The Audacity of Hope

On a cold New England Night, the impossible happened. Two people left for dead, one this summer and one last week, rose from their respective political graves. Over the summer the question facing John McCain wasn’t whether he could ride an early victory to the Republican nomination, but whether his campaign could manage enough cash to survive the summer. The one-time frontrunner had become an afterthought, crushed by a conservative wave of enthusiasm for a Northeastern governor, a 9/11-made mayor, a lawyer-turned-actor-turned Senator-turned actor-turned candidate again, and another boy from Hope.

Hillary Clinton’s problems were more recent in timing and focused in scope. National polls had favored Clinton by almost thirty points in the summer and pundits had begun planning her coronation to the Democratic nomination. But then Barack Obama happened, and after Obama won the Iowa Caucuses last week, polls in New Hampshire had Obama with a 10-point lead on Tuesday – the day of the primary. It was so bad for Clinton that the machine-like Hillary almost cried during a lunch at a New Hampshire diner. On Tuesday afternoon, pundits and prognosticators weren’t speculating about Bill’s role in a second Clinton administration, but whether Hillary’s campaign was finished less than two weeks into the nominating process.

But just a few hours later, the experts were singing a whole different tune. The Washington Post declared Hillary, “The Comeback Kid”, the same title her husband earned after rallying in New Hampshire 16 years earlier, after she defeated Obama by almost eight thousand votes.[1] At the same time Hillary was announcing she was back, McCain supporters were chanting that the Mac was back after he defeated Mitt Romney by more than thirteen thousand votes. A beaming McCain told his chanting throng, “We sure showed ‘em what a comeback looked like.”[2]

But as improbable as McCain and Clinton’s new status were to conceive, their new prominent political standings pale in comparison with the new things declared in the 42^nd chapter of Isaiah. This chapter is one of the controversial servant passages in Isaiah – in which Christians have tended to identify God’s servant as Jesus while others have insisted the servant is Cyrus, the Persian King, still others the people, and still others the most prominent cultural savior of the day. While the identity of the servant is a matter of great significance, even more important is what Isaiah announces the servant will accomplish.

The prophet’s good news is that God’s servant will not rest until the whole earth is covered with justice. The word justice is mentioned three times in the first four verses of this passage alone, when the servant’s purpose is put forth. Verse 1: God’s spirit has been put on the servant so he will bring justice to the nations. Verse3: The servant will faithfully bring forth justice in that he will not make his voice heard in the street or break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. Verse 4: The servant will not grow faint or be crushed until justice has been established in the earth. The message is striking: God’s servant will not rest until justice is the way of this whole wide world. And God will not execute justice in the traditional way – through violence and raw force. With neither sharp swords nor smart bombs will justice come forth. A candle on the cusp of being snuffed out will survive the servant’s work, and a bruised reed - a plant that can easily be broken - will also not be crushed by this servant. This servant cares for the weak and the vulnerable to the highest degree.

The word justice can and has sometimes served as a catch-all term used to justify whatever a person or a particular group wants. A person’s definition of justice often depends on their particular social and economic location. The definitions of justice we might hear in South Atlanta are probably a little different that those we would hear in Buckhead and different than those we might hear in Baghdad. Some Christian ethicists have tended to roughly define justice as a state where each person gets what they are due. But the definition Isaiah is using is not a catch-all term that anyone can manipulate and it goes far beyond the vague notion of justice as getting your due. Justice in this case is not getting what you deserve, but according to Walter Brueggeman, who used to teach Old Testament a few miles away in Decatur, God’s justice as revealed through the law of Moses and in the pronouncement of the God’s prophets is a complete reordering of society so that the most weak and the most vulnerable among us can live with dignity.[3]

We desperately crave this divine justice. And here’s the thing: Universal justice means this justice with dignity isn’t coming only to Jerusalem but stretches all the way to Jonesboro Road and everywhere in between. We will see this day of the Lord when men and women don’t have to degrade themselves by selling their bodies just to pay the rent. When children half my age aren’t being recruited to peddle poison and push drugs. When God’s children of all ages won’t ever again have to choose between broccoli and blood pressure medicine.

Isaiah won’t let us simply wait on this day of the Lord. God speaks through the prophet to tell the people that it is through Israel that God will bring forth this justice. It is through Israel, a people who have been conquered and are living in exile. There might not be a more powerless group of people on the planet! Justice will come through the agency of the people who follow and pledge allegiance to the one true God, Yahweh, the God of Isaac and Abraham and Jacob and Ruth and Naomi and Isaiah and Jeremiah. The vocation of those, both then and now, who pledge allegiance to the God revealed in the Scriptures, is to bring forth justice, to “open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon.” Our vocation, the divine calling that each of us has received from the God of Israel, is as a body of believers, to bring forth justice, to release our brothers and sisters from captivity and blindness in whatever forms they exist.

