1 John (II)

Here's our third sermon in our series on 1 John.

1 John 2:12-17 "War of the Worlds"

The Convert or the Outsider, an Inter-faith Dialogue

I probably would have let it go, but I was reading Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace at the time, a book that bills itself as a "Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation," so my sonar was perhaps more finely-tuned than usual to such "theological pings."

And what a poignant "ping" it was.  Here's the back story:  a few weeks earlier I happened to make a friend of a friend who happened to be a practicing Orthodox Jew.  We had a very rich and illuminating conversation about the parallels and differences between my work as a Christian pastor and his work in the local synagogue.  It was, I think, an example of inter-faith dialogue in the best sense of the term, and as I was leaving he said, "If you ever want to get the Jewish perspective on something, feel free to give me a call."

Flash forward a few weeks later and I'm working away on this sermon on Deuteronomy 24:17-22, which is all about our mandate as the people of God to "leave something" for the voiceless and the vulnerable. In a particular, Deuteronomy 24:17 says: "Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge" (NIV) or " You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge" (NASB) or "Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge" (good ol' KJV).

My Jewish friend's invitation was still ringing a bit in my ear, and, curious about his take on the passage in question, I sent him an email to take him up on his offer.  He replied very kindly with a number of interpretations from the Talmud sharing various Rabbinical reflections and applications of the text, illuminating the passage in ways I'd not yet considered.

But all the typical Christian translations of this passage use some word or other that means "the outsider" (alien, foreigner, stranger, etc.) to describe that first of the three groups of vulnerable people that deserve special consideration (so the NIV: the foreigner, the fatherless, the widow; or NASB: the alien, the widow, the orphan).  The specific Hebrew word is ger.  It's connected to a verb that means something like "to sojourn." It's used, for instance, to describe Abram when he was a sojourner (a foreigner, a "resident alien") in the land God told him to journey to, and it's used to describe Israel when they were captives in Egypt.  Hence Christians translate it as foreigner, alien, or stranger in Deuteronomy 24:17.

And here's the ping. In his response to my email, my Jewish friend included the standard Jewish translation of the verse.  In his translation, ger is translated, not as "the alien" generally but as "the convert" specifically (i.e. the non-Jew who has converted to Yahwehism).

We exchanged a few more emails about why this might be different, and he suggested that if an "outsider" was meant specifically, the term goy would have been used; and out of curiosity, I looked up the ancient Greek translation of the same verse, and they used a word that means "convert" as well; and, to be sure, the only biblical example we have of this passage being put into practice is the Book of Ruth, and there, Ruth the Moabitess is very clearly a convert to Yahwehism, besides being simply a foreigner.  So I'm not saying "convert" is necessarily a mis-translation of ger.

But the reason I'm still reflecting on this months later is because it seems to me there are profound ethical and theological implications for what we do with the ger in Deuteronomy 24. The question, as I see it, boils down to this: does God call us to take care of "the other" because they are "other" and regardless of whether or not they have made a profession of commitment to our community of Faith, or is conversion a necessary requisite for inclusion (and the hospitable helping that inclusion entails)?

Without the elaborate exposition that a careful handling of all these issues would require, let me at least suggest here that a radical inclusion-- one that translates ger as generously as possible-- is one of the themes of Jesus' preaching, who taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and to discover our sonship in the kingdom by living out its radical peace-making mission in tangible and concrete ways.  In this regard, radical inclusion of the other is one of the harmony notes to the melody of the Gospel.

The Ultimate Love Letter

For our post-Easter preaching ministry at the FreeWay we're working verse-by-verse through the book of 1 John.  Here are the first two sermons in that series:

1 John 1:1-10 "When a What and a How is a Who"

1 John 2:1-11 "But Where's the Love?"

When the North Star of Prayer is Cast into the Sea

One morning on his way to the Temple, Jesus curses a fig-tree because it didn't have out-of-season figs when he was hungry.  After this he enters Jerusalem, enacts a prophetic announcement of God's judgement on Herod's Temple, overturning the money-changer's tables and saying, in effect: "God is about to overturn this whole Temple and the worship-charade it houses, because 'my house was supposed to be a house of prayer for the nations' and you've made it into a monument to your own nationalistic agendas and revolutionary zeal."  Then, on the way back to Bethany in the evening, the disciples discover that the cursed fig-tree has withered, just like Jesus said it would.

