The Waking Dreamer: Acceptance

Showing posts with label Acceptance. Show all posts

Monday, July 21, 2025

Free Enough to Serve

Galatians 5:1, 13-26[1]

I recently spoke about one of the reasons some people give for not being involved in organized religion. It’s because they see the church as “full of hypocrites.” And I suggested in that sermon that one reason for that criticism is that they hear us saying one thing while they see us doing something very different. I think another reason why people avoid religion is because, truth be told, we can come across like very selfish and self-centered people. Especially when it comes to salvation. When we make salvation all about “me, my, and mine,” what other people may hear is that we really don’t care about anyone else.

I think that’s a sad state of affairs. The Gospel is about Jesus Christ making the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life away selflessly so that we could all live together in the freedom, peace, and joy of God’s love. And somehow, someway, too many of us who profess faith in him do so in a way that strikes the people around us as so utterly selfish and self-centered that it turns them away from the community of those who claim to follow Jesus. To some extent, I can understand that. Too many in the church have focused on their own salvation to such an extent that it can come across as if they have no concern for anyone else’s salvation. Surely those of us who follow Jesus must share his concern for the whole human family!

I think part of the problem is that we can get caught up in our own “stuff” so much that it’s hard for us to look past it and really care about those around us. It’s a natural thing. And it’s true for all of us. It’s part of being human. Our life experiences are what are most real to us. But we can get so bent out of shape about our malfunctioning cell phones (just for example) that we lose all sight of the fact that there are many people in the world who have to walk miles for clean water! Now, I don’t want to suggest that what preoccupies us is always as trivial as a malfunctioning cell phone. We have much bigger concerns that, very naturally, occupy our attention. But the “optics” of that mindset don’t make for a favorable portrait of the church and those of us who are devoted to it.

I think our lesson from the book of Galatians for today addresses this question. Paul emphasizes the freedom we have in Christ. A big part of that freedom is that through his faithful obedience to God even to the point of death on a cross, and by placing our faith in him as our savior and lord, we’re set free from all the guilt and fear and all the other “stuff” that might plague us. For Paul, the cross means that God has “justified” us. That’s the language of the Bible. It’s a theological word for the idea that God accepts us and loves us just as we are. Unconditionally and irrevocably. Paul was insistent that we don’t have to do anything to earn that love and acceptance. In fact, he made it clear that if the believers of his day thought they could do anything to earn it, it would cancel out the message of the gospel!

We can read a passage like this and think that freedom is simple: you don’t “do the works of the flesh” and you “do the works of the Spirit.” But in reality, true freedom is something that’s really quite complicated. For one thing, if you look at the vice lists in the New Testament and think that any one of those behaviors excludes us from God’s love and acceptance, then we’re all in that boat because we’ve all fallen short in some way. And if you look at the “fruit of the Spirit” and ask whether we consistently embody those characteristics in our daily living, the answer is “sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.” It’s a tough list to live up to. Freedom is something that’s quite complicated.

Many in our society think freedom means “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to.” But that’s not freedom. It’s just “license.” As in taking liberties that aren’t necessarily thoughtful, kind, or caring to others or to ourselves. License differs from freedom in that in that it means doing whatever we please without thinking about how it may affect anyone.[2] It’s a matter of indulging ourselves however and wherever we want. License means choosing to ignore that there are always consequences to our actions and choices. And such blatant self-indulgence never results in real freedom. We can do whatever we please whenever we want as much as we can get away with, and never feel truly loved, or accepted, or valued as a person. And when we lack that basic foundation in our lives, we are never truly free. Freedom is complicated.

I think that’s one reason why Paul insists that the gospel of salvation through Jesus is a free gift. It makes a difference in how we not only look at ourselves, but also how we treat others. Recognizing that the only “justification” that really means anything comes to us through Jesus and the unconditional acceptance God extends to us through him frees us from all that would bind us in this world. That also frees us from all the ways we might think we have to bolster ourselves by putting down others. Trusting the gift of God’s unconditional acceptance frees us to serve one another, all others, in love![3] The only way to truly find freedom is to give yourself away in love, and the only way to truly give yourself away in love is when you find freedom from all that can bind us in this world.[4]

If we truly find that freedom to love, we’re naturally going to extend that love to everyone. We’re naturally going to be concerned with the salvation of the whole human family, not just ourselves. We will be motivated to serve others in a way that truly brings “liberty and justice” to all, in a way that recognizes the dignity of every person, regardless of race, gender, ability, or class. Serving others in love starts with recognizing the dignity of every person. Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s incredibly difficult to live out this level of love and freedom all the time. We all have a variety of influences within us that get in the way of giving ourselves away to others in love. What St. Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to know is that what God has done for us in Jesus sets us free to explore what it means to share love in a community of people, like this one, who are committed to sharing God’s love with the whole world.

[2] John Paul II, in “The Gospel of Life,” 19.3, said that we have “a notion of freedom which exalts the isolated individual in an absolute way, and gives no place to solidarity, to openness to others and service of them.” See J. Michael Miller, C. S. B., The Encyclicals of John Paul II, 808.

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 188. He says that the church is the “fellowship of the justified, who no longer have to justify themselves” He goes on to insist that this freedom sets us free to serve others in love. As I have suggested before, I believe this is idea of freedom to love is a central theme in Moltmann’s understanding of the Christian life. It runs throughout his discussion of the church’s identity and calling; he begins the idea that Jesus establishes the freedom of God’s kingdom by sacrificing himself for others (117), by breaking the powers of oppression through the resurrection (98-99), and by assuring us that we are accepted by God, and therefore enabling us to accept others (188-89); therefore Moltmann understands the freedom of God’s kingdom as that which enables us to serve one another in the effort to bring freedom to others (84, 195, 278, 283-84, 292); he construes this life under the concept of “friendship” which Jesus models and we are called to emulate those who are “open for others” and who “love in freedom” (121, 316).

