The Waking Dreamer: Gospel

Showing posts with label Gospel. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Everything and Everyone

Ephesians 1:3-11[1]

From the perspective of someone who is “outside” the church, I think there has always been something about our “gospel” that doesn’t sound like very good news. The “standard” script has been something like this: “we’re all sinners, and we deserve to be punished; God really does love us, though, so he sent Jesus to take the punishment we deserve, so that we could be forgiven and go to heaven when we die.” Since we’ve heard that message all our lives, it makes sense to us. But I think what most people “outside” the church hear is, “You’re no good the way you are; If you don’t change, God is going to get you; If you believe like me, act like me, hang out with me, become like me, then you get to go to heaven when you die. If you don’t, you’re going to hell.” To me, that doesn’t sound like very good news at all!

I believe the Scriptures contain a very different gospel—one that truly is good news. Our Psalm text for today alludes to it. “The earth is the Lord’s” means that everything and everyone belongs to God, both by virtue of the fact that he created us in the first place, and by virtue of the fact that he gave his son Jesus Christ to redeem us all. It means that God reigns over everything and everyone. That word “reign” might not mean much to us, but from the perspective of the Bible, God’s reign means peace, it means salvation, it means life for everything and everyone![2] It means that God also cares for all things and for the whole human family. It means that God not only deserves praise from all peoples, but also that God will be praised by all peoples.[3]

The idea in the Bible that all peoples are blessed, they witness God’s saving work, and they acclaim him in worship may sound strange to us who have been taught the traditional “gospel.” However, this understanding of God’s redemptive purpose runs through the whole Bible. From Genesis to Isaiah to Jesus to the Book of Revelation, the good news is that God is working to establish his saving reign world-wide, a kingdom which will bring mercy and freedom and new life to everything and everyone, everywhere.

I believe that’s what Paul is talking about in our lesson from Ephesians for today when he speaks of gathering all things together under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Paul believed that the return of Christ would be a day when the entire created order would be reconciled to God and restored to its rightful place under the lordship of Christ.[4] He says it this way: “God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10, NLT).[5] That doesn’t sound to me like it leaves out anyone or anything. I like a phrase from The Message translation, where it says that God takes “such delight” in carrying out this plan for everything and everyone.

I’m not ashamed to say that I believe that God’s ultimate purpose is to redeem all humanity. I really fail to see what is good about the news that those of us who are “in” will inherit an eternity of blessing in the presence of God, while those who are “out” are going to suffer an eternity of torment. I never have seen the “good news” in that message. The Christian hope is that God’s redemptive purpose will prevail—for everything and everyone. This is the message of the Psalms, the message of the prophets, and it is the message of Jesus: the fulfillment of God’s reign which brings salvation. The good news insists that, despite all indications to the contrary, “God’s cause will prevail in the world.”[6]

I realize that all of this may sound either outrageous or too good to be true. Some of us who have spent our lives seeking to live for God may bristle at the thought that those who never gave God a second thought may receive the same “reward” as we will. But then, it’s not really about “rewards” at all. Our gospel is a gospel of grace—of receiving something undeserved. That’s true for all of us. It’s a gospel of unconditional love, which creates in us the confidence to take the risk of believing something that may sound too good to be true. After all, if God’s love is unconditional, then it’s unconditional for everyone, not just for you and me. And that’s what gives us the assurance to believe that God not only chooses to save everything and everyone, but also that God has the power to accomplish that seemingly outrageous plan![7]

I realize some of you may be scratching your heads at this point.[8] We’ve heard the “good news” that those of us who believe in Jesus will be saved while those who don’t will be “left behind” for so long that when we’re confronted with this aspect of biblical teaching it seems either outrageous or too good to be true. But the “full” gospel is that God intends not just to save a chosen few, but rather every one of his beloved children and every inch of his precious creation. It’s the message that begins with Abraham, and it runs through the whole Bible. And so in the New Testament the Apostles looked forward to the day when “every knee” would bow in worship and acknowledge Christ as Lord (Phil. 2:10-11). They believed that the plan behind all of this is that God is in the process of “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5, NJB).

How that will happen I don’t profess to understand completely. There are complications involved. But despite that, it is a breathtaking message; a message that truly is “good news.” To me it seems like these days most of the news is “all bad, all the time.” I think we could do with some good news. I think the people around us could do with some good news. And so perhaps the challenge of this passage is that we become a people who reflect the hope of this outrageous good news![9] God’s plan is that through Christ he’s going to redeem everything and everyone. And as the Scripture says in The Message translation, God takes “great delight” in seeing to it that this plan will be fulfilled!

[2] James L. Mays, Psalms, 311. Cf. also Shirley C. Guthrie, “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Presbyterian Outlook (Feb. 11, 2002), who says that God’s kingdom will bring “justice and compassion for all people, everywhere.”

[3] Psalm 48:10; 57:5, 11; 66:4; 72:19; 86:9; 96:1, 7; 97:6; 98:4, 7; 108:5; 145:21.

[4] 1 Corinthians 15:28; Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:20; Philippians 2:10-11.

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 39-40: “our hope is directed towards that divine future in which God will have all his creatures beside him to all eternity. That is to say, our hope is for the day when all things will be restored and gathered in a new, eternal order.” Cf. also Pheme Perkins “The Letter to the Ephesians,” New Interpreters Bible XI:378: “Ephesians assures us that … somehow the universe is ordered so that all things return to God in Christ.”

[6] Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge, 120.

[7] Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, 344: “this love lasts forever and that it will not rest until it possesses us wholly.”

[8] Cf. Karl Barth, Romans, 38, 108-9, where he acknowledges that idea that a God of grace and mercy loves us unconditionally with a love that will never let us go is something “so unheard of, so unexpected” that it can only appear to us as something “incomprehensible and meaningless,” as a “vast impossibility.”.

[9] Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 292-93, where he speaks of the Christian community as “the sign, the instrument, and the breaking-in of the new order of all things” and therefore not as “the exclusive community of the saved,” but “the initial and inclusive” expression of “the world freed by the risen Christ.”

