Sermon, Proper 6, "Roman law and order co-opts what it means to be faithful"

 I want to make it clear I would never preach this sermon.  One of my cardinal rules for sermon-giving is that I should never appear as hero within my own sermon.  And this one reeks of just how good I am.  Whether that is true, I don't think congregations learn much when the pastor is "the hero."  Though the statements within the sermon are true, I am including this sermon only because it helps me with my systematic theology.

I believe Galatians is a window toward understanding the whole of the New Testament.  

C Proper 6

Galatians 2:11-21

Many of us know what it is like to be the person who does not belong, who is excluded and not part of the in-crowd.  As finding your people or developing a group of friends is an important part of life in adolescence, we see this as a common theme in movies that feature teens.  Who is in?  Who is out?  What are the markers for who is in or out?  Bandos, jocks, cheerleaders, burnouts, geeks, nerds, everyone seems to come with a ready-made label for their group or who belongs and who does not as we make our way through Junior High and High School.

Because that in-group, out-group dynamic is an almost universal story, movies about teens, teen spirit and angst, are regularly made.  In the 1980s, the years I grew up in, there were a series of movies made by teen stars named the “Brat Pack.”  Many of those movies were exactly about what it means to be part of “the club”—“Sixteen Candles,” “The Outsiders,”  “Pretty in Pink,” and

probably the most famous, “The Breakfast Club,” where a group of high schoolers in detention break out of their categories for just a moment to really hear each other’s stories and realize that all of them and their stories are bigger and broader than their high school cliques or labels.

Hard to believe those movies were forty years ago.  Twenty years ago, adolescent angst about who is in and who is out was portrayed in the movie “Mean Girls” and how even teen evangelical Christianity had become the “in group” in the movie “Saved.”

In all honesty, I’m not really sure we ever get out of that mindset of insider/outsider.  I know some of the most toxic churches I have pastored often have an “in group” that they invite the pastor and their family to join.  Come be a part of our special group, trade in the insider knowledge we have, and see our local church and the wider world as we do.  Regularly attend the social gatherings we post and maybe overlook some of the ways we exclude the other, not so civilized members or friends of the church.  Within that group the clergy family becomes aware that we will be protected from the in-group’s church gossip and backwater conversations.  We are even subtly warned that comes with a trade-off if we do not accept.  If we do not accept the invitation to be part of the “in-group,” we run the risk of being talked about ourselves.  And excluded from the next big social event.  And talked about much more often like, I’m not so sure about “that” sermon, or the pastor seems to be spending quite a bit of time with “that” family.  Or what would happen if “that” crowd the pastor is talking about started to come to “our” church?

I remember Tracy and I having conversations in our kitchen about whether we accept the invitation to let other people in the church know we had made the insider choice.  We had walled them off, even as their pastors.   Or do we make it clear that we will move with freedom in other circles to embrace a wider community? I’ve stated that in a way which makes the value choice seem simple.  At the time, it did not feel that way.  And it was painful, really painful, as we made mistakes, tried our best to navigate what love means in the everyday world, where our choice would cost not only us as a couple but also cost our kids.

Paul and a disciple named Cephas--some New Testament writers identify Cephas as Peter, but for here we’re going to stick with the name Cephas--Paul and Cephas had a confrontation.  While Cephas was in Antioch, he would eat with the Gentiles, in some Jewish circles at the time, a break of Jewish kosher practice.   Cephas seemed to be ok doing that, Paul said, until two people who believed in the insider/outsider story of circumcision arrived in Antioch.  When those of the circumcision faction arrived, Cephas drew back from the gentiles.  And his behavior encouraged Barnabas to draw back as well.   Cephas seemed to be willing to break bread with Gentiles until the “in crowd” rolled around.  And when they did, Cephas broke communion with the Gentiles, would not break bread with them.  “Is keeping this kosher practice more like Roman law or Jewish faith?” Paul seems to be asking.

Now for centuries Christian scholars have pointed at this Scripture as a difference between the legalism of Judaism verses the freedom Christ provides.  But looking closer, that’s not how Paul tells it.  In verse 14, Paul says he confronted Cephas and said, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”  Paul does not believe that Jewish Law is about an insider/outsider story—where some are acceptable and some are not, some are worthy and others are not.  In fact, what Paul seems to be saying throughout his letter to the Galatians is that too often Roman law has appropriated Jewish Law and they have become conflated.  Roman law is about domination, who is in and who is out.  It is the gentiles, Paul writes, who tell us to look at the gentile and not see our neighbor but to see someone who should be less than, excluded, and not worthy at the table. 

