THIS GENERATION IS wired a bit differently than previous generations. I don’t only mean the vitality of portable multitasking devices that provide continuous streams of global news, entertainment, gaming, and random opinions from 2,157 of their closest friends. In all fairness, it’s not their fault. They are who we taught them to be. Often they seek the good, but not God.
Notwithstanding a persistent rejection of organized religion, many in this generation continue to seek power, transcendence, and mystery. Though church membership is down, a steady number continue to express a profound interest in spirituality. In a post-theistic context, says Diana Butler Bass, “many Americans are articulating their discontent with organized religion and their hope that somehow ‘religion’ might regain its true bearings in the spirit.” It’s worth noting that many remain attracted to the idea of Jesus.
These last weeks of Lent invite a rehearsal of faith journeys that lead to rumors of resurrection. Glittering gadgets and tantalizing trinkets will not rid us of an awareness of the futility of our efforts to bring about change. Gossip and trends will not provide Christians with the vitality that facilitates a genuine hope for good. By submitting our ideas of justice to the witness of the reign of God, we pass on the confidence that the faith of the past can sustain us to live into the future. Not only as if there is a God, but as if our God has the power to rebuild and revitalize all that injustice has shattered.
[ APRIL 6 ]
Abandon Human Confidence
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
THE DEATH OF Lazarus is more than a spiritualized scene. The writer provides a metaphor of the proverbial fork in the road brought on by crisis. This scene is like a season-ending cliffhanger: All the protagonists seem to have exhausted their options. The antagonists appear to have eliminated any alternative action. Will this be a feel-good climax or a disappointing documentary? It is only week five of the Lenten season; while this episode will end, the story must continue.
Attuned to the spirit of God, Ezekiel’s view of reality does not originate from a mountaintop. Instead, down in the valley, death’s shadow overcomes his vision. The capital city (Jerusalem) has fallen to Israel’s enemy (Babylon). Death, destruction, and devastation mark Israel’s existence in exile. No king, no land, no temple. In this most famous of metaphors, hopelessness is like dry bones scattered directionless across a neglected hollow. The people have lost their way, their nerve, and their security. The best of human efforts will not eliminate poverty, prejudice, or pretention (Romans 8:6). Human nature is fatally flawed. The outcome requires divine intervention. Ezekiel dares not make grandiose promises or admit pessimistic despair. In a response that serves as an apt harbinger of Peter’s disheartened rejoinder to Jesus’ question in John 21:17 (“Do you love me?”), Ezekiel abandons human confidence to admit one hope—“O Lord God, you know” (37:3).
Like Ezekiel, today’s prophets must linger in the valley long enough to recognize the futility of human efforts. The task of the church is to admit to the world that our redemption has never come by denominational decision, political platform, or common convention. Our revitalization is spoken in the word of God. Stephen Breck Reid points out the “parallelism between the hand of the Lord and the spirit of the Lord. [A] parallelism of agency tracks with a parallelism of action.” The journey toward life, liberty, and justice for all begins in the valley of human failure, not the mountaintop of human achievement. Journey with Ezekiel through the valley of dry bones long enough to hear his confidence in God rising above the trending social despair.
[ April 13 ]
A Sustaining Word
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14 - 27:66
WHEN NELSON MANDELA DIED the world was reminded of the black South African struggle for freedom and equality. To rehearse the story of Madiba is to tell of one who was “given … the tongue of a teacher, that [he would] know how to sustain the weary with a word” (Isaiah 50:4). The story in the news headlines was not told as one of Christian faith. But for those with a Christian imagination, Mandela’s story echoes the passion of Christ. As the psalmist describes, he is the one in distress, whose eyes, soul, and body waste away from grief (31:9). Mandela’s life, for a time, was spent with sorrow, his years with sighing (31:10). But his time was not held in the hands of his enemies and persecutors from whom he was delivered.
