No Longer Bound by the Law

Texts:
Psalm 29
Isaiah 1:1-4, 16-20
Romans 8:1-8


Romans 8, for me, is Paul at his best.  From verse 1, "There is therefore now now condemnation those in Christ Jesus," to verse 39: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," and everything in between, points to the Gospel.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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How, then, are we to reconcile verses 5-8?  These verses almost seem to negate the promises found in the other verses.   What is Paul trying to say?  What is he trying to accomplish?  Is he introducing a new law, though God has undone the law on our behalf?  It would seem that, in verse 3, God has turned Godself against the law on our behalf.  The Law, created that we might live in harmony with our neighbors, we turned on its head and started to utilize it to separate us from our neighbors.  We utilized it for our own ends, weakening the Law into a set of rules and boundaries that protected ourselves rather than inspired us to protect our neighbors.  In so doing, we bound ourselves to the flesh, obsessed with protecting ourselves and with our own well being.  We failed to see that our thriving is deeply connected to the thriving of our neighbors.


So God set Godself against the law in order to break down our divisions and to make obsolete our misinterpretation and misuse of the Law.  By making the Gift free, God has taken away any ability we would have to use the Law to separate ourselves from our neighbors.  God has undone Godself in order that we might be bound not to the Law, but to our neighbor.  It is here we see the Law was never meant to bind us, but rather to enable us to set one another free.  And as we unbind one another, we find our shackles have been released as well.

Identity in Diversity

Texts:

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Genesis 11:1-9

1 Corinthians 12:12-27

"And if one part of suffers, all parts suffer with it; if one part is glorified, all the parts are glorified with it."

But the truth is we live divided lives.  We live divided from our neighbors, from our brothers and sisters, and from ourselves.  We desire intimacy and connection but we do not want these things at the expense of our identities.  I think there is an implicit belief that, by allowing another person to be themselves, or by identifying ourselves with another person, we lose piece of our selves.  How little confidence we have in who we have been made to be!  So easily threatened, so easily challenged, so easily made defensive, we choose to cut people off from relationship with us when we fear we might be hurt or when we realize we have the capacity to hurt each other.

What if our identities are not so much in spite of one another but because of one another?  What if it is when we are met with the Other that we have the opportunity to be our most true selves?  Instead, we try to make it on our own.  We try to live as though we are impervious to the world around us, above needing each other, above desiring intimacy and connection.

I think this is the real issue with the story of Babel from Genesis for today.  It wasn't that God was jealous that the people were working together or that God was threatened by them building a big city and a big tower.  I don't think it was that God was threatened at all.      Having created people to be in relationship with each other and with God, God saw people attempting to do this on their own, pointing to their accomplishments as the end and purpose of their existence.  The self becomes puffed up as it starts to imagine that it has no need of those around it.  Conversely, the self who has known failure and defeat begins to believe it serves no purpose.  We have been created for relationship, to rejoice in each other and to grieve with each other.  

Where we burn bridges, God builds.  Where we hate, God loves.  Where we turn away, God turns toward.  Where we see tally our defeats and successes as a mark of divine favor, God removes all of the stipulations, all of the excuses, and all of the reasons and simply says, "You are mine." 

If They Tear it Down, We'll Just Build Another One.

People of God, can these bones live?  People of God, can this church live?  People of God, can we live?  Today is the day the church is born.  Today is the day the Spirit shows up.  Today is the day that we cannot undo, any more than we can shove the toothpaste back into the tube after putting it on our brush.  There they were, having their festival, going about their merry ways celebrating the giving of the 10 Commandments, and then, all of the sudden, there was this great wind and something like tongues of fire and people heard foreigners - outsiders - outcasts - speaking in their own languages.  This is the day they couldn’t go back.  They couldn’t forget.  They couldn’t make the Holy Spirit go away.  They couldn’t do synagogue normally anymore.  Nothing is the same.  It starts here, leaving the good Jews scratching their heads, “Well, are we going to let anyone in, then?”

The church was called forward, and it was messy and uncomfortable and awkward, so much so that the sane people in the crowd started murmuring, “They must be drunk.”  That’s what I want to say to these people, to the people who are moved by the Holy Spirit.  That’s what I’m telling myself when the Holy Spirit shows up in my life.  It can’t be, can it?  It can’t be that we’re called to be church together, can it?  It can’t be that we are called to be a part of this mission, can it?  Like most good Lutherans, when the Holy Spirit shows up, we take off running the opposite direction.  She messes with the way we think church ought to go.  All those prayers, all those years, as we watched members find other homes.  All those prayers, all those years, as we watched our lives fall apart and learn how to pick them up again, each time with a few more cracks in them.  The Holy Spirit is out running lose in the world, and it seems its whole mission is to take a nice group of church people and show them how church is different from how they ever imagined it.  Today is the day that we are thrown out into the world, forced to learn its language, forced to see everything anew, forced to see God working in the far reaches of our experience.  Blinking as we step into the blinding light, there is no way back.