Not too long ago my friend Ben and I were having one of those discussions you have when you’re in graduate school and have too much time on your hands. One afternoon we were despairing at all the problems we saw, particularly in our classmates. One after another with problems too many to count and seemingly too big to solve, wonderful people devoured by their personal and societal demons. He looked at me, his eyes full of severity and passion, and said it – “There’s just not enough band-aids to go around.” As much as we both might have wanted to, we were powerless to spring these people from their debilitating captivity. Or so we thought.

Ben and I were operating with the framework of former things in mind, but in this text God speaks through Isaiah of wondrous new things. The new thing that God is declaring to the prophet beforehand is that this universal dignity will be come to pass. The servant, whose purpose is to bring forth universal justice, will succeed. Justice and dignity will ring from Mesopotamia to Metropolitan Avenue. The people, whose vocation is to open the eyes that are blind and bring out prisoners of dungeons, will succeed. The dignity that will be brought into being through the people who declare their allegiance to the one God of Israel is guaranteed to succeed. Talk about the audacity of hope.

Its success is not dependent on the financial or political capabilities of the people. Its success does not rest on the abilities of people to organize grassroots and community support. Its success is ultimately not dependent on the people’s gifts and resources. The people’s work for justice will succeed not because of the people’ strength but because of the strength of God. God - the Lord who created the heavens, the Lord who spread out the earth, the Lord who gives breath to the people, has guaranteed this success. God has called the people in righteousness with the express purpose of giving sight to the blind and liberating the prisoners. God would not use us to accomplish a task that cannot be accomplished. And if God can create the earth from chaos and sustain our lives at every second of every minute of every day, then we know, that even when this task looks impossible, God can accomplish it.

One of the most hopeless situations imaginable must have been Africans living under apartheid in South Africa. For years the white majority had violated, tortured and subjected the Africans to all kinds of oppression and relief appeared nowhere in sight. Desmond Tutu knew and had experienced many of the horrors. He had been thrown in jail for trying to end this horrible system.

Jim Wallis, who many of you know as the editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, tells the story of hearing Tutu preach in Cape Town one night during the movement. As Tutu stepped up to the preach, you couldn’t help but notice that hundreds of police had surrounded the church and even more surrounded the back walls of the church, prepared to take notes and record Tutu’s sermon. Tutu pointed his finger at the police trying to intimidate him and the crowd, and then told the truth. “You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God that cannot be mocked. So since, you’ve already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side.”[4]

The power of injustice is pretty small really when compared to the power of God. The injustice that is all around us is no different than the injustice the prophet Isaiah saw all around him. In chapter 41, immediately preceding our text, God speaks through the prophet and challenges all the people about the Gods they are serving. The kings, the alliances, the riches and the hosts of other Gods that the people are putting their trust in. The final verse of chapter 41 puts it this way: “No, they are all a delusion; their works are nothing, their images are an empty wind.”

The idols that bring forth injustice today are making the same claims for ultimacy that those idols did. Selfishness and violence and insecurity that give us the drugs and the despair, the homelessness and the helplessness are no less powerful than the perceived power of those policemen staring down Tutu. But while they too are full of power, they also aren’t gods. And we serve a God that won’t be mocked and a God who won’t rest until every idol is defeated and who won’t quit until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

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[1] Balz, Dan. “With Echoes of Clinton ’92, Another Comeback Kid”, The Washington Post. Jan. 9, 2008, A8.

[2] McCain, John. “Remarks by John McCain on New Hampshire Primary Victory”, Jan. 8, 2008. http://www.johnmccain.com.

[3] Brueggeman, Walter. Isaiah 40-66: Westminster Bible Companion. 42.

[4] Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it.

Isaiah 42:1-9

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations. ²
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street; ³a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. ⁴
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. ⁵Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it: ⁶
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,^*
a light to the nations, ⁷ to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. ⁸
I am the Lord, that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols. ⁹
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare; before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.

"Fools Be Gone - Matt. 25:1-13"

I don’t often preach on the bus, if by preaching you mean talking about Jesus or the Bible. Rant maybe, but preach – nah, that’s just not how I roll. But a while back, I actually found myself trying to explain the Parable of the Ten Maidens on the bus. In my attempt to save a little money during the school year, I park my car at the mall and ride the bus to school. As I was making small talk on the bus one morning, I found myself explaining to a doctoral student in anthropology that this parable was tormenting me. (Why a tale about ten maidens is tormenting to a single man is another story for another time.)

Well about two hours later we ended up on the same bus again - I in the front and her in the back. As we were waiting for the bus to leave, she shouted: “So what’s this parable all about anyway?” In front of a cadre of Emory students, I then explained my take on the parable, with its five wise maidens and five foolish ones, the lamps, the sleep, the groom and all of it - my exegetical and homiletical brilliance on display for the whole bus to see. My new friend was, well, unimpressed. “Don’t you think the parable should be more actual? I mean, five wise and five foolish - it should probably be more like nine foolish and one wise.” The parable itself was foolish, she said. I felt her pain.

