The Waking Dreamer: Jurgen Moltmann

Showing posts with label Jurgen Moltmann. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

In the Face of Evil

Romans 12:9-21[1]

Our world is a beautiful one. The presence of God’s love shines through so much of our world. Focusing on the beauty of the earth helps us find joy in the goodness of creation. But our world also includes a disturbing presence. We have word for it. We call it “evil.” I’m not sure we even know what that word means any longer, to be honest. Many of us live our lives without really having to come face-to-face with evil on a day-to-day basis. We know it’s there but may not even recognize evil in our very own community. On the other hand, some of us have been so deeply affected by evil that it has always defined our lives. That’s a tragedy. Most of the people I know who live with the lingering effects of evil are doing everything in their power to set themselves free from it. And that’s a good thing. But make no mistake, we live in a world that includes evil.

To some extent, “evil” is a matter of perspective these days. Is it “evil” to take unfair advantage of someone in a business deal? Sadly, I think the answer these days depends on which side of the deal you’re on! Most people will say that it’s “evil” to deprive a person of their life savings simply to ensure a “win” in the stock market. Most people also agree that the violence that takes innocent lives is “evil.” Especially when it’s “murder.” But when it’s “collateral damage” in the context of war, we may not take it so seriously. It may take the violence of war touching your life directly for you to use the word “evil” for the violence of war. I guess I would say any violence that takes innocent lives is always evil in my opinion!

In our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans for today, he addresses the issue of how we as followers of Jesus Christ should respond to the evil in our world. It’s one of the more difficult teachings of the Bible: in effect Paul says, “don’t repay evil with evil but rather with good”! Perhaps the first step for us to try to live out this principle is to become aware of what is truly evil in our world. Unfortunately, I think things have gotten pretty confused here. We tend to see the “evil” that is far away from us. We may not even know the people we’re pointing the finger at, but we label them “evil,” whether rightly or wrongly. But when it comes to the “evil” that lies at our front door, or lies within us, we tend to turn a blind eye. We do that because it feels safer that way, I think. It’s certainly more convenient for us.

Jesus took a different approach: he called “evil” out where he saw it. And he saw it not in the failings of the people who were labelled “sinners” or “outcasts” or “other.” He called out “evil” when he saw people with power and privilege using that power and privilege to take advantage of others in such a way that they were doing real harm to them. I would say things haven’t changed much on that score. All too often, the “evil” that Jesus called out was being perpetrated by the leaders of his day, including the religious leaders. It’s hard for us to swallow, but I know for a fact that there are religious leaders who have so abused their position that they have done real harm. And all too often, they have done it in Jesus’ name!

One of the reasons why Paul’s teaching about how to respond to evil is so difficult for us is because Paul is following Jesus! He’s most certainly referring to Jesus’ teaching when he says, “Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them” (Rom 12:14, NLT). Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to love their “enemies” and to pray for those who mistreated them (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-28). But there’s more to it. When Paul says, “Never pay back evil with more evil,” he’s not only following Jesus’ explicit teaching not to “resist an evildoer” (Mt 5:39), even when they strike you, even when they try to take away your most basic necessities! Paul’s going back to the original command to “love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus. The beginning of that verse in the original Old Testament context says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge … but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18)! The Bible is full of passages that resound with the same approach: don’t repay evil with evil, but rather with good!

I’ll be the first to admit that goes against the grain for most of us. Our tendency is to resist evil; we want to take the side of the victims and rush to their protection. But Paul follows Jesus and the witness of Scripture when he tells us not to resist evil, but to seek to redeem evil. I think his words reflect the wisdom that when we respond to evil with force, we only give it more power. It’s impossible to avoid the truth that “fighting fire with fire” leads inevitably to the point where we become what we’re fighting.[2] When that happens we’ve abandoned the love that God wants us to practice in the world so that we can take part in his work of redeeming the world!

I think one of the hard truths that Jesus and Paul are trying to get across to us is that only a love that is willing to suffer has the power to truly overcome evil and redeem it.[3] That’s hard to take in. But that is precisely the response God made to evil in Jesus Christ. As Frederick Buechner says, “Christianity … ultimately offers no theoretical solution [to the problem of evil]. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene—not even this—but that God can turn it to good.”[4] We may not like it, it’s hard for us to hear, but one of the lessons of the cross is that there really is no other way to solve the problem of evil in this world! Only the willingness to respond to hostility with peace, to respond to hatred with forgiveness, to respond to violence with love, can redeem evil.[5]

That all sounds fine and good, but the question has practical dimensions that we all have to face. When someone breaks into my home and threatens to harm me or my family, what am I supposed to do? It’s a difficult question. I probably can’t answer that question for anyone but myself. But what I know is that when it comes to facing these difficult decisions, asking “What would Jesus do?” always leads me in the right direction. For myself, I would say that I would consult with home safety experts about finding ways to protect myself or my loved ones without resorting to violence. But that’s my answer to a question that’s a very personal one. At the end of the day we all have to come up with our own answers to those very personal and practical questions about how we’re going to respond to evil in our world. But we must remind ourselves that the whole Bible, from Moses to the Psalms to Jesus to the Apostles, teaches us not to repay evil with evil, but rather to respond to evil in a way that can turn it to good.