Today is the day God is calling the church forward, calling the church to let go of all its visions of the past, calling the church to let go of what it supposes the glory days were, and calling us into God’s new reality.  St. Peter isn’t supposed to look the way it did 100 years ago.  St. Peter isn’t supposed to look the way it did 30 years ago.  It’s not supposed to look the way it did 15 years ago.  Dear friends, we cannot go back.  We are not called backward, but we are called forward.  We are called to imagine this life, this church anew.

“If they tear it down, we’ll just build a new one,” the Abuna said to me about the church.  They had continued building on this site even though the permit was tied up in government paperwork and would never come back.  I couldn’t understand much Arabic, but I understood the twinkling in his eye, the note in his voice that said, “What we have can never be taken away.”

And here, in this valley of dry bones, there is a creaking, a wind, a movement, and it’s scary.  It’s scary to build a church knowing that it might be torn down.  It’s scary knowing all of your work might amount to a pile of bricks.  But will it?  Is that all we have been given here to work with?  Is that it?  Just a pile of bricks?  And I say to you what the Abuna said to me, “If they tear it down, we’ll just build a new one.”

This is what Jesus said about his body.  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  I will raise it up, and I will raise you with me.  I will not leave you orphaned.  The advocate has come, and it’s scary, coming with wind and fire, rattling through our bones, making a noise within us.  Dear brothers and sisters, the Spirit is moving.  It is moving through a valley that looked like it might be dead.  It is moving through lives that looked like they would never change.  It is moving through people that looked like they would never change the world.

There Peter was, witnessing all this.  And he opens his mouth.  Peter is no protagonist.  If this were Hollywood, at this point the audience would gasp and say, “Nooooooo!”  Then the strangest thing happens: Peter begins to preach, and it’s beautiful.  Borrowing from Joel, he says: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”  This story, which had been told to Peter and has been told to you, is the story that he tells.  This is the proclamation:  ²³this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. ²⁴But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 

It was impossible for him to be held in the power of death.  Death, the final enemy, has been conquered.  “Can these bones live?”  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  “If they tear it down, we’ll just build another one.”  Dear friends, this is the hope to which we have all been called.  It is this audacious hope that looks at a valley of dry bones and calls it to life.   It is this audacious hope that looks at sinners and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, proclaims them saints.  It is this audacious hope that says “What I have can never be destroyed.”  The Holy Spirit gives us the audacity to preach, to tell this story.  The Holy Spirit gives us the audacity to look at all of creation as our mission field.  As Ben and I left Holden Village, scared, not knowing where we were going or what we were doing, having no idea we would go to graduate school or seminary, the prayer the community sends those who leave it was strangely prophetic for us, and now I share it with you: “Lord God, you have called us your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is guiding us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Dear brothers and sisters, the Spirit is calling you out, beckoning you to imagine your lives and St. Peter anew, giving you a Spirit of adoption, a Spirit of hope, a Spirit that says, “If they tear it down, we’ll just build another one.”  Thanks be to God.

Life at the Edge

Texts:

Psalm 33:12-22

Job 37:1-13

1 Corinthians 15:50-57

I love the 1 Corinthians reading for today:
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters,^* is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,^* but we will all be changed, ⁵²in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.⁵⁴When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ 
⁵⁵ ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?’ 
⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.


And no, I do not love it because I think it points to the rapture.  And no, I do not love it because it is fascinating literature (though it is!).  I love this because what I think Paul is actually conveying is: "Whatever you have thought about life, whatever you have thought about death, whatever you have thought about eternity, it's better than that."  There is this mystery and there is this promise that, though we cannot see it, though death seems to be the one thing living things cannot avoid, though it often comes during times of great stress and pain, it holds the promise that "Death has been swallowed up."  Death brings questions that yield no easy answers, but it also brings promises beyond our greatest imagination.  


This reading does not empower us to leave life behind, but rather to live into it more fully, more fearlessly, more boldly.  We are not called to be apart from the world but called more deeply into it.  We live at the edge: at the edge of life and death, at the edge of hope and despair, at the edge of belief and apostasy, at the edge of sinner and saint.  It is living on this edge that we find that life is more than preservation, more than protection, more than cautiously walking through hoping we do not encounter any landmines.  It is here we find that life happens in spite of the landmines, in the face of disaster, in the mud and the muck of humanity because it is here Christ dwells.

In Letters Too Large to See

Quote:
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
C. S. Lewis

Texts:

Psalm 33:12-22

Genesis 2:4b-7

1 Corinthians 15:42b-49


This is the story 
of how our Creator has sustained creation, 
having loved the good-but-not-perfect earth, 
of having made it needlessly, 
out of sheer extravagance.


This is the story
of tripping over ourselves trying
to gain power other than that of great love
though we tried to leave it behind
out of arrogance that we could do it ourselves.


This is the story
of falling down, down, down
to earth to realization to humility to fear
realizing our strength lies only in weakness
and our hope at the edge of despair.


This is the story
of redemption and reconciliation
as extravagant as the first day of creation
in which love outpours in abundance
a love which has grown from the beginning of all things.