If John Dominic Crossan is right and parable does subvert the world, this little tale in the Gospel of Matthew is certainly a parable. Those of you who know me can say without a doubt that it’s a rarity when I think of myself as foolish. I actually like to think of myself as quite wise. But after wrestling with this text, flip-flopping more times than I can remember about how to preach it, I felt foolish. The anthropologist said the parable was foolish. The preacher felt foolish. Foolishness was all around. In that case, maybe this parable simply confirmed the world.

That’s because foolishness appears, at least to me, to be all around. A sex-obsessed society has left deep scars in its wake: fatherless children, marriages destroyed, the devastation of HIV, waves of women and men with needs and desires unfulfilled and unmet. It’s not just sex, though. An ever increasing percentage of American children are overweight and out of shape. Stories and faces of anorexia, bulimia and devastating eating disorders haunt us. We can too easily name friends and families ravaged by the terrors of alcohol and drug abuse.

We live in a world wrecked by war and on a planet victimized by violence. We know a world where deep inequalities rooted in selfishness leave very few with far too much and way too many with far too little. We might like to keep foolishness out in the world and wisdom in the church, but unfortunately we know all too well that there’s plenty of folly inside our sanctuaries too. Newspaper scoops and television gotchas have exposed that power plays of folly abound in our churches, whether it be the high-profile abuse scandals or government sponsored inquiries into the finances of prosperity-peddling preachers.

About a year ago I heard James Forbes preach in Atlanta. Forbes, the pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, finished his sermon with a rap, proclaiming that there was, “No time for foolishness.” It’s no surprise since the tragic stories I mentioned earlier scream not for foolishness, but wisdom. We want and desperately need to banish all this foolishness from our lives, our communities and our churches, and for good reason. We need to forsake our folly for the good path, but we can’t do it. Preachers try to shame individuals and congregations to leave their foolishness behind. It’s still here. Christians of both political stripes engage in lobbying to end foolishness through legislative fiat. It’s still here. And don’t think that if one of those preachers being investigated by Congress is found in the wrong, somebody won’t get fired – we’ve tried to get rid of foolishness by getting rid of people for years. It’s hopeless – its still here and we can’t get rid of it.

When we hear Christian talk of foolishness and wisdom, Paul looms large, and wisdom can sometimes get a bad wrap. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, Paul writes. But Matthew is a different story. Matthew is drawing on the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, like Psalms and Proverbs - staples of the faith. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs tells us. Wisdom is not what prevents us from experiencing God, Matthew might say, but wisdom is what points us towards God; to understanding justice, righteousness, and the good path.

A cursory reading of Matthew’s Tale of Ten Maidens doesn’t appear to give us much hope, or wisdom either. There’s no way around it - Jesus is telling us a parable about eschatological judgment, a statement about who will be in, who will be out, and the difference between the two. From chapter 21 when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna in the Highest to chapter 26 when the wheels of the crucifixion are set in motion, Jesus is preparing his disciples for life after he is gone. By the time we get to our parable, the emphasis of his teaching is clear – Jesus wants us to know how to live and how to be prepared for the coming of the Kingdom.

Our parable is a warning: be prepared for the long haul. In the parable, only the wise and their lamps are allowed into the wedding banquet, the foolish are left alone in the dark. The bridegroom, who we are to take as Jesus, gets rid of foolishness by getting rid of the foolish. The foolish arrive late to the party, and are told, “I never knew you.” Many commentators have speculated that Matthew wants his reader to interpret the lamps as faithful discipleship, and that those who lived faithfully throughout their lives could be welcomed into the Kingdom.[1] Johnny-come-lately Christians trying to cheat the system need not apply. “I never knew you,” the bridegroom says. Those of us who look in the mirror and see more fool than wise aren’t left with much hope by this reading.

However, despite the parable’s context and original intent, I don’t think this is the only word that God has in it. For if this parable is to be Gospel - if it is to be good news - then it can’t only be a word of judgment and blood-curdling fear. And Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of Heaven is not a tale of despair but one of shocking good news. What if the five foolish and the five wise don’t represent separate individuals, but different parts of our lives; equal parts wise and equal parts foolish? What if Jesus is telling us that the eschatological feast is not one in which some deemed wise will make it while some deemed foolish will be left outside? What if the good news of this parable is that the darkness, the foolishness that prevents us from sharing God’s marvelous light with the world, is what is left behind in this eschatological vision of the kingdom? That at God’s banquet, only the best of us, only the wisdom that leads to righteousness will be present; our folly will be out of sight, out of mind?

This might reek of a liberal trying to avoid judgment, but I don’t think it is. This reading of the parable leads us to one of the core elements of the Christian life –sanctification. The foolish maidens aren’t allowed into the wedding banquet because foolishness itself isn’t allowed in. Only wisdom that leads to righteousness is. The good news of this parable is the good news of the Christian life – that God is never done with us, that God is continually pruning the foolish away and replacing what is gone with Godly wisdom so it is possible for us to enter the banquet. It is in this process of sanctification that God is actively refining us so that we look less like sinful human beings and more like Jesus.