Ok:  this would all be confusing enough, but then, when they ask him about the tree, he declares:  "Have faith in God:  truly I say to you that if one has faith, he should say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and cast into the sea' and if he does not doubt in his heart but he believes that what he says will be so, it will be so for him."  Or something like that. Then he adds:  "Because I tell you this: everything you pray and request, believe that you have received, and it will be so for you."

I've been thinking about this passage a lot over the last little while.  Because it seems to imply that the operative factor in determining whether or not we receive what we pray for is the degree of faith with which we ask-- i.e. the one who believes firmly that they will receive what they've prayed for will receive it; by implication the one who doubts won't; and by further implication, the more strongly you believe the more likely you are to receive. This is, at least, how I've often understood it.  And there are huge pastoral implications for this reading:  do we tell people, explicitly or implicitly, that when they don't receive what they're praying for, it's because they don't have enough faith?  Especially when there's a lot on the line (for a child, perhaps, praying for the healing of a loved one), this can insidiously turn the life of faith, which was meant to be liberating, into a life of bondage and guilt.

So here's what I got: when you read the whole passage (Mark 11:20-25) in context, notice that:  1) Jesus doesn't actually tell us to believe that we will receive, but that we already have received  what we're looking for (the verb tense in v. 24 is aorist, not future); 2) Jesus doesn`t say "ìf you have faith in God" in verse 22, but "have faith in God" (some early manuscripts say "if you have faith" but the most reliable say, simply, "have faith in God") The point:  this is not a "conditional statement" (i.e. you'll be answered if (and only if) you have faith); it's an imperative: "Have faith when you pray.  Believe that you have 'received' and it will be so for you."

Which brings us to note three:  this promise of having received when we pray is embedded right in the middle of Jesus' prophetic announcement that the Temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed.  He acted out its destruction through the whole money-changers demonstration, and then  he symbolically predicted it with the whole fig-tree curse. Just like the fig-tree didn't have fruit when God's Messiah came looking for it, and was destroyed because of it, so too the Temple: it didn't have the "fruit" of righteousness when God's Messiah came to it, so it will be destroyed.  And in as much as the fig-tree did shrivel at a word from Jesus, so too the Temple:  its predicted destruction is assured.

Which brings me to note four.  Jesus tells us that the primary content of our prayer should be that "this" mountain be lifted up and cast into the sea.  I always used to think he was speaking generally and metaphorically; i.e. you could ask for something so impossible as a mountain to be thrown into the sea, and if you've got enough faith, it will happen.  But. Jesus has just pronounced and enacted God's judgment on the Temple-- which is situated on the Temple Mount.  He's actually standing (presumably) in the shadow of the Temple Mount when he utters verse 23. The "this" of "this mountain," it turns out, is a very literal and very specific "this."  He means the Temple Mount.  He's saying, in light of his ominous announcement that the Temple is slated for demolition:  if you have faith, you could say to this Temple (and the Mountain on which it stands) be cast into the sea, and it will be so (v.23):  and once it's so, whatever you pray for will still ascend lovingly and confidently to the gracious ears of God, by faith (v.24).

Why does this context matter?  For a first Century Jew, Herod's Temple is the Spiritual North Star of your whole religious life.  You prayed toward the Temple, as a First Century Jew, because this was where God's Name dwelt.  Your prayers were heard and answered, as a First Century Jew, because God's Name and Glory still "dwelt" in the Temple of Jerusalem.  And Jesus is speaking to First Century Jews when he tells them:  because of its corruption, the Temple is about to be destroyed.

It would be like telling a devout Muslim that Mecca will soon be no more.

Can you hear the anguished reply:  But then how will we pray now?  How will our prayers be heard (let alone answered) now?  By what will we navigate, spiritually speaking, if the lode-star of our spiritual lives is cast into the sea? 

The question throbbing in this passage isn't "what does it take to get my prayers answered?" The question is:  how could we even imagine praying at all, if the Temple is destroyed (which the lesson of the fig tree, well learned, assures us it will be)? Because to pray that this particular mountain be thrown into the sea is actually to pray for a whole new way of coming to God in prayer, period.

And God says:  believe in your heart, and do not doubt, and you will receive exactly that.

Because Jesus says:  "Have Faith in God.  He's doing a new thing in me and through me.  And for those who have faith in me, and through me, the Temple can be cast into the sea, and prayer will not cease; in fact it will have just begun to thrive, because it will no longer be centred around a building made by hands, but will be empowered and filled and transformed by my resurrected and life-giving spirit.  If you believe this, then even before you pray, you will have received the hearing from God that up till now you've assumed is only possible in and through this Temple."

