The Waking Dreamer: Book of 2 Corinthians

Showing posts with label Book of 2 Corinthians. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Truly Free

2 Corinthians 3:7-4:7[1]

I would say that our notions of freedom in this country are defined more by our secular values than they are by our faith. We believe, as the Declaration of Independence so eloquently puts it, that we are all “endowed” by our Creator “with certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That was a truly revolutionary idea about freedom in that day. It was based, however, not on biblical teaching, but on the best political philosophy of the time. And while I agree with it, I would also point out that in 1776, that statement only applied to men who owned a certain amount of property. It wasn’t really a statement about how all people equally deserve to be free. It was a response to the tyranny of the day, but we’re still trying to work out what that means for all people.

For most of the history of the world, “common people” have lived in fear of “powers that be,” whether secular or spiritual. Kings ruled absolutely. What they said was the law of the land. Whether or not it was true or right didn’t really matter. Tyranny was simply the way things were. People have also lived in fear of spiritual powers they don’t understand and can’t control. In ancient times, the “gods” were no better than the rulers. They could be just as fickle and cruel. I think some of mythology was just projecting the unpredictability of life onto spiritual powers. At least that way people could make sense of their hardships. The “gods” or the “demons” were responsible. In response most people turned to various means from astrology to magic to try to fend off the troubles of life. It was, at best, a feeble attempt.

Many people through the ages have feared death above all else. Without the light that dawned on that first Easter morning, people live in fear of death. They’ve had all kinds of beliefs about death throughout history. Some saw death as a kind of shadowy place, where you were only a “ghost” of your former self. Some saw death as the doorway to hell, where everybody would spend the afterlife being punished for everything you did wrong in this life. Even those who worshipped the one true and living God feared death, because they saw the grave as a place where they would not only be cut off from the joys of life but also cut off from God.

As we’ve been discussing the last few weeks, St. Paul insists that Jesus’ death and resurrection sets us free from all that. As we’ve seen, Paul proclaimed that Jesus’ death on the cross has broken the power of all that threatens the meaningfulness of our lives. That’s because he willingly submitted himself to the “powers” of evil, and when they did their worst to him, they effectively “spent” their power. But Paul goes beyond that. He says that Jesus also broke the power of sin and death when God raised him from the dead. As we heard in our lesson from last week, Paul declared that “Just as everyone dies because [of] Adam, [because of] Christ everyone will be given new life (1 Cor 15:22, NLT).

That first Easter morning revealed a power at work in this world greater than sin or death. Jesus’ resurrection pointed to the power of God’s life-giving Word, the same Word he spoke over the darkness in the beginning, “let there be light!”, creating all life out of the vast nothingness. And in Jesus, God revealed that his Word still has the power to bring life out of death. As we discussed last week, Paul was ultimately pointing us to the hope that we will all live in God’s (re)new(ed) creation after Jesus has returned to “make all things new.” But more than that, St. Paul was convinced that through Jesus’ resurrection, God began the process of making a whole new creation right here and right now in the midst of this world.[2] The life that God effectively “injected” into this world by raising Jesus from the dead is like a transfusion spreading through all things and everyone.

That’s why St. Paul could say in our lesson for this week that we’re all in the process of being transformed to become “more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Cor 3:18, NLT). Because we have all seen the light of the “glory of God … in the face of Jesus Christ” and we now “have this light shining in our hearts” (2 Cor 4:6-7), it’s as if God’s new work of creation is already working in our lives. So it is that Paul could say later in 2 Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17, NIV).[3]

What does all that Paul has to say about Jesus’ death and resurrection mean for us on this day? I may be wrong about this, but we don’t seem to fear sin or death all that much. That’s one reason why the traditional gospel tends to fall on deaf ears in our world. But I would say that sin still brings its own sting. We just have a way of denying it, or avoiding it, or rationalizing it away. I would also say that while we might no longer subscribe to ancient superstitions, death is still a very real enemy. We can see that power at work every time anyone anywhere abuses their power to harm or even kill innocent people. It happens all the time in our world. We just choose not to look. I would say that we still need freedom from sin and death, we just don’t see it that way.

So how then do we in the 21^st Century frame the good news that in Jesus Christ we are truly free? The biblical view of freedom is first and foremost that we are free to live in the way that God intended for us when he created everything very good (Gen 1:31). Paul says it this way in our lesson for today: “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor 3:17, NLT). And in his mind, the Spirit of the Lord is at work throughout God’s creation, especially wher there is faith in Jesus Christ. The way we see that freedom is in the Spirit enabling us to become more like Jesus, aligning our lives with God’s purposes and ways.[4] Through Jesus and through the Spirit, God is setting us free to let go our selfish and self-centered efforts at justifying the meaning of our lives, by having the right title, or living in the right neighborhood, or knowing all the right people. That way of trying to find meaning in life still brings its own “sting.”[5]

Jesus sets us free to obey God, following his example of what it means to be fully human by surrendering fully to God’s will (1 Pet 2:16). That means we’re free to give without any thought of what we may get in return, which is the essence of how Jesus lived, and the essence of how Jesus taught those who would follow him to live (Lk 6:35). Because of Jesus, we’re free to serve others, sharing food with the hungry, compassion with the outcasts, and shelter with the refugees (Mt 25:35). You may see where I’m going with this: living in a way that’s truly free means loving without constraints.[6] We’re truly free when we love God with all our hearts, tearing down the shrines to false gods that we’ve all built. And we’re truly free when we love our neighbors as ourselves. All our neighbors. True freedom, from the perspective of our faith, is not found in rights or resources, not in privileges or buying power, not in influence or success or wealth. Regardless of who the powers that provoke our fear may be in our day and time, the promise of the Gospel is that true freedom is found in a life defined by love (Gal 5:13). Love for God and love for others. When our lives are defined by love for God and love for others, then we are truly free.

