work has not been in vain.

And Jesus answers his question as only Jesus can do. “Watch me. Look closely at what I have done, and what I do.”

Apparently Jesus invited John’s disciples to travel along with him for a few days and report back what they saw. Jesus helpfully summarizes by quoting the book of Isaiah (he knew John would like that). It’s Isaiah 35 – the eyes of the blind will be opened, the deaf will hear, and Isaiah 61 – the poor have the gospel preached to them.

The case of the second-guessing prophet is not as singular as we might like to think. Anyone who has been called to be a prophet and proclaim the word of the Lord, and cry out in the wilderness in some sense or another will come to the point John came to. The place where you can’t do what you did before. Where you have to depend on the people you taught to carry on in the way you taught them.

And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that every Christian will come to this point sooner or later. We want to know if the One we have put our hopes in is really who we hoped he was. We still want to know if He is the One Who is to Come. We need to know if was have baked the winning candidate, that what we have done has mattered. We need to know that our work has not been in vain.

And Jesus says, “Watch me. Look closely at what I have done and what I do.”

The last word today goes to the Chinese pastor, writer, and martyr Watchman Nee – “God will answer all of our questions in one way and one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.”

On Glenn Beck, Communism, and Social Justice

On a recent radio broadcast, (http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/08/glenn-beck-urges-listeners-to-leave-churches-that-preach-social/) Fox News personality Glenn Beck urged Christians to look for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on their church website, discuss what the leader of the church (“your priest”) understood the meaning of those words to be, and then encouraged members to leave those congregations (“run as fast as you can”), and report the church leader to higher church authorities (“alert your bishop”). The reasoning behind this encouragement was vague, but hinged on the idea that the words “social justice” are “code words.” Later in the broadcast, Beck pointed to communism and Nazism as movements that espoused “social justice.” Presumably, he meant that “social justice” is a “code word” for communism.

He told a concerned caller whose daughter is attending Catholic confirmation class that “social justice is a perversion of the Gospel,” in the sense that we are to look to the government to provide for the needy. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003110017

In a later broadcast, (http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003120015,) he asserted that if by “social justice” the church means “when you empower yourself to go out and help the poor, then that’s exactly what Jesus or Allah or Buddha, or whoever it is, would like you to do.” But if it means “supporting big government” and “big government programs” then “you don’t have a church, what you have is an organ of the government.”

The later broadcast seems to have been in response to church leaders’ protests of his earlier statements, in particular that of evangelical pastor Jim Wallis.

I am of two minds on this subject. One is that it is probably counterproductive to argue about what Beck means, since he is speaking in vague generalizations. He uses a lot of loaded words. He makes a point, but seems to make it in the same way a political cartoon does, and with the same kind of reaction. People either immediately agree or disagree. They think the interpretation is true or they don’t. His purpose appears to be to agitate, not spark reasoned discussion and problem solving.

The other perspective is that Beck is a shaper of public opinion, and the only way to counteract bad shaping of public opinion is to engage in public discourse. I stay out of most of the political stuff, because I am a minister of the gospel. But now we are talking about the gospel. So let’s dance.

So, my plan is to dodge the gut reaction route, unpack some of the loaded words for those who have ears to hear, and instead ask a better question:

Q: Is “social justice”, as most churches and Christians understand it, a code word for communism and big government?

A: No. It is not.

“Social justice” at its broadest meaning, means a just society . It means a society founded on justice and a fair shake for all people, not only the advantaged. It means that no one is forgotten, no one is abandoned, and no one is excluded.

Beck is correct in that various groups and movements have had as their purpose, in reality or in word only, a just society. Do all groups that seek a just society propose to go about getting there in the same way? Let’s see.

When most churches or individual Christians speak of social justice they mean Biblical social justice. It is, as you would guess, based on the Bible. The Bible speaks of social justice powerfully from the Torah (orphans, widows, and immigrants get special mention, and then there’s the year of Jubilee) to the OT prophets (condemning the corrupt, advocating for the poor) to Jesus to Acts and the New Testament and even Paul (sharing a common meal and raising money to help victims of famine). I can give you verse references if you want, but that would get overwhelming real quick, so I’ll just give you one that I think sums it up nicely “Whoever has the worlds’ goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” – 1 John 3:17

The only way you can avoid the clear teaching of the Bible about social justice is to ignore large sections of the Bible, or interpret those sections to mean the opposite of what they clearly say, which amounts to the same thing.

