David vs. Exile: What happens when we stare death in the face

Text: 2 Samuel: 1-17

            The theologian, Walter Brueggemann, once wrote about this passage in particular, saying, “I judge this oracle with its unconditional promise to David to be the most crucial theological statement in the Old Testament.”[1] In other words, one of the finest late-twentieth to early-twenty-first century Old Testament thinkers believes that this is the most important passage this side of Jesus. Then it would stand to reason it should affect us in some way. But at first blush it’s hard to see how. So, God promised David a kingdom forever. What does that have to do with us?

            Firstly, let's set the scene: the prophet Nathan brings a message from God to David, who has decided to build a temple—or “house”—for God. God’s responds by saying that he doesn’t need to live in a house, and in fact what really matters is not the house David builds for God but the house God is making for David; not a house made of bricks or wood, but a dynasty. At the heart of Nathan’s message are two verses

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam 7:12-13).

This is God’s big promise: David and his descendants will be on the throne forever. But it’s also a strange promise if you know the history of Israel, because it wasn’t long after this that the people were exiled into Babylon, the temple was destroyed; and the promise seemed to be broken. So how can this be the most important statement in the entire Old Testament when only a few generations later it seems like it was all a lie?

Either God broke his promise, or the promise wasn’t quite what the people expected.

As it turns out, Israel discovered what was true about God only when it looked as if the promise were broken. When they were exiled in Babylon their God was not defeated; instead, God went with them into exile. 

We face the same critical questions today that the Israelites did in the exile. We are part of what is so often called the “declining church.” Something like 1-2% of mainline Protestant church members are leaving the ranks every year—often from death or apathy—and this decline has been ongoing for the better part of thirty years. That’s a massive exodus of people from the institutional church. You don’t need to be told this; you’ve lived it. This is the reality in Kittson County and Grand Forks and Minneapolis and Atlanta; it’s happening just about everywhere. The fastest growing religious group in the United States—for the first time ever—is the “Nones,” by which is meant those who claim no religious affiliation. The promise seems broken. The dynasty seems for all intents and purposes to be dying along with the institutional church.

So, is that really what’s going on here? Are we actually dying? For that matter, was the promise broken when the Israelites were sent into exile?

Everyday, our world bears evidence against the legacy of David; every day our world rejects Jesus Christ as the final heir to the throne. This never happens more these days than when our churches moan about decline; when we live as if there is not enough. We have so much to complain about—have you noticed this?—the economy, natural disasters, hunger, corporate greed, and everything else that is wrong with the world. Everyday we talk as if the world is going to hell, as if the enemy is secularization, politicians, economic policies and the like. Each and every day we are being taught to believe that the reign of David is over; that the promise that God makes to David is no longer applicable; that we’re living in an age of despair and hopelessness; that the good days are behind us.

The funny this is: nearly every generation feels this way. Nearly every generation has believed the world was going down the tubes and the next generation would be worse than the last. And yet, we’re still here. When we find ourselves thinking this is the worst of all bad times in the history of the world we have to get over ourselves and our simplistic perspectives.

God’s promise to David is no more broken today than it was in the exile. When the people of Israel were forced from their land they discovered that God did not reside in a house. Today, we are in a place to discover again that God does not live in the church building or in the things we do. The promise doesn’t mean more if we have a beautiful sanctuary or a run-down shack. That’s what Israel learns in exile. When everything physical that we value decays and dies the promise God made to us does not die with it; in fact, the promise is the only thing left. Why do you think the areas of the most vibrant faith in the world today are places like Sub-Saharan Africa, rural China and the poorest areas of Central and South America? Why does it always seem that the oppressed have the strongest faith?

Maybe it’s because we’re too comfortable; too brainwashed to believe that we’re entitled to a good life and that God is a nice idea for Sunday mornings.

Or for that matter, why do people listen more closely at a funeral than during Sunday morning worship?

Maybe because it’s the only time that the life-and-death nature of everything we talk about in worship hits us between the eyes. If that’s the case—if we can’t live as if worship and everything else that we do together as the people of God is important enough to impact our lives—then we’re not going to realize it when the death of the church is finally staring us in the face.

