These good earthly tents

2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 5:1-10

I have two reactions to all of this stuff about earthly and heavenly bodies in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth. The first is, “Yes, of course, inside of us there is something that is our true nature. Yes, definitely we are made for something more; we are limited here and in need of saving.” But then I that other reaction hits and I think, “Paul, this isn’t very helpful for what we should be doing in the meantime.”

            Honestly, I take issue with some of what Paul is saying, not because it’s not true, but because it tends to give rise to the kind of Christian who is overly eager to leave their bodies behind. Meanwhile, we have a God who created these bodies and called them “very good.” We are not just holy creatures covered in sinful bodies; we are sinful creatures obscuring good bodies. Now that distinction might not seem that important, but our understanding of the body and the soul—the tent that we live in and the God’s building for us in heaven, as Paul puts it—impacts how we prioritize the time we spend on earth. I’ve seen far too many people who excuse human beings from having responsibility for their neighbors, for the natural world, and even for the way they treat themselves out of some over-eagerness to fast-forward to eternity.

            It’s a tough line to walk. I believe we were created to live with God forever, and, yet, even if that is true, this is the only life we have—the only opportunity to make life better for our fellow human beings in the meantime. This is where we can make a difference, and if you read Paul as an excuse not to, then I think you are misunderstanding God’s will for us.

            For that matter, I have grave concerns with people who read Paul out of their own self-centeredness. If you are the center of the universe, then it’s entirely possible to read about salvation as personal, individual, and ultimately an excuse to do whatever you please as long as things between you and God are good. The reality is: Life is not about you. I don’t know how to convince anybody of this, really, because selfishness is such an ingrained trait that we fight irresistible currents to try to get any selfish person to become less selfish, and, yet, what can we do but remind one another of this? Life is not about you.

Follow your nose--it's a matter of perspective

2 Corinthians 2:1-10, 14-17

            What does the word of God smell like? Kind of an awkward question. If we’re judging by the churches of our childhood, perhaps it is mothballs, oak pews, grandma’s perfume, and just a hint of mold. But that’s not the question Paul is asking in 2 Corinthians. It’s a question of what the actual words and the people who bring them call to mind. After all, smell is the sense most closely tied to memory.

Paul writes, “We smell like the aroma of Christ’s offering to God, both to those who are being saved and to those who are on the road to destruction. We smell like a contagious dead person to those who are dying, but we smell like the fountain of life to those who are being saved.”
            It’s all a matter of perspective. The dead smell a rotting corpse; those alive smell the embodiment of the fountain of life—the very sweetest smell.

This question of perspective is closely related to wisdom. When we are young and naïve, we assume other people see the world as we do. If we are particularly sour, we assume others are particularly sour. The same goes for happiness. Having seen the world with our eyes, we imagine all of us have the same biases—even God. So, we draw pictures of a God who looks like us, talks like us, thinks like us, and (lo and behold!) this God likes the people we like and dislikes the very people we dislike. Perspective also colors our understanding of sin, because (again, at first) we assume others face the same temptations we do. So, when we lack perspective, we imagine that since we can have a drink and stop drinking, it must be the same for an alcoholic, or since I am not tempted to steal, it must be the same for the person who does so compulsively. Then, we assume that what others lack is simply a matter of will power, or a character flaw I don’t possess, rather than acknowledging that there are areas in all of our lives where willpower is not enough. Some covet power, some sex, some wealth, some freedom. A person can have absolutely no attachment to unhealthy sex yet be a power-hungry lunatic. Another may have the exact opposite problem. None of this is an excuse; it’s simply the first step in understanding our differences.

The end of Job: The problem with the happily ever after

Job 41:1-8, 42:1-17

Happily ever after. That’s what Job got: His happily ever after.

            But why does he get to live happily ever after? That’s what I’m curious about, because there are plenty of really good folks who don’t get a happily ever after. We don’t have to look very far to see evidence that this is often not how the world works. So, what did it take for Job, and what might we learn from this?