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Unprecedented

Mark 1:1-11[1]

This is the time of year when people think about what will be “new” about the “New Year.” But for those of us who have made more than a few trips around the sun, turning over the calendar may just mark another day. We may find ourselves thinking along with the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes that “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). Or to put it in a more familiar way, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s the moral of the story of Sisyphus, the mythological Greek figure who thought he could outsmart the gods and even cheat death. As a result, he was sentenced to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again, over and over and over. In both cases, the idea is that all our efforts are in vain.

This sentiment has been around for a long time—for millennia in fact! The myth of Sisyphus goes back to ancient Greece, and Ecclesiastes may be one of the older books in the Hebrew Bible. And yet, there are genuinely “new” things that happen for some of us. Students graduate from High School and move on to the next level. Or they complete their studies and start a career. Couples get married and start their lives together. Or they have children, which changes everything! Those are exciting times for all who are involved. But after a while, even a “new” career falls into a routine. Couples and even families can deal with the same thing. As the years continue to roll around, they may start to feel like every year turns into a repeat of the last one. Monotony sets in, and that leads to boredom. Our flourishing entertainment industry gives ample evidence of the fact that many of us, despite whatever “new” things come our way, feel like our lives are just an endless loop of the same old thing, day by day, month by month, and year after year.

To some extent, that’s a normal part of our human experience. Seasons come and seasons go. We rely on that. Our days and nights and weeks and months and years tend to follow a pattern. That’s not all bad. It’s comforting to know, for example, that the sun will actually come up tomorrow. Having a “normal” life gives us a sense of stability. But when stability turns into monotony, and boredom sets in, we can find ourselves struggling with the idea that none of it really matters. And that leads to despair, a state of mind and heart and soul that results from losing hope that anything we do or say makes any difference at all. More than that, despair cancels out any kind of faith: in God, in life, in the future, in anything. When we lose hope, and we lose faith, we also lose the heart and the will to truly live and love and find joy in doing so.

The message of the Bible, despite the pessimistic declaration of the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes, is a very different one. As the prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the Lord, “I am about to do a new thing” (Isa 43:19). In fact, the new thing that God promised to do would change everything. As the prophet said in the name of the Lord, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isa 65:17). In that setting, the prophet was primarily talking about what God was going to do to set his people free from their captivity in Babylon. The promise was that God was going to change everything; in fact, God’s work was going to change even the heavens and the earth! As we’ve discussed, when the people returned from exile, the reality they faced wasn’t as “new” and as all-encompassing as they expected. There was a lot that stayed the same.

Some might think that God didn’t fulfill his promise after all. But the reason why things didn’t turn out quite the way they expected was because God wasn’t finished fulfilling his promise. The “good news” that the prophet Isaiah proclaimed almost three thousand years ago was a sweeping vision that included all God has in store for his precious creation. And, of course, the essential piece of that “good news” had to do with the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus Christ as Lord! We get a glimpse of that “good news” in our Gospel lesson for today. Not only does Mark tell us that the events surrounding Jesus’ birth were part of the fulfillment of God’s promises through the prophet Isaiah. He also demonstrates in several ways that the story of Jesus is the “good news” about the “Son of God.” Now there had been others before Jesus who were called “sons” of God, but Jesus fulfilled that role uniquely.

That’s the point of the affirmation that the Gospel of Mark opens with: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1). One of the ironies about Mark’s Gospel is that the only person who truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God” is the Roman Centurion who witnessed his death on the cross. Nobody else truly recognizes Jesus as the “Son of God” in Mark’s Gospel. I think the reason for this is that Mark believed people could only truly understand what it meant that Jesus was the “Son of God” in light of the fact that he suffered and died on the cross. In that day, “Sons of God” were supposed to do miraculous deeds, draw huge crowds of followers, enjoy tremendous success, and be recognized by one and all! “Sons of God” in the ancient world were the “stuff of legend,” the focus of mythical stories. But Jesus demonstrated that he was the true “Son of God” by following through with God’s purpose: he took all the suffering of the world onto himself by dying on the cross.

As important as it is that Jesus was born as “God-who-is-with-us,” as important as it is that Jesus died as “God-who-is-for-us,” as important as it is that Jesus was raised to new life and ascended to the right hand of God to reign over all things, as Mark reminds us, this is the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The change that God made in Jesus was only the beginning. The work of fulfilling the promise of making a whole new heaven and a whole earth would continue through the first Christians, as the New Testament tells us. Through those who were bold enough to declare the news that in Jesus Christ God had begun working to change the whole world, the “good news” continued to be fulfilled in the lives of all who heard the message and took it to heart.

I think what I want to emphasize today is that the “good news” is that God isn’t finished with his work even now. The “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” is still in the process of being fulfilled. And God will not stop working to make all things new until he has changed everything and everyone by the power of his unfailing love. To those who say, “there is nothing new under the sun,” I say that through Jesus Christ God is continually doing something new among us, even now. To those who say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I say that it’s time to open your eyes to see the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ that is still shining on us all to this day. To those who say that the promises of the Bible are just a lot of wishful thinking because life doesn’t ever really change, I say that it’s time to break the chains of hopelessness and despair. It’s time to open our hearts to the faith that the God who loves us will not stop changing everything until his work is finished, and it’s time to celebrate with joy the signs of God’s work that are all around us. In Jesus, God did something truly new and unprecedented. And he continues to do so among us and through us to this day.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Turn Back to God

Mark 1:14-20[1]

This is the time of the year when many of us are thinking about making changes. Some want to shed a bad habit, while others want to start a new regimen. For decades, most of us have operated on the assumption that it takes about 30 days for a change to “stick.” In fact, a 2009 study found that it probably takes more like two months, and maybe even longer for some of us.[2] And, as it turns out, breaking a bad habit is likely to be harder than simply establishing a new one. Especially if that habit has been literally engrained for years. Not surprisingly, we have to have a strong motivation to put forth the effort—one that’s strong enough to keep us on track for as long as it takes to change.