The death of the church is not today… but maybe it should be.

David does not realize the power of the promise until he has made the biggest mistake of his life, until he has slept with Bathsheba and sentenced her husband to death; only then does he discover that his sins have caused the death of his son. Yet, at the same time, David discovers that the promise is not broken because of his indiscretions. God will stick with him in spite of his selfishness and greed. That’s the promise we all have, and I suppose it’s why this is the most important statement in the Old Testament. We are God’s people, which means firstly that we are going to fall short of God’s expectations for us—we’re going to talk about things like declining numbers rather than Jesus; we’re going to concern ourselves with looking decent to the rest of the world rather than worshiping as if nothing else matters; we’re going to hang on tightly to what we have rather than giving away with abandon the gifts we have been given.

Nonetheless, the kingdom of God will be unmoved by our mistakes, irrespective of what we do to try to push Jesus out of our lives. The promise God makes remain resolute. When we get bound up in statistics and polls and politics and church polity the first thing we forget is Jesus. God’s promise to David can be that reminder for you: nothing will separate you from the love of God; not anything you hear on the news; not anything your neighbor tells you in hate; not anything you tell your neighbor in return.

This is the good news of God in as tidy a fashion this side of the New Testament. That is why this may be the most critical statement of faith ever made before the coming of Christ. It’s a promise worth living into today.

Amen.

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[1] Interpretation: First and Second Samuel. John Knox Press: Louisville, KY; 1990, p. 259.

The Death (and Resurrection) of American Cycling

The following is a joint-Playing Rooky/Land of 10,000 Losses post.

On a cool October day, cycling in America received the death sentence. Not when Lance Armstrong was indicted by a grand jury; not when USADA filed its "Reasoned Decision;" not even when they stripped him of his Tour de France wins. American cycling as we knew it died with the announcement that Nike was cutting ties with the now-former Tour de France champ. The days of watching Armstrong cruise up the Champs-Elysees, sipping champagne, are now no more than a distant memory, tainted by EPO, and the greatest athlete of the first decade of the 21st century has been fully disgraced from the sport that gave him fame.

Cycling as we knew it in America is no more.

But then again, cycling was never much of a sport over here. Even with Armstrong dominating the Tour in a way that had not been seen since the days of Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx the sport was never a top ten favorite among an American public that was more interested in tennis, golf, NASCAR and skiing. Even bowling and bass fishing were on ESPN, which cycling could never claim. Yes, the American public cheered for Armstrong year after year in the same way they cheered for the obscure Olympic sports whenever an American rose to prominence. Cycling was little more than Greco-Roman wrestling in the American conscience, and in truth it was understood even poorer. Ask anybody off the street to name a cycling race other than the Tour de France and you would get blank stares. Nobody cared.

That's because cycling is the most niche of participant sports. Almost nobody is a fan who doesn't do it. Can you imagine being a fan of poker without playing yourself? It's the same with cycling. You have to do it to enjoy it. You have to ride in groups or in races to understand the strategy of racing in the pro peloton and the psychology of the riders who sacrifice their chances for the sake of the team. The shallow understanding of cycling that most Americans have has died with Armstrong's legacy, because the public cared only for victories and a character who exemplified everything that we love: defeating a heinous disease (cancer) by beating foreign pros at their own sport on their own soil. The details weren't as important as the meta-narrative--the story that lifted Armstrong to mythic heights.

That legacy is dead, and we could mourn that. We could give up on cycling altogether. Some will, I suppose, but they are the ones who didn't see this coming. They're the ones unaware of drugs in cycling and therefore oblivious to the ways that the sport has been changing in the last five to ten years. If you think the change after the steroid era in baseball was dramatic, then welcome to cycling's brave new world. This is a new sport, still stained by doping, but being reinvented almost daily by a foreign fan-base and media that are fed up both with the dopers and the excuses. It's a sport with teams like the USA's Garmin-Barracuda that are founded on the principle of clean cycling--even while being run by former dopers. There are stains--it will take some time to clean up--but things have changed.