And in answering the question like that, Jesus has made faith, once again, the life of freedom and communion with God that it was meant to be.

Palm Sunday and History

Yesterday was Palm Sunday at the FreeWay, which, outside of "the big two" (Christmas and Easter) is probably my favorite liturgical celebration.  I've blogged before about the significant but often over-looked connections between Christmas and the Triumphal Entry, and how each of the Evangelists handle Jesus' monumental victory parade into Jerusalem slightly differently, drawing out different spiritual, theological and political threads of the story.  I've preached three of the four accounts now-- John, Matthew, and Luke-- and what strikes me is how different and yet identical the view from the Mount of Olives was for each of them.

What I'm thinking about the morning-after Palm Sunday today, however, is how vital this prophetically-loaded donkey ride into Jerusalem is for historically embedding both Jesus of Nazareth and, more significantly, God's act of salvation in and through him.  What I mean is this:  Christmas, and the Incarnation that Christmas celebrates, could have happened anywhere and anytime.  Not really, of course:  Paul says it was at just the right time Jesus came, and Gabriel told Mary that she had found unique favor among God, but even without its specific historical provenance in 1st Century Bethlehem, we could still draw from the Incarnation the theological import that we usually want to draw from it: that the Creator came to his Creation to save it by being born in flesh-and-blood and through the flesh-and-blood of a virgin. 

So too, with Easter-- again, not really: there is a historical necessity to all these events, the where, the when, the who-- but then again an a-historical story about the Creator who loved his Creation so much he willingly died for it to heal and save and forgive it would still make sense to us whether it happened in 1st Century Jerusalem or not.  (And, as a test of this, notice how often our discussions of Easter and Christmas are distinctly a-historical (sometimes almost gnostically so).)

But with the Triumphal Entry it's different.  Who cares that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, really, unless the political and spiritual and historical tensions of this time and place and allowed to shine like a spotlight on his mounted figure winding its way down the Mount of Olives?  At least: we have difficulty feeling the theological significance of this story as a story let alone as a saving act of God, until we discover the profound anti-Rome, anti-Herod, anti-Sadducean sentiment in the City, Jesus' allusion to the previous "triumphal entry" by Maccabeus in 164 BC, the historical iimportance of the Temple that Jesus purges, the ache for Shalom that echoes in the Prophetic Tradition of the Hebrew People, and the tragic fulfillment of Jesus'  own prophetic actions when Titus Vespasian demolished Jerusalem some 40 years later, in 70 AD. 

And whatever else it means, the Triumphal Entry reminds us that God's saving acts are deeply embedded in history:  Jesus' donkey is bearing him, not only into Jerusalem, but into the annals of God's salvation-history, and there he reminds us that our God is a God of history, and that an a-historical Gospel is no Gospel at all.

For the record, here's my sermon from Sunday:

Luke 19:28-44 
"A Prophet, the City, its King and his Donkey"

Commentaries on the Book of Lamentations

Like I usually do after a preaching series at the FreeWay, I thought I'd post some information and/or reviews of some of the secondary resources I consulted in preparing my series on the Book of Lamentations.  It is a very telling thing, that, while scholarly commentaries on Lamentations were readily available, I found almost no commentaries that focused specifically on preaching Lamentations, like, perhaps, Sydney Gredainus did with Ecclesiastes (telling in so far as it illustrates some of the things I said in this series about our hesitancy to make real space for lament in our corporate worship).  That said, here are two of the main resources I worked with:

Paul R. House, Lamentations (Word Biblical Commentary Series, Thomas Nelson)

I have always appreciated the WBC series for its thorough work with the original languages and the historical provenance of the text, and for its ability to engage a wide range of critical perspectives while maintaining a clearly Evangelical hermeneutic.  Paul House's work with Lamentations in this series, it turns out, is no exception to the rule; I found his analysis insightfu and helpful.  He draws out a number of critical isues over things like authorship, genre/form, historical dating and so on.  What I didn't quite expect, having sloughed through some pretty technical stuff in the WBC in the past, was the profound pastoral sensibility with which he handled this difficult book, a sensitivity that shone especially in his thoughts on "why study Lamentations" and in his handling of the theodicy questions that echo in the background of the most difficult passages of Lamentations.