The Bible is filled with calls for us to change our behavior. We often associate that with a confrontation of “sin.” And that leads us to guilt. I would have to say, however, that while guilt may motivate us to make short-term change, it’s been my experience that guilt cannot motivate us to make any kind of lasting change in our lives. And when it comes down to it, that’s what really counts—re-orienting our lives from simply fulfilling our own wants to making our faith in God the impulse for everything we do. Of course, it will take us all a lifetime to achieve that goal. Fortunately, we don’t have to do it on our own.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus begins his public ministry by announcing his motivation: “the good news of God” (Mk 1:14). That may sound strange to us, but we’ve seen it before in Isaiah 61. There the “servant of the Lord” declares that he was the one “anointed” by God’s Spirit to set right all that was wrong, to relieve all suffering, and to enable all people to thrive together, equally. It was a promise of true justice and righteousness, which in the Bible means things like sharing food with the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked (Isa. 58:7). And the promise was that this kind of “righteousness” would spring up and flourish like a lush garden (Isa. 61:11).

You may be wondering what this has to do with our Gospel lesson. I would say it has everything to do with it. When Jesus defines the “good news of God,” he says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mk 1:15). That might not clear things up for you. Most of us think the kingdom of God is something that comes “in the sweet by and by.” If it impacts our lives now, it only does so by offering a hope that might help inspire us to keep following Christ in our daily lives. Otherwise, I’m not sure that the “kingdom of God” plays much of a role in our faith.

But in Jesus’ ministry, the “kingdom of God” was front and center. When Jesus referred to the “kingdom of God,” he was talking about everything that God is doing in this world to set things right, to heal and restore those who are wounded and broken, and to bring peace and life to all people and all of creation! The good news that Jesus proclaimed was that through him, God had entered this world definitively to make all things new. And the story of Jesus’ ministry was one in which he spread the new life of peace and freedom that God’s kingdom creates to all he encountered.

In some ways, I’d have to admit that the “kingdom of God” remains a promise that has yet to be completely realized in this world. But the “good news of God” is that the process of making that new world a reality began with Jesus. And God is still working among us to establish his kingdom. It may be hard for us these days to see it, but I think the signs are there: wherever those who are bowed down with the burden of injustice are lifted up, there is the kingdom of God. Wherever those who are strangers living in an unfamiliar place find welcome and embrace, there is the kingdom of God. Wherever anyone who is suffering or in want or need finds comfort and support, there is the kingdom of God.

If this is God’s work, you may be wondering what we’re supposed to do about it. Jesus says, “repent and believe” (Mk. 1:15). I would say we don’t like “repentance” any more than trying to break a bad habit. To repent takes time and work. It means being aware that we’ve done wrong, acknowledging that we’ve done wrong, and deciding that we will stop doing wrong. In biblical terms, to “repent” means turning back to God. But Jesus called for more; he called for us to “believe.” We tend to view faith as something private and personal. But I would say that when Jesus told people to “believe,” he was calling them to live out their faith by aligning their lives with everything God is doing in this world.

These two responses to God’s kingdom, “repenting” and “believing,” are connected. If we are truly going to turn back to God, it will mean changing the way we live. And, like trying to change a bad habit, we have to replace what we have done in the past with something positive. That’s not something that happens just automatically. If we want to “turn back to God,” it will not only mean deciding to stop living the way we have been, it will also mean making the commitment to direct our lives toward carrying out the work that God is doing: establishing the peace, justice, and freedom that enables us all to thrive together. [3]

[2] Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. Van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, Jane Wardle, “How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world,” European Journal of Social Psychology 40 (2010), 998–1009.

[3] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 56, where he says that the deepest meaning of our history is “a constant invitation calling us to turn our hearts to God and so discover the full meaning of our lives.”

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

No Distinctions

Acts 11:1-18[1]

Last week we talked about how the church in our day doesn’t exactly have a positive image, at least in our culture at large. One of the things the church is known for is being perceived as stuck in a rut. We are judged to be “out of date” in our attitudes, in our thinking, and in our worship. Indeed, the basic order of worship we follow dates back 1400 years! And, of course, it’s a curious fact that when you walk into some churches, you can tell when they stopped adapting, because their clothing, their hair styles, even their patterns of speech reflect a particular time. Some of the most obvious examples are the Mennonites and the Amish. But it’s found in churches of all stripes.

In this church, however, we have embraced more than twenty significant changes or innovations in the last 5 years! Of course, not everyone has been 100 per cent on board with every one of those changes. But for a church, that’s a lot of change! And I think it raises a question for us as a church: when is change something to be embraced, and when should we stay with tradition? That’s not an easy question to answer. I think most of us in the church have had to live with the tension of wanting to change in order to grow, but also wanting to maintain traditions that define the church for us.

In our Scripture lesson from the book of Acts for today, we get to “listen in” on how the early church dealt with change. In fact, I think calling it a “change” is a vast understatement. The issue they were dealing with very likely felt more like an earthquake that was shaking loose all the foundations upon which their faith and their life were built! Peter had preached the gospel to Gentiles. For us that seems logical, because we assume that was the trajectory of the Gospel: from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But the actual working out of that trajectory involved negotiating some very tricky pitfalls surrounding the relationship between the Jewish people and those they considered “Gentiles.”

By the time of the New Testament, the Jewish people had been forced to find a way to interact with Gentiles for several hundred years. They had been spread across the Mediterranean world, beginning with the Babylonian exile 700 years before Jesus. One of the ways that people groups survive being dispersed among other cultures is to define certain “boundary markers” that are considered absolute. For the Jewish people, they were circumcision (as a religious rite), keeping the Sabbath, and observing the food laws regarding what was “clean” and “unclean.” These were non-negotiable; they were the boundaries that protected Jewish identity. The Jewish people viewed making distinctions between who’s “in” and who’s “out” as a matter of survival.

In our lesson, we hear about Peter’s experience with preaching the gospel to the household of a Roman centurion named Cornelius. This constituted more than a logical next step in the Christian mission. It was a blurring of the distinctions that secured what it meant to be Jewish in a world where that seemed to be threatened at every turn. So it should come as no surprise that when Peter’s actions were reported in Jerusalem, the complaint against him was that he went to “uncircumcised men” and ate with them (Acts 11:3). The primary concern was not over the fact that he had baptized Gentiles as converts to the faith. Rather, it was that he had broken the boundaries that protected their Jewish identity, and they felt threatened by that!