They are changing in America as well. Nike's dismissal of Armstrong is the seminal moment in the history of cycling in the United States. The past has been cut. The future is one without yellow bands on the wrists. Things are starting to look different. Millions of Americans ride their bikes. More and more have  started to ride regularly, commuting to work, or using their two-wheels as part of a workout plan. Triathlon is second only to running as the fastest growing sport among American adults. We are riding their bikes as much as ever, and fans are turning out at races as never before. When Armstrong was riding there was hardly an American race of note on the calendar, but now there are two races with world class credentials (The Amgen Tour of California and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge) and a third (The Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah) gaining rapidly in popularity. There are more and more fans on those often dreary, cold summits; there are more fans still at destination finishes in Vail, Colorado Springs and Los Angeles.

Cycling will never be considered a major sport in America. It is not made for TV, for one. But let's not confuse the issue: cycling is popular; now more than ever. In my town of less than one thousand people in the middle of nothing but farmland, there are people riding their bikes past my house every summer evening: recreational riders, people riding for their fitness, kids learning how to pedal for the first time, and even the occasional cyclist like myself in spandex and bent low over the drop bars of a road bike. Cycling has never been so mainstream.

Today, the last visages of the Lance-era were put to death. It's about time those old days were drowned for good. Tomorrow is a new day. I welcome it, and I know I'm not alone. Tomorrow, somewhere around America, one hundred-thousand people will hop on a bike and the sport will be reborn anew. They won't care about USADA or the UCI; they won't have considered doping and they might not even know what the words "Time Trial" mean, but they will be part of cycling's new dawn. So it's been a mixed bag, Lance. We thought you would change the sport, and I guess in a way you did, but every resurrection requires a death.

Today, our sport is resurrected.

How Not to Clothe Yourselves with Love: A wedding sermon courtesy of the The Big Bang Theory

Text: Colossians 3:12-14

Note: This is a sermon I offered for my sister-in-law, Sam, and her new husband, Jim. I don't normally post wedding or funeral sermons, but this one is special and so I'm sharing it. The sermon is directed to the two of them and is only slightly modified for this blog format, so I apologize if it is hard to connect with this one. Such is wedding sermons.

So, let’s be straight about this from the top: this is an awfully tough sermon for me because not only am I a member of your family and not just the pastor, but let’s face it, Sam, you won’t tolerate some generic, lubby-dubby, full of fluff message. So, unfortunately, I have to actually say something substantive, which is sometimes difficult for pastors to do. Then, you selected Colossians 3 for your reading, which just about holds the record for most fluffy passage in all of scripture, and you dangled it in front of me as if to say, “Preach on it, Pastor Frank. I dare you. Preach on compassion and kindness and humility and meekness and patience. Preach on clothing yourselves with love.”

            Well, you know what? I’m going to do it, but, since you young ‘uns—like many your age—haven’t been going to church much lately, I think I’m going to need to translate Colossians from the Apostle Paul’s language into a voice you will recognize. So, today I’m going to enlist the help of Sheldon Cooper and friends from The Big Bang Theory to tell you what kind of clothing you should not be putting on. These are quotes of wisdom that you might recognize.

#1: How not to clothe yourselves with compassion, from Sheldon Cooper I quote: “If you don't mind, I'd like to stop listening to you and start talking.”

#2: How not to clothe yourselves with kindness—this time from Raj: “You have lost so much weight. That must have been difficult for you because you were so, so fat. Do you remember?”

#3: How not to clothe yourselves with humility—care of Sheldon Cooper: “Howard, you know me to be a very smart man. Don't you think that if I were wrong, I'd know it?”

#4: How not to clothe yourselves with meekness—again from Sheldon Cooper: “I often forget other people have limitations. It's so sad.”

#5: How not to clothe yourselves with patience—from Raj: “I couldn't find you guys, so I bought six new friends! Sadly, three of them are dead.”

And #6, and most importantly, how not to clothe yourselves with love—care of Howard Wolowitz: “If it's ‘creepy’ to use the Internet, military satellites, and robot aircraft to find a house full of gorgeous young models so I can drop in on them unexpected, then fine, I'm ‘creepy.’”