In fact, Paul says, I used to be like the gentiles, up on my high horse, not remembering that the whole of the Jewish Law is summed up in loving our neighbor.  “So,” Paul says, confronting Cephas, “are you a Jew, Cephas, or just like any other Roman gentile, seeing those whom you dined with in Antioch as less than, unworthy, or sub-human?”

Now those teenage dramas of who is in and who is out, who belongs and who does not, who has worth and who does not, can be incredibly painful and devastating for a young person. 

But, as people largely of privilege within our church membership, I don’t know if we can really comprehend the magnitude, the devastation of what that means for a whole people.  And what that means when the most ruthless military power on the planet can justify preemptively slaughtering 40,000 of your people because you are considered the barbarians, the terrorists, the universal enemies of law, order, and all that is right with the world. 

When we killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq based on phony evidence, we used this Roman gospel.  When Black folk are killed by police for wearing a hoodie, during a traffic stop, or to serve a no-knock warrant, this is the Roman gospel we use.  When Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man, is choked out on a subway because he is having a mental health episode, is it because all the facts conspire to show that he is sub-human, less than, not worthy?

The Roman gods justify their children’s violence over and against the Galatians by seeing them as the people of terror and tumult, the perpetual threat, the security risk.  If justice comes through this kind of violence, Paul writes, then Christ died for nothing. 

The Christ Paul preaches is Christ crucified, the vanquished, the one considered the security risk.  Roman violence did not make things right.  God makes things right by choosing to be in solidarity with the conquered, the defeated, the vanquished.  Not unlike how God chose to be in solidarity with the Children of Israel as they lay in bondage in Egypt, God’s love is revealed in solidarity with the crucified Christ. 

That is why it is impossible to avoid politics in talking about authentic Christian faith.  Because although we may want to believe that politics and religion were fused in the ancient world when talking about the Seleucid, the Romans, the Galatians, and the Jews, we cannot talk about who gets food and who does not, who gets housing and who does not, who gets health care and who does not, who gets human rights and who does not, who gets driver’s licenses and who does not, who gets public education and who does not , who gets police protection and who gets suspicion and brutality . . . without talking about politics.

When religious faith chooses to ignore a needed response to the civic religion of Roman law and order, we consent to that law and order.  We say this is the macro-narrative that holds value for us.  Religious faith, or religious faith’s failure to act, chooses to ordain and bless those decisions. 

Should not religious faith, as Paul’s religious faith did, call us to say, “This is wrong.  This is not God’s will”  God is actively working against systems and structures which oppress, dominate, or divide to destroy.   The Roman macro-narrative says that you, as the daughters and sons of God, siblings and cousins of God, you belong, while you, you we have identified as barbarians, terrorists, Galatians, do not belong.   In fact, we’ll create a whole media story to tell you why shock and awe had to be performed, why the drone had to be used against your wedding party, or why your land had to be confiscated.  We, we are doing the work of God.  You, you are the merciless savages.  In fact, if you have a media story that shows us as the merciless savages, we’ll confiscate the film and put you in prison.

Paul wants to make it clear.  Christ’s gospel sides with the vanquished, the defeated, the destroyed, those done violence against, and no Orwellian doublespeak is going to change that. 

Paul uses his confrontation with Cephas to open up a dialog about the need to distinguish Jewish faith and Roman law, between the Great Altar of Pergamon and Christ’s table.  And throughout Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he is exhorting his readers and listeners to choose values that are more than just skimming the surface, more profound than skin-deep.  These are the values that are at the heart of the Mosaic covenant, reflect the extended width of Christ’s table, and question every division that does not see the person in all their glorious difference from who we are, standing, sitting, or praying across from us as a Beloved Child of God. 