[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/2/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Viktor Paul Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul, 126: “while the salvation which God effects is first of all an object of hope, God’s power is nevertheless already effective for men [sic] in Christ. … Salvation, then, is not unambiguously ‘future,’ and it is not only a ‘hope.’ Even in the present age the ‘first fruits’ of salvation may be savored and the authenticity of hope confirmed.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:311, where he connects 2 Cor 5:17 with the complete “alteration” of the “human situation,” of “our whole existence,” through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This not only means the reconciliation of those who are “in Christ” with God, it also means “the reconciliation of the world with God”! Barth speaks of this “alteration” throughout the Dogmatics, but especially so in volume four, where he relates it not only to those who are in Christ, but to all humanity. Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 55, where he says that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ “the eschatological turn of the world begins, from transience to non-transience, from the night of the world to the morning of God’s new day and to the new creation of all things” (emphasis original

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 271, where he argues that since in the Bible (not just the New Testament!) “‘Lord’ is the name for the experience of liberation and for free life, then the name is misunderstood and brought into disrepute if it is interpreted in terms of masculine notions of rule.” He also insists that “living freedom and free life can endure only in justice and righteousness. In justice, human freedom ministers to life—the life shared by all living beings. In justice, human life struggles for the freedom of everything that lives, and resists oppression.”

[5] Cf. A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, 1301: “it is sin, the human turning away from God to become centered upon the self, that has turned death into such deadly poison, so that it hurts and kills like a sting.”

[6] I would suggest that this idea of freedom to love is a central theme in Jürgen Moltmann’s understanding of the Christian life in his works. See for example, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: he begins with 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). On this basis 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 the Christian life under the concept of “friendship” which Jesus models and we are called to emulate as those who are “open for others” and who “love in freedom” (121, 316).

Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Weakness?

2 Corinthians 12:2-10[1]

The ironic affirmation that “when I am weak, then I am strong” is the personal testimony of the Apostle Paul in our lesson from 2 Corinthians for today. It may be hard to understand that statement on its own. But when we put it into the context of Paul’s life, perhaps we can begin to make some sense of it. He wasn’t the only Christian teacher who had come to Corinth. There were many others, and some of them attacked Paul for his “weaknesses.” They claimed they were better speakers than Paul. They claimed to have supernatural visions and powers. In short, they claimed they were better apostles than St. Paul. In 2 Corinthians he even acknowledges that they claimed to be “super-apostles.” But he did not concede that they were truly superior to him.

Rather than trying to “out-boast” those other teachers, Paul took the opposite approach. His ministry followed the model of the Suffering Savior, and he demonstrated that by listing all the hardships he had endured in the service of Christ (2 Cor 11:23-30). He had been imprisoned, and he had been beaten “often near death.” He had been shipwrecked and spent a night and a day adrift on the open sea. He had experienced dangers of all kinds: from rivers, from bandits, from his own people, from gentiles, “danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea.” His life as an “Apostle” was one defined by working “hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights,” going without food “often,” shivering in the cold without enough clothing to keep him warm. He concludes that list of his weaknesses by asking, “Who is weak without my feeling that weakness?” (2 Cor 11:29, NLT). That’s probably not the image of an “apostle” most of us have. I would say it’s certainly not the image of ministry that inspires people to serve!

As a part of his personal testimony, he tells the story of an unusual spiritual experience he had years earlier. Something about that experience was so extraordinary that St. Paul says he was afflicted by a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from boasting about it. Although there have been many guesses, nobody really knows what this “thorn” was. But it’s clear from Paul’s perspective that it weakened him. In a sense, it put him in a state of perpetual weakness. No wonder he says he asked to be relieved of that burden. Not once but three times. Most of us would do the same thing—except we wouldn’t stop after three times! In reply to his fervent prayer, the answer he received was “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9, NLT). I’m not sure that was the answer he was looking for. But by the time he recounts this experience in 2 Corinthians he had embraced it so much that he could affirm what seems absurd to us: “when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Let’s be honest: For most of us, the affirmation that “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10, NLT) makes no sense. Weakness is something to be avoided at all costs. Besides beauty, youth, and wealth, we live in a society that values strength. Which explains why most of us do everything we can to avoid or hide our weaknesses. We’re afraid to let other people see our weaknesses. I think we’re afraid to admit our weaknesses even to ourselves. In our way of thinking, weakness makes us vulnerable. It puts us in a position where we may have to rely on others for help. Perhaps more importantly, weakness frightens us. After all, if we’re weak and vulnerable, someone can take advantage of us. We believe “when we’re weak, we can be hurt,” not that that “when we are weak, then we are strong”!

But the idea that God’s power works best through our weakness is a theme that runs throughout the New Testament, beginning with Jesus himself. In the apparent “weakness” of his humiliating death on the cross, Jesus demonstrated the true power of God’s love to change everything and everyone. In that same vein, St. Paul consistently “boasted” in his weaknesses. In fact, he insisted that his weaknesses were the very means by which the power of faith in Jesus Christ to change people’s lives shone most dramatically through him. And he insisted that his weaknesses were the very means through which Christ was working in and through him to bring new life to the people he served.

Again, all that can be hard for us to process. We’d much rather talk about how our faith helps us to find joy and peace and freedom in the midst of the hardships of life. We’re much more comfortable with affirming “faith is the victory that overcomes the world” than we are saying “when I am weak, then I am strong.” We have to find a balance between the two: between faith as victory and faith as surrender. That means embracing the “weakness” of faith. When we look at faith from this perspective, we’re talking about the “cost of discipleship.” And we shouldn’t underestimate that word “cost.” Our commitment to follow Christ will cost us. I’m not sure we enjoy talking about that aspect of faith.

How, then does our “weakness” become our “strength”? As many spiritual guides have taught us, it’s precisely through the “broken places” of our weakness that God is able to come into our lives and bring new life through his grace, mercy, and love. And it’s through our weakness that God does his most powerful work in the lives of those around us. As Paul recounted, the answer to his prayer to have his weakness taken from him was, “My power works best in weakness.” That means then that the “strength” we find in our weakness is not ours, but God’s! It’s the strength that Jesus demonstrated by obeying God’s will for his life, even to the point of his death on a cross. If that’s not strength, I don’t know what is!