[2] Cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 477, where he says that the one who “attempts to overcome evil with evil, may perhaps surpass his enemy in doing injury, but it is to his own ruin.”

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, “Love and Sorrow,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 74-75; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 284, where he refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ideal of a "religionless Christianity" that eschews the "religious" tendency many Christians have had to look to God for "magical" intervention (like a deus ex machina), and therefore tends to be so "otherworldly" as to neglect God's redemptive purpose for the world. Instead, he advocates for a "godly worldliness" in which the effort to "seek first the kingdom of God" leads to a love that shares the sufferings of this world as "God's suffering over the world." Moltmann concludes, "the way of life in the messianic era is stamped by messianic suffering. It is hardly ever recognizable in any other way, for "dying, and behold we live" (alluding to 2 Cor 4:10). See further Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 204: “Anyone who participates in ‘Christ’s sufferings’” becomes a witness “to the coming truth against the ruling lie, to coming justice and righteousness against the prevailing injustice, and to coming life against the tyranny of death.”

[4] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 24.

[5] Cf. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in New Interpreters Bible 10: 715, where he says that God’s people are to meet the evil in the world “in the way that even God met it: with love and generous goodness.”

Wednesday, July 01, 2026

Living in Freedom

Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:34-42[1]

Sometimes I think organized religion may be more of a hindrance to people who are looking for God’s love than a help. You may find that strange for someone who’s spent his whole career working in organized religion to say! Nevertheless, after spending almost five decades working in the church, I would say that religious organizations tend to get in the way. We create structures and rules to ensure that everyone winds up at the same place in their spiritual journey. But structures and rules always have to be tweaked. It might be tempting for us to point the finger at those “other” religions out there, for “straining a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matt 23:24), as Jesus put it. But the reality is that all religions are human attempts to understand ultimate things like God and eternity. And because they’re created by flawed and fallible people like you and me, they all in one way or another tend to get in the way of those who are looking for God in this life.[2]

In the Hebrew Bible, we see an approach to God that essentially defines the spiritual quest in terms of carefully conducted rituals and equally careful observance of rules about staying “pure.” Holiness is defined by eating the right foods and having the “right kind” of relationship the “right kind” of person. That may have been a good place to start, but I would say that many very deeply religious people no longer believe that we please God by observing the right rituals, or eating only the right foods, or having the “right kind” of relationships with the “right kind” of people. And yet, even in our day there are still some who cling to those old rules. As if Jesus endorsed all of that! They may not believe that having a plate of oysters somehow makes us unclean in God’s sight. But there are still many Christians these days who believe that the essence of sin is having the “wrong kind” of relationship with the “wrong kind” of person. Many still believe that marrying a person outside your faith, or person of another race, or anyone who is somehow “tainted” by our human standards makes you “sinful” in God’s sight.

As Jesus pointed out in many ways, the main problem with this approach to religion is that it becomes about what we avoid and whom we exclude. Last week I talked about one aspect of what makes it difficult to read Paul’s letters. I think another challenge we face is that Paul’s letters still reflect some of this kind of thinking. I see it when we read our lesson from Romans for today. While we are clearly indebted to the great Apostle for many of the building blocks of our faith, I think his views on sin may have some problems. In a very real sense, I would say Paul has a very “First-Century Jewish” notion of sin. Of course we don’t want to be “slaves of sin” but “servants of righteousness,” as Paul urges us to be in our lesson for today. But the problem comes when you ask how Paul defines “sin.” It sounds very much like it’s about what we avoid and whom we exclude.

But I would say that while Paul may have hung on to some of those notions, he was a follower of Jesus. And that meant ultimately he was much more concerned with putting faith into practice by treating other people as Jesus did. I think that should give us some sense of focus when we talk about how “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). I want to ask where you see sin leading to death in our world. Well, I see power-hungry dictators unleashing drones and missiles against innocent people. And the result of that sin is death. I see impoverished people living in ramshackle slums that are swept away completely—men, women, and children—whenever an earthquake or a flood or a hurricane comes through. And the result is death. I see the death that results from the sin of the wealthy hoarding all the resources so that the weakest and poorest of their people literally starve. I realize that Paul was talking about a “spiritual” kind of death. But I think it would do us well to ask ourselves where we see sin leading to death in this world. I would have to say, in all honesty, that I don’t much “death” resulting from failing to exclude the “wrong kind” of person.