Peter replies by recounting, “step by step,” the process by which he had been led to do such a “scandalous” thing. He begins by telling them about the vision he had of being commanded to eat all kinds of foods that were considered “unclean” by the Torah of Moses. In response he objected, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth” (Acts 11:8). The answer he received was, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Obviously, Peter claims he was led to cross the Jewish boundary lines by a vision from God. Beyond that, when the men from Cornelius came to the house and asked for Peter, he tells them that “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us” (Acts 11:12).

Now, so far, we’re completely in the realm of Peter’s own personal spiritual experience. And, of course, relying on individual experience alone is not always the wisest course. But Peter goes on to recount that as soon as he began to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning” (Acts 11:15). Now we’re dealing with the experience of a larger group of people. Beyond that, Peter used “the word of the Lord” to interpret this boundary-breaking experience. He recalled that Jesus said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:16). Peter’s conclusion was straightforward: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:17).

I know that change is difficult for most of us. I’ve been through my fair share of changes, both those I embraced and those I resisted, and believe me, I understand. But if the church is to remain vital and relevant through changing times, we may have to give up some of the “boundaries” and “distinctions” we have relied upon to feel stable and secure. We will have to be open to the working of the Spirit among us. As we together try to discern the guidance of the Spirit, we can continue to look to the word of the Lord to guide us. With the guidance of the Spirit, the Scriptures, and the community in which we seek together to discern our path, we can learn to let go the human distinctions we may rely on for stability and security, and trust God to lead us.

[1] ©Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/19/2019 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

God's Foolishness

God’s Foolishness

1 Corinthians 1:18-31[1]

I think most of us go a long way to avoid looking foolish to others. It is humbling to say the least; more than that, it’s embarrassing and humiliating. When we feel foolish, it can seem like we’re standing right in the middle of a giant spotlight and the whole world is staring right through us, laughing at us. I think all of us would rather do just about anything than appear foolish. Unfortunately, this natural tendency can be magnified by a personality that is insecure. When that happens, looking foolish becomes more than just an embarrassment. It can seem like one’s value as a human being has been stripped. It doesn’t take much to imagine what some people will do to avoid that. And when they do, it’s not going to be a pretty picture.

The truth of the matter, though, whether we want to hear it or not, is that we are all going to look foolish at some time in our lives. It’s the nature of being human. We are flawed and fallible. We make mistakes. And some of them are real “doozies”; so much so that they leave us feeling foolish. Rather than reacting in a way that is inherently self-protective (and possibly threatening to others), it seems that laughter truly is the best medicine for this. Learning to be able to chuckle at our own foibles and quirks may be one of the most important lessons we can learn in life. It certainly takes the sting out of looking foolish.

In our lesson from St. Paul for today, we find something that might seem surprising to us. It would appear that the Apostle knew the experience of being humiliated and looking foolish. Except that in his case it was a direct result of his service to Christ! I’m not sure that’s something we would expect, especially from someone as important as St. Paul, the Apostle to the nations! I think it might be like someone making fun of Billy Graham for his preaching of the gospel. It just doesn’t compute for those of us who have been raised in the Christian faith.

And yet, as we heard in our reading on Ash Wednesday, St. Paul himself could say that he carried out his service to Christ

“in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor. 6:8-10).

All you have to do to confirm this is to read over the book of Acts. I would say Paul knew the experience of looking foolish to others quite well.

The interesting thing is that the very reason why St. Paul looked foolish was because of the message he preached. He says plainly that “the message about the cross is foolishness” to those who don’t understand it (1 Cor. 1:18). The word he uses here is the one from which we get our word “moronic.” In a Jewish context, that message was a scandal, the worst kind of blasphemy, because one who had been crucified was considered to be under God’s curse. In a Greek context the very idea that one would want to be “resurrected” in the body after having one’s eternal soul freed by death simply didn’t make sense. When Paul said he looked foolish preaching the gospel of salvation by a crucified man who was raised to new life, he meant it!

But while St. Paul recognizes that he looks foolish to many because of the gospel, he does not accept that what he proclaims truly is foolish. In fact, he insists that this so-called “foolish” message was in fact a demonstration of God’s ultimate wisdom in providing for our salvation. That’s why he could say that “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:25). Even though the gospel message looks foolish to those who don’t understand it, Paul insists that is it the means by which God grants us all new life.

Part of Paul’s motivation for this passage is that the church at Corinth was badly divided over disputes about who had the true “wisdom” and “knowledge” of God. There were some who were looking down their spiritual noses at the others. But Paul reminded them that none of them had any grounds for boasting—certainly not in themselves. He reminded them that God’s gracious act of salvation has rendered all human grounds for boasting null and void.

We live in a world where following Christ—really following Christ and not just “playing” at church—means that we will inevitably share St. Paul’s experience of appearing foolish.^{^[2]} We should expect ridicule and humiliation, opposition and anger, in response to the faith that we find new life through the resurrection of a crucified man. It flies in the face of what our culture values and sets us at odds with those who cling to those values.^{^[3]} But I think we can take comfort in the knowledge that the “foolishness” with which others may paint us is not our own, but rather it is “God’s foolishness” for the salvation of the world.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place: An Autobiography, 103-4: “hope for an alternative future brings us into contradiction with the existing present. ...If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should come to terms with things as they simply are ... . The fact that we don't come to terms with them ... is the unquenchable spark of hope for the fullness of life, for righteousness and justice on the new earth, and for the kingdom of God. That keeps us unreconciled, restless and open for God's great day.”

[3] Cf. Walter Wink, The Powers that Be, 39, where he calls this “The Domination System” which he says “is characterized by unjust economic relations, oppressive political relations, biased race relations, patriarchal gender relations, hierarchical power relations, and the use of violence to maintain them all.”