[4] St. Augustine said it this way: “love, and do what you will”; cf. Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170207.htm.; See John Caputo, On Religion, 3-7, 24-28, 109-116, 134-36, 139; cf. similarly, John Calvin and W. Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 160 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc): “He who loves will render to every man his right, will do injury or harm to no man, will do good, as far as lies in his power, to all.” See further, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.2:732-33.

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The Burden Lifted

Psalm 32[1]

If we live in a world defined by dissatisfaction, as we discussed last week, we also live in a world defined by competition. There’s probably no better time of year to talk about this. “March Madness” isn’t just about basketball. It’s a symbol of how deeply competition is drilled into our lives. In every area of our lives, from school, to work, to sports, to even the games we play for entertainment. The level of competitiveness in our world can leave us feeling like life itself is a “zero-sum game.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that somebody has to lose so that somebody else can “win.” In a tournament like “March Madness,” a whole lot of “somebodies” have to lose so that just one team can win.

I realize that this competitiveness is so much a part of our way of life that some of you may seriously ask whether there is any real alternative. We see it when more than one company has to “compete” for our business. That can be a good thing. To be sure, we also see many ways in which cooperation brings people together for mutual benefit. I think of how communities rally around a farmer who has been injured or is sick and can’t get their crops planted or harvested. But at the end of the day, when the driving force is to “win,” that means “beating the competition.”

I think that’s at least one of the reasons why the message of God’s grace gains so little traction in our culture. The idea that God’s unfailing love is unconditional, unqualified, irrevocable, and unlimited, and that it extends to everyone, everywhere regardless of who they are, where they’ve been, or what they’ve done, just doesn’t compute for us. Like everything else, we view love as something we have to “win” by outdoing others. Even many of us who sing God’s grace in church every week may try to “win” God’s love for ourselves with our morality and our religious devotion. But the very effort means we view others as the “competition.” Maybe that’s one reason why the church has lost so much spiritual credibility with so many in our day. The idea that God extends his grace and love to all people everywhere solely because that’s who God is gets lost in the drive to “outdo” others. We just cannot envision a world in which everyone “wins.” But maybe that’s part of our problem.

You might think that’s a surprising way to introduce our Psalm for today. We hear the language of “righteousness” and we think we have to “measure up” to some kind of standard. In some of the Psalms, the bar for being “righteous” is set so high it leaves us wondering who can ever reach it.[2] But that’s where the Psalm for today comes in. We discussed last week that in the Psalms being “righteous” means trusting in God completely and wholly. Our Psalm for today expands on that: the “righteous” who are “blessed” or truly “happy” are not those who by their own efforts achieve some unreachable standard of morality. Rather, the “righteous” are those who know that they are embraced by God’s love.[3] They’ve learned to be vulnerable enough to admit their pain not only to themselves, but also to God. When they do that, they know the meaning of the psalm-singer’s words: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” Unfortunately, we tend to hear this kind of language in terms of guilt and shame. But this Psalm isn’t about guilt or shame, it’s about grace.

This is more than just religious jargon. The psalm-singer knows by experience the pain of feeling “not good enough.” To paraphrase the ancient words of the Bible, when we try to hide that pain, it becomes a burden that crushes us. It grinds us down as long as we keep silent. Many of us may know by personal experience the suffering that comes from keeping silent about our burdens. Some things are too painful to admit, even to ourselves. That’s because we may we think we’re unworthy of love and acceptance, by God, by others, or even by ourselves. But the burdens we carry don’t disqualify us from God’s love. We’re more than our worst failure. We’re more than the labels people put on us.

The psalm-singer also speaks of the freedom that comes from honesty. The promise of the Psalm for today is that when we admit all the ways in which we feel unworthy or disqualified, we find God’s total and complete acceptance. Even the language of sin and forgiveness demonstrates this. The variety of Hebrew words for sin and forgiveness in Psalm 32 offers the promise and the hope that our all guilt and shame in all its dimensions is resolved in every way that is necessary.[4] And this total and complete acceptance is available to us just for the asking. All we have to do is open ourselves enough to admit to ourselves and to God who we are, what we’ve done, and how we feel about it. We may be able to share this burden with a trusted friend or a counseling professional. The offer of healing held out to us by God’s grace applies not only to what we’ve done, but also to the pain we may carry for what has been done to us. When we name what hurts in a safe environment, we find that we’re still loved by God. Always have been and always will be. The joy and the freedom that comes from this kind of honest vulnerability is rooted in knowing that we are accepted for who we are, now and to all eternity.

In this Psalm, as in the Psalms as a whole, the key to finding this kind of freedom to learn to trust God’s unfailing love. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Psalms are filled with testimonies of the “blessings” that come from trusting God’s unfailing love. It’s about more than just comprehending God’s love as a concept. It’s about embracing God’s love wholly and completely with our whole hearts as well as our minds, even with body and soul. It’s about entrusting all that we are and all that we will ever be to God’s care! It may be hard to wrap our heads around something that big. Maybe we need to bring it down to a level we can grasp by taking the risk of trusting a friend enough to share our deepest pain. When we do, and we find love and acceptance in the place of the rejection we feared, the burden is lifted.

More than that, this process of healing can lead us to a whole new sense of worth, value, and acceptance. When the burdens we carry are lifted by God’s unfailing love, or even by the love of a friend, we find the freedom to accept that we are accepted. We find God’s unconditional, unqualified, irrevocable, and unlimited acceptance. That’s what “grace” means.[5] It means we’re accepted by God for who we are, now and forever. Always have been and always will be. When we find this level of freedom because the burdens that may have weighed us down for years have been lifted, we’re free to live fully in the present in a way that’s grace-filled and loving. We’re free to pass on to others the acceptance we have received. It transforms us and everyone around us, as God’s unconditional love is meant to.

[2] Psalm 15 is a great example: the psalm-singer asks a question that boils down to who may live in God’s presence, and the answer is, “Those who obey God in everything and always do what is right, whose words are true and sincere, and who do not slander others. … They always do what they promise, no matter how much it may cost” (Ps 15:2-4, GNT). I think we all tend to assume that “I could never live up to that.”