Fortunately, God is not passively watching to see if this happens and judging us if we don’t make it, but is working with us, molding us and shaping us to reflect divine wisdom instead of sinful folly. The point of the Christian life is the sanctification that leads to holiness and a life modeled after the God we know to be revealed in Jesus Christ. And it is Gospel that God provides the sanctifying grace to help make it happen.

We know, deep down, that this is true. We can each look back at some of the foolishness in our lives that has been replaced by divine wisdom as God has worked within us. Some of the sins that once owned us – and we could all recite a laundry list of them – no longer define us. We can look back at the people we were when we first knew Christ and see where foolishness has left the building, and divine wisdom has moved in.

Hillary is a friend of mine, who throughout the course of her life, has been riddled by doubt. For much of her life, Hillary confronted her demons by drinking alcohol, lots and lots of alcohol. A friend recalls a day-long drive to a meeting when they had to stop three times on the trip, not for lunch or gas, but so Hillary could buy more beer, which she would then put away in the car. Well, not surprisingly, all this came crashing down on her, and after an alcohol-induced altercation at work, Hillary had to leave her job.

This isn’t the end of the story, however. Forced to enter rehab, Hillary examined her life and vowed to leave the alcohol behind. Sober for five years, she attends weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and preaches a message of hope for those wanting to live a life without as she calls it, “the booze”. At a dinner over the summer, Hillary announced that her alcohol-induced public disgrace was the best thing that ever happened to her. Her foolishness behind her, she no longer is trying to numb the pain but is celebrating the new life God has given her.

We also know that Hillary’s story isn’t the only side of the coin. We look around our world and see that foolishness still abounds. We realize that sometimes my friend on the bus was right, that it seems like there are nine foolish maidens and one wise one in ourselves, in our churches and in our world.

But we know that God is at work, and that God’s word is not one of unbearable fear but of unlimited hope. That’s because the end point of sanctification is not a time when some of our foolishness is gone, while some remains. John’s Revelation claims that we are waiting on a new heaven and a new earth, where sin will be vanquished and the divine wisdom of righteousness will reign. Those victimized by the societal foolishness of war and inequality now have hope that the way it is now is not the way it always shall be. There will be a new heaven and a new earth; this sin-stained creation, with its pain and its tears, its mourning and its crying, is not the last word.

The good news of this parable is nothing less than what Miroslav Volf calls the central Christian hope – that there will be a final and irrevocable reconciliation in which all will be made right.[2] The foolishness that shackles our souls will be gone, replaced by wisdom that will free us to announce and proclaim the glorious light of God’s goodness and new creation. For those mixed up with equal parts wise and equal parts fool, this is very good news indeed.

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[1] Donahue, John. The Gospel in Parable, 103-04

[2] Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation, 110.

I'm Talking About Practice

I don't like Pete Carroll, or at least I didn't use to. Maybe it was that his teams dominated like few college teams have over a three year period. Maybe it was ESPN's hype machine talking too much about USC or maybe it was all those Heisman Trophies the Trojans won. Maybe it was the way Carroll struts and stomps on the sidelines during games, or maybe it was jealousy at the way they owned college football supremacy, snatching it away from programs in my beloved Southeast Conference. For whatever reason, something about the guy just rubbed me the wrong way.

But as I was making my way through the Internet this morning before church, I stumbled across a wonderful profile of USC's coach in the L.A. Times. The opening story of Carroll visiting men and women in some of the roughest neighborhoods and listening grabs your attention, but there was another piece of the story that stuck with me this morning in church.

Carroll has to pass through the USC music building on his way from his office to the practice field, and the sound of wannabe musicians pounding out notes day after day serves as an echo of one of Carroll's central themes.

“One thing I’ve learned, which I was taught a long time ago but didn’t grasp at the time, is the power of practice,” Carroll says. “The discipline that comes from practice, that allows you to transcend the early stages of learning and take you to a point where you’re free floating and totally improvising. Through the discipline, the repetition, you become free.”

I spent four years as a sports reporter, so the idea of a football coach stressing the importance of practice doesn't register as breaking news. However, reading Carroll talk about the routine of practice and the way that discipline can free us piqued my interest.

One of the hardest parts of my time in seminary has been finding ways to practice my faith in the midst of studying. I know practices are all the rage in theological education (thank you Diana Bass and Craig Dykstra), but Carroll's point led me to think about the ideas in a slightly different way.

I attend a school of theology that views itself as progressive, constantly defining itself against conservative or evangelical ways of doing things. Professors have talked about defining spirituality and faith as not as structured or defined as their more conservative brethren often do. For example, prayer is not sitting down and reading the Bible and then talking and listening to God, but prayer can be many different things. Life is prayer.

All this is well and good, but I wonder if we have to get to a certain point for this to take root. Maybe we need a discipline, a practice, that can then free us as we progress in our faith. I have found that as legalistic as it might sound, spending time reading and praying, a "devotional time", is important and can help me nourish the spiritual life that others might find in more broader terms. The discipline, the process of going over something, of doing it again and again, is worthwhile. As Carroll claims, we can only be free, maybe we can only go deeper as we cultivate the routine.

