This Love Stuff Is Scary

Nobody said this love stuff was going to be easy.  The church has always known that its particular brand of love (agape) is especially difficult for us.  The apostle Paul speaks a lot about our Christian love for one another in his letters to the church in Corinth.  In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul talks about Christian love as he distinguishes between those of us who understand our lives through the veil of the old covenant and those of us who understand our lives through the unveiled new covenant of love offered in Christ.

The old covenant is a universal perspective that views the world and our relationship with God through the law.  Christians remain tempted by this law-based perspective. Paul is speaking to all of us when he says, “Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there.”  Paul isn't talking about Jews.  He's talking about Christians who are still tempted by the law.

This fact was driven home during the week of February 4, when The Rev. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Missouri Synod, pressured a pastor to apologize for saying a prayer during an interfaith ceremony.  Rev. Harrison stated:

There is sometimes a real tension between wanting to bear witness to Christ and at the same time avoiding situations which may give the impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us and how we get to Heaven, really don’t matter in the end.

The veil is present.  Rev. Harrison has drawn the boundaries of his interpretation of the law around what he sees as appropriate religious behavior – and nothing can violate Rev. Harrison’s law – even bearing witness to Christ.  Lord, have mercy Christ, have mercy.

A minister standing as an impediment to those bearing witness to Christ seems unthinkable until one grapples with what it means to live as one called to the new covenant.  Engaging the world through the new covenant in Christ is a scary thing.  It can be very uncomfortable to love others – especially when they do not share our Christian faith.  Love may be all of the wonderful things Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, but love is also scary and unsettling.  Love can feel unsafe.

It is much safer to be old covenant people and shrink back into our comfortable sanctuaries.  It’s reassuring to mark the boundaries with our interpretation of biblical rules so we know we’re on the correct side.  It’s comforting to convince ourselves that God wants us to do this.  The old covenant has an allure.  The veil is tempting.

A Pauline paraphrase of Rev. Harrison’s words might be: “There is sometimes a real tension between wanting to engage God and the world through the new covenant of Christ and needing the safety of our veiled, legalistic, old covenant perspective.”


There is always a tension between love and law.

But we don't deal with that tension.  American Christianity has become a feel-good religion.  We speak a lot about how much God loves us (and some about how much God loves the world).  We speak about how God has shown that love by instituting a new covenant sealed in Jesus’ blood.  But we’ve stopped wrestling with what God is calling us to do in that new covenant.  We've stopped wrestling with how scary it is to love. 

As a result, we've stopped loving anyone who isn't easy to love.  We stay in our little cliques with people who agree with us.  Christ calls us out into the world to love our neighbors - whatever they might believe.

It's Not About Him Until It's Not About Him

The conventional wisdom is that Luke 2:41-52 is a prefiguration of the passion narrative.  John Petty says:

Finally, one notes that Joseph and Mary search for Jesus for "three days."  When an early Christian heard the phrase "for three days," one of their first associations would have been to think "resurrection."  Jesus had been raised from the dead after "three days."  Virtually every first century Christian would have made this association automatically.  This would indicate that the story should be understood and seen in light of the resurrection.

But, could this narrative prefigure the transfiguration instead?

In the transfiguration narrative, Jesus appears in gleaming white and is accompanied by Moses and Elijah.  Peter, awestruck, fumbles with his words and wishes to build booths so that they all might remain there.  In the midst of religious ecstasy, Peter's first inclination is to stay. 

Is this not what happens in the Temple story?  Jesus, as a young man, is filled with ecstasy attending a festival at the Temple.  Everything in him desires to remain there "in the things" of his Father.  He does not want to come down off of his own mountain.

The pain of Mary and Joseph changes him.  He not only comes out of the place of ecstasy, his attitude toward his parents (and toward us all?) changes.  His life is no longer about pursuing what he wants.
For Jesus, at this moment, his religious direction turns away from the pursuit and nurturing of internal ecstasy.  The direction of his ministry changes to the needs of the people away from the temple.  I think it is significant that he does not return to the Temple until the passion narrative. 

It is at this moment that the text changes.  Previously, the Lukan narrative had been about the people around Jesus.  It is when he leaves the Temple, when his religious pursuit has changed, that the text becomes about Jesus' actions.

It's not about him until it's not about him.

At this point, it would be easy to berate ourselves as a church.  We could chide ourselves for too much focus on what happens inside our sanctuary.  We could challenge ourselves to move like Jesus did - out into our community.  We could adopt the pithy motto, "it's not about us until it's not about us" as our mission statement.  All of that would be in line with this text.

However, I think it might be better to take a moment and realize that our inclinations (the desire to remain in the sanctuary) were, at one point, Jesus' inclinations.  Jesus also desired to stay in the company of like minds and warm settings.  His ministry out in the world was not an innate impulse.  Jesus had to resist the temptation to make religion about the church. 

Having resisted it, Jesus understands our temptation - and he will help us fight that temptation.