Learning to affirm with Paul, “when I am weak, then I am strong” is an essential part of the Christian life.[2] That may sound strange to us, or it may be uncomfortable, but it is the direct result of the fact that God was working most powerfully in this world when he entered it in the weakness of a newborn baby, who couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything for himself.[3] Learning to affirm, “when I am weak, then I am strong” is also a direct result of our commitment to follow a Savior who gave his life in the weakness and humiliation of the cross. If we believe in a God whose power works best in our weakness, if we follow a Savior who “emptied” himself on the cross, we are going to have to learn what it means to say with Paul, “when I am weak, then I am strong”!

[2] Cf. Luke Johnson, Learning Jesus, 201: “The imitation of Christ in his life of service and suffering … is not an optional version of the Christian identity. It is the very essence of Christian identity.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:191: God “Most High” is all-powerful and majestic “precisely in His lowliness” as we see it in the birth, life, and death of Jesus.

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Try and Try Again

2 Corinthians 4:8-18[1]

You may or may not know that I enjoy solving puzzles. All kinds of puzzles, from sudoku, to crosswords, to card games, to actual jigsaw puzzles, to Lego sets. Yes, I am an “Adult fan of Lego” (Afol). I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to put it all together. I enjoy keeping my mind and my hands busy, so to speak. Solving a puzzle is something that I can do and lose track of time. I enjoy other activities as well, as you know. I can lose myself in a really good work of fiction. I can lose myself playing guitar, especially when I’m trying to learn something that’s challenging. But puzzles have been a “go to” activity for me for a long time.

One of the reasons why I enjoy solving puzzles so much is because you have to look at the “big picture” in order to solve a puzzle. That’s especially true with sudoku. Every column, every row, every segment can only have one sequence of the numbers one through nine. I also enjoy the fact that solving puzzles requires “thinking outside the box.” Or perhaps I should say looking at things from a different perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the right puzzle piece in the right place, but it was turned around the wrong way. I enjoy the challenge of a puzzle because it makes me look at both the “big picture” and the “small details,” and it makes me “turn things around” in my head until I find the solution.

I would say that the question of how a church can thrive in this current setting is something like that. We have to look at the “big picture” in order to solve the puzzle. We need to see how all the pieces fit together. We also have to look at the “small details.” Some aspects of our life together as a congregation that we may have taken for granted, perhaps for years, may need more careful attention. The way things are in our current context also means that we have to “think outside the box.” Some of the things we have always done continue to work for us. Some of them may not, and we may need to be willing to look at new solutions to the new problems we’re facing. Maybe the most important element to solving the question of how a church can thrive in this current context is the ability to look at things from a different perspective. We get used to seeing things on a regular basis (or not seeing them). All of this is going to require that we adopt the basic attitude that “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”!

I think that’s what St. Paul’s testimony about his life was about. From our perspective, it’s all too easy to think of “Saint” Paul as someone who walked around with a halo and lived “above” this world and all its troubles. But Paul makes it clear in his letters that was not the case! Later in this same letter he tells us that he endured “troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.” He continues, “We have been beaten, been put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food” (2 Cor 6:4-5 NLT). He summarized his experience by saying, “I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not.” (2 Cor. 11:26, NLT).

In our lesson for today he describes his experience of serving Christ as an Apostle in a particularly memorable way: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9, NLT). I’ve always found this passage to be both troubling and comforting. It’s troubling because in essence Paul says that when we follow Christ, we are bound to have this kind of experience! In another passage, he says that we “must expect such things” if we follow Christ (1 Thess 3:3, Phillips)!

Given all of that, you might think that anyone in their right mind in Paul’s shoes would seek “greener pastures”! But I think this is where he was able to view his situation from the “big picture” and see all those hardships from a different perspective. In doing so, he was able to recognize that God was using the hardships he endured for good in the lives of the believers he was serving. He viewed his sufferings as part of Christ’s sufferings, and so he could say, “we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you” (2 Cor 4:12, NLT). I think his ability to adopt this perspective reminds us that we may not truly know how God is using the hard things we may have to endure for the benefit of others. But I think Jesus’ death on the cross makes one thing clear: that’s how God does his most powerful work in this world!

That brings me back to the comforting part of the passage I quoted earlier: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:8-9, NLT). Paul could face everything he had to endure with the assurance that God never abandoned him. And with God’s help, he was able to bear everything that came his way. He knew the weight of suffering, but it did not crush him. He knew the confusion of not understanding why some things happened to him, but he never gave up hope. Instead, he was confident that through everything he had to endure, God’s grace was reaching “more and more people” (2 Cor 4:15, NLT). And so he could say “we never give up” (2 Cor 4:16, NLT)!

For many of us, the condition of the church as a whole these days is perhaps the worst we’ve ever seen it in our lives. There are people who are paid to come up with reasons for it, and their insights are helpful. But I think we have to adopt the mindset of solving a puzzle in order to address this challenging and confusing time. We can look at the “big picture,” and think about what God may be doing in and through us in the midst of these struggles. We may not know what that is, but we can be assured that God is doing something in and through us in this difficult time. We can turn the pieces of the puzzle around and look at things differently to try to figure out the key question: how can we draw people who are content with their lives as they are into our community? In all of this, we can trust that God never has and never will abandon us. And this hope can give us the energy to try and try again.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Glimpses

2 Corinthians 3:16-4:7[1]

Our world is not one that makes it easy for us to hold on to our Christian faith. The message that the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign of Jesus points us to a way of living that promises us true life is only one among many messages out there competing for our attention. If you want to be seen as a person of worth and value in our world, you need youth, beauty, talent, wealth, or power. Or as many of them as you can get. Youth and beauty mean people notice you. Age and the signs of aging mean people overlook you. Talent means you count, in some cases to the tune of millions of dollars, in some cases to the tune of tens of millions. Wealth and power go hand in hand in our world. Those with enough wealth have the power to get their way, whether it’s right or not. It can be hard to see how Jesus Christ makes much of a difference in a world like that.