We tell the story of the passion of Christ to remind ourselves of the presence and power of God intervening in human history. To insist that we have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5) only rings true if those who are weary of a life spent in sorrow acknowledge the existing humiliation, disgrace, and injustice. The promise only offers hope if, first, the hurt is acknowledged as real. The church’s journey to reconciliation always begins with confession.
In Matthew’s gospel we hear the story of Judas’ betrayal. In it the church rehearses the painful reality that Jesus’ death was instigated not by outsiders, but by insiders who did not have the mind of Christ. Nonetheless, divine grace extended to those who claim to love God the most makes justice available for everyone. Rather than focus on Judas to excuse or applaud his efforts as a misguided attempt to advance Jesus’ mission, recognize instead that, even among the people of God, there are those who will not understand why the cross is necessary. This is true for so-called insiders in every struggle. There were African Americans who did not understand the nonviolent protests of the Fisk students. There were women who did not understand the efforts for equal pay. Even still, the justice that their sacrifice enabled will benefit all. Such is the hope of the Lenten season.
[ April 20 ]
‘It Is Marvelous in Our Eyes’
Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
THIS IS THE most ancient of Christian liturgies: “The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed!” The Easter season provides opportunities for the church to reflect on the biblical witness concerning the “rumors” of the resurrection.
The Orthodox Church celebrates the resurrection differently than we Catholics and Protestants do. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to be in Switzerland on Orthodox Easter. I learned that they celebrate Easter like Americans celebrate the Fourth of July—fireworks, midnight celebrations, and even drinking in the pubs. That’s right! Apparently at midnight some Orthodox drinkers will raise their vodka glasses and celebrate the liturgy. At least they have their “minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossian 3:2).
As Matthew reminds us, it was the first day of the week. The most talked about event in recent history, with its graphic morbid visuals, was etched into their minds forever. The rest of their lives they would rehearse where they were on that fateful day: at the foot of the cross; grappling with an empty tomb.
For Christians, that is what the fuss is all about. The awe-stricken faithful did not testify to climate change, imaginative Ted Talks, or political comebacks, but to the presence of God that struck fear and joy.
Karl Barth reminded us that the mission of the church should be the activity of God. The women went to the tomb to testify to a human burial tradition. They found themselves witnesses to a divine tradition of bringing life to what humanity destroyed.
Today’s believers must hold in tension both fear and joy to testify that what is marvelous in our eyes is the activity of God (Psalm 118:23). The followers of Jesus, now as then, must sort out the question of whether to follow the atheistic government authorities and the celebrity-status-seeking leaders with established power in religious institutions or to confirm the strange words of a few women.
[ April 27 ]
An Occasion of Doubt?
Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
IT'S THOMAS' SUNDAY. The church has long focused on this first Sunday after Easter as an occasion for doubt. Poor Thomas. They told him the good news, and he asked for what everyone else had experienced—a moment with the resurrected one. This was not so much doubt as a desire for a spiritual experience. Sometimes those who believe have to have patience for those whose journey has led them to the hope of Christ along a different path.
This is Peter’s message. The swift-tongued disciple whose denial of Jesus was in fact behavioral evidence of doubt now sees clearly (Acts 2). Peter, the rock on whom the church is built, is not called to wallow in his own personal morality within the context of a privatized religion. If you really love Jesus, actively engage the poor and the marginalized, the ones who have wronged you and the ones you have wronged (1 Peter 1). Patiently, Peter responds to the accusations against him with a defense of Jesus.
Evangelism today is simply telling the good news of this story narrated in Christian scripture in light of rumors of the resurrection. The Easter season provides opportunities for the church to reflect on the biblical witness. John provides four experiences of the followers of Jesus that are recounted as further testimony to the central conviction that we “may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
It is a story of God’s eternal confidence in human beings to offer a glimpse of divine glory to the world. Some things need the intrusion of a chaos-to-calm, death-to-life, forgiving-and-forgetting God in order to make sense. The rumors of the resurrection sustain us because, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29).
“Preaching the Word,” Sojourners’ online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.
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