Social justice is not the only thing the Bible teaches. A false distinction has often been made between the spiritual needs of people and the physical needs of people. The Bible does not make that distinction, and presumes that the people of God will care about BOTH the spiritual need of the world to be reconciled to God and for the physical needs of the those who lack to be taken care of.

A just society is a goal that is perhaps unreachable by human effort alone. But it is still the Biblical goal for all human relationships, based on the model provided by a good, gracious, and merciful God who desires none to perish, and sends rain on the just and the unjust, and on the belief that all people are created in the image of God, and are equally beloved of God. It is to be reached for, according to the Bible, by sacrificial giving and meeting needs in the name of Christ.

Is this the same thing as communism?

Well, there’s at least two definitions of communism. Theoretical communism proposes a classless, stateless society, in which all property is commonly controlled. But it is not based on the example of or authority of God. It is based on the concept of the pure equality of humanity, and that all people can be equal in the eyes of one another.

So, that kind of communism doesn’t exist. It is similar in theory to the kind of society envisioned by Biblical social justice, but is not at all based on the same foundation.

Which leads us to historical communism , the kind the USSR had and China has, in which the government owns the means of production and has a centrally planned economy. It excludes a belief in God entirely from its system, and though it preaches the equality of all people in theory, it is far, far, from executing that in practice. THAT is clearly not Biblical social justice.

Historical communism is a form of socialism , which is a broad term that in theory means that the public owns the means of production that there is equal access to resources, but in history usually ends up with government owning the means of production and giving access to resources however it feels like. That was the socialism of National Socialism, otherwise known as Nazism. That Nazism has nothing to do with Biblical social justice is so obvious that it needs no comment.

It is important to note that the vision of a just society of both theoretical communism and socialism would require the end of capitalism. Biblical social justice envisions a just society that could theoretically exist within any economic system. It stands over and above any economic system, because it sees humans as more than cogs in a system, even an equal system. It sees them as children of God.

I think, as far as I can tell from his statements, that Beck is equating socialism and communism with government-run assistance programs. Those, by the way, would fall under the category social democracy , which aims to democratically reform, or lessen the effects of, unjust practices of a capitalist state through state-sponsored regulation and programs. Medicare and Medicaid are examples of social democratic programs. So is TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, commonly known as welfare), Social democracy and socialism are not the same thing.

And here’s where the real issue is. Buried and obscured underneath loaded terminology, is the question, does Biblical social justice encourage Christians to support government attempts to provide justice and basic well-being for all of its citizens? I actually think there’s room for debate here, but here’s my two cents.

Three things:
1. Ideally, any community, city, state, or nation with enough Christians in it wouldn’t need government sponsored welfare programs, because we would already be all over it. The love of God would prompt us to meet the needs of those around us - all of them.

But apparently we don’t love God that much, so we have left the care of the needy to others.

2. That’s the cynical view. The more positive view is that the government’s influence by definition is more far-reaching than any Christian community. Christians are members of this marvelous democracy of ours, and we get a say in how our government seeks to establish justice and provide for its citizens’ general welfare. It makes sense to me to advocate for practices and policies that will get us closer to the vision of society provided by Biblical social justice.

3. Among the various purposes of our government, as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution, is to “establish Justice” and “promote the general Welfare.” So the United States was founded on the attempt to attain a just society. The Constitution is a document of social justice. As the government does its version of justice, we may find that we agree with the purposes and ends of programs that do things like care for the elderly, the poor, and especially the children of poverty. Just because Christians and the government are seeking justice and general welfare in the same direction does not mean that one has become the tool of the other. Either CAN become the tool of the other, but that’s the beauty of Biblical social justice – at its heart its allegiance is to God, and to seeing His will done on earth as it is in heaven. It is led by the living Holy Spirit, who corrects it when it loses its way.

I welcome your thoughts and comments on the issue of Biblical social justice, and the way it relates and doesn’t relate to current or proposed government attempts to establish justice. I would like to avoid comments along the lines of “Glenn Beck is genius/Glenn Beck is crazy person.” That’s not what I want to talk about. I much prefer talking about the Bible and how it instructs us to live, and even better than that is actually doing what it says.

