The praises of Hannah and Mary

The story of a woman named Hannah is related in First Samuel. Hannah was married to Elkanah, a Levite and a priest. For many years Hannah was childless. Hannah spent her years in tears and bitter disappointment. Finally Hannah reached the end of her rope. She prayed near the temple, in her day a rough building of wood, for Hannah lived a long time before King David, who built the first grand Temple. 

Hannah prayed, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life... ."

The prophet Eli happened to be sitting in a chair nearby and saw her utter the words but did not hear her voice. He thought she was drunk and told her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine."

Like Zechariah (Elizabeth's husband), like Joseph, like Abraham, Eli just didn’t get it. Hannah explained what she was doing, and then Eli gave her his blessing. 

Hannah did give birth to a son, Samuel, whom she turned over to Eli when Samuel was about three years old, so he would be brought up exclusively in the service of the Lord, as Hannah had promised. Then Hannah was overcome with gratitude and joy, leading her praise God.

Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your victory. There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

Talk no more so very proudly; let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.

The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low; he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked will perish in darkness, for not by might does one prevail. The LORD! His adversaries will be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.

As an adult, Samuel led the people against the Philistines and selected Saul as the first king of Israel. He later anointed David as Saul’s successor. Pretty important guy in the history of the Jews!

Luke's Gospel relates that Mary, betrothed to a man named Joseph, was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told her that she had been selected by God to bear the Son of God into human birth. Joseph was not consulted about this but later learned the truth, that as Gabriel had told Mary, she would be with child by the Holy Spirit. 

Shortly afterward, Mary went to visit her relative, Elizabeth, and upon greeting her, burst into a canticle of praise that has endured through time as Mary's Magnificat.  

For centuries Christians have remarked on how much Mary’s Magnificat resembles Hannah’s song of praise. And so I have combined them as a responsive reading. 

Responsive reading: the praises of Hannah and Mary (Lk. 1:46b-55; 1 Sam. 2:1-10)

 Hannah: My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. I delight in his deliverance.

Mary: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

H: There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides him; there is no Rock like our God.

M: He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

H: The warriors’ bows are broken, but those who stumbled are made strong. 

M: God shows mercy to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

H: The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.

M: He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.

M: He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

H: He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.

M: He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever.

H: The foundations of the earth are the Lord’s; upon them he has set the world. He will guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked will be silenced. 

H: It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the LORD will be shattered. 

H: The LORD will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt his anointed. Amen. 

A link for FB readers.

If you are here by following the link I posted on my FB page on Oct. 31, concerning what we can expect after the election, no matter who get the most votes, then please click here to go to the actual essay, since FB's robots kicked it off when I posted to it directly because it was, they said, spam.

Post-election violence is coming

Several links here. I will excerpt from each, but I hope you will read them all. My prediction (and I am hardly a lone voice here) is that the time following the presidential election will see widespread violence in our country. Not necessarily on election day (though that is possible now seems certain, see second update at end) or immediately thereafter, but at minimum on and after Dec. 17, which is when the electoral college votes. 

That violence will follow next week seems almost certain to me, starting closely after the news media announce which candidate has gained 270 or more electoral college votes.

And most Americans agree: "Many expect post-election violence, most blame media."

“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 51% of likely U.S. voters believe it’s likely there will be a violent reaction if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, including 26% who say such a reaction is ‘very likely.’ However, 47% also think a violent reaction is likely if former President Donald Trump wins, including 23% who say violence is ‘very likely’ to follow a Trump victory,” said the survey analysis.

Which begs the question: "Could Civil War Erupt in America? The United States is now showing preconditions for political violence, scholars say. Here’s how it can prevent disaster." (Foreign Policy, paywalled):

... the U.S. Civil War was highly, highly unusual. Most civil wars look like insurgencies and guerrilla warfare and tend not to be fought by large armies. They are fought by small militias or paramilitary groups. And sometimes those groups are working together, and sometimes they’re actually competing against each other. And the reality is they don’t want to engage the government soldiers. They’re trying to avoid battles and avoid direct fights with the government because in most cases, governments are much, much more powerful than these ragtag groups of insurgents or militias. And so they tend to take the violence to civilians.

Terrorism is one of the main tools of 21st-century civil wars. Think about the IRA in Northern Ireland. By the definition of civil war, that was a civil war. But most Irish Catholics were not fighting. They called it the Troubles. This fight was by a minority of citizens on the ideological extreme.

One of the reasons why skeptics have said this can’t happen here again is because the model they’re using is the first Civil War. And that is true. That is never going to happen again here. Something different, however, could easily happen here.

How might it start? Well, the 2016 election's aftermath gives us a clue:

But anti-Trump or anti-Harris rioters are not the only snakes in the woods: "U.S. Adversaries Could Stoke Post-Election Unrest, Intel Report Warns. Iran and Russia may seek to foment violence after the vote, according to a newly declassified analysis."

U.S. adversaries are likely to try to undermine confidence in the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, stoke unrest, and boost their preferred candidates even after polls close on Nov. 5, according to a newly declassified assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Tuesday.

“Iran and Russia are probably willing to at least consider tactics that could foment or contribute to violent protests, and may threaten, or amplify threats of, physical violence,” according to the assessment, which was prepared on Oct. 8. 

The seven-page memorandum also says Tehran’s efforts to assassinate former President Donald Trump and other former U.S. officials are likely to persist after Election Day regardless of the result.  

In fact, FBI Director Christopher Wray has been warning of foreign terrorist threats inside the US for at least a year:

Foreign terrorists targeting US 'increasingly concerning': FBI director

Foreign adversaries and terrorist groups are sharpening their aim at the United States -- targeting cyber operations, security and "mafia-like" tactics in an "increasingly concerning" way, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech on Tuesday.

At the American Bar Association luncheon in Washington, D.C., Wray said the agency is working to prevent a coordinated attack from terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, an affiliate of ISIS.

"Foreign terrorists, including ISIS, al-Qaida and their adherents, have renewed calls for attacks against Jewish communities here in the United States and across the West in statements and propaganda," Wray said. "The foreign terrorist threat and the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, like the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago, is now increasingly concerning. Oct. 7 and the conflict that's followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come."

The warning comes as experts predict ISIS will try to carry out an attack on the United States.

"We should believe them when they say that. They're going to try to do it," retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz last month.