Monday, August 06, 2018

Talking about Jesus

Talking About Jesus

Mark 1:29-39[1]

I ran across a surprising statement this week. Comedian and Actor Russell Brand was quoted in an article as saying, “My personal feeling is the teachings of Christ are more relevant now than they’ve ever been.”^{^[2]} If you are at all familiar with Mr. Brand, you may find yourself equally surprised. If you’re not familiar with him, he is this generation’s version of Howard Stern. He made a career as a “shock jock”—basing his comedy on extremely vulgar and crude antics. Which, of course, explains his success among adolescent and young adult males! I would have to say that, not knowing Russell Brand personally, he’s the last person from whom I would have expected to hear about the importance of Jesus.

But then, if you think about it, that might not be so surprising after all. When it comes to actually talking about Jesus publicly I would say that we have “delegated” that role to celebrities. But the fact that we don’t really know them personally makes their “testimony” shallow at best and merely sensational at worst (Mr. Brand is promoting a new book). Those of us who have been around the block a few times have been stung by celebrity evangelists. They may flourish for a while, but it seems that their true motivation is always about themselves. I have no way of knowing whether that’s true in this case. But then, I think that’s part of the problem.

Our gospel lesson for today is about the importance Jesus placed on carrying out the task of publicly telling people the good news. After a hugely popular reception to his ministry of healing in Capernaum, Jesus up and disappeared. In fact, he had gone out of town to pray alone—perhaps to have the strength to resist the temptation to bask in his success! That this was an issue he faced is, I think, illustrated by the fact that Peter and the others “hunted him down”—most likely because they wanted him to come back and continue to draw crowds where he was.

But Jesus responded in a very strange way. He said, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mk. 1:38). In effect, instead of staying in Capernaum where he already had a receptive audience, he felt that he must be going, leaving behind the crowds to preach his gospel message elsewhere! For him, it was more important to fulfill the task of publicly spreading the good news than to stay in a place where he was apparently a big hit!

I don’t know about you, but this interesting episode from Jesus’ life makes me wonder what we’re missing about the importance of talking about Jesus. It would seem that Jesus viewed his preaching of the good news as something so vital that he would leave behind crowds clamoring for healing. I think we might be excused for wondering why he would do that. At least part of the answer was that Jesus saw himself as the one appointed by God as the messenger of “the good news” (Mk. 1:14) that “the kingdom of God has come near.” It would seem that Jesus insisted he must be going to other places because were many who still had not heard his message.

In our day, we may not think Jesus made a smart choice. We place a value on actions rather than words. But the words Jesus was speaking were no ordinary words. It would seem that he viewed speaking the gospel publicly as one of the important means of spreading God’s kingdom and bringing freedom and peace and new life to the people of his day. Rather than being “mere words” that have little or no effect, Jesus believed that his preaching of the good news was crucial. And so he told Peter and the others that he had to spread the word elsewhere.

If that is true, it means that we have an important task to fulfill. The good news still has not been fully proclaimed. There are many in our day who have no idea that “the kingdom of God has come near.” And even if they did have an awareness of that, I doubt that they would understand the implications for their lives. In order to address this problem, we have to give substance to Jesus’ message that “the kingdom of God has drawn near.” I think we do that by first learning to live our lives in the freedom and peace of the kingdom ourselves. But we have to go beyond that. We have to find a way of putting our experience of that freedom and peace into words, words that we speak to those around us.

We may not like to hear it, because we much prefer to stay in our “comfort zones” than to take the risk of talking to anyone about our faith. But just as Jesus knew that he must be going to other places to tell the good news about God’s kingdom, so we must leave behind our personal comfort. I don’t think we have to make it all that difficult. It’s a matter of simply sharing our experience with faith. Many of us may think we’re not qualified to do that. But the truth is that one of the most powerful things we can do is to simply speak out of our experience of living the Christian faith. And each of us can do that. Just as Jesus knew he had to spread the word, so we must be going to share the good news with our world. The place to begin is to start talking about Jesus.

[2] Jesse Carey, “The Second Coming of Russell Brand,” RELEVANT Magazine, Oct. 8, 2017.

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Endless Patience

1 Timothy 1:12-17[1]

We are not patient people. Not typically. We have become accustomed to instant everything. Microwave ovens, the internet, and cell phones have gotten us in the habit of getting what we want right now. Of course, there are some notable exceptions among us, but I would say that patience is not something most of us come by naturally. We have to learn it. Life has a way of breaking down our impatience, and the more life experience we have, the more patient we’re likely to be. Many of you may be like me: I learned patience mostly from my children. Not that they were patient, but I had to learn patience in order to raise them.

I would say that, at least at first, St. Paul was not a patient man. In his early adulthood, he was climbing the ladder as fast as he possibly could. By his own confession, he had been a zealous Pharisee, devoted to obeying every rule in Judaism in every possible way. As a result, when confronted with the gospel, Paul’s initial response was violent. He considered the gospel to be worthy of a death sentence. What made Jesus’ gospel outrageous to someone like Paul was that it presents a God who loves everyone so much that he goes out searching for those who have lost their way! That was an intolerable upheaval in the image of God for Jewish zealots like Paul. It was outright blasphemy![2] And so he set about to eradicate it as quickly as possible.

That’s not some kind of exaggerated picture of Paul intended by his opponents to slander him. Most of it comes from Paul’s own confessions about his life. And so in our lesson from First Timothy for today,[3] we hear about how Paul had formerly been “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” (1 Tim. 1:13). The sobering fact is that he did all of that on God’s behalf, as an expression of his faith.[4] That may seem impossible to believe, and yet I think it was part and parcel of his impatience. When confronted with something he could not reconcile with his own cherished ideas about God, he didn’t hesitate to act in anger and violence. People of faith still do it all the time.

But something happened to Paul that changed him dramatically. He came face-to-face with the risen and exalted Christ, who loved Paul enough to die for him. And as a result Paul received mercy and grace “poured all over” him (1 Tim 1:14, CEB). That was enough to convince him that he was headed in the wrong direction. So he turned his life around completely. But more than that, Paul received a commission: he was “judged faithful” and “appointed” to serve Christ. And so, as he says elsewhere, Paul began to proclaim the good news he had formerly tried to destroy (cf. Gal. 1:23).