Apostle's Court! (A Play in One Act)

Scene: A courtroom. On one side sit seven men dressed in suits, with various bandages, slings, stitches, and bruises. On the other side sits a lone man in a rumpled suit with large coke-bottle glasses, furiously scribbling on a yellow legal pad. A bailiff, dressed as a Roman soldier, and a narrator are also present. There is a gavel and a glass of water on the judges bench.

Narrator: "What you are witnessing is real. The participants are not actors. They are actual litigants with a case pending in an Ephesian municipal court. Both parties have agreed to dismiss their court cases and have their disputes settled here, in our forum: Ephesian Court!"

These are the plaintiffs: The Seven Sons of Sceva Exorcism and Practical Magic, Inc. They say their recent injuries, and their damaged reputation as exorcists are the fault of the defendant, and they are suing him for medical costs and damages.

This the defendant: Paul of Tarsus. A tent-maker. He claims that he had nothing to do with the Seven Sons of Sceva’s recent troubles.

In a moment, the case of the The Seven Angry Men. Judge Wapnerius will appear shortly to hear testimony from the two parties.

(Judge Wapnerius enters)

Bailiff: All rise!

Judge: Please be seated. I’ve read your statements. Now, who is addressing the court on behalf of the plaintiff?

(One of the sons of Sceva stands)

Son of Sceva: I am, your honor. Eliazar bar-Sceva, eldest of the sons of Sceva.

Judge: And what is the nature of your business?

Son of Sceva: We are traveling exorcists, your honor.

Judge: The name on your business card says “exorcism and practical magic.” Why did you not say you were a magician as well?

Son of Sceva: Your honor, that is an accommodation to the marvelous Greek culture here in the city of Ephesus and elsewhere in the province of Asia. The term “magic” has a negative connotation for our people, the Jews.

Judge: I see. Yet you do perform magic?

Son of Sceva: What you would call magic, yes, your honor. Fortunes, forecasts, lucky charms, blessing, maledictions, and the like. We are followers of a great tradition of our people which dates back to the great king Solomon. We have extensively trained in recipes, potions, angelology and demonology, and have a vast collection of powerful amulets and magical papyri. We take our business very seriously, your honor.

Judge: Very well. And you are suing this man, a fellow Jew, on what grounds?

Son of Sceva: Your honor, the defendant’s preaching of the man Jesus has caused my brothers and I physical harm, emotional distress, and caused our business to suffer…

Paul: (Interrupting) I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!!

Judge: (Angrily) Mr. Paul! You will not speak unless addressed by the court! Is that clear?

Paul: I will render to all what is due them – custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

Judge: Ahem. Well. From now on, when you address the court, you will address us as “Your honor.” Mr. bar-Sceva, please explain how you and your brothers received your injuries.

Son of Sceva: Yes, your honor. Last month, my brothers and I had gone to perform an exorcism on a gentleman in the city, and…

Judge: (Interrupting) Excuse me, I need some clarification. You were all together?

Son of Sceva: Yes, your honor.

Judge: Why is it necessary for the seven of you to cast out one demon?

Son of Sceva: Your honor, it is widely acknowledged that the number seven is a holy and sacred number, and my brothers and I find our power most effective when we work in concert. Our business slogan is: “For the blessing of heaven, go with lucky seven!”

Judge: Very well, please continue.

Son of Sceva: Thank you, your honor. As I was saying, we had gone to perform an exorcism. As is widely known, the most effective way to deal with possessions is to name over the offending spirit a more powerful name, and command the spirit by the authority of the name, whether it be an angel or some other such supernatural force.

Judge: Yes, I see. That practice is common.

Son of Sceva: Recently, in Ephesus, since the arrival of this man (he hooks a thumb at Paul), the name of one Jesus has been used frequently for the performing of miraculous healings and exorcisms. We came into the house in question, and said over the possessed man “I command you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” (He stops, finding it difficult to continue)

Judge: Yes, and then what?