Director Wray's Opening Statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies:

When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment. Since then:

1. We’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole 'nother level after October 7;
2. We continue to see the cartels push fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of the country, claiming countless American lives;
3. We’ve seen a spate of ransomware and other cyberattacks impacting parts of our critical infrastructure and businesses large and small;
4. Violent crime, which reached alarming levels coming out of the pandemic, remains far too high and is impacting far too many communities; [and]
5. China continues its relentless efforts to steal our intellectual property and most valuable information.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today.

There are many more such links. One question is: Will foreign operatives take advantage of homegrown post-election violence to carry out potentially devastating attacks, using homegrown violent actors as cover? Such attacks need not cause massive casualties to be devastating. Attacking our civil infrastructure such as power grids and transportation hubs would cause untold chaos. 

America is more divided now than ever, including the years leading up to the Civil War. The coming weeks or months will be critical in determining whether the inevitable post-election violence will accelerate this country's political and social dissolution, or whether Americans still have enough sense of national unity to overcome and rebuild. I personally am not optimistic.

Update: After VP Harris's speech at the Washington ellipse early this week, a pro-Hamas crowd demonstrated there, calling for intifada. Intifada is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement, according to Wikipedia, and has been the term used for many years to describe violence by Muslim Arabs against Jews and Israel generally. This image is a grab, the link to the video on X here here: https://x.com/TPostMillennial/status/1851427970189242510

Last summer, Richard Pollock wrote, "Palestinian Storm Troopers on the Potomac?" which seems now hardly to deserve the question mark. Well worth reading the whole essay. 

[Ryan] Mauro says the militants are trying to create an emotional and violent “new paradigm” that is part of an aggressive political “eco-system” designed to deliver harsh attacks against all Americans - Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Christians and Jews. 

“These aren’t just critics of Israel,” Mauro told me in an interview. “They’re not Republicans or Democrats. They’re not liberals. We really have to think of these groups as a new paradigm because they’re communists, anarchists, radical Islamicists and anti-Americans. It really sets them apart from the categories of people that we’re used to dealing with people like liberals and those demonstrating for women’s rights. No, this is separate. This is an eco-system that is against both political parties, against liberals and conservatives.”  ...

So Mauro warns one of the most troubling things about the Palestinian groups is their tendency toward aggressiveness, and eventually, violence.

He says of all American protest groups, the Palestinian organizations “are the most aggressive.”

“They’re not the type of people out there who are interested in positive, civil discourse that brings back healing and unity to the country. They’re terrible bomb throwers that like to cause conflict and they are ferociously anti-American too. That’s what’s often forgotten. Just as much as they hate Israel, they explicitly hate the United States and have actually called for the U.S. to no longer exist.”

Ryan Mauro "follows extremist groups for the nonprofit Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C. Prior to his work at CRC, he served as the Director of Intelligence for the Clarion Project, a counter-extremism organization."

Richard Pollock was one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s and served as it chief tactician (meaning he taught New Leftists how to riot, literally). As he says elsewhere, "For the hard Left, violence has been part of their political religion. I know, as I once was a hard Left activist as I was a roommate with Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis. I personally became friends with Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and hard-left lawyer Bill Kuntsler. I understand that political violence is part of the Left’s DNA."

Update, 1 Nov: Richard Pollock, yesterday: "Anti-Trump Protests Are Being Readied in the Nation's Capital - National Park Service Records Disclose Protest Plans."

Donald Trump’s opponents appear to be planning potentially violent demonstrations that could rock the nation’s capital if the former President should win the 2024 election.

This dark prospect emerges from current requests for demonstration permit I obtained from the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency which regulates legal demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

NPS permit records show that nearly all the post-election and Inaugural Day permits have been filed by leftwing anti-Trump groups, including pro-Palestinian and “defend democracy” groups.

The applicants claim about 15,000 protesters could descend on Washington, D.C. on election night and up to 200,000 anti-Trump protests could arrive leading up to and including Inauguration Day, when the next President is sworn in.

Also, Portland, Ore., businesses are boarding up their windows (just as they are doing in D.C.) and expecting the worse. 

The Portland Police Bureau says it has received no specific threats, but it has extended shifts to cover for Portland's unique "peaceful" transfer of power. In other words: likely violence.

The PPB said it would not tolerate: 

• Impeding transportation by blocking streets and vehicular traffic. 
• Lighting fires and burning materials.
• Vandalizing and damaging property.
• Assaultive behavior.
• Unlawful weapons possession and/or use.

PPB Chief Bob Day told attendees of a presser, “Everybody’s talking about Portland. Everybody wants to know how we’re going to show up, how we’re going to be. I think this is our time.”

Portland is where two ballot drop boxes were broken into a few days ago, vandalized, and burned, where the still at-large arsonist left the messages including, "Free Gaza," and "Free Palestine," hardly the script of a rightwing Trump supporter.

Is God guilty?

Elie Wiesel survived Nazi concentration camps to become a renowned author and playwright. In his stage play of the Holocaust, “The Trial,” a man named Berish is a survivor of a persecution in which most Jews of the village of Shamgorod are taken out and killed by soldiers one day. Afterward, Berish and some surviving Jews put God on trial, with Berish acting as the prosecutor. 

He speaks as witness for all the slaughtered: “Let their premature, unjust deaths turn into an outcry so forceful that it will make the universe tremble with fear and remorse!” Berish’s play is interrupted by the news that the soldiers are about to return. A village priest offers to baptize Berish so he can truthfully claim to be Catholic. Berish refuses, saying, “My sons and my fathers perished without betraying their faith; I can do no less.” He insists that this decision does not suggest a reconciliation with God. “I lived as a Jew,” he exclaims, “and it is as a Jew that I shall die – and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God! And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Because the end is near, I’ll tell Him that He’s more guilty than ever!”

There is evil in the world, and pain, and suffering. If God is not responsible, then who is? Is anyone?

The second-longest book in the Bible bears the name of a man named Job. Job was a wealthy and righteous man, said so by God himself in the opening verses. Yet with God’s permission, he was brought to ruin. All his property and his entire family were destroyed by storms and marauders. Then Job was afflicted with terrible diseases that broke his skin out in painful, cankerous sores. At first and for a long time afterward, Job refused to blame God for any of it, even though his wife told him he should "curse God and die." Some friends came and tried to explain his suffering to him. One said he was being punished for his sin, but Job correctly denies that he is sinful. Another says it is not Job's sin that is the cause of the calamity, but that God is trying to teach Job a lesson. But Job rebuts that notion by pointing out that there is no lesson so valuable that he would ever consider it worthwhile to learn at the expense of the deaths of his children and his own, personal suffering. All their attempts to explain Job’s plight have all the theological depth of a bumper sticker. Job doesn’t buy any of it. 