I’d have to say that this is one area where some of the most “religious” people of our day still “miss the point.” I would go further and say that whenever we make the essence of our relationship with God a matter of following religious rules, not about the love we have received from God through Jesus Christ, we continue to miss the point. But more importantly, our manmade and rigid religious rules always become obstacles to loving other people. Jesus called them “burdens too heavy to lift” (Mt 23:4) and points the finger at religious perfectionists of all stripes for ignoring their own sins and focusing on the mistakes of others (Mt 7:3-5). It all becomes just an elaborate way of justifying oneself by condemning others. But at the end of the day, even religious perfectionists can’t bear the burdens they create for others. And so, as Jesus said, they condemn themselves when they condemn others! That’s not only because they fail to live up to the expectations they demand of others. It’s also because making our devotion to God about what we avoid and whom we exclude inevitably turns into hostility toward them, whoever “they” may be. You can’t love your neighbor if you really hate them down deep inside!

Jesus had a way of cutting through all this religious hypocrisy. He said that true holiness is about loving God and loving others (Mt 22:37-40). He said that true spirituality is about embracing a child (Mt 18:1-5). True religion is about not only having empathy for the weak and outcast, but also about taking steps to care for them (Mt 25:34-40).[3] It’s about feeding a hungry person, visiting the sick, and being a companion to those who are in prison. For Jesus, a truly spiritual way of living is about being willing to give someone a cup of cold water on a hot day (Mt 10:42). It’s really no more complicated than that. No elaborate systems, no obsessions with keeping tedious rules. At the end of the day, it’s not about what we avoid or whom we exclude, but rather it’s about having a heart that’s willing to give to others the same mercy that we have received.

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes this kind of life as “losing your life for my sake” (Mt 10:39). But he also said that was the way to truly “find” your life. I think that’s the lesson we can take away from Paul talking the freedom to live for God. Through the love we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that bring “death” not only to ourselves but also to those around us. Through the love from God that we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that harm not only others but also ourselves. That’s how I would define “freedom from sin.” It’s the freedom to stop draining the life out of ourselves and others by our actions and attitudes. And in the process, we’re set free to live for God, to live a life of love and mercy, which is the life we were always meant to live.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 1933, 242: “Religion compels us to the perception that God is not to be found in religion.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 126-9, where he says in effect that those who truly follow Christ are to be serving where Christ awaits us, “amid the downtrodden, the sick, and the captives.”

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Returning to Peace

Luke 12:49-56[1]

Sometimes the Bible is easy to read. God’s love just seems to leap off the pages and fill our hearts. There are other times when the Bible is confusing. It just doesn’t seem to make sense with what we have been taught about God, about Jesus, or even about life. The way we tend to read the Bible doesn’t help. Because it’s the Bible, we tend to think every verse has to be just as important as every other verse. When we do that, we are “flattening out” the Bible by taking every verse at what seems to be the “face value” to us. Many people call this reading the Bible “literally,” and they’re proud of themselves for doing so. But that approach to the Bible leads to all kinds of confusion.

For example, 25 years ago, Bruce Wilkinson published The Prayer of Jabez, a book that became a New York Times bestseller. The “prayer” of Jabez comes from 1 Chronicles 4:10. We know next to nothing about Jabez. He’s just a guy who shows up in the extended genealogy that occupies the first ten chapters of 1 Chronicles. And basically, the prayer that Jabez prayed was for God to make him prosperous and protect him. Nothing wrong with that. But also not a model of devotion to God. We have another prayer in the Bible that does a much better job of modeling devotion to God. It’s the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. And there’s good reason why we’ve been praying “The Lord’s Prayer” for centuries, not the “prayer of Jabez.” There just really is no comparison between the two!

Thinking the “prayer of Jabez” might be some formula for success is one example of the confusion that can result from flattening out the Bible. And I would argue that it’s not really reading the Bible literally. What it does is turn the Bible into a convenient “container” for whatever opinion or viewpoint of ours we want to claim is “from God.” But the Bible isn’t meant to reinforce what we think we already know. As our lesson from the prophet Jeremiah for today puts it, “‘Does not my word burn like fire?’ says the LORD. ‘Is it not like a mighty hammer that smashes a rock to pieces?’” (Jer 23:29). That sounds ominous, but the idea is that when the Lord truly speaks, it tends to shake up our lives. The Bible is not meant to just keep us comfortable!

Part of the problem is that when we read the Bible we tend to forget how language works. We use language in all kinds of ways that don’t make a lick of sense to take the words at face value. For example, if we say someone is “barking up the wrong tree,” we all know what that means, because it’s a figure of speech in common usage. Can you imagine someone coming along from another planet centuries from now investigating these “earthlings” and how they lived their lives scratching their heads and trying to figure out why they were acting like canines and “barking” at trees? It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get the point. The way we use language doesn’t always work “at face value.” We’re so used to it that we think it’s “face value.”