            What The Big Bang Theory really tells us is that it’s simple to find examples of what love is not, of what commitment is not, of what humility and meekness and patience are not. Every day of your lives together you will be bombarded with examples, some humorous but many just depressing, of ways not to live. And, you know, sometimes Jim isn’t going to be kind or humble; sometimes Sammy isn’t going to be compassionate or patient. You are going to get a lot of advice about your marriage: just be this, be that, do this, do that, support one another, love—just love each other—and as well-meaning as all that advice is, your marriage will not be made by following paths that others have cut for you.

            What’s important is not the advice of your friends or family, my advice, or the Bible’s advice for that matter. In fact, what’s important is not what everyone here today says; what’s important is they are here for you. Most of these wedding guests—friends and family—thought the big commitment was going to be made between the two of you, Sammy and Jim, but if that were the only commitment that mattered we could have done that two days ago at lunch or over the phone weeks ago. The big commitment isn’t only between you two; it’s between the two of you and all of us who are here today.

As the two of you make this commitment to one another today you do not do it on your own; you are surrounded by people whose commitment to your success as husband and wife is unparalleled. Many of them are here; some of them are with you from afar. They aren’t perfect people; they don’t have perfect marriages; they don’t know everything… and some of them honestly don’t know very much. None of that matters. What matters is that they are here, behind you, supporting you, today and from now on in your lives together.

            If all of the scriptural witness around marriage could be summed up in a single line it would sound something like this: “You are not alone.” Today, you are not alone. But, you know what? You never were; you never will be. Kindness, humility, meekness—all of these things you will discover in the community of friends, family and loved ones who surround you now. In Genesis, God said, “It is not good that [the] man should be alone.” And from that moment on, none of us have been. We are all tied to one another; we are all in this together. A marriage does not succeed or fail solely because of the love that two people have; it succeeds or fails because the community either succeeds or fails to be there for it; to nurture it, to demonstrate everything that Paul tells us to value—compassion, meekness, kindness, humility, patience, love.

            So, Sam and Jim, you have a difficult and, yet, simple task ahead of you. Your job is to remember that you are not alone. Remember that a community of friends and family are standing behind you, ready to tell you when you are wonderful and humble and meek and kind, and ready to tell you when you are crazy. Sam, sometimes you are crazy. Jim, sometimes you are crazy.

Turn around and look at everybody here.

Each and every one of them is willing to clothe you in love and, more importantly still, to look you in the eyes when you think you are alone and tell you that you are crazy. Each and every one of them is ready to tell you you’re not alone.

That’s what we celebrate. That’s why we’re here. Thanks to be to God for Sam and Jim, may they never again feel as if they are alone.

Calves, Other Idols and Electricity

Test: Exodus 31:1-14

            On Thursday afternoon I was sitting in my living room, pondering the Israelites and their golden calf while also thinking about getting by without electricity. For us, that was a few hours; for others of you it has lasted a few days. We all have a baseline level of comfort that, when breached, can make us uneasy. When you take away a simple thing like electricity it becomes immediately obvious how dependent we are on all sorts of little things around us. Losing power is different from going on a camping trip. I love hiking, camping and generally getting away from electricity and technology, but those are occasions where I intentionally remove myself from those comforts of home. When the power just goes out I have a very different feeling—a “what on earth do I do now?” feeling.

            I think that’s pretty close to where the Israelites are at when Moses went up the mountain. There they are at Mt. Sinai, completely unsure what Moses is doing up there, and their sense of what is normal has been completely obliterated. There is no normal, no home, nothing to do now but wonder, “Where on earth do we go from here?” It may seem silly to turn from worshipping the God who led them out of Egypt, but that’s where they are. They’re confused.

            What the people demand of Aaron is something visible to hold their focus in light of their current predicament. It’s not so much that they want a different god than the one who led them out of Egypt; rather, they want a physical image of the true God. Aaron’s problem is that such an image is not forthcoming; God shows himself to Moses alone, not in idols to appease the crowd. They have to take it on faith that the road through the wilderness is led by a God they cannot see. Unfortunately, Israel does not yet have this kind of faith. It seems silly to create a golden idol and honestly believe it is a god. Clearly, God is not a calf, but then again, tell me we don’t do the same thing. How much physical stuff do we put before God? How much do we consider worship to be about the pastor or the building, the music or the liturgy? Those are the things that upset us, and though God certainly works through all of these they are no more God than that golden calf.