Robin Parry, Lamentations (Two Horizons Series, Eerdmans)

Robin Parry's commentary on Lamentations reflects a genuine sensitivity to the poetic form of the book (much of his translations, for instance, try to convey the acrostic "feel" of the original), and his insightful readings often draw out subtleties of the text that might otherwise have been missed. (That the word translated "The man" in 3:1 is actually ha gibor (the valiant one/warrior). Stuff like that.) His work was especially helpful for sermon prep. because, where the House commentary presented each chapter as a whole, Parry broke each chapter down into smaller units of thought that lent themselves more readily to "sermonization," and helped to parse out the inner logic of each chapter more clearly.

Learning to Lament (4)

Here's our final sermon in our series on Lamentations. It has been a challenging but rewarding job this Lent season, preparing this material.  In a few days, I hope to post some more summative thoughts on lament, it's role in the Christian life, and the Book of Lamentations specifically, but in the meantime, here's Learning to Lament #4:

Lamentations 3:40-51 "Coming Back"



Learning to Lament (3)

Lamentations 3:1-24 "Remembering the Gall"

Learning to Lament (2)

Here's the second sermon in our lenten journey with the Book of Lamentations.  I'm still working on some more extended thoughts on this beautiful, sad, haunting book, but for now, here's sermon 2:

Lamentations 2:11-22  "Poured Out"

The Five (Smooth) Rocks were also Christ

As regular visitors to terra incognita will probably have gathered, I've been spending a lot of time in 1 Samuel these days.  The other day it was Chapter 17, the most famous giant-bout in recorded history, immortalized in monumental marble masterpieces and children's coloring pages alike.  I lingered for a moment over the scene where David selects five smooth stones from the stream, and I was reminded of this post over at Richard Beck's very good blog called Experimental Theology.

The question here is quite simple: if David was indeed trusting YHWH in his square-off against Goliath, why did he take five stones.  Wouldn't one stone have been a far more dramatic gesture of faith?  Moralistic Sunday School lessons, of course have a ready, allegorical answer:  the stones are symbolic of the disciplines of the godly life (by turns, "courage, humility, prayer, effort, love of duty" (this is one I found online this morning), or "spiritual renewal, kingdom generosity, church revitalization, church planting, authentic evangelism" (this is a more elaborate (and grown up) one I found at a random on  a church website)).

But then, these "answers" just illustrate the problem. If we are indeed trusting YHWH to win the battle for us, why do we so quickly and easily point to our own efforts--our courage, our duty, our giving, our church planting-- as the deciding factor.

But here's the intriguing thing (and again, credit where credit's due: Richard Beck first put me on the scent of this trail).  In 2 Samuel 21:15-22, it describes the on-going skirmishes with the Philistines under David's rule.  Here we meet four imposingly large "descendants of Rapha in Gath":  Ishbi-Benob (Abishai, the son of Zeruiah took him out), Saph (Sibbekai, the Hushathite took him down), a "huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot"  (Jonathan son of Shimeah killed him), and "the brother of Goliath the Gittite" (Elhanan Son of Jair got him (see 1 Chron 20:5)).

Of course, if one of these four sons of Rapha was the brother of Goliath, then that would make Goliath himself the fifth son of Rapha.  There were, it turns out, five giants in Gath:  Goliath and his four goliathine brothers. 

After reading 2 Samuel 21:15-22, it doesn't take much speculation (Richard Beck points out) to figure out why David would have taken five stones; it just takes some simple math.  David took five stones because there were five giants in Gath, and he was gearing up to whip the whole lot of them.  So confident was David in YHWH's salvation, that he before the battle with Goliath even began he was already looking past it to God's victory over all the giants in Gath. 

Suddenly these five stones have become a profound reminder to us, whenever we stand in Goliath's shadow, that not only does the battle belong to the Lord; so too the entire war. 

And, at the risk of wringing hermenutical blood out of exegetical stone here, they have become a little cairn, marking out the ultimate battleground of God's victory: the cross of Christ.  Because whatever else it means, a pouch-full of pebbles in a battle against a crew of gigantic Philistine champions reminds us that when God does win the victory, it will be on his impossible terms, our best efforts be damned: a smooth stone, a small still voice, a pregnant virgin, a crucified Messiah.

In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul reminds the Church how God saved Israel in the desert by bringing water from the Rock. "That Rock" he says, setting the precedent for all subsequent Christological readings of the Old Testament, "That Rock was Christ."  Without wanting to put words in his mouth, I would hasten to add:  "So too were the five smooth stones."