I bring this up because there are people who somehow think it’s scandalous to think that Jesus may have used figures of speech. We all know that he told parables to make a point. There are still some people who want to insist that some of Jesus’ parables were factually true. That’s because for us, truth has to be “factual” in an objective sense for it to be “truth.” We forget that truth can sometimes be conveyed much more powerfully through a poem or a work of art than through a paragraph. That commonsense approach to the “truth” of the Bible leads us to what I would consider a truly “literal” way of reading it. We recognize metaphors, idioms, figures of speech, and even exaggeration for what they are, and seek to discern the original intention behind the words. It’s not as convenient for us as just throwing out a verse and claiming it supports our favorite opinion, but it’s more consistent with the truth of Scripture.

That’s a long introduction for our Gospel lesson for today. The reason is because when you simply read our Gospel lesson for today at “face value,” it’s confusing at best. And to some it could be downright disturbing! Here Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace to the world, but rather “fire” and “division” (Lk 12:49, 51)! And in another gospel, he says he came to bring a “sword” (Mt 10:34)! That sounds so contrary to what we believe about Jesus that it may be painful even to hear it! How are we supposed to reconcile the idea that Jesus came to bring division and not peace with the joyful announcement at Jesus birth in this same Gospel of Luke that he came to bring “peace on earth” (Luke 2:14)?

In the first place, we have to understand that Jesus was speaking to a world in which religion was used to keep a few in power and privilege in a way that beat down most people. The religious powers of the day used the language of “clean” and “unclean” to maintain their position and power and to keep most people “in their place.” After all, if being “unclean” means you can’t get too close to God, then you have to rely on those who are “clean” enough to represent you. That gives them all kinds of power over you! I’m afraid the language of “sin” and “forgiveness” still creates a similar situation for many people to this day.

Into that world, Jesus came offering God’s love freely to anyone and everyone. He preached the gospel of God’s goodness to all people, regardless of their place in society or lack of place in society. And all his talk of a kingdom of God where the first are last and the last are first overturned the way the whole world worked. It was like setting fire to the whole religious establishment, and with that, their whole way of life. It was like smashing the “rock” of religious oppression in pieces. Jesus’ message threatened everyone who had worked hard to climb their way to the top of the social ladder by virtue of their “holiness,” or their wealth, or their power. As you can imagine, a lot of them didn’t like that. It was a threat to their very way of life. And they responded to him with rage and hatred, and they killed him for it.[2]

When you look at our Gospel lesson in that light, I think it makes sense to recognize that Jesus was exaggerating when he said he came to bring division rather than peace. Of course Jesus came to bring the peace of God’s kingdom. He makes that clear with virtually everything he said and did! But the whole Bible is equally clear that God’s peace comes with a cost. It comes only by righting the wrongs in this world, especially those that benefit the privileged few. God’s peace comes only by exposing the untruth of structures that beat people down in this world.

That kind of message is always going to divide people. Those who benefit from the how things stand will fight tooth and nail to oppose anyone who tries to change things for the benefit of the “least of these,” as Jesus calls them. And at times, they’ll quote the Bible to keep things as they are. At times they’ll kill the people who are trying to benefit the “least of these.” The sad truth is that we still live in a world where “holiness,” wealth, and power determine one’s place (or lack of place). But seeking the peace of God’s kingdom will always be perceived as a threat by those who benefit from beating down others. I think Jesus was warning all who would seek the peace of God’s kingdom that their work would be met with hostility and even violence.[3] I think that’s why Jesus used exaggeration in our lesson for today. History has borne out the truth of his warning. We must be clear: Jesus never endorsed violence.[4] But he knew how far people would go to protect their status and power. And yet he called the people of his day to return to God’s peace, a peace that exists only where there is true justice and compassion. And he calls all who would follow him to extend that peace to the people of our day. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not always going to comfortable. But if we’re going to follow Jesus and align our lives with God’s kingdom, there’s really no other way but to seek peace by helping the “least of these” have a place in this world.

[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/17/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. J. T. Carroll, Luke: A Commentary, 275–276: “The depiction of Jesus’ fire-dealing, division-engendering mission in 12:49–53 thus stands in tension with some aspects of the preceding narrative but also anticipates the heightened conflict that his activity will provoke en route to Jerusalem.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 18-19: The promises that the hope inspired by the Gospel makes “must stand in contradiction to the reality which at present can be experienced,” which is a reality of suffering and death. Cf. also ibid., 103, 118, 225-226, 330. For this reason, he says (p. 324) that “Christians must venture an exodus and regard their social roles as a new Babylonian exile” in which they must proclaim the hope of the Gospel and work for the transformation of society.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:60-61: “That Jesus comes to bring about the ruin of any man is a thought which is wholly foreign to the New Testament.”