I can't remember the sheer number of times that I have heard coaches proclaim, "you play how you practice." Allen Iverson's protests to the contrary, practice matters. If we practice, if we spend our time cultivating a way of doing something, then we can improvise and maybe move beyond that to something deeper or " better".

I'm hoping to practice. I'm hoping to find a way to practice what I believe, to be trained and formed into patterns that will help me become the person that God has called me to be. Sounds like a good New Year's resolution to me.

A Samaritan Theology

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.^*262728 ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

29

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ ³⁰Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ ³⁷He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

The Good Samaritan. In “Along the Road”, the sociologist Robert Wuthnow chronicles that, in fact, this classic story of Christian faith matters, and matters greatly. Wuthnow undertook the task of trying to figure what difference the Parable of the Good Samaritan has on American society. He interviewed scores of Christians and non-Christians alike, asking them to retell the story and about what significance it had on their lives. Wuthnow found that those who knew the story, and had heard it in the context of regular church attendance and particularly by experiencing the story either as the Samaritan who helped or as the wounded man who needed help, were much more likely to sign up to help other people. The great moral tale, the Good Samaritan, is helpful. It formed people to go and do likewise. The people had gotten it, we were looking at a real live Biblical success story. There’s only one problem. This parable, this well-known tale of helping and do-gooding, is not a parable primarily concerned about ethics, about doing good. It’s a parable of theology – it is, a word about God.

We all know the story. A man was on his way to Jericho and got mugged. The robbers stole his money. They took his clothes. And so he couldn’t get away, they beat him. They might have kicked him. If they had a weapon they probably used it on him too, maybe cutting and slashing him to a bloody pulp. The attack was so thorough, so complete, that they left him for dead, not even bothering to hide the body or get him off the road. When people across the street saw him, he looked half-dead.

Two religious officials, one a priest and another a Levite, maybe on their way to the temple, passed the man on the other side of the street. The Bible says that they saw him, yet they passed on by. They could have thought he was dead. They could have kept walking because they didn’t want to be ritually defiled by a dead body. We don’t know. All we know is that they kept on keeping on and they too, left him for dead. Then, a third man appears, a Samaritan. He sees the man, has mercy on him, bandaging, rubbing oil and wine on his wounds, and securing lodging for the man. He was the neighbor. Go, and do likewise. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

You see, the Samaritan isn’t just any neighbor. He’s not Uncle Joe or even the nice little man who lives down the street. The Samaritan is Hillary Clinton to the wounded man’s James Dobson. The Samaritans and the Jews had been fighting since about the eighth Century B.C.E. It shouldn’t surprise us that the Samartian woman Jesus met was shocked when he asked her for water. The hatred between Jews and Samaritans was so bad, that according to Josephus, during one particular Passover some Samaritans scattered bones of a dead human in the temple, not only defiling the temple but also preventing the celebration of the feast. Georgia Tech students stealing UGA have nothing on these guys.

The fact that the Samaritan is a sworn enemy makes things a little different. Whereas modern do-gooder interpretations tend to focus on the parable as a moral exemplar for helping the needy in society, Patristic interpreters of the early church had a different take. The parable was not about an ethical imperative – to help the needy in the world – but it was an allegory of God’s plan of salvation and an entry path for persons into the church. Whereas moderns tend to understand themselves as passing by the man on the road – in a position of power – Patristic interpreters looked at the parable and saw themselves on the ground, beaten and left for dead, waiting for someone to help.

Jesus’ tale is Gospel, it is powerfully good news. It is good news for the lawyer – he gains insight into the law of love. It is good news for the Samaritan – he is a hero. It is good news for the wounded man – he gets taken care of. And it is ultimately good news for its hearers, who whether we know it or not, are ourselves beaten and broken, callous and cut up along the road. That’s because Jesus isn’t offering a tale about what to do in this passage. In this well known parable he is revealing just who God is. The parable of the Good Samaritan is ultimately a revelation of the character of God.

But before we can talk about God, we need to talk about us. It’s not as much in vogue to talk about it much these days, but from the Apostle Paul way back when to Reinhold Niebuhr only a little back when, Christian theologians have affirmed that humans are sinful. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Paul writes. Wesley said that the goal of the Christian life was to recover the image of God that was lost through sin. Whatever the words say, we know that most of the time we are working against the will and plan of God. God desires reconciliation and we foster division. God desires sharing – take the cloak off your back and give them your tunic too – but from the day we leave the womb we are constantly clamoring for ourselves. Wasting water in a drought, cashing a big check while another can’t eat, or hiding my Halloween candy so my little brother can’t have some. We know just who and what we are.