            In our lives we have a base level of comfort, and whether it’s the power going out, a wildfire, an accident, health concern, or something equally unexpected, there are many things that can rock that comfort. Those are the moments where the depths of our souls are bared and we are shown for what we really are. Last week I talked about what is right and what is easy; this is similar: in the face of trouble, do we build another idol or do we trust in the unseen.

            The stakes are huge. One of the things that gets lost in this story about the golden calf is that God nearly destroys the Israelites for their stupidity. This is not a fuzzy, lubby-dubby God willing to offer cheap grace; this is a powerful God who the Israelites are right to fall before on their knees and worship. This is a God willing to give it all up and start over with Moses. This is a God who demands obedience.

This scene really is remarkable. God proposes to Moses his intent to destroy the people and offer the promised future instead to Moses and his progeny alone. This is a ticked off God. And it is Moses who is the calming voice—the one who saves the day—yes, the very same Moses who came up with every excuse in the book why he should not be leading the people out of Egypt; that very same Moses intercedes before God to save the people from God’s own wrath. He asks that God remember the promises that God has made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and in a line of thinking that should resonate with people up here, Moses adds in the line about what Egypt will say about the God who destroys his people. “What will the neighbors think?” he asks God.

Then, strangely, in verse 14: “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

(Breathe out.)

There’s part of us that doesn’t like that. It doesn’t square with how we understand God. There are these Greek terms that Christians like to use, even though they never occur in the Bible—omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent—which mean respectively: all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing, all-loving. These terms do not describe the God who visits Moses, and since we believe in one God, and we proclaim that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the same God that we worship today, this should tell us more about our misconceptions about God than anything else. God is beyond our knowing, so when we try to put God on the couch, perform a psychological analysis and slip the creator of the universe into categories of our own making, we are essentially doing the same thing that the Israelites did: we are asking Aaron to create for us an idol to worship. God doesn’t like that.

Thankfully, even when we make our idols we have an advocate. This story is Moses’ time in the spotlight. As much as he gets a lot of credit for parting the sea and bringing God’s messages to Pharaoh, the real moment of star-power in Moses’ life comes here on the mountain, talking God out of the destruction of his people. Honestly, Moses is only a little man in the scheme of things, but he foreshadows something bigger and better on the horizon. The conversation between Moses and God was not just a debate about the future of the chosen people; it was a preview of what comes to us in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world to live with us today. We still have an advocate—not Moses, but the Holy Spirit—who hears what we pray and intercedes on our behalf with God.

            There’s a reason that the first commandment chiseled on those stone tablets in Moses’ hands is what it is: “I am the Lord, your God, you shall have no other gods before me.” You want to know a secret about those commandments? We never get past the first. We get hung up on murder and theft and adultery, but none of us can be judged right by the first commandment of all. Each of us is building idols; we’re doing it right now, even in this worship space. We all want a golden calf; not the true God just beyond our sight. We all want glory; not a cross. We all want a god we can fashion, not the God we cannot control, who may, in fact, destroy us at a moment’s notice. “Too bad!” said God in last week’s reading, “You will be my people and I will be your God… and you have an advocate who is going to keep it that way.”

            Just as the Israelites didn’t deserve Moses, so we don’t deserve Jesus. We deserve to suffer for the idols we have made, and yet, God is willing to do something incredible, remarkable, and completely inhuman: he’s willing to change his mind.

            Thank God for that.

            Amen.

What is Right and What is Easy: Cedric Diggory and the Passover

Scripture: Exodus  12:1-13, 13:1-8

            In the fourth book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the storyline begins to take a darker turn. The evil wizard, Voldemort, returns from being almost-but-not-quite-dead and the first thing he does is murder a boy-wizard named Cedric Diggory. As Goblet of Fire ends, Dumbledore—if you are unfamiliar with the books, Dumbledore is the headmaster at the wizarding school, Hogwarts—eulogizes Cedric before the student body with these words, "Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."