[3] J. Clinton McCann, Jr. “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:806, where he points out that one of the purposes of this Psalm is to demonstrate the truth that “to be righteous is not a matter of being sinless but a matter of being forgiven.”

[4] Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 266.

[5] Paul Tillich, “You are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations, 162. He says that we truly experience “grace” not by anything we decide to believe or do, but rather it’s as if “a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’” (emphasis added). See also James L. Mays, Psalms, 146: “Calvin observed that all that the Scripture says about blessedness in other beatitudes depends on the blessedness commended here, ‘the free favor of God, by which he reconciles us to himself’ (Calvin I:526).”

Sunday, September 27, 2020

"Righteous"

“Righteous”

Matthew 21:12-32[1]

Most of us have opinions that we believe to be right. That’s a perfectly normal part of being a living, thinking person. There are just some things that make sense to us, and others that don’t make sense. When it comes to matters that are near and dear to the heart, we can often tighten our grip on our opinions. We may even blur the difference between “opinion” and “truth.” Granted, our opinions can be more or less “informed,” but they are nevertheless opinions. Assuming that our opinions are “true” can set us up for some unfortunate conflicts with our fellow human beings. Especially when they also have opinions they believe are “true.”

Again, so far we’re just dealing with normal life. This has been going on as long as there have been people. Things can get a bit dicey when we go from assuming our opinions are “right” to assuming that they (and we who hold them) are “righteous.” That adds another dimension to the problem. When we take that step, not only are those who hold different opinions “wrong,” we may view them as “enemies.” When we see ourselves as “righteous,” it’s not far from seeing those who disagree with us as dangerous. And when we perceive people to be a threat, it becomes easier to attack them.

I think Jesus was addressing this problem in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s no secret that Jesus had a tense relationship with the Jewish religious leaders. In our lesson for today, he “got in their face” about their hypocrisy by driving the merchants out of the temple. Now, we have to understand that the base of power for the Jewish religious leaders was the temple and the synagogue. Part of what that means is that by definition they got to define who was considered “righteous” and who was branded a “sinner.” And of course, in that setup, they were the ones who got to be “righteous,” and they were the ones who got to target others as a “threat.”

So when Jesus dared to criticize the religious leaders on their own turf, they responded in a way that is perfectly predictable. They asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matt. 21:23). This is predictable because they assumed they were the ones whom God had given authority in religious matters, and that Jesus had no such authority. But Jesus saw through their intentions, and so he asked a counter question. He asked them where John got his authority to baptize. He knew they didn’t recognize John’s baptism any more than they recognized his authority. And their response is interesting and instructive.

The “argument” that followed among them showed where their true concern was. They weren’t concerned about the authority of Jesus’ ministry, any more than John’s. They weren’t even concerned about what was true. Their sole concern was about maintaining their power and prestige and about how they looked to the people! So they kept their place firmly on the fence and simply answered, “We do not know.” Now, these are men who were used to answering questions with definitive answers that were to be taken as God’s truth. I would say they rarely, if ever, spoke those words to anyone.

So Jesus told a parable that exposes their hypocrisy. In the parable, a father asks a son to go work in the vineyard and he refuses, but then changes his mind and goes. The father asks his second son to go to work and he says yes, but then doesn’t go. The clear implication is that it’s not always those who make a lot of noise about being righteous who actually practice what they preach. In fact, Jesus told the “righteous” religious leaders that the tax collectors and prostitutes—those who were at the top of their list of “sinners”—were way ahead of them when it came to actually doing God’s will!

For all their presumption of being “righteous” and the pious play-acting that went along with it, they had rejected what Jesus called “the way of righteousness” (Matt. 21:32). What’s more, the people they scapegoated as being “sinners” were actually the ones who believed John and Jesus and accepted the good news of the Kingdom of God they came to preach. The very fact that the leaders considered themselves “righteous” was simply a convenient way for them to keep up appearances with their sham religion by diverting the attention to others. In fact, their whole system of religion was an elaborate self-justification for their self-designation as “righteous.”[2]

This behavior was not the exclusive prerogative of the “righteous” people in Jesus’ day. People of faith throughout the ages have identified others as “sinners” simply as a way of justifying themselves. We all can fall into the trap of deflecting attention away from ourselves so we can keep up the appearance of being “righteous” and avoid facing our own sins. But whenever we use our religion to make ourselves look good at the expense of others, we’re not only hurting them, we’re also hurting ourselves. The more tightly we draw the circle of who is “righteous,” the more pressure we feel to live up to expectations that no one can fulfill. Instead, Jesus offers us God’s full and free acceptance as a gift. When that gift takes hold in our hearts, it no longer matters who is “righteous,” because none of us are!

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 114: Jesus was “breaking through the vicious circle of their discrimination in the system of values set up by the righteous.”

Monday, June 10, 2019

That They May Be One

John 17:20-26[1]

A few weeks ago I mentioned some of the ways in which the church is perceived by our culture—not necessarily positively. I think another problem with the perception of the church at large in our society is the idea that there’s supposed to be “one, holy, catholic, apostolic” church. Of course, we could spend a sermon on each one of those marks of the church, but I’m thinking about the first: we say we believe that the church is “one.” But the reality is that, despite our best efforts, if you look at the church today as a whole, you would be hard-pressed to say that we are “one.”^{^[2]} Even when it comes to individual congregations, it’s hard to find a church where everyone is on the same page.

There are so many different approaches to living out the Christian faith. Some are traditional, some are not. Some are conservative, some are middle of the road, and some are very liberal. There is so much “difference” out there, it can leave us wondering whether there is anything that unites the church in any meaningful way. Of course, some churches don’t want to be united with those who do things differently. And while most of us may not agree that “difference” means “heresy,” practically speaking we tend to divide ourselves into groups based on our cultural, political, and social views.

This situation is not for lack of efforts at promoting (or enforcing) unity. Many churches use agreement regarding what they believe to achieve unity. Other churches seek unity through organizational uniformity, through a ladder of authority that works from the top down. In our context, we seek unity through what is essentially a policy manual, the Book of Order. I would have to say that these well-intentioned but misguided efforts at promoting (or enforcing) unity have in reality been ventures in missing the point. They really haven’t succeeded at producing the intended result—a church that is one.