The Samaritan in the parable didn’t leave his enemy bleeding on the ground. And neither does God. For even though we are often God’s enemy, fomenting rebellion and living against God’s desire for the world, God still sees us. God still sees us and has compassion. God, like the Samaritan in the parable, saw our needs. God sees that, like the man in the story, we are hurting. God sees that the sin and evil have ransacked us along the road, beating us beyond repair and leaving us for dead. But our sin and our sad, sad, state does not prevent God from seeing that we need help, and then crossing the road to heal us. The Apostle Paul spends the first half of Romans slaying us, slicing and dicing us by detailing all the ways that we sin and rebel against God. But at its height, the text sings as Paul declares, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

The turning point of the parable comes when the Samaritan sees the man, and “has compassion” on him. The Greek word that is translated as having compassion is used twelve times in the New Testament, all in the Gospels. Nine times it refers to God’s compassion as revealed in the Incarnate One, Jesus. The Samaritan isn’t a unique man willing to transcend religious politics or an extraordinary guy walking down the road one day. The compassion that he shows isn’t an attribute to be imitated. Instead, his compassion reveals that the Samaritan is nothing more or nothing less than a description of the Christ, Emmanuel, God with us. We see in the compassion extended to the man lying in the road the compassion God extends to each and every one of us. The Good Samaritan is a reflection of the love of God.

Over Thanksgiving I listed to a sermon. The focus: What must I do to be saved? My uncle, an avowed agnostic and the song leader in the local Church of Christ, is mad at God. His eyes getting wider and his hair flying every which way as he leaned forward, he couldn’t understand why God did it. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask for God to put me here and see if I could live up to all this. Give all your money to the poor. I’m selfish. I can’t do it, but that’s what the Bible says. Leave your mother and your father. I would never do that. I can’t do that, but that’s what the Bible says. If it was up to me, I would never have been born. The point of the whole thing is to get to heaven, and I know I’m not making it. It’s going to be hot where I’m going. What kind of God is that, who creates you and knows you are going to fail, knows you are going to be damned? I didn’t ask for that.”

His misreading of this parable and the New Testament is a tragic one. He is haunted by his own texts of terror, the ones that keep him up at night and the ones which prevent him from loving God instead of fearing God. What he doesn’t get is what the lawyer in our tale didn’t get. The lawyer asked Jesus the question about his neighbor wanting to justify himself. My uncle thinks that he has to justify himself too. But the message of the New Testament is that we don’t justify ourselves; God does that, and already has.

Terrifying thoughts like the ones that tormented my uncle helped Luther to the claim that this parable speaks to. How can I be righteous before a holy and righteous God. Impossible. But what is impossible with man is possible for God. We are justified, made righteous, not by works of our merit, but by faith apart from the works of the law. Sola Fide: Faith alone. The wounded man didn’t pick himself up by his bootstraps, dust himself off, anoint himself with oil and wine and make his way to an inn. The Samaritan did, risking himself for the sake of that wounded traveler. We don’t reconcile ourselves and don’t heal ourselves from the sin and evil that has ravaged us. God does that.

The story of the Good Samaritan is about a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, but the hope in the story is in the one who is on his way to Jerusalem, and who will die there. The fundamental claim of the Christian faith is that God is made flesh in Jesus, who is crucified and resurrected for our sake. God crosses the road, for us. The great mystery of faith. Thanks be to God.

Wuthnow, Robert. “On the Road”, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, 157-87

Donahue, John. The Gospel in Parable, 130

Hultgren, Arland. The Parables of Jesus, 98-99

Overhearing Catechesis

I was sitting in church yesterday, waiting for the processional to begin, when it started. The father, who I believe to be a seminary professor of some kind, asked his daughter whether she knew what was significant about this Sunday. She didn't know the answer, and he responded, that it was the last Sunday of the Christian Year. Christ the King Sunday ended the year, and a new year would begin the following Sunday with Advent. Then a crazy thing happened. The daughter, who couldn't have been older than 10, recited to her father, in order, the liturgical seasons of the Christian calendar. I don't think I could do that. In fact, I know I couldn't.

But it didn't end there, either. She asked her father about the differing Christian traditions in the Gospels, specifically about the differences between Mark and Luke's account of the birth. They then went on to discuss the origins of humanity, and how the mythical story really dated back to the Tower of Babel and Adam and Eve. No one really believes all humanity descended from Adam and Eve, he said, and only people who can't think critically do.

Another seminary professor demonstrated her practice of catechesis when after communion, her son wanted to dip his hand in the water in the Baptismal font. She let him do it, of course, but she wouldn't let him rub the water over his hair. No, she took his head and formed the sign of the cross. The child probably won't know what it means now, but down the road I imagine all this formation will help him know what he is doing, whether he buys into it or not.

I don't think it was their doctorate's worth of knowledge that led to this intentionality, but simply a belief that these moments of formation matter. The small actions, the ritual and the education, are powerful. The little moments of the tradition are very significant, and over time, can form us and our children into the way of Jesus.

Existentials Over Eggs

I've landed in the middle of existential crises - not my own, thankfully. Over the course of the past week, I've been engaged in conversations with my roommate and one of my best friends here at Candler about the import of faith in some pretty big decisions in their lives.