            The Passover is to the Israelites what Cedric Diggory would be for the wizarding world—minus the flying broomsticks and butterbeer. The Passover, and accompanying Feast of Unleavened Bread, is about remembering the oppression and cruelty of the past in order to keep from repeating them in the future. It is a tradition that originates out of the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt and the killing of the firstborn that finally led to their exodus. These festivals were instituted by God to remember the cruelty of slavery so that it may not be repeated, but they also serve a secondary purpose: they are an antidote for nostalgia.[1] Those of you who know the story of the exodus well may remember how quickly the Israelites are in need of this antidote. They can practically still see the Red Sea—the site of the miraculous parting of the waters—many of them still have the lashes of the slave-drivers, persecuted by a Pharaoh who did not know Joseph and was therefore unaware of their history, and still those Israelites quickly turn on Moses and wish to go back to the land of Egypt—site of the good ol’ days. Nostalgia, even for times that were not good by any measure, is a uniquely human response to adversity. When difficulty comes, the Israelites need to be reminded again and again that they are fleeing from a broken past and the journey—no matter its challenges—is worth it. The Passover bids them to remember the past in order to set their course for the future.

            The Israelites’ situation is not that different from the one facing the wizarding world when Voldemort returns, or, for that matter, our world today. We need something to rally behind in order to keep from wishing away our lives forever gazing into what has been. Why did the wizarding world need to remember Cedric Diggory? Because they were about to be plunged into internal conflict under questioned leadership. Why did the Israelites need a festival to remember the Passover? Because they were about to be plunged into internal conflict under questioned leadership. Where are we today? In constant internal conflict under questioned political, economic, social, and religious leadership.

            The world turns, but things—whether in the wilderness, at Hogwarts or in Kittson County—hardly change; we face the same challenges and tough choices. We are in need of an antidote for nostalgia. There is much that is wrong with the world today and also much that we are indebted to the past, but we make a terrible mistake when we get our destiny backwards. God’s future for us is just that—in our future, ahead of us. History does not move backwards toward the Garden of Eden. We are always moving forward, like Israel, into a future promised to us, and again—like Israel—our entrance into it will be kicking and screaming and dragging our feet. We want to go back. God pushes us forward.

That is why we must remember. Remember the Passover. Remember the times when we have been persecuted and remember when we have been the persecutors. Remember human beings at their worst—Darfur and Auschwitz, the Gulags, apartheid, slavery, the Inquisition, the Third Reich; it goes on and on. Remember all our Cedric Diggorys. I’m not just talking about issues bigger than what we can control. We need to process together all the mistakes we have made; we need to be unafraid of what we may discover if we go deeper.

What we will inevitably find is that at our base we are all like the Israelites, eager to return to what is comfortable in our past. Left on our own we will do things how we’ve done them before; if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Even if it is broke, pretend like it isn’t and do it just the same. We will reach back for a past as beautiful and shiny as it is unrealistic and untrue. At our base this is who we are, but in no small part because of the God who leads us forward we are also much more than this. God re-orients us—God reminds us—where our true destiny lies.

At its core that is what festivals are about: remembering something important from our past and remembering who we are; not so that we can repeat that past but so that we can live into the future. Festivals tell us something true about the past in order to tell us something true about the present, and in-so-doing they tell us that the most important moment for the history of the faith is always right now. It’s the only moment that includes all other moments, learns from all moments, and bridges where we have been to where we are going. Festivals are a bridge from the past to the future on which we stand right now with a choice before us—forward or backward; what is right or what is easy.

Remember Cedric Diggory, Dumbledore said, because the time will come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy. Easy, comfortable—words for a time when there is nothing on the line—but the truth is that there is always something on the line. The Israelites teach us that God’s people are not just a generation away from extinction but only a moment away from turning back to the path that is easy. We live in such a world of luxury that we actually value things that are easy. Somehow the good life has been equated with comfortability. The Passover tears that comfort apart.

We are not our own, have never been our own, will never be our own. We are part of a web that stretches back to those Israelites and forward to the advent of the Kingdom of God in which no moment in time matters as much as here and now. We walk alongside the Israelites in the wilderness; we walk alongside all those hurt and broken; we stand for what we believe because of the God who works in and through us today and the God who worked in and through our ancestors before us. There is no separating the past and the present, just as there is no reliving what has happened before. The past is always behind us, reminding us of where we’ve been and tempting us to return, but the Promised Land lies ahead. Remember Cedric Diggory; remember the captivity in Egypt; remember the hurt you carry with you; then, allow that hurt to be the catalyst that pushes you forward.