            Job’s case is actually fairly simple. He gets his happily ever after once he admits he doesn’t know a thing about God. Then, he confesses and bingo: Things are set right. That formula is a good starting point, but I’ve got to admit it also makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. First, being humble and confessing doesn’t bring people back from the dead, and second, my job is quite literally to say things about God, which is part of Job’s problem. I can try to preach with humility and an understanding that I haven’t got it all figured out, which is very true, but still I am saying things about God all the time. Job’s story reminds me of why it can be very tricky to say much about God without subtly trying to be God.

            There’s an old Latin saying, “Traduttore, traditore” that in English means, “Translator, traitor.” It is often meant in relation to translating the Bible—that whoever attempts to take an idea in one language and translate it into words in another will inevitably be a traitor to the original text and its meaning. This is very true of the Bible, but a level deeper, it’s also very true of our entire experience of God. Every time you attempt to speak of God’s nature you are filtering God through your little perspective. To attempt to give words to God is to be a kind of traitor.

            Every week I preach I am a kind of traitor. And, yet, without talking about God, we would have no shared knowledge of God to form a community of faith. This is a tension in which we live as fallen, broken human beings attempting to name the unnameable, even as we need each other to tell us that greatest of all stories.

It isn't about Job... or us.

Job 31:35-40, Job 38:1-11

The story of Job has been leading up to this seminal question. “Where were you, Job, when the foundations of the earth were being laid?”

I don’t know how many of you have been following along with the book of Job, but to this point, Job has lost everything—his family, his wealth, his land, his servants, everything but his life. His friends have come offering terrible advice, and Job has responded with his own misunderstandings about God, unable to imagine any God but the one who gives and takes away. Job lacks what we might call the “gospel,” he has had no preacher to offer it to him, and so he feels no hope for the future.

All of this is to say that Job may hit a little close to home today. Like Job, we may well be lost, confused, and grieving. It’s almost worse that it’s not completely clear what we are grieving. So, we come back in-person today and in some ways that might feel great, and in some ways, it might also feel awkward, or confusing, or uncertain. You may be wondering when we will get back to normal, but those who have gone through grief—the long road, not the shortcut of pretending it’s all over—know that what we knew as normal is gone and we will have to grieve that.

            Job was looking for normal, but he also knew he couldn’t get it. He knew there was no going back. So, he grumbled and fussed and complained about how unfair it all was, and for 37 chapters, God let him rant, waiting and watching. “Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind.”

            I want to talk today about what God didn’t do. God didn’t do theology. God didn’t answer Job’s questions or argue Job’s points. God didn’t explain the nature of good and evil or even respond to any of the demands that Job levied. God didn’t use logic, didn’t cite any studies, or demand that Job follow some kind of formula.

            Instead, God simply asks, “Who do you think you are, Job?”

            “Who created the world?”

            “Who gave you this life?”

            “Where were you, Job, when it all came together?”

Conspiracy theories, fake news, and midrash: What I learned from freshman Religion

In 2004, I was enrolled in a Religion 101 course with Dr. Murray Haar at Augustana College. It was my first religion course of any kind and the first time I ever read the Bible with even an ounce of criticism. I was surrounded by other freshmen, most of whom were not Religion majors, being exposed to ideas few of us had ever considered. The lion's share of us were Christians; Dr. Haar was Jewish. This is probably one of those classes that a certain category of faith leaders warn you about--the kind that could cause a person to question their faith.

Yet, I discovered something different from Dr. Haar's class. One of the ideas we learned about was the concept of midrash, which is the study and interpretation of ancient Hebrew scripture. That may sound boring, but it was really more like wrestling with the Bible in the same way that Jacob wrestled with God--caring enough to never let go. There is a long and rich history of playing with scripture in the Jewish tradition, and you can read this today in the Talmudic literature if you seek it out. But we weren't just supposed to read midrash, we would be doing midrash of our own! If nothing else, this showed that Dr. Haar had a deep tolerance for bad interpretations, because, let me tell you, I know we did some truly poor midrash.

Enter our first midrash assignment in November of 2004. For some reason, I ended up with the story of the rape of Dinah from Genesis 34. I don't know if I chose that scripture (if so, I was an idiot) or if it was assigned. Either way, I could hardly have ended up with a trickier story to interpret. Not only did I know next-to-nothing about Genesis or the Jewish tradition, I also knew next-to-nothing about sexual violence or, frankly, women. What followed was predictable: I wrote something embarrassingly bad.