It started with a drug-induced (prescribed of course) blast about radical discipleship and comfortable living and came to a crescendo this morning. I discussed one of Wesley's famous questions - "How can I be assured?" over scrambled eggs and overpriced bacon with one friend and returned home to hear the other, taking a respite from devouring Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution, announcing that he was going to write a book, The Gospel in the Suburbs. The book, of course, has already been written, but I hope he writes it or at least thinks more about it.

I couldn't help but walk back to my room with a smile on my face as I began to procrastinate from writing my CPE application. Not because I was enjoying their plight, but because I thought that these are the questions we should have been asking the last two years. Not the questions about whether a theologian had credibility if they used masculine language for God or whether you could be a republican and a Christian at the same time.

But the real ones, the ones about, "How can I know that God is God and not my own imagination" and "If I believe that God is, how do I live into that? How do I live into that in the inner city? How do I live into that in the ivory tower of the academy? How do I live into it in the suburbs? How do I live into it in the ordination process? How do I live into that in my relationships? How do I live into it in my life?

I came to seminary in part hoping to find a community that would allow me to ask these types of questions with like-passioned people all struggling with what it means to be the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. I have been having these conversations more and more of late, about how to follow Jesus and not ourselves.

I will be really disappointed if I don't have more of them. This week has contained some of the deepest theological reflection of my life here in Atlanta. Existential crisis...a mark of the church? Maybe not, but not far away I think.

The Cost of the Kingdom

Sept. 9, 2007. Luke 14:25-33.

Like many children, I grew up in awe of my father. At no time or place was this more apparent than at the grocery store. It was not his deft decisions in selecting flavorful the freshest fruits or the greenest vegetables. That’s because anyone who knows my mother knows that any choices that involved more than a carton of milk or box of cheerios were hers and hers alone. But what enamored me most when we went Krogering for cheerios and milk was Rex’s ability to answer questions. You see, my father, was born and raised in Sevierville, where he has lived almost his entire life. People knew him as a child and watched him grow before there very eyes. So when the local boy grew up to possess a powerful judicial mind, his friends and neighbors couldn’t resist the desire to ask him their most pressing legal questions. “Judge, let me just ask you about this, it’ll only take a second…” And so it would begin, and twenty minutes later it would end. There was no legal question that my dad couldn’t answer. He discussed DUIs and domestic disturbances with diplomatic aplomb and tackled tort challenges with a smile on his face. It was amazing.

About 15 years later I found myself really wishing I had my dad’s ability to answer the questions. I was in Washington D.C., visiting Alan, an old friend, when he posed a question. Wanna-be theologians are often as easy targets for this type of thing as sitting judges. But before getting to the question, let me tell you about my friend Alan. Alan is a rising star in the legal profession. Fresh out of the University of Virginia law school, he spent the last year clerking for a federal judge and will spend the next as a lawyer in an international tribunal. His intellectual talents have yielded him financial reward – he can easily afford his $2100 a month apartment, because for the first time in his life the son of two educators has disposal income instead of institutional debt.

As we sat on the couch reminiscing about the longago days of our youth, Alan posed the question. “If I really believed what I say I believe,” he began, “why shouldn’t I sell all I have?” Now there’s a question that will flip the room upside-down. The beauty of an earnest heart asking questions driven by his faith was there, but that sentiment didn’t answer the question, and he was looking to me to solve his quandary. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, Thomas Paine wrote. Pastoral responsibility was staring me straight in the face – and I wanted to crawl under the couch.

The Gospel text this morning, in which Jesus lays out the conditions for discipleship is one of those that makes you understand where Mark Twain was coming from - “It’s not what I don’t understand about the Bible that bothers me. It’s what I do understand.” Jesus doesn’t mince words. Plain talk is best understood and Jesus lays it, and us, out. To become my disciple you must hate your family. To become my disciple you must, hate life itself. To become my disciple you must sell all your possessions. Take up your cross, and follow me to Jerusalem. Hate your family. Hate your life. Sell everything. Follow me to suffering and death. A model for church growth this is not.

Christians have been avoiding the radical demands of this text for years. Those of us who want to talk about social implications of the Gospel like to play Jesus, hammering the crowds! How can you be a Christian and drive a BMW? People are starving. The command is to sell all you have, not sell out! A second option is even easier. They say, “I mean, you can’t take that text literally. The shelters would be even more overcrowded. Welfare would be out of control. Families would fall apart. And the last time I checked, the Ten Commandments said honor your mother and father, not hate them.

But the problem is that we can neither play Jesus nor ignore the passage’s stark literal demands. We can’t avoid one simple fact: We aren’t Jesus; we are the crowds. This is a text about who Jesus is, who we are, and how we fail to connect the two. The crowds, like us, are attracted to Jesus. There’s just something about him – the way he teaches them, the way he welcomes them, the way he speaks things to their hearts in a way they have never experienced before. But Jesus declares that he isn’t looking for a following; he’s demanding followers.