I cannot tell you what a difference this has made in my life, how this drains my life of fear, and opens me up to incredible friendships I would never have imagined possible.  For, in the end, that is one of the ultimate goals of spiritual practice in prayer, that we might become friends of God as Christ prayed that his disciples might be known as his friends.  Rabbi Binah Wing, the first-ever rabbi in Rockford, Illinois, became one of my best friends.  African-American pastor Jesse Waters was the one who could see when I was boiling over in seminary class and take me to the basement of our seminary dormitory and whip my butt in ping-pong until I settled down.  Rabbi Uri Barnea became one of my greatest colleagues on the Montana Interfaith Network mission and ministry and we became great dishwashers together.  I have spoken of great Native leaders in Billings, Montana, Josiah Hugs, Philene Whiteman, Nell Game Counter Eby, and Lita Pepion as great leaders for their own people who are rightly suspicious of Christianity and have been the greatest of friends.  Barb Wenger, out lesbian woman, risked her life every darn day for Guatemalan refugees and saved my life on a fateful early morning at the Mexican border. 

All of these friendships crossed traditional lines.  If I had any responsibility for them, they happened because my Christian faith, in humility, made my heart open for the possibility of being changed and transformed.  They did not happen, my life was not saved, because these friends became Christian.  On the contrary, my life was saved because of who they were as non-Christians.  God is forever tearing down walls, breaking apart altars to violence, and bending implements of war into tools for gardening.  These friendships make me a better friend of God.  Imagine if I had forbid them in all of my arrogance and righteous indignation as a person of the true white, straight, male Christianity that affords me all the benefits and entitlements of my superiority.  Pffffft.  I would be so much lesser of a person, poorer in spirit, and fail as a friend of God.  That does not make me heroic in any way.  It means I just paused long enough to let God’s love wash over me.

Friends.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, these are the possibilities that await us when we get off of our high horse and we are convicted by Christ who meets us on the ground to know ourselves in solidarity with the people who are forever named the barbarians, the terrorists, the outsiders.  Pay attention to a macro-narrative that calls people or the good earth less-than--not based on behavior but because those labels benefit those who seek to enslave, dominate, and make a profit from those divisions.  Do not let it happen!  Do not consent to values that are surface or skin-deep!  By Christ’s cross, join Paul as he invites us to something richer, deeper, and fuller as friends of God.  As friends of people who bear gifts and salvation we could not have imagined possible.  Amen.

Sermon, Proper 5, "The Great Altar of Pergamon as macro-narrative"

 

C Proper 5

Galatians 1:11-24

Galatians 1:11-12

Ancients talked about the divine world, the activity of the gods, to explain how things are or why things are the way they are.  Or as a way of expressing how Divine activity was beginning to move or act in a way that either is in keeping with other stories or counters the dominant story of the time.  For the Jewish people, a people often beholden to an alien power, God was often moving counter to the dominant story of the time.  Paul shares this in our passage from Galatians today.

¹¹ For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, siblings and cousins, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, ¹² for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Using the divine realm gives a story power and authority, a sense that what we participate in is a story bigger than ourselves—even etched in stone.

           Those who have been with me in Bible 101 studies know one of the original questions to ask of any Scripture verse is, “What is the macro-narrative, the defining story, the matrix or context?  And how do we know it?”  That larger question is answered with other power questions such as: 

·       Who owns the land?

·       Who owns the natural resources? 

·       Who has access to food and water and its distribution?

·       Who owns the means of production?

Those who tell the macro-story put the story in a prominent place, a place where the story might be seen and told over and over again.

One of the most common ways ancient societies told stories was through their architecture.  Paul’s gospel has a backdrop, a macro-narrative, to which he is responding in his letter to the Galatians.  Paul is telling the Christian gospel as a response to the macro-story or narrative of the Roman gospel and how their gods have ordained the status quo.

New Testament scholar, Brigitte Kahl, points to the architectural marvel of the Great Altar of Pergamon to help us better understand that Roman gospel.  Just to give you a sense of scope for how powerful that story was intended to be for people in the ancient world, here is a photo of the Great Altar of Pergamon at its moder-day home in Berlin.  Look at how huge that thing is!   The story written into that architecture is meant to dominate the landscape in the ancient world.