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

The Great Mystery

Colossians 1:15-28[1]

One of the blessings and curses of our culture is the way we put everything in a “box.” That was how philosophers and scientists taught us to make sense out of the explosion of knowledge that began a couple of hundred years ago. We might not even be aware of the “categories” we use to understand our world, but of course it is the role of philosophers and scientists to point out these things to us. Some of us are familiar with the mail-order catalogues that used to come from department stores like Sears and Roebuck or J C Penney. I’m not talking about the flimsy little ones we get these days. These were catalogues that included “everything, including the kitchen sink”! They were the “Amazon” of their day. But unlike Amazon, where you can just start typing what you’re looking for into a search box, those massive catalogues had a huge index at the back. That’s how you found what you were looking for. The index was an alphabetical listing of all the items for sale with an indication of the page number where you could find what you wanted. But even the index was so big it was divided into categories.

I think most of us have just become used to looking that the world through the lens of a huge “catalogue.” It just seems “natural” to us to break things down into their parts and sort them into the “right” categories. But there are other cultures that emphasize the connections all things and all beings have with one another. It’s a different way of looking at the world. I would say the world into which Paul wrote the lesson from Colossians for today was more like that than like our world. I think that’s especially the case with the way Paul connects Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord with everything and everyone. Because he is the “is the visible image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15, NLT), he’s connected to all of creation. That includes not only the world and everything and everyone in it, but the entire universe. I know that’s hard for us to wrap our heads around, but Paul can say not only that “through him God created everything” but also that “he holds all creation together” (Col 1:17, NLT). Paul’s view of Jesus Christ goes far beyond the simple teacher from Nazareth who died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. He’s that, but he’s also so much more.

What makes the difference here is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and his ascension to the right hand of God. That pointed the Apostles back to Jesus’ existence as God’s son from all eternity, and therefore his role in the work of creation. But it also convinced them that Jesus is the one who rules over all things in God’s name now, and who one day will bring all God’s plans to fulfillment. This is the “great mystery” that belongs to Jesus the Christ. We see this in our lesson from Colossians as well: the purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection was for God to “reconcile everything to himself” (Col 1:20, NLT), or as version we read for today puts it, “so that all beings in heaven and on earth would be brought back to God” (Col 1:20, CEV). We might say, “all beings in the whole universe.”[2]

Again, that language might sound strange to us. There are some places in the New Testament where the language of the Gospel, including Paul’s preaching and teaching, seems to limit salvation to only a few. In the Jewish world, salvation was for Jewish people, and only for Jewish people. All the gentiles, or the “heathen,” were condemned for their ignorance. Unfortunately, there have been many theologians up to this day who have promoted that mindset. Tertullian, a Third-Century teacher said it first, “extra ecclesia nulla salus est.” That means “outside the church there is no salvation.” Only those in the church experience salvation, and no one else. That line of thinking was carried on by some of the most influential theologians in the history of our faith, and many believe it to be the “received truth” of the Christian faith to this day.

But there have always been other Christian scholars and teachers who have taken the language of our lesson for today more at face value. While we cannot ignore Jesus’ real humanity, there is much more to who Jesus Christ is. Paul alludes to this in our lesson for today when he tells gentile believers that God’s “wonderful and glorious mystery” is that “Christ lives in you, and he is your hope of sharing in God’s glory” (Col. 1:27, CEV). What we may have a hard time imagining is just how hard it would have been for any Jewish person living in the First Century to say that about any Gentile person. I agree with a number of others who think that the fact that people who would have been assumed to be permanent outsiders responded to the Gospel in faith made the Apostles rethink a lot about their faith, especially whom they included and whom they excluded.

For too many people, the church in our culture has been known primarily for whom we exclude, especially to those who are outside the church. I would say this is another reason why some people avoid church so much these days. But I believe that we can take seriously the hints that in Jesus Christ, God is up to something bigger than perhaps we’ve ever dared to imagine or dream. That “something bigger” is nothing less than fulfilling the promise of the resurrection that says that “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again” (1 Cor 15:22, NCV). Paul says it a little differently elsewhere: “Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone” (Rom 5:18, NLT). And in our lesson from Colossians for today, we hear the astounding statement that the Gospel ultimately extends to everyone and everything in the whole universe! Paul calls this the “mystery of Christ.”[3]

What difference does this “great mystery” about God’s work through Jesus Christ make for us in our daily lives? Well, for one thing I think it calls us to be open to the fact that our faith contains more than we can put into our “boxes.” God is bigger than we can imagine or conceive. And in our lesson for today, we learn that so is Jesus Christ! Despite what the psalmsinger said, God does not resolve the problem of injustice in our world by “breaking down forever” the villains (Ps 52:5). In Jesus Christ, God resolves the problem of injustice by reconciling all things to God. God undoes the evil of those who arrogantly presume to abuse their power, as the prophet Amos describes. But he does so by “making peace” through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Essentially, he brings us all, oppressed and oppressors alike, back to God. That version of salvation is hard to put into any “box.”