I think part of the problem is that we’re looking in the wrong direction for unity. We think somehow that we can find unity through our own efforts. But in our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus pointed us toward a very different source for unity. Jesus called his disciples to a unity that is grounded in the unity of love between the Father and the Son. Jesus prays, “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Jn. 17:21). He says it in several different ways, but essentially Jesus prayed for the disciples “that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me” (Jn. 17:22-23). Clearly, what creates a real and lasting unity in the church is the love that unites Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I guess the real question, though, is how we promote the love of God among people like us, who hold very different opinions about what we deem important in life. How do we promote the love that unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit among people like us who get very attached to our opinions, and who can be stubborn at times about holding onto differing viewpoints? I think what it takes is a unity that is deeper and stronger than anything we can create ourselves. What really makes the church one is the unity that God creates—the church is the one people of the one God. It is the unity that Jesus Christ creates—the church is the one people of the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is the unity that the Spirit of God creates—the church is the one people of the one Holy Spirit. This is the unity that makes the church live.

I don’t believe this kind of unity is about the absence of difference. As I’ve said before, I believe that one of the signs of the health of any human community is that it has the ability to disagree. The bond created among us by the presence of the love of God in Christ through the Spirit doesn’t eliminate the differences among us. It means that the differences don’t divide us, they make us stronger. And I think that the way that happens is when we respond to our differences by practicing acceptance, gentleness, humility, and patience. These are ties that bind us together and help us to thrive in the love we share with one another, a love that originates in God’s love for us.

I believe that living out the unity we share in God’s love is one of the most important ways that we can bear witness to our new life in Jesus Christ.^{^[3]} In our day and time, the church is divided by race, divided by class, divided by politics, divided by dogma. All of these divisions contradict what Jesus said should be our defining trait: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn. 13:35). Because we come from different perspectives and backgrounds, the kind of love Jesus commanded us to show one another is difficult. It takes all that we have to give. But in a world that seems increasingly lacking in love, I would suggest that demonstrating the love that makes us one may be the most important way that we can show the world that the church is a place to find new life.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:677: “The disunity of the Church is a scandal.”

[3] cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:235-36, where he argues that the essential revelation in the Gospel of John is the mutual love between the Father and the Son which Jesus demonstrates as a love that draws the world into this fellowship.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Open Our Eyes

Acts 9:1-20[1]

Some say that the hardest thing to do is to tell another person, “I’m sorry.” And I would agree that it can be difficult to say those words. It takes humility to be able to apologize to someone we’ve offended or wronged. But as hard as it is to utter the words, “I’m sorry,” I think it is even harder to say the words, “I was wrong.” Apologizing still leaves room for the possibility that you didn’t mean any harm. Saying, “I was wrong” goes beyond that and accepts responsibility for offending someone. That can really challenge us to the core of our identity. Saying “I was wrong” can be humiliating, and painful.

In our Scripture lesson from the book of Acts for today, we learn that Saul the Pharisee found out that he was wrong in a dramatic way. Given our general impression of St. Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, we might find the description of Saul the Pharisee a bit shocking. The Scripture reading says that he was “breathing threats and murder” against the disciples of Jesus (Acts. 9:1)! It’s hard for us I think to imagine the same Apostle who wrote “Love is patient; love is kind” (1 Cor. 13:4) acting out such vicious hostility. Apparently, it was not enough for Saul the Pharisee that the Christians had been driven out of Jerusalem. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest them and drag them back for punishment!

I think it may be hard for us to understand what would inspire such intense violence. In the case of Saul the Pharisee, it would appear that what he would later call “the scandal of the cross” (Gal. 3:13) was the basis for his zeal to attack believers. The fact that Jesus had been crucified constituted for Saul conclusive proof that he could not have been the Messiah. According to the Hebrew Bible, a crucified man stood under God’s curse (Deut. 21:23). So for Saul, the gospel that the crucified Jesus was God’s Messiah constituted blasphemy.[2] In Saul’s mind, he was rounding up blasphemers for the punishment they deserved.

But as he was on his way to Damascus to carry out his violent intentions, he met the living Christ along the way. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened because the book of Acts recounts it three times in three slightly different ways. But the dialogue makes it clear that Saul met Jesus. And Jesus was the one who had been raised from the dead and was alive forevermore, not some messianic pretender Saul thought was dead. Interestingly, when Christ confronts him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4), he replies, “Who are you, Lord?” Despite his preconceived notions, he recognized that he was dealing with some kind of divine encounter. I’m sure he was stunned to hear the answer: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5)!

In that moment, I can just imagine what must have been going through Saul’s mind. He had been violently pursuing Jesus’ followers out of a conviction that they were the worst kind of blasphemers.[3] I would think that meeting Jesus on that road started his mind swirling in the most intense kind of re-evaluation of his life we could imagine. I would say that when he opened his eyes and could not see, it was symbolic of the blindness from which he had been doing things he now regretted. After all, even at the end of his life, St. Paul could still call himself the “chief of sinners” because he formerly persecuted the church (1 Tim. 1:15).

When I think about this story, I wonder what made such a dramatic change in the life of Saul, a strict Pharisee who had been so zealous for God and God’s Torah that he had condemned the followers of Jesus to death (Acts 26:10). I think surely the fact that he came face-to-face with Jesus must have been a powerful experience. I would imagine that he felt not the anger or rejection he may have thought he deserved, but grace, mercy, and love. And above all, I think he experienced an acceptance that transcended anything he had ever known. When Ananias came to him and called him “brother Saul,” and baptized him, I think it must have affected Saul deeply. More than that, when he learned he was “an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15), I think it must have been deeply humbling to him.