It won’t be easy. That’s a promise. We have a choice—every day of our lives—between what is right and what is easy. Cedric Diggory bids us to choose well. So does the Passover.

Amen.

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[1] Katheryn Schifferdecker, WorkingPreacher podcast

Creation, the Physical and the Spiritual

Adapted from a devotion for the WELCA Cluster Gathering at Red River Lutheran Church

Saturday, September 29, 2012

1 Corinthians 15:42-49

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Martin Luther loved to talk about the Old Adam--that sinful hanger-on in our lives in this world. This was how he talked about the already-but-not-yet nature of our redemption. It is also an introduction into his idea that we are simultaneously sinner and saint. The Old Adam is our sinful self; the new creation is the side of us drowned in the waters of baptism and raised a new creation. As Luther wrote in the Large Catechism, "These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man."

This is another way to talk about our dualism as creatures both physical and spiritual. However, the language of physical and spiritual is largely misunderstood in our world. The passage above from 1 Corinthians resonates with the modern understanding of the separation of body and spirit (or soul). It's fairly common to think about the body as bad and the spirit as good; that the body is the corrupted part of us that awaits its spiritual redemption when our physical life is over. However, this is a misguided understanding of the whole of the biblical picture, and I believe it is a profound misreading of 1 Corinthians. We are indelibly both: physical and spiritual; bodies and spirits; sinners and saints. I turn to Wendell Berry: 

"I would like to purge my own mind and language of such terms as ‘spiritual,’ ‘physical,’ ‘metaphysical,’ and ‘transcendental’—all of which imply that Creation is divided into ‘levels’ that can readily be peeled apart and judged by human beings. I believe that the Creation is one continuous fabric comprehending simultaneously what we mean by ‘spirit’ and what we mean by ‘matter.’” (“Health is Membership,” 1994).

We have this problem since the fall from Garden of Eden. We think very poorly of our bodies in large part because we think of them as vessels of pleasure whose usefulness will wear out over time. Moreover we consider the pleasure itself to be a sign of sin, and we act as if the only way to control our brokenness is to subdue our physical to the spiritual. This is a hollow dualism. To disconnect our physical selves from our spiritual selves is to perform a lobotomy on our souls.

As Christians we proclaim a bodily resurrection—these bodies but changed. The ultimate physical nature of things will be revealed when the spiritual and the physical are understood as one; only then will the Old Adam dissipate in the face of our true physical/spiritual nature. Our bodies will be demonstrated, finally, to be both spiritual and physical; not one, not the other. This is counter-cultural but it is at the heart of the scriptural witness to resurrection. Matthew Dickerson writes:

"The biblical Christian account of eternal life does not correspond to the popular image of disembodied spirits hovering on clouds. Rather, the Christian idea of eternal life is once again that of embodiment: a life of both body and spirit. The body is important.

Put another way, Christian teaching about the death of the mortal body does not promise that the soul will go to heaven. Rather, the Christian hope given in the Bible is that heaven will come to earth, and the individual will be given a new body—or, perhaps, will be resurrected in a new body. That is, both the created earth and our bodies will be renewed or restored.” (The Mind and the Machine, Brazos Press, 2011)

Shoshone Base Camp--Prichard, Idaho, 2005

We do ourselves a disservice when we divide ourselves into separate natures. We are not souls trapped in bodies. The body isn't sin and the spirit divine. We are one fabric, as Wendell Berry wrote; in fact, all of creation is one fabric. Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Rome that "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22-23). Dualism does not mean that we are separate parts but in fact that we are wholly one in Christ, redeemed in every facet of our being. Our distinctions between the physical and the spiritual are finally just perceptions of a reality beyond our grasp.

Paul himself seems only to see this in part--his words in 1 Corinthians crash into the words from Romans--so I think we're excused for still wrestling with the implications today. But don't be confused, this is imminently important for how we live. The spiritual and the physical have never been more dissected and separated in any time in history than they are today. I believe we have a calling to point out this divorce and to reclaim our wholeness.