Part of the problem stems from the various media sources in our world. These sources are means of communication that have given us ready access to information and have made it possible for us to stay more connected to one another than ever before. And that’s a good thing. But they also have the power to shape our perception of the world in ways that can distort the truth. Every “report” is an interpretation from a particular point of view. And any media source that doesn’t recognize their own point of view is likely intentionally distorting the truth for their own purposes. What counts these days is being the first to “break” a story, not making the effort to ensure that you got the story right. Or that the way you presented it was fair. And we’ve faced this distortion of reality for so long that many people would be hard-pressed to explain why they view the world the way they do. It’s just what they heard from their favorite media source.

Amid the competing versions of “truth” that are out there, what matters isn’t whether you have done your due diligence to fact-check what you say. Rather, what matters is how well you “spin” your story so that it’s convincing. I find myself speechless at times over what we as a people believe to be “true,” and the flimsy basis upon which we believe it. And I’m dumbfounded that in a country that still to a large degree considers itself “Christian” we follow people and embrace ideas that blatantly contradict everything Jesus stands for. But then, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when what really counts for us is the size of your home or your bank account, or whether you get to drive the latest and greatest car and sport the finest in fashion. When our values are measured by what we have instead of who we are, we have truly lost our way.

All of this brings us back to how important it is for us as those who profess Christian faith to make the message about the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign of Jesus Christ the one that truly defines our lives. This brings us to our lesson from 2 Corinthians for today. St. Paul himself had lived his life based on a message that was very different from the one that Jesus taught. His view of the world was one that had been defined by the distinction between those who are “righteous” and those who are “sinners.” And that distinction was based on things like your ethnic background, your loyalty to the “right” people, or even by the foods you ate. It was something that could be measured, and anyone who didn’t “measure up” was a sinner. Like most people in that kind of system, it was always the “others” who didn’t “measure up.”

St. Paul was so committed to that view of the world that he considered Jesus a blasphemer because he offered God’s love and grace and mercy to everyone regardless of whether they “measured up” or not. And he considered all those who followed him and spread his teachings not only to be a threat to his way of life but also as “enemies” of God. And so it was that he set out for the ancient city of Damascus with authorization to arrest and even kill any Christians he found there. But St. Paul met someone he didn’t expect on the road to Damascus: he met the risen Lord Jesus himself! And in the face of the Jesus, he saw something he also didn’t expect. He saw “the glory of God.” As St. Paul says in our lesson for today, “For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6, NLT). I think he was referring to the “light” that he saw in the face of Jesus on the road to Damascus!

It was that encounter that changed St. Paul from a man who was “breathing out murderous threats” (Acts 9:1, NIV) against the followers of Jesus into a man who completely changed his life to follow Jesus himself. Because of what he saw in the face of Jesus, because he could say that God had made that light “shine” in his heart, St. Paul changed his life from being a man who believed he could and should measure everyone else by his own life into a man who recognized that he could never truly “measure up,” and nor could anyone else. And his life would never be the same. He gave up a life in which he was considered one of the ones to “watch” as an up-and-coming leader to one who was seen as a “fool for Christ” and the “scum of the earth” (1 Cor 4:10, 13). He walked away from everything he had valued in order to follow Jesus.

But more than what he gave up, St. Paul tells us in this passage what he gained by that dramatic change. What he gained was nothing less than the life and the love and the power of God at work in him. In our lesson for today he says it this way: “as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more” (2 Cor. 3:18, NLT). But reflecting the glory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ is a very different thing from the glory of this world. The glory of this world is based on how much you have. But the glory of Christ is based on how much you’re willing to sacrifice. The glory of this world is based on how well you look to your friends and others. But the glory of Christ is based on how well you serve the least, the last, and the left out among us. The glory of this world is based on how much power you have to get your way. But the glory of Christ is based on how consistent you are about treating all people with kindness and respect, especially the most vulnerable among us.

A life that’s based on following Jesus is one that looks very different from one that’s based on the values of this world. Sometimes it can seem like the values of this world have so much more appeal, so much more impact than the values of our Christian faith. But I choose to believe that what God is doing in our world through Jesus Christ is ultimately more powerful. To believe that, we have to “hope for more than we have yet seen,” as one of our confessions of faith puts it. It’s a matter of believing that in Jesus, especially in his resurrection from death to new life and in his reign in our lives through the power of love, we see a glimpse of the work that God “will surely finish” one day. More than that, as we embody the way Jesus lived in our own lives, we reflect the glory of Christ still to this day. We become living “glimpses” of the one who died for all people, who was raised to life to defeat the power of death, and who reigns over all the powers of this world.

Thursday, April 04, 2019

God was in Christ

2 Corinthians 5:16-21[1]

Through the ages, the images preachers and theologians have used to depict God have created some significant problems. One example is Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741). It was required reading in my Sophomore American Literature Class in college. Edwards drew the picture of God dangling sinners over the prospect of an eternity of punishment like someone might dangle a spider over an open flame. Personally, I’d have to say that seems cruel even for a human being, let alone God. It certainly doesn’t convey the idea that God is gracious and compassionate, full of mercy and unfailing love!

Unfortunately, when it comes to Jesus’ death on the cross, many of us have some ideas that are not consistent with the biblical witness. It’s common to think of Jesus, who loved us enough to give up his life for us, standing in the gap for us with God, who is angry enough with us for our sins that he is willing to consign us to eternal flames. Jesus may come off in a positive light from that perspective, but that kind of a God is someone I think we’d want to keep our distance from, rather than embracing as a loving father who will not let anything in all creation separate us from his love.