Finally, Job cannot cling to his old faith any longer. Sitting in ashes, clothed only in sackcloth, he challenges God to stand trial for mismanaging the world. Piety no longer makes any sense to Job. Chaos such as Job experienced afflicts not only Job, but the world at large, so God seems either inept or monstrous, and therefore should be feared, but not loved or worshiped. 

So Job bitterly, defiantly pressed his complaint about God to God: “Let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing” (Job 31:35). The task God faces in responding to Job is to make worship and piety sensible again.

God’s reply to Job begins in chapter 38 and continues through the end of chapter 41. Our reading today is just a taste. But is it a taste of a great banquet or of thin gruel? By the time one has read the first 37 chapters one has wallowed in Job’s misery. One has listened to Job’s self-righteous friends, with their turgid, repetitive explanations. Job’s conditions, the problems of human suffering, and the emptiness of easy explanations leave one famished for spiritual food and drink. So Job demands that God defend his governance of the world. Job has shed all his presuppositions about God. Nothing he thought he knew works anymore. 

Thomas Long wrote, “Because Job suffers so grievously and so irrationally, he is no longer permitted the luxury of an illusion. Every attempt at make-believe falls before the reality of empty places at his family table and the throbbing pain in his body. The only god Job can manufacture from his misery is a monster, and Job must decide whether to flee from this arbitrary and punitive god or to stand up boldly to see if there just might be another God not of his own making."

1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: 2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements – surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? 35 Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? 37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, 38 when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together?

39 “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 40 when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert? 41 Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food? 

Job 38:1-7, 34-41 

At first reading of God’s reply to Job, it seems God explains nothing, he just swaggers in, thumps the divine chest and throws his weight around, demanding who Job thinks he is. 

Back in chapter 9, Job had predicted this would happen. “If it is a matter of strength, he is mighty! . . . Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me ...” (Job 9:19a, 20a). In effect, Job predicted that when God shows up, he will be a humbug, rather like the man behind the curtain whom Toto uncovered to Dorothy’s accusing stare. Taking God’s reply at face value, God says, “You’ve got a lot of gall to question the creator of the world! Be quiet! I’m God and you’re not.” 

Unless . . . 

Unless we observe two things. First, no one book of the Bible contains all of God’s revelations and thus no one book even asks all the questions, much less gives all the answers. In the rest of Scripture, God has more to say – and more importantly, to do – than he says to Job. Second, God’s reply to job is mostly poetic. It is visionary. God calls us to experience existence itself, not just ponder our misfortunes.

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God demands. “Counsel” means the “planning of God in relation to his creation and includes what we understand by providence” (Gerhard von Rad). Job’s former world of familiar order and routine has disappeared. God knows that Job has accused him of creating a world lacking moral order, a world governed by darkened counsel. 

Job has considered only two possibilities: either God is just in ways that we like and understand, or creation is basically chaotic and not even God is what he should be. 

So God defends his design of the world. A rapid series of divine questions reveals to Job that he does not know the ways of God. There is a purpose in creation that God knows but Job does not. Job is right is rejecting his sinfulness as the cause of his suffering. He is right to reject his friends’ suggestions that he somehow deserves his suffering, but still, Job assumes too much. The whole of reality is far greater than Job can comprehend. Human understanding can never be more than very partial. In the midst of the realms of nature, there is order and wisdom – not a fixed order, nor even an obvious order, but a flexible order that demands patience and wonder. God’s questions humble Job because he cannot answer them, and they affirm the counsel of God. But one would have to be God to answer God’s questions, so what is being proved? That Job is not God? Job already knows that.

Yet by the end of God’s speech in chapter 41, we see that Job’s understanding is incomplete. Everything – even evil and suffering – are brought finally under God’s dominion.

Then Job answered the LORD: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. . . . therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." Job acknowledges that God’s power and dominion over creation are not fully comprehensible by him or any other human being. He has presumed too much.

There is another side to suffering and another side to presuming too much. The Gospel of Mark records that James and John went to Jesus one day and said, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."

Jesus replied, "What is it you want me to do for you?"

And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

Talk about presumption! James and John decided to get a jump on the competition and jockeyed for favor early. Jesus was obviously a man who was going places, kingship, no less, so they wanted to be his prime minister and secretary of state.

Like Job, these disciples adopted a bargaining relationship with God. We’ll serve you, they basically said, but on the condition that your governance suits us. 

But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking." And he explained that to follow him means to endure what he would endure: you "must be able to drink the cup that I drink," he explained. If you wish to be great, you must be a servant and if you wish to be first you must be a slave to all. "For," Jesus explained, I came "not to be served but to serve," and "to give my life a ransom for many." So suffering and death are part of the cup of discipleship.

The suffering and death of Christ were obstacles to evangelizing the ancient world. How preposterous can it be to worship a God who died a political execution? What sort of God would or could let that happen? If the sufferings of Job call into question God’s governance of the world, how much more the sufferings of Jesus make us wonder whether God is really in control. If Job is able reasonably to imagine that God might be monstrous, what are we to think about a God who would permit his own Son to endure what Jesus did? If God really is in control, what kind of God is he? 

This question - not whether there is a god but what kind of God there is - is the central question of religious faith. It is also perhaps the most deeply personal question we can face because within it lie all our hopes and all our fears, all our doubts and all our longings, all our love and all our loneliness. 

Intellectual and moral integrity require us to acknowledge the justice of Job’s complaint against God. Far from avoiding the issue by rote repetition of empty religious slogans, Job had the courage to take God seriously, as God, whose majesty and sovereignty over creation were real. The issue for Job was not whether God exists, but whether God is a cosmic bully at worst or incompetent at best. 

In the face of the plight of job and the history of our own world, what evidence is there that can persuade us not simply to fear God but to love and worship God as a saving God of compassion and grace and mercy?

The promises of God are many, wrote Paul. Redemption, reconciliation, recreation, resurrection. If we can imagine a better world than we have – and each of us can imagine one easily – then what is God doing to bring such a world about? What is the evidence that God is keeping his promises? For without such evidence, believing those promises is not a matter of faith, but of wishful thinking at best or blind stupidity at worst.