The historical matrix for the altar begins with the Attalid Dynasty at the time of the Seleucid Empire, at the end of the 3^rd Century B.C.E.  Kahl writes:

 The historical background of the altar is a series of successful military operations of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon directed against "marauding Gauls" towards the end of the third century B.C.E. In the battle scenes of the Great Altar, these historical Gauls became transformed into mythological "Giants" in order to celebrate the archetypal and universal dimension of Pergamon's victory over them. These are "our" Galatians. "Marauding Gauls" is a common name for them at this time. And, they are perceived as universal enemies and an almost cosmic security risk.

To understand this we have to keep in mind that the Greek word for "Galatians" (Galatai) covers Gauls and Celts in general.[1]

 

The Galatians were the “northern barbarians” found all over what we now call Western Europe and also found as far east as modern-day Turkey.  These barbarians troubled the Greco-Roman world for centuries.  Late in the 4^th Century BCE, the Galatians forever seared themselves into Roman consciousness by conquering and burning Rome.  One hundred years later, in 279 BCE, savage tribes of Galatians attacked the Greek sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, referenced as the navel or center of the world.  In another hundred years, in 189 BCE, “the Roman general Manlius Vulso, in a ‘pre-emptive’ and highly disputed military action, massacred or enslaved 40,000 Galatians, quoting them to be the notorious enemies of Rome all over the world and a permanent threat to Roman interests in Asia Minor, even if they had not taken up arms against Rome at this point.”[2]

Two decades after Manlius Vulso, the Great Altar is erected, to capture the order of things and enshrine the Galatians as the universal barbarians, ancient terrorists, the common enemy uniting empires across centuries.  The dominant story, the macro-narrative regularly refers to the Galatians as the terror et tumultus (the terror and the tumult). 

And so it was displayed at the Great Altar where the Galatians are portrayed as the vanquished, the defeated, the ones who come from the
ground up, the outside and below.  They are portrayed as the mythological Giants.  In the sacred victory over the barbarians, anarchy, the lawless, the Attalids have their gods, protectors of law and order, coming from inside and above.  The gods bring with them cosmic civilization over and against barbarism, law and order over and against lawlessness and chaos. 

Rome legally inherits the Great Altar and Pergamon becomes one of the early centers of the Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor.  The Roman gods transplant the Greek ones:  Zeus becomes Jupiter, Athena becomes Minerva, Nike becomes Victoria, Aphrodite becomes Venus.  The Great Altar not only comes to define the larger narrative for the Romans, the dominant people, New Testament Professor Adela Yarbro Collins believes the Great Altar defined Roman occupation for oppressed peoples like the Jews as well.  Collins believes the Great Altar is what is being referenced in Revelation 2, verses 12 through 16, as the “dwelling place” or throne of several identities fused into one, the throne of Satan, Jupiter, and Caesar.[3] 

John of Patmos writes in Revelation:

¹² “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword:

¹³ “I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives.

From the Roman perspective, the Great Altar was a reminder of your social location, who is in and who is out, who are the sons of the gods and who are the others, the outsiders.  We learn from the Great Altar, before we even think about it, who brings law and order, and who brings terror and tumult.  The Jews, especially during the First Century, had become fused with the Galatians, the barbarians, the other, it was seen as the throne of Satan, the story of how the Romans justified their domination and violence against the Jews.  In response to Rome as the first commercial empire, using debt to leverage the loss of land, a people who understood land as given to them as a gift of God would respond.  Several times the Jewish people revolted against Rome.

           Again,  take a look at the Great Altar of Pergamon.  Presently, it is found
at a museum in Berlin.  And one can see how huge and imposing, its immensity as a communicator of Roman law and order. 

This is a frieze or a panel showing Athena, the goddess of Pergamon, and Nike, the winged goddess of victory, doing battle.  They ascend from on high, calmly in command, Athena with her hand in the nappy-headed hair of Aeschylus, the son of Gaia being separated from his mother who is coming up out of the earth from below.  As legend would have it, Alkyoneus was considered immortal as long as he remained in contact with the earth, his mother’s energy flowing through him.  Many of these giants like Alkyoneus are portrayed as sub-human, beastly, large serpent tails, trailing behind them. 

In this frieze, Athena begins to lift Alkyoneus off the ground, separating him from his life force.  Athena and Nike are imposing their righteous will.