I would say another important lesson for us is that that we, as members of Christ’s “body” on earth, all participate in this “great mystery” right now. And more than that, we all have a role in fulfilling God’s big plan to save the whole creation. If you doubt that, perhaps your Jesus is too small.[4] Part of this great mystery is that every time we act with integrity and kindness, every time we seek to make love for God and love for others the principle of our lives, everything we do in this world to spread just a little of the justice, freedom, and peace of God’s kingdom to someone who needs it, we’re contributing to the fulfillment of God’s big plan. That’s not because we’re anything special, but rather it’s because Jesus Christ who reigns over all things as Lord even now is working in and through us to fulfill God’s big plan to save the whole creation. It may be hard for us to wrap our heads around all this, but I think our Scripture lesson calls us to marvel at the wonder of it all, and to be grateful that we have the chance to participate in something so awe-inspiring!

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:756 speaks of “the alteration of the whole situation of man and his cosmos as already accomplished in Jesus Christ” as he is in the process of fulfilling God’s determination ” to reconcile everything to himself” (Col. 1:20). Some would dispute this theme in Barth’s Dogmatics. It’s true that he takes a different approach in the earlier volumes. But it seems unavoidable to recognize it in volume 4. It would seem that Barth underwent a transition in his thinking about the extent of salvation during the twenty plus years of writing the Dogmatics.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann in Sun of Righteousness, Arise!: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, 140, quotes Christoph Blumhardt, a 19^th century German theologian who believed the impact of God’s redemption extended beyond individual salvation, as saying that this is his “confession of hope”: “That God might give up anything or anyone in the whole world—about that there can be no question, neither today nor in all eternity … The end has to be: Behold, everything is God’s!”

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, 276: “in personal faith a rebirth is experienced which will one day extend to heaven and earth; and the church prefigures and foreshadows the temple of the Holy Spirit which the whole cosmos is destined to become. It is only the cosmic dimension which gives the human, historical experiences of Christ their all-embracing meaning. We can only think of Christ inclusively. Anyone who thinks of Christ exclusively, not for other people but against them, has not understood the Reconciler of the world” (emphasis original). Cf. also ibid., 278: “Christology can only arrive at its completion at all in a cosmic christology. All other christologies fall short and do not provide an adequate content for the experiences of the Easter witnesses with the risen Christ. If Christ is the first-born from the dead, then he cannot be merely ‘the new Adam’ of a new humanity. He must also be understood as the first-born of the whole creation.” He continues to discuss Karl Barth’s “cautious consideration” of this “possibility” in the passage cited above and intentionally “develops” it. As a result, he concludes, ibid., 285: “the church must be seen as the beginning of the reconciled cosmos which has arrived at peace.”

Monday, July 21, 2025

Free Enough to Serve

Galatians 5:1, 13-26[1]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, February 18, 2025

Our Hope in Christ

1 Corinthians 15:12-26[1]

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life. We cannot thrive without a sense of hope. While I think many would agree that hope is a mindset we can learn, it doesn’t just come automatically. And when we lack a healthy sense of hope about our lives we can find it hard to believe that they have meaning and purpose. That puts us at risk for sliding into depression, anxiety, or even suicidal thoughts. A lack of hope can affect us in more “physical” ways, like diminishing our ability to cope with the stress we all face as a part of life. Hope gives us confidence to persevere in hard times, because we believe that there is indeed meaning and purpose to our lives, each and every one of our lives. That kind of resilience enables us to move forward with our goals in life and with our commitments to family and work and service.

Hope keeps us going when everything in life seems to conspire against us. But hope can be risky as well. We can put our hope in all the wrong things. We may be hoping for a nicer car, a bigger home, a better job, a more fulfilling relationship. Hoping for those things isn’t in and of itself wrong. There is a forward-looking aspect to all hope. But when we stake too much of our well-being on hoping for the wrong things, if those hopes come crashing down, so do we. That’s when false hope can hurt us deeply. It can shake our faith in others, in the meaning of life, even in the goodness of God.

Our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians for today addresses hope from the perspective of Christian faith. Specifically, Paul was addressing the hope of the resurrection. I dare say that’s not something that’s high on our list of hopes these days. As Christians, we hope to “go to heaven” when we die, to be with Jesus and to be reunited with our loved ones. But that’s not the focus of hope in the New Testament. The focus of Christian hope is that we will share Jesus’ resurrection, in bodily form, and that in that new body we will enjoy new life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.[2] In fact, for Paul the hope of sharing in Jesus’ resurrection is so foundational for Christian faith that he could say, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless” and “we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Cor 15:16-17, 19, NLT).

It may be hard for us to understand how Christians who lived only 30 years after the first Easter Sunday could somehow doubt the resurrection of Jesus. Part of the problem in Corinth may have been that in the Greek world, the idea of a future “resurrection” in which the dead live again in physical form was thought to be crude and disgusting. In the Greek world, people looked forward to being set free from the “prison house” of the body. They believed that death was a transition from physical life in a body to living among the stars in the heavens as an immortal soul. “Resurrection” just didn’t compute to them. They would have been much more comfortable with our notions of “going to heaven” when you die. In fact, it was the influence of this line of thinking about three hundred years after Paul’s day that shifted Christian hope from sharing Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation to eternal life in heaven.