Then there’s the question of Jesus’ cry of agony from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” I would say that most people take that statement both too literally and not seriously enough. Jesus was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm that expresses both anguish over afflictions and also trust in God to sustain us. The same Psalm that begins with “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” also affirms, “he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me” (Ps. 22:24). If we really take Jesus’ cry seriously, we have to include this affirmation of faith in our understanding of it.

Again, we have to consider the implications for our image of God if we really believe that God abandoned Jesus on the cross. The New Testament presents Jesus as fulfilling the ultimate act of obedience to God’s will by dying on the cross. Paul said it this way: Jesus “became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). If God abandoned Jesus at the moment of his greatest obedience to God’s purpose, then what possible hope could you or I have that God will sustain us in our hour of need? I’d have to say that’s also not a very inviting image of God!

I think our lesson from St. Paul for today might help us here. As we find in the consistent witness of Scripture, Paul does not set an “angry God” over against a “forgiving Jesus.” Rather, Paul says that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Now this could be read in a couple of ways. We could read it to say that God accomplished the work of salvation through what Jesus did on the cross. That would be entirely consistent with the message of Scripture elsewhere. But we could also read it the way the King James Version rendered it, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” In other words, if we take the idea of the incarnation seriously, that God became a human being in Jesus, then God was the one who was hanging on the cross. In Jesus, God was the one who died for our sins. In Christ, God was the one who gave himself up for us that we might have life.

This is an image that might sound strange to us. How could God “die”? We’re used to the idea of God all-powerful as the one who rules over all things, not the one who allows himself to be mistreated at the hands of lowly mortals. We’re used to thinking of God as “above it all.” It may be difficult for us to think of God allowing himself to be humiliated in this way. We’re also used to believing that God is too pure to be tainted by our failures. How could God take on our sins? All this may strain our ability to make sense out of how to hold together God’s love and Jesus’ death on the cross.^{^[2]}

But the two are completely consistent with the Gospel message in the New Testament. As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, when Jesus died on the cross, he “was never more in accord with the Father’s will. He was acting on behalf of God, manifesting the Father’s love that takes on itself the loneliness, pain, and death that result from our waywardness.”^{^[3]} The Study Catechism puts it a little differently: through Jesus’ death on the cross, we see “how vast is God’s love for the world — a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes, yet so strong that nothing will prevail against it.”[4] The Good News is that Jesus completely fulfilled God’s will for us in his death on the cross.

I think sometimes we would like our faith to be easier. We embrace the good news of God’s love for us. But we shrink back from the full implications of that love. It is a love that will not leave us where we are. It is a love that enters into our brokenness in order to bring us new life. And because “God was in Christ” on the cross, we can also be assured that God’s love is a love that nothing can separate us from. Just as God never abandoned Jesus, so God never abandons or forsakes us in his love. Because “God was in Christ” on the cross, he continues to draw us all into the eternal life he wants to share with us.

[2] Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. The Enlarged Edition, 360-61: “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 [quoting Isa. 53:4] makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering … Only the suffering God can help … That is a reversal of what the religious man expects from God.”

[3] Presbyterian Church in the United States, “A Declaration of Faith,”117th General Assembly (1977), reissued by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 1991, 4.4.

[4] Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “The Study Catechism,” 210th General Assembly (1998), question 8.

Monday, March 11, 2019

Now is the Time

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10[1]

We live in a “throwaway” culture. That’s not a particularly original observation. In fact, the first use of the phrase was in an article called “Throwaway Living” in the August 1, 1955 edition of Life magazine. Ironically, at that time, “throwaway living” was something that was celebrated. The article opened with a picture of a family tossing plastic goods into the air that would have taken hours to clean. Instead, they could just throw away these items and devote their time to something other than the “tedious” chore of cleaning. Unfortunately, I think the idea of throwing away something instead of taking the time to clean or mend or otherwise make it useful again spread from simple items used in everyday living to a broader mindset about life in general.

It seems to me that these days we are more aware of the problems created by throwing away packaging waste and plastic or Styrofoam utensils. That’s a good thing. But I fear the “throwaway” mindset has migrated into more important areas of our lives. Relationships these days seem to be viewed increasingly as something that one can simply “throw away” if they get too unpleasant to manage. I’m not talking about the fact that some relationships have serious flaws. I’m talking about the casual way in which people approach relationships. The attitude seems to be “If it works out, great. If I have to put any work into it, I’m outta here!”

We’ve seen before that St. Paul’s relationship with the church at Corinth was a difficult one. Paul was their spiritual “father,” so to speak, in that he was the one who had brought the gospel to them in the first place. In spite of the fact that Paul founded the church, it would seem that a majority of them had been turned away from him by other teachers. These others came to Corinth and scorned Paul for the fact that he didn’t “throw his weight around” as an Apostle apparently “should have.” The idea seems to have been that if he were truly an Apostle of Jesus Christ, he would have demanded to be treated with the proper deference. Instead, by his own confession, St. Paul served them in “weakness” and humility. And his opponents used that to turn the church against him.

As I have mentioned before, the tension between St. Paul and the church at Corinth came to a breaking point. We have to do some “reading between the lines” in 1 and 2 Corinthians, but when we do, a troubling story comes to light. Apparently, on one of his visits to the church, the majority of the believers at Corinth, led by one only known to us as “the one who did the wrong” (2 Cor. 7:12) openly spurned St. Paul and his ministry among them. As we might expect, Paul speaks of this as a painful experience. Some might think he should have simply “shaken the dust from his sandals” and moved one, treating his relationship with the church at Corinth as something that he could readily “throw away.”

But as his letters demonstrate, St. Paul never did that with any of the churches he served during his ministry. No matter what kind of opposition he faced, his letters display a determination not to let any of these relationships go without making every effort to reconcile whatever differences or problems there may have been. And in this case Paul goes to great lengths to argue that his ministry among them was not fraudulent, as his opponents claimed. Rather, the mark of the authenticity of his work was precisely the fact that it was accompanied by “afflictions, hardships, [and] calamities” but also by “patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, and truthful speech,” among other qualities (2 Cor. 6:4-8). Paul turned the very accusations leveled against him—that he was weak—into proofs that he truly was a “servant of God” (2 Cor. 6:4).