He doesn’t want people to serenade him in the sunshine only to disappear after dark. This call to discipleship accommodates no middle-ground, no sitting on the fence, standing on the sideline, flip-flopping, cut-and-run or any other cliché you can come up with. The cost of discipleship is not cheap, but Jesus is looking for disciples who will pay it. To spell it out: the cost of discipleship is an all-or-nothing commitment that relativizes every other aspect of our lives. Family obligations, economic stability, employment security and a host of other comforts and commitments no longer dominate. This is why Jesus warns his following to count the cost. He wants them to know that to follow him means to embrace a life of suffering that the culture screams: Run while you can! But its not enough to know the cost, but to understand what following Jesus requires, and then to join him on the road to Jerusalem. Don’t stop to bury the dead. Carry Your Cross. Don’t stop to kiss your family goodbye. Carry Your Cross. No one with one eye on their life, their work and their family and only one eye on Jesus is fit for the Kingdom. Only those who devote their whole lives to Jesus and follow him to the Cross.

The parable of the Great Banquet immediately preceded this call to discipleship in Luke’s Gospel. In the parable, a man who we are to infer is Jesus, invites people to a great feast. The first ones invited refuse to come. One has to tend to property. Another to his animals. Another to his family. The man responds by inviting the poor, the lame and anyone else who will come, but those who denied the request, Jesus tells them and us, will never taste his dinner.”[1] Connecting these two passages helps us get the fullness of this stark demand that Jesus lays out. Jesus is asking the crowds one of those “Who do you say that I am?” questions that he loves so much. If the answer is that he is the Son of the Living God, then they will sell all and follow him. In other words, there is no reason to devote yourself to Jesus and the expense of everything else if you aren’t convinced that he is literally God with us. But if we believe that he is, then we are to devote our lives to following him. Only in losing ourselves and in giving our lives can we gain a life, he says. You can’t taste the feast without taking up the cross.

The problem with being a people of the Book, is that the words it contains are not mere speculation, but words that force us to examine our lives and the lives of those around us. To call one’s self a Christian, or a follower of this Jesus, means to examine our lives in light of this stark call to discipleship. If you will permit me, I think this text particularly has something to say to Kern Church right now. The Gospel always examines us, but counting the cost seems to be the only appropriate action for a church asking and struggling with what it means to be a “Kingdom Church”. From what Jim tells me, this dangerously titled Bible Study will be one that examines what it means to a community of people that follows Jesus by focusing not on what you want, or what the advertisers, sociologists or church growth strategists tells you to want, but on what the Gospel requires of you. If you will permit me, first let me commend you. These are the questions the Gospel demands to ask, and too few people actually raise them. So, give yourself a hand for asking the hard question.
But since you let me commend you, let me also warn you. Know what you are getting into by taking on “Kingdom Church”. The Bible tell us that pointing towards a Kingdom-driven church does not mean affirming our own ideas about how the world should look, but in imagining what John Donahue calls, “a world that points beyond itself and back to God.”[2] And as Jesus so forcefully warned us, this is painful. And if you are faithful to this calling, earnestly wrestling with, thinking about and enacting what it means to be point not to yourselves or even your own church community, but beyond the world and to God, this will hurt, and hurt a lot. Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean stretching your own theological imagination to praise God by practicing your faith in ways that you aren’t comfortable with. Becoming a Kingdom Church might require you to open your facilities to people you don’t like. They might be the Scouts. But they also might be people you wouldn’t want your boys or girls near. Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean letting go of pride in your tradition and history and anticipating a bold future in following Jesus.
Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean a lot of different things. But the Gospels tell us that if you want to know what a Kingdom Church looks like, look to one – the Holy One in fact, Jesus the Christ. But be warned, his answer is not the easy one. He will call you down the path of discipleship - the one that will take you places you don’t want to go, but ultimately will lead you to life truly lived and a feast that will not cease. [3] See friends the truth that we want to believe but have such a hard time with is that true life comes from giving ourselves to God and each other. It’s not in hoarding our money or protecting ourselves from change or clinging to our families or friends when God calls us somewhere else. The path of discipleship is an invitation to the eternal banquet and life with God, and Jesus tell us we can’t reach the end without walking the path.

You may have forgotten by now, but I suspect you have a lingering question…Daniel, you never told us how you answered Alan’s question. Well, first I stumbled around for a few minutes, tripping over my tongue – as anybody who participated in my Sunday School class here saw on a frequent occasion. But after this, I tried again. I said Alan, the financial question is there, but the truth of the matter is that Jesus doesn’t demand your money, he demands your life. Any thing, any possession that prevents us from following him, has to go.” We looked at each other, bewildered at what we both suspected. “Of course, the hard part isn’t in the knowing, but in the doing.” So my prayer this morning is that God will give me and Alan and Jim and all you fine people in this place the strength to count the cost and the courage to live into and towards God’s kingdom by following Jesus down the hard road of discipleship that leads to the elaborate feast that has no end. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

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[1] Luke 14:15-24

[2] Donahue, John. The Gospel in Parable, 11.

[3] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship.