Thoughts for Lent (6) - Boundary-Crossing Generosity

From A Way Other Than Our Own...

Romans 10:9 is a well-known Bible verse that has collected "authoritarian baggage" in many church traditions. Brueggemann says that to confess Jesus is Lord is simply to make the claim that "Jesus, not the emperor, nor the system, nor our class or our nation state, can claim our loyalty."

And to affirm that God raised Jesus from the dead is the simple "claim that the executioners did not and could not keep him dead...because God, that deep power for life, has shattered the system of death and made all things new."

The apostle Paul goes on in verse 12 to "draw a deep and decisive conclusion" from these two claims which is: "The Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call upon him."

"The defining mark of the Easter world is divine, cosmic generosity...

"There is no class structure. There is no exceptional tenure or entitlement, no riding in the back of the bus, no exclusion of Gentiles - women, or conservatives, or progressives, or gays, or whomever we fear and want to exclude.

"God is bringing the world to a new inclusiveness on the basis of God's own generosity."

"Deep Power of Life, draw us into your boundary-crossing generosity. May we be on the way toward others, toward new life, in sync with the one who is Lord of Easter. Amen."

Thoughts for Lent (5) - New Song, New Reality

Today's reading from A Way Other Than Our Own focuses on Isaiah's poem/song in Isaiah 42:15,16.

Brueggemann draws parallels between exiled Israel in the Babylonian empire and today's followers of Jesus in the American empire: "...scattered where we do not have much impact, sensing that the world is resistant to change, aware that the policies and practices around us are aimed at death. We are close to despair in our weakness and futility."

Brueggemann goes on to say of exiled Israel: "When this community of faith could do very little...it sang new songs, counter songs that refused to let the promise of the gospel sink into the landscape of the empire. The new song is a protest...and a bold assertion that the God of the gospel has...a will to reorder the world, to bring wholeness and health to the blind, the poor, the needy...and to the entire creation now so under killing assault."

The phrase, "...refused to let the promise of the gospel sink into the landscape of the empire", reminded me once again of how American Christianity has failed to be a clear contrast to the values of the empire by joining forces with the political powers (whether on the right or on the left).

Vincent Harding says, "It will take a miraculous overhaul of the church to become once again the bearer of good news." New songs, poems, art is all part of moving us out of the old and into the new.

Dear Abba, as you continue your gracious yet painful work of allowing the overhaul and dismantling of our structures and systems that have caused the gospel of Christ to become reduced to one more edifice on the landscape to serve the empire, give us new fresh songs and poems that envision a reordered world with wholeness and health for the blind, the poor, the needy and for all of creation. Amen.

Thoughts for Lent (4) - Like a Thief in the Night

Continuing our series from A Way Other Than Our Own...

Lent is a time set apart for us to recognize that the church is in a time of wilderness and wandering and must reconsider, rethink, and change our mind about many things. This reading by Walter Brueggemann looks at I Samuel 3:10..."Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, 'Samuel, Samuel!' And Samuel said, 'Speak, for your servant is listening.'"

God speaks to Samuel in the night..."Night is a time when we cannot see. Night is when we cannot control...Night is when things are unclear and beyond explanation...the old priest was slow to figure it out...something not routine was happening.

"The anthropologists call this 'liminality,' an unsettling feeling at the threshold of something new, when life is gathered into a wholly new configuration.

"...too often the church in our society is thought to be a place of unambiguous answers and sure certitudes, where we come settled and cocksure, and the spirit has no chance to change anything...Then emerges something new from God that comes like a thief in the night.

"The narrative suggests that the holy place must be understood with...nighttime bewilderment. For it is in such moments that we sort out the voices of address, and God works the newness of nurture and vocation, demand and promise and healing."

Dear Spirit, enable us who call ourselves by your name to be at peace and even expectation in this place of liminality; help us humble ourselves and recognize that we DO NOT KNOW very much and that "nighttime bewilderment" is our place of rest as you upend all that we have constructed to secure ourselves in order to lead us to the "something new from God that comes like a thief in the night." 

Thoughts for Lent (3) - Summoned Beyond Ourselves

This Lenten challenge is from the second Thursday of Lent reading in Walter Brueggemann's Lent devotional, A Way Other Than Our Own...

Matthew 15:28 "'...woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly."

"Jesus reached beyond his people, beyond his perceived mandate, beyond his tradition, extending himself to the 'other'. Notice that something powerful happens to Jesus in this narrative...She is the outsider who instructs the insider. She explains to Jesus his larger vocation that he had not yet embraced. He is willing, in turn, to be instructed by her...we can watch while Jesus rethinks his vocation and his mandate as Messiah...

"...this is the big issue for us in our coming world. All of us, to some extent, hold the line against the 'other.'...It is clear in these texts that the good news of God's love and God's healing and God's justice cannot be kept just for us and people like us...the pull of God's largeness summons all of us, often through the words and presence of 'the other.' 

"The old teaching of exclusion cannot fully protect us from God's pull to be a neighbor..."

Dear Lord, help me identify who 'the other' is in my world who I have decided should not be included in your family and who I won't listen to, thereby entrapping myself in my small world of small doctrines and small heartedness. Amen.

Thoughts for Lent (2) - On Terms Other than Our Own

On this first Tuesday of Lent in his Lent devotional A Way Other than Our Own, Walter Brueggemann speaks of a way of walking with God "on terms other than our own."

Exodus 33:19: God is gracious and merciful towards Israel after their turning to worship a false idol in the wilderness; but as God and Moses negotiate the terms for the future, it becomes clear that "the future is on God's terms...Israel is expected to give up all of its pet projects of religion, all of its favorite convictions, all of its conservative ideology, all of its liberal propensity, to notice that God has not signed on for any of our easy preferences...

"We people of faith do not have life on our terms. And we, like Moses, have to decide that we will walk into the future on terms other than our own."

This is as true for God's people today as it was for Moses and Israel; may we have the grace to do the hard work of discovering God's terms rather than settle for our "easy preferences".

Thoughts for Lent (1): A Way Other Than Our Own

During this season of Lent, I will occasionally share select thoughts from Walter Brueggemann's short devotional readings for Lent,  A Way Other than Our Own.

Today's reading (1st Friday of Lent) looks at Matthew 6:27 and challenges us to rethink our general approach to this season, that rather than giving our primary focus to our sin and suffering and self-denial, "we ask in fresh ways what the people clustered around Jesus make of the world they are in...Jesus affirmed that it's possible to be in the world in a new way, to be present to the people and problems around us with newness and freshness. The usual way of being in the world is anxiety..."

In Matt.6:27 Jesus asks, "Which of you, by being anxious, has ever added an inch to your lives?"

"Being defensive and frightened and coveting has never resulted in any gains...(Jesus) suggests another way: Seek the kingdom and his righteousness...

"The invitation is to get so involved in the emergence of humanness...that we don't have to be defending how it was, worried about what will happen to the things to which we have given our lives."

Brueggemann closes with this prayer:

"Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that we don't have to worry about our place, our church, our class, our values, our vested interests. Help us to know the joy and freedom of putting all our trust in you. Amen."

Authoritarianism and Jesus

In our day of rising authoritarianism in many forms (both in society and the church), a timely word from one of my favorite books about Jesus (JESUS BEFORE CHRISTIANITY). Unlike all others, Jesus insisted on not using any titles for himself. Albert Nolan says this about him:

"Jesus' courage, fearlessness and independence made people of that age ask again and again, 'Who is this man?' It is significant that Jesus never answers the question. There is no evidence that he ever laid claim to any of the exalted titles which the Church later attributed to him.

"...did Jesus claim authority, any kind of authority at all, even implicitly? Would it not be closer to the truth to say that what makes Jesus immeasurably greater than any other human being is precisely the fact that he spoke and acted without authority and that he regarded the 'exercise of authority' as a pagan characteristic...

"Jesus was unique among the people of his time in his ability to overcome all forms of authority-thinking. The only authority which Jesus might be said to have appealed to was the authority of the truth itself. He did not make authority his truth, he made truth his authority...(He) did not expect others to obey him; he expected them to 'obey' the truth, to live truthfully..."