I don’t think this was just a matter of St. Paul defending himself. His primary concern here was for the fact that when the churches he served rejected him, they were also rejecting his message. And it was their adherence to the message of the Gospel that he was his primary concern, not his personal reputation. And so he made every effort to call these believers to reconcile with him, that the gospel seeds he had planted among them would not go to waste. He made every effort to reconcile with them, so that their reconciliation with God through his gospel would not be endangered.

Being reconciled with someone with whom you may have difficulty is not easy. It takes work. Sometimes it can take months of work to heal the broken relationships we have with others. That was true in this case as well. St. Paul spared no effort in his appeal to the people at Corinth. In fact, by the time we get to Paul writing the Scripture before us today, there had been a significant amount of work behind the scenes to make amends. All of this took place while Paul was working with other churches. He could very well have delayed the effort while he was busy elsewhere.

But the gospel message would not allow him to do so. He knew that if they spurned him they were in danger of spurning the offer of being reconciled with God he brought them in the gospel. Rather than putting off the work of reconciling with the believers in Corinth, he knew that it was something that needed immediate attention. It was something that had to be done “at the acceptable time,” and that time was now. His determination and persistence point us in the same direction. When it comes to being reconciled, whether with God or with others, the right time is always “Now”!

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Freedom

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2[1]

We as a people are proud of our “freedoms.” Most of us are familiar with Lee Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA.”^{^[2]} The first line of the refrain says, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” We’ve been raised on the ideal of American freedom. It’s as ingrained in our culture as Norman Rockwell’s depictions of the “four freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.^{^[3]} His inspiration for these iconic portraits was President Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union speech, in which he articulated these freedoms as basic human rights for all nations. Many believe he did so to awaken this country to enter World War II.

Freedom has a long tradition in this country. But I'm not sure we've ever been as free as we'd like to think we are. Especially not from fear and want! There is an equally iconic image from Life magazine in 1937 of a mural boasting of the “American Way” as having the “highest standard of living” with people in front of it standing in line for assistance in Louisville, KY after the Ohio River flooded.^{^[4]} To be fair, it was taken during the Great Depression. But these were people who were not free from want and fear. I think true freedom is much more complicated than the sentiments expressed in Mr. Greenwood’s song.

I would say that St. Paul knew that freedom is complicated. In our lesson for today, he deals with one of the central problems regarding freedom in his day: how does a Gospel message that offers freedom to Gentiles apply to Jewish people who are bound by the Torah of Moses? This problem plagued most of the Christian communities Paul served in the First Century. To Jewish people, even Christians, a Gospel that offers salvation to Gentiles represented a casting aside of all their most cherished traditions. It simply did not compute to them, and this caused tension in the churches, most of which combined Jewish and Gentile members.

Paul’s response to this issue was to argue that God in Jesus Christ has set all people free through the Spirit. His logic in this chapter of 2 Corinthians is difficult to follow because he’s interpreting a portion of Exodus chapter 34. One of the central points Paul seems to be trying to make here is to say that the same Lord who set the people of Israel free from slavery in Egypt is the one who in Jesus has set them free from sin and death, from guilt and fear. And this same Lord is the one who in the Spirit makes freedom in Christ a reality in their lives: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17).^{^[5]}

The foundation for this line of thinking is found in Paul’s understanding of the resurrection of Jesus and what that means in our lives. As the Apostle makes clear elsewhere, the effect of Jesus’ resurrection is that while “in Adam all die,” “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Jesus’ resurrection imparts new life to all of us. And so St. Paul can say that through the resurrection, the gift of freedom and new life in Christ come to us through the “Spirit of the Lord.” In other words, “freedom is present where Christ is experienced through the Spirit.”^{^[6]}

This way of approaching freedom as a gift from the Lord God of all creation, extended to us by the risen Lord Jesus, and made real in our lives by the Spirit of the Lord is very different from our understanding of freedom. In the first place, we seem to think of freedom as a “right” that we deserve, not as gift. But perhaps more importantly, in this culture we insist that freedom is something that belongs to us by virtue of the fact that we exist. In our world, every person is by definition free. We don’t need anyone, not even Jesus Christ, to give us something that we already have.

By contrast, I would say that many of the people I meet don’t seem to be free. Some are bound by fear—fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of becoming financially destitute, fear of being alone. Some are bound by pain—the pain of some disease, or the pain of trauma. Some are bound by addictions—to alcohol, drugs, pornography, and even electronic games, among many others. Some are bound to a past that they simply cannot seem to shake. Others are bound by the ever-increasing cost of living and by debts that may be more than they can handle. And if you asked them were freedom is to be found, I’m afraid not many people have a very good answer.

But the Gospel insists that freedom is found in Christ through the Spirit who is constantly working in our lives. The assurance that Christ can truly give us this promised freedom is that God raised him from the dead. In raising Jesus from death to new life, God demonstrated for all time that it was his purpose for the human family to give them that new life by the Spirit.^{^[7]} As we respond to this amazing gift in faith, hope, and love, we find the truth and the reality of this promise becoming real in our growing experience of the freedom to truly live.

[2] Lee Greenwood, “God Bless the U.S.A,” You’ve Got a Good Love Comin’, MCA Records, May 17, 1984.

[3] Published as covers of The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, February 27, March 6, and March 13, 1943. See https://www.nrm.org/2012/10/collections-four-freedoms/ .

[4] Margaret Bourke-White, “World's Highest Standard of Living,” Life, February 1937. https://www.artic.edu/articles/467/worlds-highest-standard-of-living .

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 120-22.

[6] Ibid., 121.

[7] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:308-9.