This is neither the start nor the finish, but it's a piece of the puzzle. 

Joy, Happiness, and the Way the World Doesn't Work

Earlier this week I attended a splendid NW Minnesota Synod Retreat and Conference whose keynote was Dr. Jacqueline Bussie, Professor Religion at Concordia College in Moorhead. She talked on hope and joy in a world of despair and grief, offering really practical suggestions for how this can impact our lives. Let me be frank, this may have been the best conference I've ever attended for its sheer usefulness to everything that I do as a pastor. These are some of my reflections, mixed with Dr. Bussie's insights, on the impact that joy can have on our lives.

We think we are all looking for happiness--that what really matters is whatever makes you happy. We tell ourselves that; we tell our children that. We retreat into the corner when something or somebody seeks to take that happiness away. I believe this is why we are not willing to talk seriously about grief and loss, because those are subjects that just sound too depressing to consider. They are contrary to the motto: Whatever makes you happy.

When I look at my own life I am not a particularly sad person, and so I often feel that same tendency to avoid grief and loss. Things are going pretty well; I have nobody close to me sick or dying, no imminent loss that I know of, nothing that should be able to deter my immediate happiness. This is my fortune, but it's not simply the case that we turn on and off feelings of grief and sorrow or, for that matter, control when they may come. All of us--if we live long enough--will experience moments of absurd suffering; moments that show our happiness to be no match for despair.

This is because happiness is actually a pretty shallow emotion. For all the face time we give to being happy it is not that momentary feeling--or state of mind--that keeps us going in times of grief. Instead, it is something else, something deeper, that persists when the foundations of our world shake.

Joy.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness, though the world tells us it is. Happiness is moment-by-moment; it is subject to the whims of the world; and it is always in conflict with sadness and despair. You can't be both happy and despairing; they are two sides of the emotional coin. Joy is something else. Joy may show itself in spurts, like happiness, but it is not quashed by sorrow. In fact, joy requires an understanding of the power that tragedy and despair have over our lives, and it protests that power, saying "No, sorrow and despair do not win. There is something stronger, something more real than loss." Happiness is internal conquest, but joy is resurrection.

Here is where that distinction becomes practical. Think about the most powerful moment of hope in your life. Think about the times that have strengthened your faith more than any other. What led to that moment? I am willing to bet there is at least a undertone of sorrow in those moments of hope. In fact, I bet that many of those moments of profoundest hope come intermixed with our most acute feeling of helplessness.

I think about the trip our youth took to Cortez, Colorado this summer and the joy we found there. We experienced intense sadness on that trip at the suffering of people whose lives we could not fix, but I think I can speak for the group and say with assurance that everyone of us had a favorable experience. What we experienced was not happiness--not as the world would define it. None of us came away content that the world was a great place for those children and families, and yet we felt a sense of wholeness in being there. It was a clear sense of joy; a power that says "This is not the end." Hunger and divorce, jailed family members and broken relationships do not destroy the human spirit that cries out in spite of their condition. Joy is always in spite.

Our youth (and adults) in Cortez

I worry that we are not joyful enough. We turn on the news and feel down because the media suggests that bombs and politics are the real story. We turn on the XBox and find contentment in mindlessness. We turn to things that are simple and make us happy: sex, alcohol, drugs. We put more importance in contests and pride--in our sports and our us-versus-them mentality--than we do in our unity and diversity. All of this is a culture that just wants to make us happy. It is a hungry beast. You keep feeding it and it will never be enough.

But I believe there is a better world out there. It is a world that discovers joy in the little things; that does not sell its soul for happiness but understands that sorrow is a natural part of life. We can learn from this. We can be bigger than our losses. We can experience true joy in the midst of things we do not understand. Joy does not conquer sadness; it lives in it. So, when the trappings of happiness fade away may you discover that there is a deeper joy that gives you hope. May you find it in the midst of things that the world considers depressing and dour. May you discover that nothing can contain the joy that is in you.

And may you share the joy that is in you with someone who needs to hear it.