It's all about security

When the NRA is advocating for armed government schools in our elementary schools, you know we've crossed a threshold.  Gone are the days when we worried about losing our freedom to tyranny.  Now we're willing to mortgage everything in the name of security.  If there was any lingering doubt about the United States being an empire, Wayne LaPierre should have banished them with his speech on 21 December. 
In his book The Common Good, Walter Brueggemann says:

I believe it is impossible to overstate the defining nature of the empire of force among us, if empire is understood as a political, economic, military, ideological practice of self-security and control.

We, as American Christians, are being defined by the nature of empire - as have generations of Christians before us in various historical empires.  We are the brood of vipers John the Baptist preaches of in Luke 3: 7-18.
Brood is such an antiquated term.  For me, it loses its meaning.  Instead of offspring, or children of snakes, it sounds to me like a group of snakes.  Like a gaggle of geese, a pack of wolves, a litter of puppies . . . a brood of vipers. 
Brood is offspring.  John the Baptist says I am (we are) the offspring of snakes - like I am a child of the 80s, or a son of the Midwest, or a real, live nephew of my Uncle Sam.  It's a metaphor for the influences on my life.
And the snake which does the influence is empire.
The author of Luke drives this point home by calling out two groups from among the crowd - tax collectors and soldiers.  Economy and warfare.  Why not call out tentmakers or shepherds or carpenters?  Tax collection and war are two basic elements of Empire.  
Brueggemann:

All empires act according to the principle of scarcity, imagining that they need more land, more tax money, more revenue, more oil, more cheap labor, more energy.

In the name of security and control, empires hoard. 
Look at what John tells the people who ask what they should do: Give of your clothes.  Give of your food.  He tells them to step into the breach of insecurity.  To give up the need for control and security.
His advice to the tax collectors and soldiers is the same.  They had been using the system in ways that enhanced their own positions - their own wealth - their own power - their own security.  John tells them to stop doing that.  Step into the breach and trust that your wages are enough. 
It is important to note that John does not tell the tax collectors or soldiers to abandon their jobs.  They are not to abandon empire.  But, they must recognize how being raised in empire has impacted their thoughts and actions.  They must (we must) recognize that the call of Christ is to a different life.  It is a call not to security, but to vulnerability for the sake of others. 
We cannot do the work to which Christ calls us if we are desperate for security.  We cannot budget for mission if we are desperate to secure the future of our churches.  We cannot reach out to the marginalized if we are desperate to maintain our respectability. 
This week we celebrated the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  We celebrate God entering our world and becoming vulnerable.  And we celebrate it as a brood of vipers deathly afraid of becoming vulnerable ourselves.  We fear because we listen to empire when we should be listening to the Word of God. 
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

To Bind OR To Loose?

To bind or to loose? Is that even the question?

Twice in Matthew, Jesus says to Peter and the disciples, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (16:19 & 18:18) What authority is Jesus giving to the church through this statement?

Our sinful nature clouds how we answer that question and how we understand Jesus’ message. We have a desperate need to see the world from a dualistic (good/bad, righteous/evil) standpoint. Because of this, we assume that there must be good people and bad people in the world – those who are in and those who are out – those who are bound and those who are loosed.

Then in an act of hubris reminiscent of Adam, we believe God has given us the license to determine who falls in those groups. We believe we have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and are qualified to make some ultimate decisions for God.

And so we begin to pursue practices like shunning and excommunication and casting-out. We decide who to bind to the church and assure ourselves that those people have a place in heaven – if they stay on our good side. We decide who to kick out and assure ourselves that we won’t have to sit at table with those people in the life to come.

Pretty scary, isn’t it. Not only does it reek of sin and hubris, it's a false interpretation of Jesus’ word to the church.

The Greek word for loosing is translated as to “set free” or to “release” – as in captives. When it is translated that way, it gives the lie to our interpretation. You can’t set someone free from what holds them captive while cursing them, can you?

Jesus' exhortation isn’t about loving or hating, embracing or castigating. It's about loving and setting free, embracing and releasing from burden. The church is assured that those whom we love will be loved in heaven and those whom we set free from their bonds, will be set free in heaven. Win/win written theologically.

And our better selves have known it all along. It’s been a part of our church life from the beginning. We see it in our hymns. We can sing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” (binding) and “Go Down Moses” (loosing) with the same joy and devotion. We can even sing about binding and loosing in the same hymn – Arise, Your Light Is Come!

Verse 2 is all about loosing:

Fling wide the prison door; proclaim the captives liberty, good tidings to the poor.

Verse 3 is all about binding:

All you in sorrow born, bind up the broken-hearted ones and comfort those who mourn.

In fact, the very foundation of the church proclaims that binding and loosing are both joyous parts of the Good News. In our baptism we were engrafted to the Body of Christ (bound) and freed from our sin (loosed).

The church is not asked to view the world from a dualistic point of view and pick the winners and losers. The church is called to preach the Good News and to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are called to bind in love and to loose in love. There is no other way.

To act otherwise – to believe Peter and the disciples (and the church) were given a command to harm and to hurt – to believe we get to choose winners and losers – puts us in the ridiculous position of also having to choose which aspect of our baptism we consider to be a curse.