Son of Sceva: (Choked with rage) The evil spirit said, “I recognize Jesus, and I have heard of Paul – but who are you?” Then the possessed man flew into a rage such as I have never seen, and brutally attacked my brothers and me. We were forced to flee the house in a state of undress. The next day, the incident was well-known all around the region. Our business has suffered greatly. We are a laughing-stock!

Judge: Mr. bar-Sceva, I am sorry for you and your brothers’ troubles, but I fail to understand the defendant’s connection to your unfortunate circumstances.

Son of Sceva: Your honor, I have never seen an evil spirit more agitated than at the mention of this Jesus and Paul. I believe something sinister is going on here. I believe that this man, Paul, is himself a magician and has used some previously unknown magic to disrupt the natural order.

Judge: Explain yourself, Mr. bar-Sceva.

Son of Sceva: What you call magic is formulaic, your honor. It is a verifiable and repeatable process by which mortals may attain control over the forces of the natural and supernatural worlds.

Judge: Yes, I am familiar with how it works. This is Ephesus, after all.

Son of Sceva: I believe this man, Paul, has introduced the name of this Jesus in such a way that it is disrupting all previously effective magic, either canceling it out or rendering it explosively unpredictable. In fact, I believe Paul has conspired with the devils to assure that they cooperate with none but himself, that he intends to replace both the Greek and Jewish religion with his own so-called Way, and through the name of this Jesus, that he proposes to monopolize magical practice in the city of Ephesus, and the entire Roman Empire!

Judge: Great Artemis! These are incredible claims, Mr. bar-Sceva!

Son of Sceva: I am aware of that, your honor, but I believe a look at the reputation of this man, especially recent events in Ephesus, bear this out. In my investigations into his activities, I have found that nearly everywhere that he goes, riots and angry mobs appear, and that he is continually in trouble with the law. In particular, in the great city of Philippi, he was arrested for ruining the business of legal fortune-tellers. In Ephesus, shortly after his arrival, he was kicked out of the synagogue, the local assembly of Jews, a situation which has occurred with frightening regularity wherever he goes.

(Judge Wapnerius begins to drink from his glass of water)

Since his time here - and I have exact figures for this, your honor – he has induced many formerly loyal customers of ours and other magicians of the city to abandon our services – both Jews and Greeks - and even burn magical papyri worth 50,000 pieces of silver!

Judge: (Spits out water in shock) Hephestus’ Fiery Forge! That’s 137 years wages!!

Son of Sceva: And we wish to make clear, your honor, that this lawsuit has not been brought merely because this man has bested in us in business competition. In further researching this Jesus whom Paul preaches, we found the master is worse than the disciple! It is said among our people that this Jesus was a magician as well, in league with the devil, that he was a notorious flouter of our people’s laws, an associate of anti-Roman zealots, and was in fact crucified as a blasphemer and an insurgent!

Judge: Zeus’ Thunderbolts! How horrible!! (Puts his hand over his face to compose himself) Mr. Paul. The accusations leveled against you are most severe, but this
is Rome – we are nothing if not thorough – the court will hear you out. What can you tell us about your association with this condemned criminal Jesus?

Paul: (Stand up, takes glasses off and wipes them, puts them back on, flips through
yellow legal pad) Your honor, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, and I
formerly persecuted this Way to the death, and I received letters from the leaders of our people and started off from Jerusalem to Damascus in order to…

Judge: (Interrupting) Mr. Paul, I did not ask for your life story. Tell me if you or this Jesus person have anything to do with the injuries to the health and reputation of the Sons of Sceva.

Paul: Jesus the Messiah has disarmed the rulers and authorities of this world, and made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through the cross.

Judge: I beg your pardon? I am an authority of this world, may I remind you. And what sort of bizarre triumph is a cross of execution?

Paul: We preach the Messiah crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the Messiah the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Judge: Mr. Paul, do not presume to lecture the court about wisdom. I am asking you to clarify your association with a crucified criminal.

Paul: I am a bond-servant of the Messiah Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, concerning His Son who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead – Jesus the Messiah, our Lord.

Judge: (Icily) Mr. Paul, tread carefully. Rome is renowned for its allowance of native religions such as yours, but our very coinage declares our great Caesar son of god and lord. Back to the matter at hand - you assert that this Jesus is still alive?