A lot of eyes were opened in the course of these events. Saul’s eyes were opened. Jesus was not an impostor, he was truly the Messiah and Son of God, as Saul began to preach immediately after being baptized! The believers were not blasphemers for proclaiming a Gospel he now knew to be true. The eyes of many in the early church were opened to the power of God: their most violent opponent had been transformed into a brother and a fellow believer, and he proclaimed the faith he once tried to destroy. Although it took some time for the Apostles in Jerusalem to trust him, even they ultimately received Saul the Pharisee as a brother. A lot of eyes were opened indeed.

When our eyes are opened, it often involves a recognition that we’ve been wrong. That can be a hard experience. It involves admitting that we’ve been acting on assumptions that were false. It involves recognizing that we may have been in the wrong in the things we’ve done and said. All of that is humbling, and challenging. I think what makes such an experience truly life-changing is when we admit we are wrong, but find that we are accepted nevertheless. There are times when we come face to face with our wrong thoughts, words, and deeds. Hopefully when that happens, we will embrace the opportunity to have our eyes opened, and to take a different direction with our lives as did Saul the Pharisee.

[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/5/2019 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 71: “A crucified Messiah was worse than a contradiction in terms; the very idea was an outrageous blasphemy.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1:199, where he says that Paul is “an opponent and persecutor of the community simply because (cf. Rom. 9:4f.) he stands for Israel, for its election and calling, for its mission to the world, for the course and development of its history as the history of salvation, and therefore for the faithfulness which is to be shown to God in the form of the faithfulness of Israel, its obedience to the Law which He has given it and its trust in the promises which He has made to it, … . He persecutes Christians because he sees that this economy of reconciliation and revelation is questioned, transcended, relativised and outmoded by them, i.e., by their proclamation of the person, work, lordship and authority of the Jesus of Nazareth rejected by Israel and delivered up by it to be crucified, by their declaration of His Messiahship, election, calling and commission, of His history as salvation history, of the demand to obey Him, to trust in the promise given in Him, to believe the Word spoken in His existence.”

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Staying in the Light

Matt. 1:18-25[1]

As we approach the days when we celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus the Christ, I’m not sure many of us are feeling very “saved.” The season of Advent is a time for us to remember the hope, joy, peace, and love that have come to us in the one who is for us “Emmanuel,” or “God with us.” And yet, as we get through these days leading up to Christmas, I’m not sure that hope, joy, peace, and love are the most prominent feelings we’re experiencing. I’m afraid that many of us are feeling stressed out by all the preparations, the busy-ness, and the search for the perfect gifts. Families are gathering, and for many it is a time to “endure” the drama that gets played out every year at this time. Others, who have more solitary lives, may be feeling left out and lonely as the rest of the country “celebrates” the season with their families--even TV specials focus primarily on that dimension of the season.

And so our Scripture readings that speak about the good news of God’s presence with us to restore us, to make his face shine on us so that we might be saved (Ps. 80:7, 19), may sound hollow to many of us at this time of the year.[2] The prophet Isaiah promised a child who would come to restore the people of Israel, and ultimately the whole human family. And Matthew’s Gospel presents Jesus as that child, the one who will “save his people from their sins” (Mt. 7:21) and who will be for us “Emmanuel,” or “God with us” (Mt. 7:23).[3] But I would say it’s hard to find too many people at the mall who are focused on the hope, joy, peace, and love that these promises offer. Especially during the week before Christmas!

Rather than the hope of God’s presence restoring us and all humanity to the life God intended for us, we seem to be mired in a pit of hopelessness. The continual barrage of violence, oppression, and suffering on our TV sets reinforce the cynical view that there is “nothing new under the sun,” but rather “as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly the same since the world was first created” (2 Pet. 3:4, NLT). And that bleak outlook on life positively saps the joy out of many people in our world. What is there to be joyful about? Incomes are declining, poverty is on the rise. Families struggle to hold themselves together in the face of the forces that pull them apart at the seams. Violence and anger are such an integral part of our lives that we pay billions of dollars every year to entertain ourselves with movies that are filled with violence, revenge, and anger.[4] And we’re all so busy “celebrating” that we lose sight of true joy--joy over the gift of being accepted unconditionally and irrevocably by our God who is always “God with us”!

And then there’s peace. I wonder if it is even possible to live in a world that is less conducive to experiencing peace than the one in which we live. Everywhere you go, there’s some form of noise. Whether it’s traffic, or television, or the incessant droning of Christmas music (which some places have been playing since November 1), I would say that many of us wonder where we can find even a moment’s peace in these hectic days. But it’s there--real peace, the peace of a life that is restored to wholeness, to goodness.[5] We just have to find a way to tune out all the noise that keeps us from finding it in the silence of meditation and prayer.

At the heart of the good news of Christmas is love. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it, there is nothing you have to do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less.[6] And yet, even though that message is clear virtually throughout our Scripture, our liturgy and hymns, it’s tremendously hard in this day and age for us to actually feel loved. By God or by anybody else. Part of the problem is that we disconnect from the possibility of love by escaping into our electronic devices. Even when you’re in a public place that is intended to foster community and connection, like Starbucks, it seems most people remain glued to a phone or a tablet or a laptop rather than risk actually speaking to a real person. And who of us doesn’t know the joy of taking the family out to eat, only to have most if not all of the group glued to their phones? I think, for the most part, we’re afraid to take the risk of love--the risk of opening ourselves up to one another, and the risk of allowing others to open up to us. But in a very real sense, if we can’t give and receive love to one another, how can we expect to feel loved by God? I believe there’s a verse about that as well (1 John 4:7).

The discipline of Advent calls us out of the darkness of this hopelessness, this bleakness, this frenzy, and this isolation into the light of hope, joy, peace, and love. And if you ask what there is to be hopeful, joyful, peaceful, and loving about, the answer is Emmanuel, God with us. The God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ is the God who will never leave us nor forsake us. The God who came to us in the form of a helpless infant is the God who from eternity past to eternity future had determined to be “God with us.”[7] Not because he has to, but because he wants to. It seems to me that the light of God’s unfailing presence with us all is enough to overcome the darkness that can threaten to overwhelm us at this time of the year. I think the task for us is to keep our focus on that--to stay in the light of God’s love.