Some of the believers at Corinth went to the opposite extreme. They heard some of the wonderful promises of new life in the Gospel message Paul and others had preached. And because they heard in that message that they already had eternal life fully and completely because of what Jesus did, they believed that they had all they were ever going to receive of salvation. They bypassed the promise of God’s future as resurrected people living on a recreated earth in the way God had intended in the first place—without sadness or pain, suffering or injustice, violence or even death. They believed that all they were ever going to get from their faith was what they had right then and right there.

But St. Paul wouldn’t accept either of these options. For him, the inevitable consequence of Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning was that we would all share in the new life Jesus now enjoys. He says it this way: “Christ has been raised from the dead” as “the first of a great harvest of all who have died” (1 Cor 15:20, NLT). For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant more than God had intervened to vindicate Jesus and his message. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection meant the beginning of the transformation of all things and all people! It meant the beginning of God’s whole new creation that would eventually “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).[3] It’s hard to wrap your head around that big of an idea. But for Paul tampering with that hope meant tampering with the Gospel message. And that was something he never allowed!

The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that he died on the cross so that we could know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves us—he always has and always will. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his death broke the power of everything that could separate us from God or harm us in any way. The promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that his resurrection overcame even death itself and brought new life to everyone. Paul said it this way, “In Adam all of us die. In the same way, in Christ all of us will be made alive again. (1 Cor 15:22, NCV). And that means that what God has done through Jesus is nothing less than to set in motion the process of restoring everything in all creation to the way that he intended in the first place. Just as Jesus enjoys that resurrected life now, so we too can look forward to enjoying the same life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation.

We need all kinds of hopes to keep us going. Hope in the form of looking forward to doing something fun. Hope in the form of knowing that there are friends and family who will always love us no matter what. Hope in the form of trusting that all our needs will be supplied by our God. But more than that, we need a hope that can motivate us to do as our affirmation of faith for today puts it: “to take up our cross, risking the consequences of faithful discipleship; to walk by faith, not by sight.” It takes serious hope to give us the courage and the strength to “plunge … into the present struggle.”[4] The reason for that is that we can see injustice and violence and even death at work all around us to this day.

Yes, we already have a taste of the amazing grace of God at work in our lives here and now. But I think our experience with the bitterness of death can help us truly appreciate the hope Jesus gives us by rising from the grave.[5] Those of us who have looked into the eyes of a loved who was there a few moments ago, but is gone now, those of us who know the bitterness of death, must know that we cannot accomplish God’s work in this world on our own. It’s just too big! Because what God is doing is nothing short of restoring of all things and everyone to the life that God intended for us in the first place. And that’s what he is doing even now through the power of Jesus’ death and the power of Jesus’ resurrection to new life. Our hope is that power is already working to change our lives now. But our hope is also the recognition that we have not yet tasted it fully and finally as we will when we all share in Jesus’ life in God’s (re)new(ed) creation. Sharing that life, the life that Jesus now enjoys, in God’s (re)new(ed) creation: that is our hope in Christ. And that hope gives us courage and strength to press on, come what may.

[2] Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, 1229: “the resurrection of Jesus was not to restore life in the conditions of continuing earthly existence (and eventual death) but to initiate a transformed mode of existence as the firstfruits (v. 20) of the eschatological new creation.”

[3] Cf. 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. “A Declaration of Faith,” 9.5, 10.1, 5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 171-72, 210-11. He holds in tension the “deadliness of death” which still persists in our experience of life with the “promise and hope of a still outstanding, real eschaton,” that is, a future that is defined not by death but by life.

Tuesday, June 04, 2024

Dancing With God

Dancing with God

Romans 8:9-11[1]

Last week I mentioned that there is a reason for the things I say and do every week in worship. And it’s not just about taking the easy way out. As I mentioned last week, I frame every sermon with a reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I do that because, believe it or not, I think that our faith in the one God who is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is essential to our understanding of God, of salvation, and of our place in God’s work to redeem the whole creation.[2] We understand that God truly entered this world to become “God-who-is-with-us” based on our belief that Jesus God the Son. It is that same belief that enables us to understand, based on Jesus’ life and death, that God is also “God-who-is-for-us.” And God the Spirit makes all the amazing things God has done for us real in our hearts and lives to this day.

So, yes, it is my heartfelt conviction that a Christian view of God is only possible through the lens of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one triune God working together to gather us all into the love that defines God’s very being.[3] Without the creation of all things in love, we would not have the assurance we do that God loves us all. Without the sending of Jesus the Son of God to show us God’s love, we could not be sure that God loves us all. Without the constant presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, our faith in God’s love would be based solely on stories of events that happened a very long time ago. It’s only the love of God as revealed in creation, as demonstrated by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to new life, and continually poured into our hearts through the Spirit that gives us confidence to trust that God’s love for us never fails!