Monday, September 17, 2018

More Than We Can See

2 Corinthians 5:7-9, 14-17[1]

Most of us, I think, are people who process information through what we see. I would say that the advent of television shifted the test of what we believe from “I heard it” to “I saw it.” Personally, I don’t remember a time when television was not a daily part of life in our society. I think that the developments with the internet that I’ve seen in my lifetime have only made us even more dependent on what we see. We have access to live video feeds from all over the world, almost as soon as events are happening. This is a reality that my children have grown up with.

The problem is that you can’t base your faith in what God is doing in our lives and in our world on what you can see. Think about it, it really isn’t that hard to believe what we see through various media—news, internet, or social media. But anyone with experience in photography can tell you that the lens can dramatically alter how we understand life. We are actually taking a step of faith to believe that those media are accurately depicting the events they portray. That’s just as true for our faith in God as it is for what we choose to believe about our world. It depends to a great extent on the lens through which we view our faith. Believe it or not, that can make all the difference in the world in where we come out with our faith.

I think St. Paul was continually trying to get the people he was serving to adjust the lens through which they were viewing their life and their faith. There were all kinds of competing “visions” of reality in his day, just as there are today. For some, the notion of a crucified Savior was utter foolishness, if not outright blasphemy. For others, the idea that a dead man could come back to life was simply “non-sense.” These weren’t theoretical obstacles; St. Paul had actually encountered people who raised these and other objections to his gospel.

In the face of the skepticism and cynicism of his world, Paul continued to declare the good news of the resurrection of Jesus from death to new life. For him, that becomes the lens through which to view all aspects of our faith in what God is doing in our lives, in our world, and ultimately in all creation. If we do not view our lives through the lens of the resurrection, then as St. Paul says elsewhere, our faith and even the gospel itself are useless, and “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). But, of course, the Apostle would never concede that to be the truth. He never stopped insisting that we view what we can see through the lens of what we cannot see: that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead on the third day, and is alive and working in each of us to this very day.

And so it is that St. Paul insists that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). One of the most important aspects of this faith is the conviction that, just as God raised Jesus from death to new life, so he will raise us to new life as well. In one respect, this applies to what happens to us after we die. And, unfortunately, the Bible is perhaps unnervingly silent about just exactly what that looks like. But here, St. Paul says it in a memorable way: to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). While he doesn’t describe it in detail, I think the image of being “at home” is one that can help us to be “confident” as he was.

But St. Paul goes beyond what our faith means for the afterlife. He insists that our confidence extends to this life as well. And he expresses that confidence in this way: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17). St. Paul reaches back to the prophet Isaiah for a concept that may be hard for us to grasp: the idea of a new heaven and a new earth. According to Isaiah, what God is up to is nothing less than the complete renewal of everything and everyone. And for St. Paul, that constituted a whole “new creation” that has already begun in our lives here and now. But here as well, we have to be able to put our trust in more than we can see!

I think this is difficult for most of us. We live in a “matter-of-fact” world, where we look for results that can be measured. “What have you done for me lately” becomes the basis by which we evaluate the people, ideas, and experiences we encounter in life. But the problem with this approach is that when all you have to go on is what your eyes can see, then the story of our lives really is nothing more than you pay your taxes and then you die! Might makes right, cheaters prosper, and money talks. While there may be many in our world who embrace that outlook on life, it can only end in despair, both for this life and for the next.

What St. Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to understand is that God does not operate within the limits of what we can see. God demonstrated that conclusively by raising Jesus from the dead! And that means we are called to put our trust in “more than what we have yet seen.” At least part of that “something more” is that God is working in this world to bring about a whole new creation. The first act of that new creation was raising Jesus from the dead. But God didn’t stop there. God continues to work in all of our lives and in the whole creation to “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). It may seem too good to be true. If so, it means that we are called to stretch our faith beyond the confines of our doubts to trust in more than we can see.

We Do Not Lose Heart

2 Corinthians 4:13-18[1]

St. Paul is famous for having said “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:10). He’s famous for this because he’s been so often misquoted as saying that the love of money is the root of all evil. No doubt, greed motivates people to do things they might otherwise not think of doing. But so does fear. I believe that fear can be just a powerful a motivator to do evil as greed or lust. We fear what we do not understand, what we cannot anticipate, and what we cannot control. And in our world, there is so much that we don’t understand, can’t anticipate, and have no way to control. I would have to admit that the things I’m most ashamed of having done I’ve done out of fear.

I think one of the main reasons why fear can affect so deeply is because fear converts to anger. To be afraid of something or someone is a powerless feeling, and most of us don’t like feeling powerless. So we convert our fears into anger, because anger feels more powerful than fear. And we usually do so without even knowing it. This dynamic in our human psychology has allowed zealots and tyrants of every stripe to manipulate whole nations of people to do unspeakable evil. It still makes us susceptible to those who point the finger at some particular group as the ones who are to blame for the challenges that we fear so much in our world.

If anyone had a right to give in to fear, it was St. Paul. He recounts that during the course of his service to Christ, he endured “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Cor 6:4-5). He said it well elsewhere: he was in “danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters” and he carried out his ministry “in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked” (2 Cor. 11:26-27). I think if anyone had a right to give in to fear, it was St. Paul.

Beyond that, he had endured public humiliation and even being run out of town by the people of the church at Corinth. Now this was a church that he had founded, and he continued to serve as a pastor to them for many years through his letters which we have in the NT. But the relationship between them was not always the best. The Apostle recounts one particular occasion when he visited the church in Corinth and was forced to leave by those who opposed him openly. He also chides the church at Corinth for receiving so-called “super-Apostles” who claimed that Paul was a fraud because he was he didn’t “throw his weight around.”

Part of the problem was a question of authority. The “super-Apostles” who attacked St. Paul claimed that his authority was lame and ineffective. They insisted their credentials and performance as preachers of the gospel put Paul to shame. And it would appear that, at least for a while, the people of the church at Corinth were taken in by this scam. But in our lesson for today, St. Paul addresses this: he says, “everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 4:15).