Paul: I deliver to you what I also received, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Judge: (Sarcastically) Mr. Paul, if this Jesus is alive as you say, would you contact him and ask him to appear in this court, since he seems to be the primary cause of the damage in this case?

Paul: Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? Do you not know that we shall judge angels?

Judge: (Pinching between eyes in frustration) I swear, Mr. Paul, that I often do not have the slightest idea what you are talking about.

There will be a brief recess while I decide the case!

(Judge Wapnerius exits. The sons of Sceva glare at Paul, while he writes some
more on his legal pad and quietly sings ‘Amazing Grace’)

Bailiff: All rise!

Judge: This is a most singular case. Several facts have led me to my ruling. It is
indisputable that the presence of Mr. Paul has caused a great disturbance in the city and that this is a pattern of behavior with him. From our brief conversation I have my suspicions that his chariot may not be running on both wheels. However, this specific case hinges on the damages caused by an evil spirit, and the case that Mr. Paul is directly responsible for its behavior. First of all, it is beneath this court to take an evil spirit at its word, and so the demon’s mention of Mr. Paul is suspect. Secondly, whatever else Mr. Paul may be, he is not a magician in the traditional sense of the word. Thirdly, and most pointedly, if I may say to you and your brothers Mr. bar-Sceva, it seems based on your testimony that you attempted to use the power of a name that you had no direct experience with, and as your testimony states, it was only later that you discovered the disreputable nature of this Jesus and Mr. Paul. The dishonor and damage done to you and your business is your own doing for engaging in poor research and shoddy magician-ship. Therefore, in spite of my personal dislike for Mr. Paul, I find in favor of the defendant.

(The sons of Sceva groan and mutter)

Judge: (Banging gavel) Order! Order I say!

Paul: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Judge: That does it Mr. Paul! Though I find in your favor today, let me give you some advice. You need to leave the city of Ephesus as quickly as possible, or I foresee worse conflict between you and the citizens of this fair city. And I predict also that your bizarre and disturbing religious beliefs, not to mention your abrasive attitude and lack of inter-personal skills, will continue to get you into trouble with the law. Unless you change your ways, your head will end up separated from your shoulders.

Paul: To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Judge: Well, you may get your wish sooner rather than later. Case closed! (Bangs gavel)

Narrator: If someone files a lawsuit against you and you're convinced you've done nothing wrong, don't be intimidated. The best policy is to go to court and stand up for your rights.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Based on Acts 19:13-20

Paul’s quotes: Acts 23:6, Romans 13:7, Acts 22:3-5, Colossians 2:15, 1 Corinthians 2:23-24, Romans 1:1-, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 1 Corinthian 6:2,4, Philippians 4:13, 1:21

Thanks to Everett Ferguson’s great section on “Magic and Maledictions” (what a great word) in Backgrounds of Early Christianity

Thanks to Judge Wapner, first and greatest of TV judges

Beatitude Week - Day 7: Praying the Beatitudes

For the close of Beatitude week, and for this day of worship, a prayer guide:

“Blessed are the poor in the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Help me Lord, come to you humbly, without pride, arrogance, or a sense of entitlement. Help me to receive gratefully every good gift from your hand, and so live as a faithful follower and good citizen of your kingdom. Help me to live in a way that your will is done in every place I go.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Help me Lord, not to rest on my laurels, or sit in despair because of all the things that are wrong. Help me to expect your Spirit to come and enliven, energize, and redeem me, and enliven, energize, and redeem the people of your church, and the world.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Lord, help me to wield your Spirit-given power with self-control, and to trust you to care for what is yours. I trust my reputation to you – and pray that your estimation of me would be the only one that guides and comforts me. Lord, help me receive graciously all that you allow me to have.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Help me Lord, humbly, empathically, meekly, seek to do right and give you praise when I do, for you are the source of all righteousness.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

Lord, help me to be merciful, as you have been merciful to me. Help me to forgive the faults against me, and to love even my enemies.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Be my one thing Lord. And as I gaze upon you, bring the lives and needs of others into focus – help me see your image in myself, in those around me, and in the world.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Let the vision of you animate me to work for your purposes. Help me to bring healing to the broken, hope to the hopeless, love to the loveless, and reconciliation to the warring.

“Blessed are those who have persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.”