The answer, you will be unsurprised to hear me say, is Jesus Christ. “For no matter how many promises God has made,” wrote Paul, “they are "Yes" in Christ” (2 Cor 1:20a).

A passage from Hebrews tells us, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. . . .  and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. ...”

There is the assurance we find in the suffering of Christ: God himself stooped to suffer pain and death, just as we all do. 

Every complaint Job has is valid, but none of his complaints are the final say. For if Job and we want to doubt God because of the way the world treats us, then God in Christ answers, "It has treated me the same way." 

But the cruel and sometimes capricious world does not get the last word, either. "In this world you will have troubles," said Jesus, "but don’t worry: I have overcome the world." God gets the last word. Suffering and death are real but not final. The worst that the world could throw at Christ was defeated by his resurrection. 

There is an order to creation that we may not see very well. But there are some things we can see with blinding clarity. So we fix our eyes not merely on the here and now, but also the eternal purposes of God. For this world and all its troubles is temporary, but the purposes of God are eternal. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,” says Hebrews, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). 

And so, someday, shall we.

Of M.I.C.E. and men (and women)

 I once went to an apologetics conference at Trevecca-Nazarene University in Nashville. Christian apologetics is the investigative, coherent and evidence-based defense of the claims of Christian faith. One of the speakers was named J. Warner Wallace. Mr. Wallace comes from a fully-atheist family. He is one of multiple generations of his family who have served the Los Angeles police department, working as a cold-case detective. It was his professional investigative skills that led him, a confirmed atheist at the time, to investigate the death and claimed resurrection of Jesus in order to prove that the story was nonsense. Instead, he found that the hard evidence of history firmly supported the proclamation that “Christ has died, Christ is risen.” He became a Christian and wrote a book called Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. It’s worth your time and money.

One thing Wallace did was explain the investigative process and how evidence comes together to support or rebut certain conclusions. In explaining this process, using a real murder case he had solved, he said that there are three, and only three, motives for committing a crime. They are greed, lust, and pursuit of power. That’s it, he said, just those three and all motives criminals have fit somewhere in them. 

I found this interesting because it helps explain also why we sin. It does not explain everything about why we sin since Wallace’s three motives only from within the human person. But when we combine this explanation with an understanding of temptation, which comes from outside us, we have a pretty good overall understanding of the human tendency to sin against God and one another. And when temptation combines with built-in desire, watch out!

Think about this while hearing Joshua’s admonishment to the children of Israel after they had established tribal provinces in the Promised Land in Joshua 24.1-3, 14-25. 

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. 2And Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors--Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor--lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. 3a Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many.

14"Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." 

16Then the people answered, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; 17for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; 18and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

23He said, "Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel." 24The people said to Joshua, "The LORD our God we will serve, and him we will obey." 25So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem.

The people of Israel were not yet the strict monotheists they would become. Like all other people of the ancient Near East at the time, the ancient Israelites had a very ethnic concept of divine beings. Their God was Yahweh, as they called him in their language. But they didn't yet insist that only Yahweh existed. Other nations had other gods: the Egyptians had Ishtar, Horus, Anubis and many other gods, the Canaanites had Baal and Anat and others. The ancient Israelites did not think those other deities didn't exist. Those were the foreigners' gods and Yahweh was their God. The belief that only Yahweh existed took time to develop. 

That is why Joshua found it necessary to admonish the people that they must choose whom they would serve. He reminded them that their ancestors had worshiped other gods than Yahweh, and the people who still lived in the Promised Land, the Amorites, also worshiped other gods. 

He reminded the people of the liberty that Yahweh had given them in bringing them from Egypt and giving them their new homeland. But, said Joshua, the choice is yours. Serve Yahweh or something else. But they would serve someone so they must choose. There is no neutrality. "As for me and my household," concluded Joshua, "we will serve the Lord." 

Rarely is the choice between serving God or false idols presented to us as starkly as Joshua presented it. Usually the choices are presented subtly. 

Detective Wallace’s explanation of the motives of human criminality made me recall a conversation I had years ago with an officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He told me the secret of MICE. It was an acronym for the four main reasons an officer or diplomat of one of our nation's adversaries would defect. It stood for Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. Find the right way to press those buttons, he said, and the chances of recruiting a foreign official to serve the interests of the United States would be much improved.

Some people betray their country, he said, simply for money. Both the old Soviet Union and the United States, he said, were very successful in gaining defectors simply by paying them enough money. 

We can take it for granted that if spy agencies know people can be bought off by money, then the devil knows we can. I used to subscribe to a weekly email newsletter. One of them told of a chief executive officer of a large company who retired. At the retirement dinner he looked at all the young executives and said, “I know you want my job, and I’ll tell you how to get it. Last week my daughter was married, and as she walked down the aisle, I realized I did not know the name of her best friend, or the last book she read, or her favorite color. That’s the price I paid for this job. If you want to pay that price, you can have it.”

It is not true that whoever dies with the most toys wins. Whoever dies with the most toys just dies. Money itself is morally neutral. Money is a tool, that’s all. We can use it for good or for evil, or we can just trifle it away. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” says First Timothy 6. "No one can serve two masters," said Jesus, "for he will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Mt. 6:24). We have to choose!

Ideology. 

Ideology is another way to displace God. Ideology is a pernicious temptation because many ideologies have great similarities with religion. In fact, I wonder whether the slide from religion to ideology is a particular weakness for religious people. Over the past twenty centuries the Church has been admonished over and over not to turn Christian religion into an ideology. 

Political parties have ideologies, and Lord knows we have enough such ideology in America today to last us for decades to come. In fact, the entire idea of America began as an ideology. Being involved in politics is not a bad thing for Christians unless our loyalty to party is greater than to Christ. Political affiliation must never take priority over the way of the cross.  

Unfortunately, the whole concept of "church" itself can be an ideology, too. This is the special temptation of clergy, I think, to become so loyal and devoted to the institution of the church that we forget the church exists not for us, nor even for itself, but for the kingdom of God to do what God wants.

Compromise. 

We live in an imperfect world. Ideal solutions to issues we face as individuals or as the church are rarely going to be possible. We make compromises of one kind or another every day. We have to. But the necessity to compromise easily slides into a willingness to make excuses: I won't pray this morning because I'm running late, so I'll pray tonight. I can't pray tonight because I'm too tired. Compromises, excuses.