I won't explain what I said, except to say that I still have the original and I can barely read it. It was that bad. Mercifully, I did one wise thing that changed everything: I had someone else read it. Naomi was an academic tutor for our dorm, who read papers for dumb freshmen like me, and in this case, she pulled no punches. She graciously pointed out not just the interpretive flaws but, more importantly, the assumptions I was making about women and violence. In response, I did one last wise thing: I listened to her. Dr. Haar never got the original paper; in fact, what he got was a paper lacking any of the original claims. The midrash I turned in was still bad in the way that freshmen papers are bad, but it set me on a course that made all the difference--all because I let somebody in to reveal my glaring blind spots.

I thought about this paper today as I saw another in a long line of conspiracy theories come across my social media feed. I suspect this jarred my memory of the Dinah midrash because I recognized the same kind of assumptions undergirding those "fake news" articles. People who post these claims often say something like, "This is interesting," or "I don't know if this is true but worth thinking about." I can imagine thinking something similar about my Dinah midrash. My interpretation was interesting, but it was also wrong and damaging. It was worth thinking about, but only to understand why it must be rejected.

Unfortunately, I see the opposite reaction from so many who share these ideas. When confronted with the factual inaccuracies in their posts, they too often say something like "Well, who can really know what is true?" I get it: it's embarrassing to be wrong. It's easy to say, "I didn't really believe it. I was just posting it because I found it interesting." But we know the truth: You found it interesting because you wanted to believe it. In fact, maybe you wanted to believe it because it was interesting. I certainly wanted to believe my interpretation of the rape of Dinah, because it demonstrated I was clever enough to see beyond the scripture. That would be interesting! That it was also damaging wasn't really my concern; after all, I wasn't trying to be damaging--I was only after the truth, and who knew what that may be?

One of the bits of wisdom that Dr. Haar often said was that "you need the community to tell you when you're crazy." I believe this is the breakdown we are seeing in this conspiracy-driven landscape. We surround ourselves with like-thinking people who agree with whatever we post, people who coo, "Ooohh, that's interesting!" right back at us. Then, when others are critical, we feel emboldened by the support of those first like-thinkers who reinforced our initial beliefs. Soon it doesn't matter what is true, because the initial idea is still interesting.

I thank God I found Naomi first--that I didn't send the midrash to somebody who would also have found my interpretation interesting. If I had been emboldened to believe whatever I was writing was correct, then I may have been emboldened enough to think that any criticism leveled by Dr. Haar would have been elitist--and what did he know anyway? It's a very slippery slope, which is why I'm so thankful I ended up where I did.

I've never thanked Naomi for this before, though we are still in touch thanks to the wonder of that very same social media that so easily leads us astray. This gives me a good deal of hope, actually--hope that we can be better. I share this today in the hope that you can find the same kind of honest critique. It is a tremendous blessing for somebody to care enough to tell you that you are wrong.

Bad theology and the book of Job

Job 7:11-21

In preaching Job, especially these passages today, I think it’s incredibly important to point out that Job’s friend, Eliphaz, doesn’t understand God at all. It’s one of these challenges reading the Bible out of context when we pick up a chapter and read someone like Eliphaz saying, “Isn't your religion the source of your confidence; the integrity of your conduct, the source of your hope? Think! What innocent person has ever perished?” and it’s real tempting to think, “Well, that must be biblical wisdom!” The problem being that Eliphaz is simply wrong and Job, God, and the reader all know it.

            Job’s friends probably mean well. That might be me putting on my 8^th commandment hat and believing the best of them, but I’ll try it out here at least. Let’s say that Job’s friends actually believe that they are helping him; that Job has some terrible, secret sin that is the reason God took everything from him—never mind that we already know from the story that this isn’t true. If we can put the best light on Eliphaz, we might believe that his understanding of God is just as likely as Job’s. After all, none of us really have met God and been able to interrogate the divine about these matters of theology. Karma makes logical sense; so does an eye for an eye.