Lord, help me to proclaim your gospel and to seek first your kingdom, fearless of what any power on earth may do to me, trusting that the power of the Spirit that raised Christ Jesus from the dead is also working in me.

Beatitude Week - Day 6: The Peacemakers and the Persecuted

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
“Blessed are those who have persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Today, a quiz, with visual aids!

This is a peacemaker:



A Colt Peacemaker, specifically.

And this is a peacemaker:



Can you guess which one is closer to what Jesus had in mind with the saying about peacemakers?

The difference is worth exploring. First of all, note that Jesus says “peacemaker” and not “peacekeeper.” The role he has in mind is not one merely of maintaining a peaceful situation already in existence, or merely preventing fighting, but of a proactive making of peace in situations where there is not peace.

One method of doing this is exemplified by peacemaker number 1, up there. Make peace by having a bigger gun that the other person. The first century Roman historian Tacitus had this to say about the Roman Empire, the original setting of Jesus’ saying: “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

There is also the approach taken by the second peacemaker above, a making peace that turns away from violent or coercive methods of achieving its goals. This approach also has a broader, more positive definition of peace: “Peace is not merely the absence of war, it is the presence of justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.

The peacemakers will be called sons and daughters of God. Take up the profession of your Father and bring peace where there is war, justice where there is injustice, reconciliation where there is brokenness.

But don’t be deceived. People aren’t as fond of peacemakers as you would think. People are much more fond of peacemakers after they are dead than when they were alive. And peacemakers have this habit of being killed in most un-peaceful ways.

We hate it when people are oppressed, unless of course we directly benefit from the oppression. We love helping people, unless of course it requires us to give up our “rights.”

And when you start talking about that kind of peacemaking, and following that kind of Messiah, people are bound to get upset. They didn’t crucify Jesus because He was so nice. It was because they were terrified of the consequences of people really following him.

The great modern theologian Jurgen Moltmann said:
“Jesus’ sufferings and humiliation came from his actions, from his preaching of the imminence of the kingdom as a kingdom of unconditional grace, from his freedom towards the law, and from his table-fellowship with ‘sinners and tax-collectors.’ Jesus did not suffer passively from the world in which he lived, but incited it against himself by his message and the life he lived.”

So, who wants to be a Christian?

Well, I’ve got good news, and bad news. The good news is that, as Jesus said, when you are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, you are standing in line with a great tradition! Those persecuted for the sake of this kind of righteous peace-making stand shoulder to shoulder with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and more. And did you catch the subtle thing there, where Jesus seems to be saying that the prophets of old were following him, instead of him following them? So that's the good news.

The bad news is that, according to Jewish tradition at least, all the prophets died as martyrs.

But there’s more Good News. It ain’t permanent. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” – the ones who have lived and died as ambassadors for the kingdom of God will feel right at home when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. (Rev. 12:15)

Beatitude Week - Day 5: The Hungry, The Merciful, and the Pure in Heart

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Whew! Finally we’re in familiar blessing territory! Jesus has been talking this WHOLE TIME about being divinely blessed, and he hasn’t once mentioned being blessed for having faith, praying for blessings, or giving money. He has these odd notions that blessings come from humility, mourning, and meekness. So odd.

But now, here we are! Blessed are the righteous! Get on God’s side and get blessed!

Except…that’s not exactly what it says, is it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those who desire to be right with God the way a starving person desires food, the way a person in the desert wants water. And they shall be satisfied – not, “and they shall satisfy themselves,” but shall be satisfied. The object and the source of righteousness is God.

And there’s a reason this is 4th down the list. Before we try to determine if we are on God’s side, or vice versa, it would do us good to achieve humility, a proper gravity toward the suffering in the world, and a proper perspective on spiritual and earthly power. And it might help us to remember Who is really righteous.

It would also be good for us to remember that the Righteous One is also the Merciful One. Everybody likes to receive mercy. We really like it when the traffic officer lets us off with a warning. But it certainly is difficult to give mercy. We want people who have hurt our feelings to make it up to us in extravagant ways. We want people who have harmed us prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Except ourselves, of course. We clearly deserve a second chance. Possibly a third, or fiftieth.