Compromises can be disastrous. A New York family bought a ranch out West to raise cattle. Friends asked if the ranch had a name. "Well," said the would-be cattleman, "I wanted to name it the Bar-J. My wife favored Suzy-Q, one son liked the Flying-W, and the other wanted the Lazy-Y. So we're calling it the Bar-J-Suzy-Q-Flying-W-Lazy-Y ranch." 

"How many cattle do you have?" the friends asked. 

“None,” said the New York man, "They didn’t live through the branding." 

Usually, though, compromises are the death of a thousand cuts, each small and insignificant on its own, but in total lethal to Christian character or ministry. Most sins we commit are compromises of one kind or another, but they are always for sound reasons, are they not? As author James Moore put it, “Yes, Lord, I have sinned, but I have several excellent excuses.” We should remember that there is no right reason to do a wrong thing. 

But the worst kind of compromise is this: Because we all sin, there is nothing the devil likes more than to try to convince us that our sins prohibit us from serving God. Have you ever thought, "I would pray, I would take Holy Communion, I would go to Bible study, I would participate in this ministry, but there's this sin in my life and I can't face God until I've stopped it." I've thought that and sometimes still do. It's a compromise all right, but it's a compromise with the devil. When we dwell on our sins instead of the One who takes them away, we've compromised ourselves out of God's service.

Paul wrote in Second Corinthians that he was prone toward unwarranted pride but that a “thorn in the flesh” tormented him too much to allow it. We do not know what this thorn was; speculations have ranged from physical disability to temptations of the fleshly kind or even a personal opponent. But we don’t know. He said he prayed over and over for this thorn to be removed but it was not. Finally, he realized that God’s grace was greater than this thorn and Christ’s power was made perfect in human weakness. So he learned to live with it because it was in his human weaknesses that Christ could be strongest. 

When we compromise with our sin, sin wins. I know exactly what my thorn in the flesh is and I have prayed much for it to vanish. Many have been the times when I thought it disqualify me from even attending church, much less preaching in it. But, like Paul I think, I have come to know that sin wins when we let it rule and nowhere is our defeat more decisive than when we let some sin make us withdraw from Christian service. That is not really a compromise; it is a surrender. So, as Paul wrote in Philippians, I want to serve Christ and so press on to reach the goal of the heavenly call of god in Christ Jesus. 

No thorn in the flesh may rightfully hinder us from serving our Lord because there is nothing in this life that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Ego. 

The DIA operative told me that successful diplomats or intelligence operatives can become so self-impressed that they defect to the other side just to play the game at a higher level. They try to “play” both sides. That’s a mindset that Joshua was denouncing: We can’t “play” God.  God knows everything about us. But it’s easy for us to think, “I have everything completely under control,” including where Christian devotion fits in. It’s easy to slide into thinking that the church is there to prop up the lifestyle we want to live rather than admit that a just and loving god has every right to take a wrecking ball to all of it for the sake of his kingdom. 

Paul admonished us in Philippians chapter 2, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves." Jesus said, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." 

In Herman Melville's book, Moby Dick, the sailors go to a service at the Whalemen's Chapel before setting to sea. Preacher Mapple tells them, "All the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do - remember that - and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists."

And that is really the central issue: Do we decide to obey our fallen selves and yield to the temptations of money, ideology, compromise, and ego? Or do we say yes to God and accept his grace, mercies, and gifts? As Joshua put it, we have to choose. Let us choose widely!

A reflection on World Communion Sunday

John 15:1-8:

1 “I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the vine grower. 2 He takes away every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he cleanses it to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

4 Abide in me as I abide in you. A branch is not able to bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 

5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is cast out like a dried branch; such branches are gathered, cast into the fire, and burned.

7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Around these parts when we hear the word, “vine,” we tend to think of either honeysuckle or ivy. In Jesus’s day the word vine would have evoked the image of the grapevine. Grapevines require intense cultivation. Left to itself, a grapevine becomes useless for bearing good fruit. Arborist and gardening author Lee Reich wrote, “Few garden sights are as sorry as an untended grapevine. Its branches become so tangled that sunlight and air no longer dry them readily, making the plant prone to disease. The grapes become difficult to harvest because they are out of reach.” 

Jesus used grapevines to explain his purpose in the world and the common life of those who follow him. His hearers understood vine as a metaphor for Israel and its people. Psalm 80 says, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself” (Ps. 80:8-15, excerpts). The Jews understood themselves as a people of God, a vine, planted and cultivated by God. 

The biblical image of a vine conveys a deep sense of community and mutuality of the people with God and one another. The fruitfulness of the branches depends on their connection to the vine. 

“To live as the branches of the vine is to belong to an organic unity shaped by the love of Jesus, and individual branches join together to bear fruit, of living in a way that reveals us to be a community of Jesus’ disciples” (NIB). As branches of a vine, the church is a community of persons collectively known for their love for God, one another and the world at large. 

What makes us a Christian community is solely our relationship to God and Jesus. Our mark is how we love one another as Christ loves us. There is only one task, to bear fruit, and any branch can do that if it remains with Jesus.

To our modern ears, the image Jesus evokes of taking away fruitless branches and throwing them into the fire seems stern. Yet that is not what Jesus said. The fruitless branches of verse 2 are not the branches cast into the fire in verse six. 

Verse two actually shows the patience and grace of God. Grapevines bear more fruit when they are elevated off the ground. In ancient Israel, modern wires and frames to hold the whole vine off the ground did not exist. There was no wire. Rope was expensive so dressers used rocks, which were plentiful, to hold the vines off the ground. So even the main trunk was only a few inches off the ground. 

Vines that grew from the main trunk often dropped to the ground. In the rainy season they either rotted or they took root themselves. Neither are fruitful. In the eight-month dry season they could dry out completely. Verse two says that fruitless branches are taken away but verse six does not say they are burned. It is the dried, dead branches that are burned. 

The word used for “taken away” also means “lifted up.” In ancient Israel, vine dressers liked new branches to form because larger vines produce more fruit. So they did not “take away” new branches that crawled on the ground, they elevated them off the ground with rocks. They lifted them up.