Some might be tempted to say that this is a special case. They might think that God made an exception for Paul because he was Paul. But that’s not what our lesson for today suggests. In fact, it suggests that the reason why Paul experienced such extraordinary grace and mercy was to show that this is the way God deals with us all. As the Scripture lesson puts it, Paul’s experience was to demonstrate that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Since Paul could consider himself the “foremost,” or a “worst-case” sinner, our lesson says that he received mercy so that “Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16). In the words of another translation, Paul experienced God’s “endless patience” (1 Tim. 1:16, CEB) that he shows toward us all.[5]

I think some of this might come as a shock to us. After all, it is “Saint Paul” we’re talking about, preacher and teacher of the gospel, founder and pastor of churches, and writer of about a third of the New Testament! Most of us would consider ourselves much worse sinners than Paul! But I would say our lesson insists that the reason why Paul experienced such amazing grace and mercy was to show there is no one who is beyond the love of God. He had blasphemed Christ and viciously attacked and even murdered Christians. If he could be forgiven for that, then there was no one who could not be forgiven. Since Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that includes us all. And Paul was the prime example of God’s “endless patience” that is available to everyone, everywhere.

Our Scripture lesson for today comes from the end of Paul’s life. The message that God’s grace and mercy and love are for all people was an important part of the gospel Paul preached from the very beginning. In fact, the idea of God’s “endless patience” can be found in Scripture long before Paul’s life, even before Jesus died on the cross. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, God displays grace and mercy to his wayward people again and again.[6] And yet, not only was this a fundamental part of Paul’s scripture, but also this was something Paul I think knew by personal experience. Over the course of his lifetime, I’m sure St. Paul had many occasions to observe God’s “endless patience” at work in his life.

I think the point of our lesson for today is that God’s “endless patience” is not just something that was true for a select few or for special cases like Paul. It’s true for us all. God shows us all extraordinary grace and mercy.[7] Christ Jesus came to save us all from our sins. There is no one who is beyond the love of God. This is the way God deals with us all—the same way he dealt with the people of Israel and the same way he dealt with Paul. It is the same way that God has always related to the human family. And I would venture to say that there are a number of us here today who have had many occasions to observe that God has worked in this same way in our lives. Just as God always has, so he always will show us “endless patience.”

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 128-29, where he points out that Jesus “demonstrated God’s eschatological law of grace towards those without the law and the transgressors of the law, through his forgiveness of sins. By so doing he abolished the legal distinction between religious and secular, righteous and unrighteous, devout and sinful. He revealed God in a different way from that in which he was understood in the law and the tradition and was perceived by the guardians of the law.” Cf. also ibid., 142, where he speaks of this as a “revolution in the concept of God”: “God comes not to carry out just revenge upon the evil, but to justify by grace sinners, whether they are Zealots or tax collectors, Pharisees or sinners, Jews or Samaritans, and therefore, also, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.”

[3] Cf. James D. G. Dunn, “The First and Second Letters to Timothy and The Letter to Titus” New Interpreters Bible XI:779-80, where he discusses the question of the “Pauline” nature of the Pastoral Letters, which have been questioned as authentic letters of St. Paul for over 200 years. He suggests viewing the issue from the perspective of “what we might call the concept of ‘living tradition.’ That is, within Israel's history we can readily discern several different streams of tradition, each originating with an authoritative earlier figure, but elaborated and extended within the immediate circle of that figure's disciples and retained under the name of the originator of the tradition. The Pentateuch is generally recognized to have reached its final form in this way, and the present book of Isaiah to be the work of two or three generations. Just as David was remembered as the originator of a still-growing collection of psalms, so also to Solomon was attributed a sequence of wisdom writings (most notably Proverbs and Ecclesiastes). A close comparison of the Gospels, even of the Synoptic Gospels alone, indicates that there was a basically similar elaboration and extension of the Jesus tradition within the Gospel format. John 21:24 attests to the activity of a circle around the Fourth Evangelist, who had at least some hand in the final form of John's Gospel. The Pastorals can be readily seen in similar terms.” He therefore concludes, “The Pastorals would have been deemed authentically Pauline; therefore, their attribution to Paul would have caused no problem. Already, in this early judgment, the canonical definition of what was and what was not ‘Pauline’ was being determined.”

[4] 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, in short, for faith in the Word of God which has been spoken and is to be received in and with its existence. 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.”

[5] Cf. Dunn, “First and Second Timothy and Titus,” NIB IX:794, where he reflects on the “trustworthy saying” that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” by adding, “Paul had been the worst of these ‘sinners,’ so that the mercy he received could serve as a model of the full sweep of God's patience toward those who were to believe subsequently.” Cf. also W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 57: “It is the Jewish rabbinic argument of the harder to the easier (qal wāḥômer): if God’s mercy can extend to someone as sinful as Paul, surely it can reach anyone.”

[6] Cf. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 58: “The OT frequently pictures God as being patient with the world, slow to anger and abounding in love (Exod 34:6 …; Num 14:18; Pss 86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; cf. Rom 2:4; 9:22; 1 Pet 3:20).”

[7] Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.2:31, where he speaks of God’s grace and mercy toward us in terms of God’s great “Yes” to us all, a “Yes” that God says “without any if or but, without any afterthought or reservation, not temporarily but definitively, with a fidelity that is … total and eternal.”

Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Scandalous Grace

Luke 4:14-21[1]

It doesn’t take much to be able to see that prejudice is alive and well in our world today. Segregation may no longer be legal, but it still defines our world in ways that are subtle and others that are not so subtle. As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, racism is just as real in other parts of the country as it ever was in the “Deep South.” If you doubt the fact that prejudice is still alive and well, all you have to do is listen to the political rhetoric coming not only from our country but also from other world leaders.[2] The sad truth is that what drives the prejudices that they promote is fear, plain and simple. Unfortunately, there have always been those who have no qualms about using fear to gain power.

But the really hard truth about prejudice is that it has a way of taking root in the soil of our faith. I have heard with my own ears a member of a Presbyterian church say that there are some people he wants to go to hell! While I don’t think most of us would be so crass as to actually say that, I’m afraid we may feel that way about certain people we find offensive. At least we don’t want them going to church with us! The problem with this is that it becomes incredibly easy to assume that those we dislike are also outside God’s favor. We can all fall into the pattern of excluding those we deem unworthy of God’s grace.