[1] © Alan Brehm 2013. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 12/22/2013 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms 264-65: this Psalm is a expression of the faith that the people of God “must in the long last and in its extremity look away from its own repentance to a kind of repentance in God--his turning away from wrath and returning to grace. The trust that God will in the end do so is based on nothing in the congregation [of Israel]. It is based on the understanding that the congregation is the work of God, there in existence, wholly and only as an act of God.”

[3] Cf. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, 12: the idea of “Emmanuel” expresses “the full significance of Jesus’ life and work” as a “functional definition of who Jesus is.” Cf. also M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII: 138: “for Matthew, the story of Jesus is a way of talking about God. In Jesus and his story, God is with us.” Cf. also Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7, 97-98 on the interpretation of Isa. 7 in Matt. 1. See further Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, 21; R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, 182–83; Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 166.

[4] Grady Smith, “Box office report 2012: Film industry climbs to record-breaking $10.8 billion,” Entertainment Weekly.com 12/31/2012, accessed at http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/31/box-office-report-2012/.

[5] Cf. Desmond Tutu, Made for Goodness, 198: “For Christians, finding our way home to God is not a ‘self-help’ project. Jesus Christ is our hope for complete wholeness, for healing that is salvation. And that hope has already been accomplished. So we are constantly called to experience the truth about us: that we are beloved of God.”

[6] Cf. Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream, 32. He says it this way: “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more, for God already loves you perfectly and totally. But more wonderfully, there is nothing you can do to make God love you less--absolutely nothing. For God already loves you and will love you forever.”

[7] See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2:735: “God does not will to be without us, but, no matter who and what we may be, to be with us, that He Himself is always ‘God with us,’ Emmanuel.” Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:3-20. Cf. Ulrich Luz, Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, 31. See further, Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 81, where he connects the power of the Spirit in Jesus’ entire life, including his birth, with the theme of “God with us.”

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Grace Overflowing

Lk. 15:1-10[1]

The Church has, in my opinion, had a mixed legacy. In many cases the faithful have given sacrificially to those in need, and have poured out kindness and mercy to those who are hurting. But in all too many cases, I’m afraid the Church has been responsible for inflicting the hurt. The painful truth is that we in the Church have drawn all kinds of lines between “us” and “them”--whoever “they” may be. Like the Pharisees who criticized Jesus for consorting with “sinners,” we have labeled those we deem outsiders by using all sorts of unkind and hurtful language. And in my opinion, we have wounded some people so deeply that there is very little chance they will ever walk through the doors of this or any other church. And yet, it seems to me that we are called to relate to them, and indeed to anyone we come in contact, as channels of God’s unlimited and overflowing grace.

According to the Gospels, Jesus related to people of all classes and stations in life with the same kindness. That’s part of the reason why some of the Jewish religious leaders were so offended. They went to great lengths to justify their belief that they were God’s chosen, blessed by God’s favor, living in God’s good graces. And in this system, anyone who didn’t live up to their standards of holiness was a “sinner.” That meant that, by definition, they were rejected by God and excluded from God’s grace. The way they expressed that mindset was by excluding them from common activities like worship, and especially meals. In their mind, to share a meal with a “sinner” was to extend God’s grace to them, and they didn’t deserve it![2]

That’s the context behind the parables Jesus told in our Gospel lesson for today. He told two unusual stories that illustrated how God extends grace to all people, without any restrictions or limitations. The first is a story of a shepherd who has a flock of 100 sheep. One of them goes astray, and rather than staying to make sure the other 99 are safe from all dangers, he leaves them to search for the lost sheep. When he finds that one sheep, he is so overjoyed that he invites his friends to rejoice with him. And in that day and time, it was expected that the host of a celebration would provide food. So did he serve roasted lamb? Seems ironic, and extravagant to go to so much effort to find one sheep, only to use it as the main course for a celebration with his friends! I think the point is that God’s grace is that extravagant.

Jesus told another, similar story about a woman who lost a coin. That might not seem like a big deal, but in this case, her entire “nest egg” consisted of ten coins. So she literally turns her house upside-down looking for the lost coin. And when she finds it, she’s so overjoyed that she invites her friends to celebrate with her. And guess what--yep, she would have been expected to provide food. At the very least, she would have had to spend the coin she had just put so much effort into finding to put on the party. Again, it seems ironic and extravagant to celebrate finding the coin by spending it to throw a party for her friends. Again, I think the point is that God’s grace is extravagant.

In both cases, Jesus drew the same conclusion: “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Lk. 15:7). Jesus makes it clear that, contrary to the smug, self-righteous, and stingy attitudes of his opponents, God excludes no one from grace. In fact, God actively seeks out those who have found themselves on the other side of the boundary lines. And when just one of those who have been excluded finds his or her way back into the grace and mercy and love of God, Jesus said all heaven rejoices.[3]

I don’t think there was any way that Jesus could have more blatantly contradicted the self-righteous attitude of some of the Jewish religious leaders. What he was teaching about the free access of God’s grace that extends to everyone, crossing all the “lines” we draw to mark off “us” from “them,” constituted virtually the exact opposite of what they taught. Their definition of what constituted a “sinner” was rather sweeping. They didn’t limit “sinners” to those we might think of as leading an “immoral” life.[4] They included everyone who didn’t have the luxury of spending their whole day studying and seeking to practice God’s commands. They even had a word for them: they called them “the people of the land.” It wasn’t a compliment! And the self-righteous religious snobs of Jesus’ day believed that those “sinners” had only one way to gain access to God’s grace: they had to earn it. It’s no wonder they could treat the vast majority of people around them as if God could care less about them.[5]

Unfortunately, we in the church have made the same mistake all too often. We have excluded those whom we ought to include. We have looked down on those whom God loves and values and seeks to bring home. We have not only drawn lines that make us feel like we’re righteous at the expense of assuming others are sinful, we have in some cases reinforced those lines with hurtful words. As I said earlier, I fear that there are some people whom we the Church have wounded so deeply that there’s very little chance they will ever come back. There may be nothing we can do about that. But what we can do is imitate God’s extravagant love for all people.[6] We can be channels of God’s overflowing grace--simply by treating the people we encounter in our daily lives with kindness and mercy and love.