This isn’t just some abstract conclusion based on ivory-tower speculations of theologians. It is written into virtually every page of the New Testament. The word “Trinity” may not occur in the Bible, but the idea is written into virtually every page of the New Testament. We see it especially in our lesson from the book of Romans for today. There’s one verse in particular that has always fascinated me. It’s Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” St. Paul is talking about the new life that we all have through our faith in Jesus Christ. But he makes it clear that this new life in us is the result of what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit does in our lives.

Notice that it starts out with a reference to “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead.” Well, the one who raised Jesus from the dead is always God in the NT. So Paul starts this beautiful declaration by talking about what God does in order for us to experience new life. He’s the one who sent Jesus to demonstrate his love for all people by his life and death. God is also the one who raised Jesus from the dead to make it clear that our new life was not just intended for this world alone. And God brings us to new life by giving us his own Spirit within us. All of this originates in God’s very being, which is defined in the Bible as “love.” God’s love is a love that reaches out to claim us all, and God never stops reaching out to us all to claim us in his love.

St. Paul also refers to the role of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our experience of new life. Jesus the Son of God is the one who came forth, bearing God’s love into the world in human form. Everything he did and said was to demonstrate God’s love for us all. Particularly the fact that he refused to exclude those whom the religious people of that day would normally exclude from God’s love. Of course, his death was a decisive demonstration of God’s love for us. Indeed, it has been said that in Jesus’ death on the cross God was present, drawing the whole world into his love.[4] And the final demonstration of God’s love reaching out to us to bring us new life took place when Jesus rose from the dead. Every aspect of Jesus’ life happened the way it did to demonstrate God’s love for us all.

St. Paul’s description of the new life we enjoy through our faith would not be complete without the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s because the Holy Spirit “dwells” in us that we have this new life. In the NT, the fact that the Spirit “lives” in us, or “dwells” in us is not a reference to some kind of “come-and-go” presence. Although we don’t always “feel the Spirit moving” in our hearts, make no mistake: the Spirit is always there! That’s one reason why I like Gene Peterson’s translation of this verse in The Message: “It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s”!

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is hard to wrap your head around. Some of the most brilliant theologians throughout history have tried. Having read some of them, I’d have to say that I’m not sure their efforts always shed light. Many times they only make it harder to understand! I think what might make the most sense of “trinity” is the idea that the varied ways in which God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit works in our lives are all expressions of God’s love that seeks to draw us to himself. We know God’s love through creation, we know God’s love in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and we know God’s love through the presence of the Spirit within us.

There have been a lot of analogies that have been used to illustrate the idea of “trinity” throughout history. There is one analogy that makes sense to me. It is the analogy of dancing. We sing about it in our hymn “I Danced in the Morning.” The analogy is an ancient one. The idea is that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are joined in an eternal dance by the love they share for each other.[5] But love always seeks out others, and so the purpose of this eternal dance of God’s has always been to draw all of us to join that dance. The God who has loved us from all eternity not only became one of us, but also continually takes us by the hand, leading us gently but persistently into this ongoing dance. I’m not much for dancing myself. Unless it’s a wedding for one of my children, my grandchildren are there, and I’m feeling particularly silly, I’m probably not going to join in the dance. Someone would have to take me by the hand and pull me out there. Being that kind person, I’m grateful that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, keeps reaching out to all of us, drawing us into God’s love, continually teaching us all what it means to join in the dance of love.

[2] Cf Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 53: “the church can only understand its own position or abode in participation in the movement of the history of God’s dealings with the world, and therefore as one element in this movement. Its attempts to understand itself are attempts at understanding the movement of the trinitarian history of God’s dealings with the world; and its attempts to understand this movement are attempts at understanding itself.”

[3] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 56: “A Christian doctrine of the Trinity which is bound to the history of Christ and the history of the Spirit must conceive the Trinity as the Trinity of the sending and seeking love of God which is open from its very origin. The triune God is the God who is open to man [sic], open to the world and open to time.”

[4] cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 208. He quotes Cyril of Jerusalem as saying “On the cross, God stretched out his hands to embrace the ends of the earth.” In fact, Cyril was speaking of Jesus (“He stretched out His hands on the Cross, that He might embrace the ends of the world”), and it would seem that Moltmann is giving his statement a trinitarian interpretation. Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 13.28 (NPNF 2.7, 89).

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, 174-75. He quotes John of Damascus, a 7^th century Greek Father, who said that the unity between the Father, Son, and Spirit is the relationship of love that they share with each other. His term for it was perichorēsis, a Greek term that literally means “rotation,” to describe the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moltmann (ibid.) interprets it this way, “The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one.”

The Waking Dreamer