Jesus’ hearers knew that he meant that fruitless branches were lifted up off the ground, not that they were severed and thrown away, because they knew that was how vineyards were cultivated and made fruitful. They would have understood Jesus to say, “He lifts up every branch in me that bears no fruit.” Such branches are nurtured because they are still living and are still connected to the vine. They are cared for so that they may start to bear fruit. 

Vine dressers also prune – Jesus says “cleanse” because he is speaking spiritually – fruitful branches to enable the vine to produce fruit according to the dresser’s needs. Pruning sounds destructive, but it is actually creative. Pruners examine the plants to locate unwanted branches, imagining the plants without this or that branch, imagining how it will grow, seeing what needs to be done. Like a haircut, it's easy to take it off, hard to put back on, so pruners know when to quit.

God knows how to prune so that growth and fruit-bearing are enhanced. The problem is being the “prunee” is usually not very pleasant, either for pastors or congregations. It’s hard to see how losing something we thought we wanted or needed to have can make us better disciples. The status quo is too easy to cling too, even when we understand that God has better things in store.

But we bear fruit only when we submit to pruning. If we do not do that we do not abide in Christ. And that lead us to the sharp, serious warning of verse six: “Whoever does not abide in me is cast out like a dried branch; such branches are gathered, cast into the fire, and burned.”

A vine branch that does not abide in the main vine, or stay connected to it, is one that has stop receiving nourishment from the main vine and so dried up and died. Vine dressers try to prevent this, but if a branch does it, there is no solution except to tear it off and throw it away. The deadening can spread elsewhere. So vine dressers cut them off and in Jesus day they burned them as fuel. 

Jesus’ warning is one of the harshest in the New Testament. Individuals, congregations, or whole denominations can wander away from God, fail to abide in Christ, and suffer the grave consequences. Jesus’ words are matter of fact and severe. God is serious about the work of his church now and its salvation in eternity. God’s rescue of us from death was no halfway measure, and he accepts no half-hearted measures in return. 

A Methodist lady named Elaine Olsen watched a wrecking crew demolish three houses in North Carolina damaged by Hurricane Floyd so badly they couldn’t be occupied again. Two homes went down quickly. The crew moved to the third one. Elaine wrote, 

Vince and I walked around the house for one last glance. It was then that I saw them, the last and final living remnant from 104 Lower Street. Vines, clinging beautifully to the white brick chimney, reaching almost to the top. Moments later, the first blow came from the hammer.

I watched this flimsy structure wobble and fall into pieces. But the chimney with the vines took longer. It was the last to fall. It was as if those vines, encircling the chimney, provided protection of some sort. And as the blows crashed, I strained to see the green ropes as the chimney fell. The house was down. I went across the street to survey the remains.

Tears came, and through my blurred vision I spotted a most unusual gift, green, unbroken, dusty, yet somehow reaching far above the pile that was the end of this one-hundred-year-old memory. Life reaching forth, calling for notice. A garden of mercy amidst a pile of surrender. Hope springing to life in the middle of crucifixion. 

A vine. A journey. A weeping. A surrender. A springing forth. A resurrection. A promise to remain until the end, to fall alongside in the midst of the blows, to rise above the dust and bring forth the vibrancy of the green.

Sometimes it takes a demolition to see the green. Sometimes our brokenness brings such a death that all that remains is that Vine, forever alive, forever reaching, forever protecting. Reminding us that life issues forth from the surrender.

“May you sense the clinging of the vine,” Elaine concluded. “May you walk with Christ into that garden of surrender, remembering all the while” that life issues from ashes.( )

Pruning at the hand of God while we abide in the vine of Christ is a form of practice, perhaps, for the consummation of eternity. Death and the resurrection the Scriptures promise us are a logical extension of the pattern of our lives: the old passes away and the new is born. 

The difficulties we have in our cycles of being pruned and growing may come from our need to control the process. But we are amateurs. We don’t know how to do the job. So we prune and cut and pull and burn blindly. Yet we have to surrender to God’s cultivation to bear fruit, and we have to stay entangled with our brothers and sisters in faith to the vine, which is our life, our Savior. Apart from him we can do nothing. Connected to the vine, we bear good fruit. 

The right thing for us to be is a branch on the vine we know as Christ. We are a people who believe in our hearts that Jesus rose from the dead and we confess that Jesus is Lord, and so we have been grafted by God onto the vine of Christ. May it ever be so, and may we bear much fruit. 

The Myth of Christian Obligations

 Let me start with a short list of our privileges before dealing with obligations. Some of the privileges are:

·        We are adopted by God into his family

·        We are given God's favor without having to earn it.

·        The Holy Spirit is always with us and mediates us to God.

·        We are freed from sin and fear of death and so can move onto perfection in this life.

·        We receive the renewing and sustaining grace of God through the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion

·        We enjoy the fellowship of other Christians for the sustainment and improvement of our moral character and ability to do godly works.

There are many more. There is an old saying that that with great privileges come great responsibilities. The saying has been variously attributed to Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others. But in fact, it was Voltaire who first wrote it, and the exact quote is a little different: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Maybe Jesus should get the credit, though, for he said in Luke 12.48, “To those whom much is given, much is required.”

With this in mind, are we who follow Christ encumbered by certain obligations? That is, once we have confessed Christ as risen Lord of our lives, are there certain requirements we must carry out if we are to be counted as Jesus’ disciples and granted eternal company with God and other saints? 

I submit that the answer is both yes and no. So bear with me and let me confuse the issue as only a seminary graduate can.

That there are such things as commandments of Christ is explicitly stated by Paul in Galatians 6.2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” As a former Pharisee, Paul did not use the word “law” lightly. He meant it was a requirement. Jesus himself spoke of a new covenant and new commandments. The longest description of judgment day in the New Testament is given in Matthew 25, where Jesus explains that the ones who thought themselves Christ-followers are rejected because,

“… I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

So, we can’t much deny that authority and a commanding voice that we should not ignore undergird a disciple’s life. And then we come to Luke 17.7-10, in which Jesus is teaching his disciples:    

7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

 This passage does not present “Jesus meek and mild.” This is a pretty tough Jesus speaking. This is not a Lord who would say, “I’m okay, you’re okay, can’t we all just get along?” He is speaking to his disciples and his words are direct. Does Jesus really consider us no better than his worthless slaves?

In fact, we should take Jesus’ words as great assurance, not threat. Here’s why.