Blessed are the pure in heart. We often take this to mean innocent, or unsullied. I tend to think it’s the other definition of pure – made up of one thing. Pure gold is only gold. Pure honey is only honey. And the pure in heart have hearts made up of one love – the love of God. And the promise is that their love will be rewarded with the sight of the Beloved.

Again, the placement is important. The ones who seek to see God are also the ones called to be merciful, and following this Beatitude, called to be peacemakers. To love the Lord your God with all your heart does not mean to separate yourself from the world – it means to see God in it, and work to do God’s will in it. It means to see the image of God in our neighbors. And as G.K. Chesterton said “Jesus tells us to love our neighbors and to love our enemies, because often they are the same people.” The pure in heart shall see God – sooner, and in more places, than you might think.

Beatitude Week - Day 4: The Mourners and the Meek

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

There are two basic categories for “hard teachings of Jesus.” There are the teachings that are hard to understand, and then there are the teachings that are easy to understand and hard to do. The first Beatitude – blessed are the poor in spirit – is one of the latter. Be humble. Got it Jesus – I’ll get right on that. The next two are little harder to make out at first glance.

We are still talking about blessings, right? What could it possibly mean to be blessed by mourning? And meek people are the quiet, shy, types, right? It seems unlikely that loud, powerful types will hand over the earth to them, doesn’t it?

Let’s start with “blessed are those who mourn.” What this does NOT mean is that spiritual people must be depressed and depressing people. The life of Jesus demonstrates this. His detractors accused him of being a drunkard and a glutton. But I think the life of Jesus also demonstrates what this means – to be present in the midst of and to be aware of the suffering around us. Mourning means not pretending that everything is ok when we know it isn’t, and not ignoring the suffering around us just because it doesn’t directly affect us.

I think this guy expresses well what that would could look like:

The terms of the promise here are important – they will be comforted. The consolation looked for is from God. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that one of the names for the Holy Spirit is “the Comforter.” The Power of God is active in the world to redeem and transform those things that cause us to mourn. Mourning doesn’t mean that we have to bear the burdens of the entire world ourselves. It means that we look to the One who gives true comfort, and work alongside Him, empowered by His Spirit, to do His will.

And what about the meek? This is one of those times that the English language and the Greek don’t match up so well. The meaning of the Greek word translated “meek” means “one who has power under control.” Meek does not mean weak. Meek means discerning the difference between having the ability to do something, and knowing whether it is right or wrong to do it. As Jeff Goldblum says in that great philosophical work of our times, Jurassic Park “You were so worried about whether you could do something that you never stopped to ask whether you should do it.”

So, read it again this way: “Blessed are those with their power under control, for they shall inherit the earth.” The patient, the faithful, the self-controlled, those who consider their actions based on the will of God and on the effect on others – they will inherit the earth. And I think Jesus has in mind here the redeemed earth of God’s new creation. The transformed earth that is - in fact as well as promise – the kingdom of God.

Another way to approach the idea of meekness, and one that has particular application for our society, is to submit ourselves to letting our actions speak for us, and letting God speak on our behalf. Here the power in question is the power of our speech, and that matches up pretty well with the traditional "quiet person" definition of meekness. Just because we can spend all our time justifying ourselves to others doesn't necessarily mean that we should. Who are we trying to impress? Richard Foster says in his great book on spiritual discipline: "We are so accustomed to relying on words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him."

A.W. Tozer puts it this way: "The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightly of you. The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek has accepted God's estimate of his own life. In himself nothing, in God everything; that is his motto. As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him."

Beatitude Week - Day 3: The Poor in Spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Where is the kingdom of heaven? Where is it in space, and in time? Throughout Christian history you tend to get one of two answers:

1. The kingdom of heaven IS heaven. In space it is above and beyond this earth, and in time it is in the future beyond the present life.

2. The kingdom of heaven is here on earth. In space it is where the people of God are, and where God’s presence is supposed to be in a unique way. The Crusaders equated it with Israel and Jerusalem, like in that Orlando Bloom movie. The Pilgrims equated it with wherever they happened to land. The Mormons with Utah, of all places. In time it is present. The fun theological term for this is “realized eschatology.”

Before we weigh in on “where is kingdom of heaven,” we need to answer the question “what is the kingdom of heaven?” Remember, we are in Matthew, the Jewish-focused gospel, and in keeping with the Jewish tradition, Matthew is sensitive about throwing around the name of God willy-nilly. The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of God.