This may sound like a very negative way to introduce our Gospel lesson for today. It is a message of amazing good news. Jesus appears in the synagogue at Nazareth, his home town, and announces a message full of hope and promise: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19). It is a wonderfully upbeat message: Jesus was announcing that in him God was going to bring freedom and renewal to all who had been beaten down by the injustice and cruelty of this world.[3]

It is a message that found deep resonance with the audience at the synagogue on that day in Nazareth. I think when it says that “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him” (Lk. 4:20) after he read the scripture, it may be a bit of an understatement. You could probably say that everybody in the room was sitting on the edge of their seats. It was one of those situations in which it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. They had suffered under Roman and Greek military occupation for centuries. They had seen their land taken away by the wealthy among their own people who took advantage of the political situation to enrich themselves. They were tired of it and longed to be set free.

So perhaps we can understand that they totally misconstrued what Jesus was saying, as the outcome that day at Nazareth makes clear. They heard him promising to bring hope and freedom and renewal to them—to the people of his own home town. The fact that later Jesus rebukes them with the proverb “Physician, heal thyself,” indicates that he knew they were expecting him to perform miracles for “his own kind” just as they had heard he had done for others who were “outsiders” (Lk. 4:23). [4] It would seem that they were more than a little put off by the fact that he had done wonderful things for others, but hadn’t taken care of the home town crowd.

But that was where they got it all wrong. From the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, the Scripture makes it clear that the marvelous events that were unfolding were not just for the “home town crowd.” They were not even just for the Jewish people. The fact that the news of Jesus’ birth was delivered by the host of angels to shepherds, who were the lowest of outcasts in Jewish society, already demonstrates that what God was doing was going to break through all social barriers. And Simeon made it very clear when Jesus was presented at the temple: he was going to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Lk. 1:32).

That was the message Jesus proclaimed on that day in the synagogue at Nazareth: the good news was for the poor—for all the poor everywhere.[5] Jesus made it clear that God’s “favor” was coming upon those who had been excluded from “proper society” as outcasts.[6] The freedom and release and renewal he said God’s Spirit had empowered him to bring was for those who had been beaten down by the hard-hearted attitudes of some of the very people sitting there in the audience. And when he made it clear to them that God’s grace was for the outcasts they themselves had excluded, it enraged them so much they tried to kill him.[7]

It is an unfortunate truth of human existence that we like to be around people who look like us, who talk like us, who live where we live and shop at the same stores as we do.[8] But in the meanwhile we are very likely unaware that we are living our lives in a closed circle. Our human tendency is to prefer to stay in that closed circle. But the message of Jesus is one that will not let us stay there.[9] It is good news for the outcasts of our day—the people we exclude from our circles, whether consciously or unconsciously. It is a message that breaks down all kinds of walls we build up to protect ourselves from “outsiders.” Because Jesus proclaimed God’s scandalous grace, he calls us to venture outside our closed circles to put God’s good news of freedom and release into practice for everyone, everywhere.

[2] Cf. “Illiberalism: Playing with Fear,” and “Anti-Immigrant Populism: The March of Europe’s little Trumps,” in The Economist, December 12, 2015; accessed at http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21679792-america-and-europe-right-wing-populist-politicians-are-march-threat and http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21679855-xenophobic-parties-have-long-been-ostracised-mainstream-politicians-may-no-longer-be .

[3] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, 62: the message of Isaiah 61, the passage Jesus read in the synagogue, is that “Christ is God’s servant who will bring to reality the longing and hope of the poor, the oppressed, and the imprisoned. The Christ will also usher in the amnesty, the liberation, and the restoration associated with the proclamation of the year of Jubilee.” Cf. also Cf. R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke” New Interpreters Bible IX: 106: “Jesus’ ministry signaled that the time for the liberation of the impoverished and oppressed had come, and in that respect at least his work would fulfill the ideal and the social concern of the Jubilee year.”

[4] Cf. Craddock, Luke, 62-63: The fact that Jesus quotes this proverb, along with “no prophet is welcome in the prophet’s home town,” indicates that “Jesus understood the people to be expecting a demonstration of his extraordinary work reported from Capernaum.” He continues by pointing out the problem very likely lay deeper: they were motivated by “resentment that Jesus has taken God’s favor to others beyond Nazareth, especially Capernaum, said to have a heavy non-Jewish population.” Cf. similarly, Culpepper, “Gospel of Luke,” NIB IX:106. He suggests that they were hoping to “share in the fame of the prophet from Nazareth so that no longer would anyone be able to say (however wrongly) that there were no prophets from Galilee (John 7:52).”

[5] Cf. Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, 208: where he insists that Jesus takes the initiative throughout this narrative: “at every step in his address at Nazareth he asserts the universal embrace of God’s salvific purpose.” Cf. Culpepper, “Gospel of Luke,” NIB IX:108: “Jesus came announcing deliverance, but it was not a national deliverance but God’s promise of liberation for all the poor and oppressed regardless of nationality, gender, or race.” Cf. similarly Craddock, Luke, 63.

[6] Cf. Green, Gospel of Luke, 211, where he points out that the word “poor” was broader that simply either economically poor or spiritually poor. He says, “one’s status in a community was not so much a function of economic realities, but depended on a number of elements, including education, gender, family heritage, religious purity, vocation, economics, and so on.” Therefore, he concludes that the poor included “those who are for any number of socio-religious reasons relegated to positions outside the boundaries of God’s people.” Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 128-29, 175-76; Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 89-90, 112-16, where he points out that what made Jesus’ offer of God’s grace scandalous was the fact that he offered the blessings of God’s Kingdom not just to the “righteous,” but also to “sinners.”