Jesus risks comparing God to a taskmaster to drive home some basic truths about our relationship with God. We tend to think that if we behave a certain way, live a good, Christian life, that we deserve some reward from God. But that’s not true. There are benefits to living the Christian life, but they are not rewards. We have no right to expect rewards. To do so rejects grace as the basis of Christian living and replaces it with a bartering relationship. But grace is freely given and cannot be earned. We can’t earn “more grace” by living rightly.

We do not live together righteously as God requires. The disciples begged Jesus for more faith because they realized they couldn’t meet even the basic requirements from their own strength or merit. What Jesus points out is that kingdom living is God’s gift through faith but is also an act of the will by Christian disciples. God has already given us the faith we need. Jesus lays out the basic commands of the kingdom: don’t lead others astray; rebuke, repent, forgive, love God and neighbor. Living together as God commands rests on these things. And when we have done that, Jesus says, we have merely done the bare minimum, so don’t get all puffed up about it and expect God will reward us specially. After all, as Paul explains, we should understand that if we think we are meeting the standard of saving ourselves through what we do, then we don’t understand how high the standard really is. It is too high for human beings to meet.

Therefore, to imagine ourselves as slaves to Christ, as repugnant as that metaphor is, really is good news. We are not in a market economy with God. We don’t have to barter with God for grace. We cannot earn God’s grace. Grace is not a bonus check. God’s grace is always before us. It is through grace we are called to be God’s family, it is through grace we can be God’s family, and it is through grace that we will move on to Christian perfection together.

But it gets better, for Jesus did not think we were his slaves in the first place. He used that illustration, I think, to make us understand how spiritually empty our relationship with God would be if we were mere task performers, burdened with strict requirements of obedience. Elsewhere, Jesus states plainly he does not think of you and me as slaves, but as friends. Here is what Jesus told his disciples in John 15, shortly before he was crucified:

15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. … 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

What then shall we make of what Paul called the law of Christ? I would like to suggest that we should think of Christ’s commandments as liberating opportunities rather than mere commands. We should understand missions, ministries and services in Christ’s name as the means of freedom far greater than mere obligations.

The great myth or misconception about Christian obligations is that they are obligations. Jesus is not recruiting puppets, he seeks soul mates. We do not have a contract with God, we have a covenant sealed with his Son’s own blood. With that great privilege comes not great obligations, but the ability to live liberated from all that separates us from what God created us to be. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” We are liberated from the dictatorship of a personal autonomy unshaped by godliness or divine virtue. In contrast, wrote John Wesley, we are made alive as people who are washed and sanctified, “as well as justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.’ [1]

You are really changed [Wesley wrote]; you are not only accounted as righteous but actually made righteous. The inward power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you really, actually free from the power of sin and death. This is liberty, true gospel liberty, experienced by every believer: Not freedom from the law of God, or the works of God, but from the law of sin and the works of the devil. See that you stand fast in this real, not imaginary liberty, wherewith Christ has made you free. And take heed not to be entangled again in the yoke of that vile bondage to sin, from which you are now clean escaped.

For freedom Christ has set us free: free to love, free to live in joy and peace and patience. Free to be generous in all we have, free to be gentle with even those who offend us, free to control ourselves to live in ways to please God.

We enjoy privileges of receiving and liberty of giving. Privileges of receiving are the work of the Holy Spirit. Liberties of giving are what we do in return. We have the privilege of gathering for worship, for singing, for studying the Scriptures together. We can do most of these things privately as well. Wesley called them acts of piety. In these acts the Holy Spirit is the principal actor spiritually renew and restore us.

And we also have the freedom to carry out acts of mercy, done both on our own and in cooperation with other disciples. These are what we do to bring the good news by word or deed to one another and to those whom God seeks to bring into his family.

It matters to Jesus and it should matter to us how we think of him and our relationship to him, so here is why we can be assured we are friends of Jesus serving in love rather than slaves of God obeying in fear:

   Slaves try to do as little as they can to get by. Friends look for ways to help one another.

   Slaves try to avoid the master. Friends seek one another’s company.

   Slaves wait to be told. Friends volunteer.

   Slaves want to escape. Friends want to draw closer.

   Slaves serve the master out of fear. Friends serve one another out of love.

   Love is the key.

We are free to relate to one another the same way that God relates to us: in grace and mercy and love – especially love.

God is love, and any community following God must be love, also.

4 Love is patient, love is kind [says Paul]. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. (1 Cor 13:4-8)

I used to think it was a tossup whether the greatest privilege God gives us is to receive his love or to be empowered ourselves to love divinely. And then I realized there is no real difference because God both loves us and loves others through us.

The work that Christ does today he does with our arms. When we embrace the outcasted, the scorned and unloved, we hold them with Jesus’ arms. When we bear our neighbors’ troubles, we uplift them with Jesus’ hands. When we give food to the hungry, it is by Christ they are fed. When we welcome a stranger, we clasp his hand with the hand of Christ. When we carry clothes to the naked it is Jesus’ fingers which button their shirts. We heal the sick with Jesus’ hands and we visit the dying to embrace them to Christ’s own breast.

In Christ we accept our flaws and imperfections not because we condone them in ourselves, but because Jesus accepts us despite them. Therefore, we can boast in our shortcomings because Christ’s love is perfected through them.

There is no greater privilege, nor any greater freedom, nor any greater joy to be found in this life.

---

[1] “A Blow at the Root,” http://ucmpage.org/articles/wesley_blow_at_root.html, slightly paraphrased

We are saved by works and nothing else

 James 2:14-24

   14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 

   19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. 20Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? 21Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God. 24You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

This is one of the most vexing passages in the New Testament. Martin Luther, who insisted that salvation is by faith and nothing but, said that he wished the whole book of James could be deleted from the New Testament.

Since Luther’s day at least, different flavors of Protestants have been arguing about the relationship between faith and works. Are we saved merely because of what we confess or are deeds of Christian service also necessary?  

Nothing is truer, I think, than the claim that we are saved by works. It runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Though I try not to be hardline dogmatic, I do not see how anyone, based on Scripture, can deny not only that we are saved by works, but we are saved exclusively by works. 

I had this discussion once with an ordained Baptist minister who was, as you might imagine, somewhat resistant to the idea of salvation by works, right up until I said to him, “The question is not whether we are saved by works. The Bible argues conclusively that we are. The question is, ‘whose works?’”

I could almost see the light bulb illuminate over his head. We are saved by works, but not our own works. We are saved by the works of God in Christ Jesus, and by Christ’s works alone. 