[2] Cf. John Nolland, Luke 9:21–18:34, 773; Fred Craddock, Luke, 102-103, 184. Cf. also R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreters Bible IX:298: “The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin expose the grudging spirit that prevents us from receiving God’s mercy. Only those who can celebrate God’s grace to others can experience that mercy themselves.”

[3] Cf. Mary H. Schertz, “God’s Party Time,” The Christian Century (Sept. 4, 2007): 18: “God s mercy is reckless and profligate. It is a prodigal passion, and our visions of salvation are measly by comparison.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, 12.

[4] cf. Craddock, Luke, 77-78: “sinners” were those who were excluded from the synagogue, and “Given the central place of the synagogue in the community, to be a sinner was to be an outcast.”

[5] Cf. Ann James, “Prodigiously Lost and Found,” The Christian Century (Mar 1, 1989): 221, where she points out that “The Pharisees probably expected the story to end with some sort of condemnation of the way they too distanced themselves from sinners,” but the point Jesus was making is that “no one is lost—or rather, no one is left un-searched for.”

[6] Art Ross, “Lk. 15:1-10,” Interpretation 61 (Oct 2007): 424: “A life of discipleship is a life that begins with repentance, leads to the faith of Jesus, and embodies the love of God,” a love that is “love for the lost; persistent pursuit of the well being of others; joyful, generous friendship; and sharing with one's friends and neighbors.” Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1:278: “God’s love is not merely not conditioned by any reciprocity of love. It is also not conditioned by any worthiness to be loved on the part of the loved.”

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Seeing the Light

1 Jn. 5:9-13; Jn 17:11-18[1]

I still remember my first inter-faith encounter, even though it was almost 30 years ago. I had already completed my college degree in Bible, and I was a seminary student in my second year—and I thought I knew quite a bit about spiritual things. One evening, a friend told me he had met two Muslim men who just moved to our apartment complex in Fort Worth, and asked me to go with him to talk to them. Well, of course I went. When we got there, we started talking with them, and the conversation quickly moved toward faith. Assuming that their religion was completely “man-made,” I began to talk about how I experienced the presence of God in my faith. I will never forget my feeling of shock when one of the men said, “I, too, experience God’s presence through my faith”! I was young, and had not been prepared adequately to dialogue in a meaningful way with people of other faiths. I had operated with the standard prejudices that the Christians I knew cherished about other faiths—that they were simply human substitutes for the “real thing,” faith in Jesus Christ! My encounter with those two men was the beginning of a fundamental shift in my outlook toward people of other faiths.

When we read our lessons from Scripture for today, it shouldn’t surprise us that so many Christians throughout the ages have tended to hold some kind of prejudice or another toward those “outside” the church. In 1 John, the distinction seems clear enough—those who believe in Jesus as the Son of God have life, those who don’t believe don’t have life (1 Jn. 5:12). Similarly, the reading from John 17 sounds like the Christians were under attack from the outside world.[2] At the very least, the “world” was something from which one had to protect oneself. While these kinds of negative statements can be found in various parts of our Scriptures, what we have to understand is that they were addressed to a very specific time and place.

It would seem that, for the most part the Christians for whom the Scriptures bearing John’s name were intended lived in Asia Minor—modern day Turkey. Toward the end of the First Century, we have evidence that these Christian communities were under mounting pressure—both from the outside as well as from within. They felt their very existence was threatened. So it’s no wonder that they looked at the outside world as something dangerous. They even viewed former members of their communities to be a threat because they disagreed over the question of Jesus’ identity as human and divine.[3]

While we can certainly understand thoughts like these when a community that feels threatened, we have to remember that taking Scriptures that were intended to address a specific situation and lifting them out of context to apply them to our day and time can be a risky venture. In a very real sense, it can enable the “oppressed” to become the “oppressors.” And in fact, you don’t have to work very hard to find all kinds of examples throughout the history of the church where that was exactly what happened—Christians took Scriptures like these and used them to justify all kinds of hateful and even violent acts against those deemed “other” and “outside.”

But the very Scriptures themselves point us to a higher road. Some of the very books of the Bible that suggest the “world” is such a threat to the Christian communities also clearly speak of the “world” as the object of God’s redemptive love in Jesus Christ.[4] In fact, in the same prayer that expresses concern for the Christians due to the threat of the world, Jesus also speaks of sending them out into the world just as he was sent into the world (Jn. 17:18)!

I think that part of what we find in 1 John might help us out here as well. The Scripture says that those who believe “have the witness in themselves” (1 Jn. 5:10). There is some debate about what this means, but I think it means that when someone’s faith in Jesus is real you can see the life that is in them.[5] It’s obvious by who they are and how they live. You can’t miss it. But I think the same can be said for a lot of people who are “outside” the church. There are a lot of people out there who have the light of God’s life within them. All we have to do is open our eyes and see it.[6] Whether we’re talking about Mohandas Ghandi, a Hindu, or the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, or Mother Theresa, a Catholic nun, or Pearl Buck, a Presbyterian missionary. You can see the light of God’s life in and through their lives. They “have the witness in themselves.”

I think this kind of approach is a much better option for us in our day and time. Instead of looking at others with shallow prejudices and dismissing their religions, if we will open our eyes we can see many people of all faiths who shine the light of God’s love all around them. Rather than getting them to “see the light” and come around to our way of looking at things, perhaps we should first be open to seeing the light they already have within them. We may be surprised to find that it looks a lot like the light of God’s life in us, and that we have a lot more in common that we expected!

[2] Cf. Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New Interpreters Bible IX:793; contrast the overly subtle approach of Paul Minear, Interpretation 32 (April 1978): 178-79, where he insists that the “world” is not humanity or those outside the church, but “the hidden jurisdiction of the Evil One.”

[3] Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, 31–35; cf. also Stephen S. Smalley, 1,2,3 John, 291. The group that left had so emphasized Jesus as divine as to deny that he was human.