            But this story should demonstrate pretty clearly that all theology is not the same, and all of us do theology, whether we think we do or not. If you say, “God is love” then your understanding of what that means is theology; it is using a particular scripture to explain God’s relationship to us. Likewise, if you quote from John and say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and none come to the Father through me,” claiming that Christianity is the only faith that holds water in light of this verse, you are doing theology. Some theology is good; some is bad; much is unclear.

Racism, a pandemic, and the island of Job

Job 1

This week we begin five weeks on the book of Job. Five weeks on the story of a man who had an incredible series of calamities hit him all at once. It might feel a bit like 2020.

But before we see ourselves in Job too clearly—and before we make ourselves out to be blameless as Job was—we should be clear from the start that Job failed miserably at understanding God. For one thing, Job clearly felt that when tragedy strikes it is God who takes away. It’s that oft-quoted verse that I just read (1:21), “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised,” but the story itself reveals that this isn’t true.

It’s probably the most famous verse in all of Job, but 1:21 is clearly a failure of Job to do good theology. God didn’t take anything away from Job; Satan did. I mean God did allow Satan to test him—with conditions—so you could blame God, I suppose, and that is supposedly what Satan is testing, but God didn’t take away anything in this story. Furthermore, the idea that God gave Job what he had is not supported here either. This is one of those tricky sticking points of theology where the question of why some people have material blessings and some do not is not easily answered, and the implied answer about blessings following faithfulness can be extremely damaging and is most often simply a lie. In the real world, the poor are often more faithful than the rich. The moment we use our blessings to prop up ourselves as more faithful is the moment we have jumped the boat.

If you find it easy to place yourself in Job’s shoes, perhaps it’s because he represents the fears of those who have much. If you have a lot, you know a lot can be taken from you. Boy, are those fears poignant right now! As we struggle with an uncertain economy and our nation struggles to come to terms with our complicity in systemic racism, whose causes are so deeply embedded in our history that we hardly know where to start, it becomes easy to ascribe everything that happens to God—the good and the bad. Yet, God’s handiwork is not revealed in Job’s disasters. God has yet to play a role in the story. It’s coming! Oh boy, is God going to take a role in this story, but it’s not yet. God cries with Job; God does not rob Job of his loved ones.

After all, our faith is a faith about taking up our crosses. God doesn’t need to send crosses for us to bear; the world gives them to us! Racism is not something God created; it just happens. Poverty, disease—they happen ultimately because of sin—but God’s role lies further ahead.

We know this is true of God because Job had everything and he was faithful—blameless, the scripture says—but the mark of a God-follower is not how good we are to earn blessings but how we respond when it’s taken away—and it’s not that God is testing us; the world provides plenty of tests without God deciding it’s time to throw another lightning bolt from heaven. Through the next several weeks we will watch the rollercoaster that is Job’s response to tragedy. He begins down an impossible pathway of theological gymnastics to explain what happened to him, because as much as he resists his friends who argue he must have done something wrong, nevertheless Job continues to view the world as if God gives and takes away, and, ultimately, Job cannot get away from viewing wealth as evidence of doing something right. He can’t get past it.

In many ways, Job never stops to realize he is nothing special; that everything he has is a gift not because he is faithful but because God is. He never pauses to consider how the stacked deck benefited him to achieve what he did—just like we rarely pause to consider our own stacked deck. Thankfully, most of us haven’t lost everything, and we may still consider our own privileges more carefully right now.

We aren’t Job, but there are some things we can learn from Job’s story. One thing I take away from Job immediately is that there is no playbook for grief and no hierarchy of grief either. Job has quite a lot and loses everything; other folks start out with little and they, too, may lose everything, and both experience grief profoundly. All the possessions can be replaced, we imagine, but his sons and daughters cannot. When you lose loved ones, nothing else matters.

I think that’s actually a great place to begin, whether you are looking to understand Job, or a pandemic, or the effects of racism. When you lose something you can’t replace, nothing else matters. For too many in our nation, they have lost their dignity and their humanity and their lives because of their skin color. That cannot be replaced, and it is their grief they carry day by day.