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.