[4] In John’s Gospel, it is clear that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” and that “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved” (Jn. 3:16-17). On this ambiguity regarding the “world” in John’s Gospel, cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, 763-65. Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:73-76, where he points to a similar dynamic in Paul’s writings, and yet emphasizes that Paul says “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

[5] Cf. Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 285-86; and C. Clifton Black, “The First, Second and Third Letters of John,” New Interpreters Bible XII:440. Cf. also G. Strecker, and H. W. Attridge, The Johannine letters, 195–196: “The Christ-event is not a thing of the past to which one may look back with an objectifying glance. … It occurs hic et nunc in the community, as a reconciling, life-giving reality. Christian life before God is life in the Son.”

[6] Cf. Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance, 301, where she speaks of this in terms of recognizing “the spark of God in others.” Cf. similarly, Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 92, where she recognizes that this is a challenge, the challenge of “escaping the small self long enough to glimpse the wholeness” in which everything that is exists. She says, “Everything that lives, lives in this light”!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

God’s Favorites

Isa. 61:1-4. 8-11; Lk. 2:14[1]

“Playing favorites” never has a positive connotation. Whether it’s in the home or at work or among friends, when you start “playing favorites,” someone gets special privileges and someone gets passed over. It can wreak havoc in any context, creating strife at work, hard feelings among friends, and painful humiliation in the home. There’s really nothing good you can say about playing favorites. Anybody who has raised children knows a little something of the challenges of playing favorites, and I think this is especially true for those of us with blended families. In a blended family, it's important never to “play favorites” with your kids. In a blended family, you can't view them as “your kids” or “my kids”; they are “our kids.” Of course, it doesn’t always work out that neatly. But we do our best to avoid “playing favorites,” because it can destroy the very fabric of a family.

I think “Playing favorites” is something to be avoided in just about every situation involving human relationships. And yet, it would seem that at the heart of the Christian message is the idea that God plays favorites![2] It would seem that the story of the Scriptures is that God chooses a family to bless in a special way above all other families. God chooses a people to liberate so as to be unique above all other peoples. God chooses a nation to honor as a favorite possession treasured above all other nations. It sounds like God is “playing favorites”!

In fact, the phrase at the heart of our Christmas celebrations, “Peace on earth, good will toward men,” is a prime example of this problem. As I mentioned last week, the best evidence we have is that it should actually read, “Peace on earth to men of good will.”[3] As one translation says it, “peace on earth” is for those “on whom God’s favor rests” (Lk. 2:14, NIV). Again, that sounds like God is “playing favorites.” It sounds like the good news of peace on earth is not for all people, but only for God’s favorites.

But I think it’s important at this point to ask on whom does God’s favor rest. Does God’s favor rest on just the few, only the chosen, only the righteous? That idea is not consistent with the strange Kingdom of Heaven we’ve seen and heard about in Jesus’ parables. In fact, it’s not even consistent with the Angels’ announcement of “peace on earth” itself. It was made to shepherds, the ultimate outcasts in the Jewish world of that time. It seems to me that the announcement of “peace on earth to all whom God favors” (Lk. 2:14, NLT) precisely to those who would seem to be the most disfavored of people indicates that it’s God’s peace for all that is the promise of Advent. It’s God’s good will toward the whole human family that the Angels’ Christmas declaration is talking about![4]

It’s the same message of the prophet Isaiah: in our text for this week, the prophet Isaiah announces “the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is shorthand for the “year of Jubilee,” the time when all debts were cancelled and all property sold or mortgaged was returned to the original owners. Isaiah reminds us that in “the year of the Lord’s favor,” God comes to set right everything that has gone wrong, which make it possible for all people to thrive.[5] It’s a time when God’s grace defines life for all people.

But Isaiah reminds us that this also involves “the day of vengeance of our God.” To some extent, God’s coming to set things right involves an element of “judgment.” But as we have seen many times, from the perspective of God’s grace “judgment” is never simply punishment. We might envision it as “preparing the way for the Lord,” as making straight what is crooked in order that it may be set right.[6] It is a matter of restoring us all to the people we were meant to be.[7] And it extends ultimately to all humankind—just and unjust, righteous and sinful alike.[8]

It seems to me that we all long for that kind of acceptance; acceptance that is complete and unconditional. Any kind of “playing favorites” hinders that. I know, because I’ve been on both sides of that game, and I’ve seen how much harm it can do. I’ve been the favored child, and I’ve experienced the false sense of privilege and entitlement that goes along with that. I’ve also been the disfavored one, and I’ve experienced the humiliation and the pain of being rejected. So to me, the suggestion that God would somehow “play favorites” and inflict that kind of experience on a single solitary person is appalling in the extreme.

But that is not the good news of the gospel! The good news of the Christmas Gospel is that Jesus has come so that now God’s favor rests on all people alike, with no exceptions! The Angels’ announcement means that it is now the “year of the Lord’s favor;” it is the time when God’s grace defines our lives—all our lives. The joyful message of the angelic choir, “peace on earth to all whom God favors,” is that now we are all—with no exceptions—“God’s favorites.”

[2] And this, despite the fact that the Bible claims several times that God doesn’t “play favorites” (2 Chron. 19:7; Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11; Gal 2:6; Eph. 6:9)!

[3] Cf. F. Bovon, and H. Koester, Luke 1 : A commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1-9:50, 91.

[4] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, 36

[5] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 311, “Righteousness is the rightness that makes for life and shalom.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 121.

[6] Cf. Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1-39, 192; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God, 243-44, 255.

[7] Cf. Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40-66, 367, where he points out that “vengeance” in Isa. 61:2 refers to restoration; cf. The Inclusive Translation, “day of vindication.” See also Isaiah 10:20–27; see also Jeremiah 30:1–9; Micah 5:7–15; Zechariah 8:1–8; 12:1–13:6; 14:1–21.

[8] Isaiah 2:2-4; 25:6–10; 45:20-25; 52:7–10; 66:18, 23; see also Micah 4:1-3; Jeremiah 3:17; 16:19.

The Waking Dreamer