What is the kingdom of God? I propose to you that the kingdom of God corresponds to earthly kingdoms in this way: The place where the will of the king of Denmark is done is the kingdom of Denmark. The place where the will of the king of Norway is done is the kingdom of Norway. The place where Anne Hathaway’s and Julie Andrews’ will is done is the kingdom of Genovia (thanks, youth girls). The place where the will of the king of heaven is done is the kingdom of God.

That means it can be BOTH in the present and the future. That means it can be both on and beyond the earth.

Re-examine this well-known bit of Jesus’ teaching: “Your kingdom come/Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Those are parallel statements – they say the same thing. “As Your will is done on earth, so it becomes as much Your kingdom as heaven is.” Like an embassy of heaven – a stronghold of the will of God, waiting for the future when the two (earth and heaven) become one in fact and not only in promise.

And the first requirement for citizenship? Humility.

Not place of birth. Not family of origin. Not even righteousness or right behavior (that’s fourth down the list – and it’s desiring righteousness, anyway).

That really opens up the roster, doesn’t it? Anybody, born anywhere, from any creed, no matter what they’ve done previously, is a potential citizen of heaven, and thereby has the divine blessing of God – as long as they are humble in spirit.

And that’s where most of the “heaven is a place on earth” people of the past blew it, and still blow it today. If you are doing the will of God, but being a snot about it, you’re doing it wrong. If you think your place and your people are heaven on earth, and you’re arrogant about it and exclusive in a way that Jesus never was – you’re doing it wrong.

And because humility is lot harder than it looks – it’s good to remember that as soon as I become proud of being able to spot the people who are doing it wrong – I’m in danger of doing it wrong.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Beatitude Week - Day 2: The New Moses, The New Israel

One of the fascinating things about the New Testament is how much of it is actually the Old Testament. Take a look! You can’t go a page or two in the gospels or Paul without a direct quote or thematic reference to something that happened in the Old Testament. Hebrews is about half Old Testament. James wants to be an Old Testament book. Revelation is Zechariah, Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel in a blender and then smothered with Jesus.

[Tangent: You sometimes hear from detractors of Christianity that the story of Jesus is a warmed over version of other ancient dying and rising god myths – Dionysus, Horus, Mithras, Baal - take your pick. The thing that gives the lie to that is the bond between the life of Christ and the story of Israel. Ancient Roman culture was a syncretistic society – that is, they never minded a good mish-mash of religions, as long as you paid your taxes. Ancient Jewish society was the exact opposite – "No outside influences, please, we’d rather die." And all of Jesus' first disciples, and Paul, were Jews. There’s more to be said about this, but that’s it in a nutshell. End Tangent]

So the topic of the day is how the Beatitudes fit into the New Testament/Old Testament love fest.

First of all, we’re in Matthew, and that gospel writer is so concerned with the Old Testament that he starts his gospel with a genealogy. Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The Messiah – the representative Israelite, linked to the other representatives of the nation of Israel – the representative Hebrew, and the representative king. As a baby, his life parallels the story of the people of God – in danger from a wicked king, he flees to Egypt, then is called out of exile. As an adult, the echoes continue – he passes through the waters of the Jordan, and he wanders in the wilderness. With those who had ears to hear, here was one who was living anew the old, old story, an individual standing for the whole. And then he finds himself on a mountain, surrounded by a crowd of Israelites.

And he begins to teach. Remind you of anyone?

Here’s a hint:


But it is not laws he pronounces, but blessings. Later he will quote the old law, given on that first mountain, by that first prophet who came out of Egypt – and then He will say “But I say unto you…” The crowds will be amazed, and will say that this one teaches with authority. And in a few short chapters, he will choose 12 disciples. Twelve, like the tribes of Israel. That is not a coincidence.

What is going on here?

Jesus is rebooting the franchise. He is fulfilling the as-yet unfulfilled promises of God. He is telling Israel, the people of God, what it looks like to be the people of God in mind and heart and soul, and not in name only. It is as N.T. Wright states in Jesus and the Victory of God, “a challenge to Israel to be Israel.”

And he starts with blessings…