[7] Cf. William Willimon, “Book ‘Em,” The Christian Century (January 27, 2004), 20, where he says that in citing the examples of God’s grace through Elijah and Elisha to those outside of Israel, Jesus “threw the book at them.” Cf. also Craddock, Luke, 63: “That these two stories were in their own Scriptures and quite familiar perhaps accounts in part for the intensity of their hostility. Anger and violence are the last defense of those who are made to face the truth of their own tradition which they have long defended and embraced. Learning what we already know is often painfully difficult.” He also refers to the story of Jonah, which he says “stands forever as the dramatic embodiment of that capacity in all of us, Jew and Christian alike, to be offended by God’s grace to all those of whom we do not approve.”

[8] Cf. Craddock, Luke, 62, where he remarks suggestively, that “Unfortunately, “The history of the church does not, …, bear unbroken testimony to Jesus’ announcement, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled.’”

[9] Cf. Culpepper, “Gospel of Luke,” NIB IX: 108, where he observes, “God’s grace is never subject to the limitations and boundaries of any nation, church, group, or race. Those who would exclude others thereby exclude themselves.”

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Here and Now

Luke 4:16-21[1]

I think there is a great deal of confusion out there about what Jesus was up to in his ministry. If you conducted a poll of people who identify themselves as Christians, I think a majority would say that Jesus came to die on the cross and rise from the grave so that “my” sins could be forgiven and so that “I” can spend eternity in heaven with God. It is a faith that is focused narrowly on the salvation of individuals; the overarching concern is “my” eternal destiny. But if you read the Gospels at all, you find that this idea of what Jesus was up to doesn’t really fit with what the Gospels say Jesus was up to. The Gospels are all on the same page in identifying the focus of Jesus’ “mission” as fulfilling the “Kingdom of God.”

In fact, the Gospels all pretty much at one time or other summarize Jesus’ “gospel” as “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” You probably know that already. What you may not know is that there was a great debate among NT scholars of the 20^th century over just what Jesus’ meant when he said “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Scholars debated up one side and down the other whether Jesus meant to say that “it’s here” or “it’s near.”

You can understand the problem—if Jesus was saying “the Kingdom of God is near,” I would think the typical response would be something like, “Well that’s nice but wake me when it’s here.” And if Jesus was saying “the Kingdom of God is here,” you might be tempted to look at him as if he had lost his mind. As a matter of fact, many did! It’s still hard for us to believe that God’s Kingdom is real in our lives here and now.

Most of the people in the synagogue at Nazareth would understand what Jesus was talking about when he said to them, “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). They knew what the reading from the prophet Isaiah was talking about—the restoration of justice, peace and freedom to the people of Israel, and through them to all the nations of the earth![2] It was the dream that had inspired them through good times and bad, through exile and return, through renewal and rebuilding against all odds. And while they were “still standing” despite the worst that history could throw at them, I doubt that many of the Jewish people would have thought that their life under the boot of the Roman Legions constituted the “restoration of justice, peace, and freedom”! And yet, Jesus’ message to the people of Nazareth was fairly straightforward. In effect, Jesus said that the dream they had been dreaming and hoping would come true for centuries is here; it’s real right now.

I think the people of Nazareth understood what he was saying—that’s why they tried to kill him! The Scripture Jesus was referring to, Isaiah 61, calls this restoration of life “the year of the Lord’s favor.” This was a well-known concept to the Jewish people of Jesus’ day—it was called the “Year of Jubilee.” It was a provision in the economic system of the Torah that was intended to be a recurring reminder of the dream of justice, peace and freedom that inspired them. Although there is no evidence they ever actually observed the Jubilee, they knew very well what it was—it was to be “the time in which God’s … compassionate justice is restored.”[3] It was to be a time of healing, of releasing those who had sold themselves into slavery, of returning debtors to their confiscated property. Every 50 years, the slate was to be wiped clean and everybody was to get a fresh start.

Jesus said to the people of Nazareth—with a straight face—that his reading of the scripture from Isa. 61 was the beginning of the fulfillment of that dream. God’s compassionate justice, God’s peace, God’s freedom was to be extended to all people everywhere. The “Year of Jubilee” was to be applied to everyone—the whole human race getting the chance to have the slate wiped clean and to have a fresh start. Jesus said that was what he had come to do—to fulfill the dream and the hope of restoring all things in the Kingdom of God.[4] And they found it all just too much to take.

I think that one of the reasons why the Christian faith shifted to hoping for the salvation of “my soul” is because we are like the people of Nazareth—we like the sound of his voice, and his words are pleasing, but what he preaches is just too good to be true. The restoration of all things is a pretty big thing to hope for! And to claim that it’s already going on here and now! It’s just too much for a body to take. I wonder if at least part of the problem is that we have trouble with the word “fulfilled.” We tend to think of “fulfillment” in terms of getting the whole thing right now. But if we think of “fulfillment” in terms of the first glimmer of the light of a new day, or a taste of what is to come, or the beginning of a process, then perhaps we can embrace the hope of Jesus’ words, “today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

The Good News of Jesus’ ministry is that everything he did was a beginning in the process of restoring all things.[5] It’s the good news of Epiphany—that God’s life, God’s freedom, God’s joy, God’s justice, God’s peace, God’s love are here. [6] What Jesus came to do was nothing short bringing all that to all of us—right here and right now. What that means is that God’s new world is in the process of “emerging” all around us. The good news of Epiphany is that God’s glory—which consists of God’s “boundless freedom, exuberant joy, and inexhaustible love”—is even now filling the whole earth.[7] God’s glory is already shining among us here and now!

[2] Paul D. Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 224, says that Isaiah 61 describes “the concrete form” that “the liberating work of God” would take. As Brevard Childs, Isaiah, 326 points out, this may begin with the restoration of the nation, but it extends to a “covenant relationship with the nations”

[3] Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 205; cf. also Brevard Childs, Isaiah, 325.

[4] Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 188: “God … [is] even now active to restore all that [has] fallen and heal all that [has] become broken.”

[5] Fred Craddock, Luke, 62, points out that Jesus’ first word in his adult ministry according to Luke’s Gospel is “today.”

[6] Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, 117-18: Jesus fulfills the “glory of God” in humanity by drawing them into the love he shares with the Creator and by imparting to them the freedom he enjoys.

[7] Moltmann, God in Creation, 124.

The Waking Dreamer