You might think that Paul would give in to fear and move on to greener pastures. But he never gave up on the church at Corinth. He never stopped trying to lead them into the truth of the Gospel, no matter what obstacles there may have been in his way. And finally, after many months of conflict, his efforts were rewarded. That was the whole reason why he wrote the letter we know as 2 Corinthians. And that helps us to understand better the context in which he could say, “we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:16).

This wasn’t the first time or the last that St. Paul was attacked by those who claimed he had no authority to act as an Apostle. Elsewhere, in response to those who were boasting of their perfect “pedigree,” he insists that none of that counts. In a church that follows a crucified savior, St. Paul insists that “the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). I might paraphrase that as “faith serving through love.” Because St. Paul knew he was a living example of “faith serving through love,” he didn’t let those who tried to discredit him divert him from his task. Because his motives were pure and his ultimate confidence was in Jesus Christ, he could say “we do not lose heart.”

I think that’s a lesson that we can learn from in our day. It is a difficult time to be the church. 60 years ago, we were right in the middle of the mainstream of our culture. These days it’s all we can do to try to keep moving forward against the current of our culture. And there are so many voices out there claiming that our mandate for being the church in our world is lame and that we are ineffective at best when it comes to carrying out our mission.

It would be easy to give into fear in this setting. There’s so much about our future as a church that we don’t understand, we can’t anticipate, and we can’t control. But now is not the time to give into fear; it’s the time to follow St. Paul’s example by putting into practice “faith serving through love.” I think that can be one of the most effective antidotes to the fear-mongers in our world who would paralyze us and attack us for carrying out our calling. When we devote ourselves to a life of “faith serving through love,” then we can also have the courage to say, come what may, “we do not lose heart.”

Monday, August 06, 2018

Unveiling the Kingdom

2 Corinthians 3:17-4:6; Mark 9:2-9[1]

Anytime we achieve some major success, we tend to want to publish it as far and wide as possible. Sometimes, as with the birth of a child, we would shout it from the rooftops of our neighborhood if we could get away with it! But this seems to be a part of human nature: when something really great comes our way, we can’t wait to share it with someone. Depending on our personality, we may be more or less discreet with that sharing. Some of us choose only trusted friends. Others publish it all over social media! It just depends on how comfortable you are with people knowing your business!

Regardless of personality traits, anyone who is chosen for a special task, especially if it is one that carries a significant amount of honor, wants to tell someone about it immediately. And the more important the position, the more widely we spread the word and the more we make a big deal about it. The arrival of a new and promising coach generates a lot of excitement. The inauguration of a new leader may draw a large and distinguished crowd to the event. Whenever we have new and important roles assigned to us, we mark the occasion with some kind of special observance. We want people to know about it and celebrate it with us.

The strange thing about Jesus and the kingdom of God, however, is that he went about things in the exact opposite way. In our Gospel lesson for today, we hear the story of his “transfiguration” before the disciples Peter, James, and John. His appearance is transformed, and they hear the voice of God telling them, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). It would seem that the whole event was designed to reveal to them that Jesus really was the one who had come to bring the blessings of new life God had promised. In a way, it was a confirmation of Jesus’ message that though his ministry, “the kingdom of God has come near.” As we have discussed, that was one of the major themes in the Gospel. In a very real sense, we could say that Jesus’ whole life and ministry was an unveiling, a disclosure of God’s work of salvation for us all.

But the strange feature of this “unveiling” that took place through Jesus’ teachings and ministry is the fact that it was somewhat understated and easily overlooked. Many in Jesus’ day did just that: they missed the whole picture of what he was saying and doing. They missed the fact that Jesus had come to reveal the presence of God’s kingdom already working to make all things new, to set things right and restore life as God intended. In light of this, it might make sense for us to speak of Jesus’ life and ministry as a kind of preview of the Kingdom. In him, we get a taste of what is coming, but the full dimension of what that will be remains to be seen.

That’s what the transfiguration of Jesus was—a preview of what is to come. Whatever you make of it in terms of “just the facts”, the point of the transfiguration was that it was a “pre-view” of Jesus’ resurrection. And, in turn, one aspect Jesus’ resurrection is that it serves as a “pre-view” of the restoration of all life and indeed all creation. So the “unveiling” that occurred when Jesus was transfigured before his disciples reveals the light of God’s new life already breaking into this world.

St. Paul the Apostle says it this way, “God commanded light to shine in the dark—Now God is shining in our hearts!” (2 Corinthians 4:6 CEV). Although St. Paul knew as much as anyone that the light God has poured into this world is one that can be veiled, he nevertheless believed without a doubt that the light is indeed shining, here and now. And he was convinced that all who have the chance to catch a glimpse of this light in Jesus wind up completely changed. Just like with the kingdom of God, it’s easy to overlook the changes God’s light in Jesus makes in us. But Paul nevertheless insists that the light of God’s new life is indeed shining here and now, and changing all of us to be more and more like Jesus.

I think it’s still very easy to overlook what God is doing in our lives through Jesus today. The reason for that is that the way God’s kingdom works is very different from the way things work in our world. Instead of turning it into a “media event,” as Judas suggests he should have in “Jesus Christ: Superstar,” the way Jesus unveiled the presence of the kingdom was understated and easily overlooked. I think part of the reason for that was he didn’t want to confirm the false assumptions people had about what the kingdom would look like. But I also think that his approach to unveiling the kingdom was so discreet because he only wanted those who were sincerely looking for it to see the signs of its presence.

In the midst of all the clamor for attention by those who are blowing their own horns in our day, we have to be sincerely looking for the signs of God’s kingdom to be able to see them. Wherever God’s love is shared freely with those who may not deserve it, there is the kingdom. Wherever words are spoken and encouragement is given in such a way as to renew faith and strengthen hope, there is the kingdom. The signs that “the kingdom of God has come near” are the same now as they’ve always been. We have to be truly looking for them in order to see the ways that Jesus continues to unveil the kingdom’s presence in our lives.

The Waking Dreamer