I hope that this makes it easier to grasp what James is talking about. James is not trying to show that our faith in God and our works of Christian discipleship are two different things. James is trying to show that our faith includes works, else it is not faith at all. Faith is not something merely spoken or affirmed, it is also that which is lived and done. “Saving faith,” said John Wesley, “is not just believing beliefs. One may affirm the truth of one, twenty or a hundred different creeds and yet have no saving faith at all.” 

James quotes Genesis 15.6, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” James points out that we have no idea what Abraham believed apart from what Abraham did resulting from his belief. We know that Abraham believed God because he did what God told him to do.

What we do reveals what we believe. And that is why James says that faith without works is dead faith, because faith and works are not independent entities. We can no more say that faith and works are separate than we could claim we can spend one side of a dollar bill without spending the other side.

So we are saved by the works of God in Christ Jesus. We cannot earn salvation by our own works alone because the guilt and stain of human sin is too deeply rooted in us to do that. It is true, as James says, that faith without works is dead faith, but our works that do not spring from our faith are equally lifeless. Paul argues in Galatians that doing deeds ungrounded in faith in Christ is fruitless. 

Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” What is our faith? It is that in Christ, God was reconciling the world unto himself and that in the life, death and resurrection of Christ everything has been done that is needed to bring us into eternal company with God. We do good works in gratitude and loyalty to the One who has redeemed us, not to earn salvation but to rejoice in it. 

Christ is both redeemer and judge of the world. Matthew 25 is one of Jesus’ discourses on his judgment. There is not a word in there that anyone is justified before Christ because of membership in one denomination rather than another, or by mode of baptism, or by being able recite the Apostles Creed. 

Jesus says that the basis by which he judges us is what we do as his disciples. “For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat,” he said, “and I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. For when you did it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it also to me.” Those are the disciples whom Jesus calls righteous, bringing them to eternal life. 

But the ones who tell him, We ignored your brothers and sisters when they were hungry or naked or sick, and so never gave them aid, Jesus calls cursed and does not permit into eternal life with him. 

And that should fill us with dread because the consequences of complacency are severe. If I may slightly paraphrase John the Baptist, it won’t do any good to tell Jesus, “But we are church members” because God can make church members out of rusty beer cans lying along the road. 

“But my heart is in the right place,” someone might protest. That is a leading way we deceive ourselves. The Bible says that our hearts are almost never in the right place but are “deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17.9). 

We are to live integrated lives of faith. Faith is:

• affirming the truth about God based on reason and evidence. “Blind faith” is not a biblical concept at all. Blind faith is not even faith; it is wishful thinking at best. The resurrection of Christ was a supernatural event, but none of the reasons to believe in Christ's resurrection are supernatural reasons. They just require logical thinking. 
• but faith is more than making reasonable conclusions or knowing the truth. As James says, even demons know the truth about God. 
• faith is also commitment to God based on trust in God. 
• trust in God is founded on God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, whose resurrection proves that God will keep his promises. 
• faith, then, is love before it is anything else. Faith transcends merely knowing the truth to become living the truth in love.

Divine love is vertical and horizontal. Love comes to us from God and from us to God in return. This gift from God enables us to accept the saving grace God offers. It is personal and specific for each one of us. 

Divine love is also horizontal, intended to spread through us outward to others. And so Jesus said that everything God wants is simply this: Love God and love others. Paul said it was even simpler than that, “The commandments,” he said, “are summed up in one command, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ... Love is the fulfillment of the Law” of God (Romans 13:9).

The vertical and the horizontal together make the cross. Jesus on the cross was God’s love for humankind come down to earth in Jesus, and also God’s love for humankind outward through Jesus to all people. 

Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said his disciples must take up their cross and follow him. Actual crucifixion was a very real possibility for Christ-followers back then, but perhaps Jesus also meant that we are to embody the love of God coming down from God to go through us to the world. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and love neighbor – reaching up to heaven and out to everyone in the world. 

So what do we do with the love of God? How do we live lives of Christian integrity? Methodist author Robert Kohler wrote, “The kind of work that God usually calls you to do is the kind of work that you need most to do and that the world most needs to have done.” If you jump out of bed every morning so eager to go to work that you skip breakfast, but your work is writing ads for casinos in Tunica, it’s safe to say that you are not living your vocation. If you are a doctor in a leper colony but are personally miserable, chances are that you are not living your vocation. 

Your vocation is not necessarily what takes the most time in your daily lives. It is what gives the rest of your life focus and meaning and may change over time. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Frederick Buechner). God calls each Christian to use his or her gifts in the world. One test of identifying your vocation is to discern whether it satisfies your hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world. But if someone doesn’t have a hunger to be about the work of Christ in the world, then their chances of discovering their vocation are slim. 

How to discern one’s vocation? John Wesley said that effective and genuine discipleship is lived according to three general rules. The Reader’s Digest version is simple:

1. Do no harm and do not sin.

2. Do positive good in the world.

3. Love and worship God.

I want to talk a little about the second rule, doing positive good. Wesley put it this way:

By doing good ... of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to everyone.

To their bodies, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison.

To their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all; trampling underfoot the false belief that "we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.”

By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning to be. 

Let me emphasize one of Wesley’s points: It is false that we don’t need to be active in ministry unless we think our hearts are in the right place, or unless we think we are called to it or unless we feel like it. 

We don’t do ministry because our hearts are in the right place. We do ministry to put our hearts in the right place. 

We don’t do ministry because we think we are called to it but to better discern the calling God gives us.

We don’t do ministry because we feel like it but precisely because we usually don’t feel like it. 

We do ministry because Christ commands it and we have decided to follow Jesus including when we don’t know where he is leading. 

We do ministry because Jesus promised unpleasant consequences if we don’t and eternal life if we do. 

We do ministry because it is the only way to affix ourselves to what is of ultimate value and eternal significance.

We do ministry because we are profoundly thankful to Christ for redeeming us from ways of sin and death and promising to lift us to the heavenly places. 

 We do ministry because we love God and therefore, we love those whom God loves. 

We do ministry because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That proves God’s love for us. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

We do ministry because we are Christians. It is what Christians do.

The psalmist wrote,

If the LORD delights in our way, he makes our steps firm; though we stumble, we will not fall, for the LORD upholds us with his hand. (Ps. 37.23-24).

If we believe that then we will act like it.