This frieze, although damaged, shows the domination of the gods over against the Giants.  Aphrodite, the goddess of civic order and war, is above these two Giants who appear in defeat and humiliation.  This close-up clearly shows her foot pressing down on the face of a Giant.  This is the sandal on the face, what we have come to say in the modern parlance, the figurative boot on the neck, the knee pressed down on the neck to not only indicate who is in charge but who can take life at a whim.

 In this frieze, one can see the goddess Hecate (right) fighting the Giant Clytus with his
serpent tail.   And the goddess Artemis (left) fighting the Giant Otos with her dog biting the neck of another Giant on the ground.   

Once again, the gods hold the upper position fighting against Giants whose animal-like qualities, including those serpent tails, are emphasized to tell us the position of the Seleucid gods and their progeny and the social position of the sub-human social location of the Giants and their progeny, the Galatians. 

I know this is much more history than what you bargained for in a Sunday sermon.  But Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the earliest written books we have in the New Testament, and Paul quotes within it the earliest baptismal formula we have in Christianity.  How is Christianity defining itself some twenty years after the death of Jesus, probably twenty years before the earliest gospel is written?  How does Christianity understand itself in relation to its cultural matrix or context? 

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is also critical because it has been widely understood as dismissing Jewish legalism in favor of Christian freedom.  When we never see Paul dismiss or renounce his Jewish faith in his New Testament writings, why would we believe he would dismiss the Mosaic covenant or the Law, a central identity for the Jewish people?

With recent scholarship, focusing particularly on Paul’s choice for the word “law,” we know he is focusing on Roman law and order.  If he is critiquing Jewish Law, he is only doing so to critique the way Roman law and order has co-opted Jewish Law to become about who is in and who is out, who brings civilization and order, and who brings terror and tumult.

The Great Altar at Pergamon tells us not just how the Seleucid and Roman Empire organized themselves but also tells us how imperial projects organize themselves in making a group of people the down and out, the other, and then developing a divine narrative which sanctifies State violence against them. 

Who do we call barbarian, terrorist in our time to justify severing then from their life force?  How do we justify the use of law and order to maintain what we call civilization with what we believe to be divinely ordained brute force?

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he proposes an alternative to the macro-narrative found at the Great Altar of Pergamon, a Roman narrative that justifies pre-emptive force to slaughter people, wipe whole peoples off their land, and believe that the gods have thus sanctioned the “othering” of another people as subhuman, the spilling of blood in the name of the gods, and even the destruction of the earth, a separation from our own life force. 

Justification for divine blessing in the Roman story is done through violence against peoples we presume to be barbarians--violent, marauding, terrorists, beastly, less than human. 

The Roman gospel said that there were some ethnicities that were insiders and other ethnicities that were less than human.  There were some socio-economic classes that were acceptable and some that the gods did not find to be of any worth.  In a patriarchal system, even with female goddesses, men were deserving of public power with a divine right to navigate the world and its choices but women were not. 

Another note on that original frieze I showed you, with Athena, the goddess of Pergamon, separating the Giant, Alkyoneus, from his source of power, the earth, defined by his mother, Gaia.  Athena has her hand in his hair, lifting him from the earth.  Many of you probably know that Gaia has come to be known, traditionally, as Mother Earth. 

Not surprisingly, what the Great Altar of Pergamon also represents is a domination of and violence toward the earth itself, to bring it under control.  Too often, historians have associated dominating, violent, slave societies with advanced civilizations:  Egypt, Greece, Rome. 

When Rome came into being in about 750 BCE, the soil was richly fertile for a wide variety of food:  olives, figs, and grapes, peaches, apples, and pears, almonds, walnuts, and chestnuts.  Gradually, though, certain Roman philosophers began advancing the gospel that human technical skills could engineer “a second world within the world of nature.”  Rome therefore pressured the good earth to produce more and more.  Roman agronomists advocated plowing even more than once a year to save on labor.  That plowing led to greater and greater erosion.  Once flourishing towns declined and their populations left.[4] 

Eventually, that erosion and degradation of the earth became so precipitous that the Roman Empire could only feed its people by conquering new territory where fertile topsoil was still available.  David R. Montgomery, professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, writes, “Rome didn’t so much collapse as it crumbled, wearing away as erosion sapped the productivity of its homeland.”[5]

Rome’s history is a reminder that the universe is not woven together on the backstrap loom of violence, domination, and warfare.  In the end, if not only Gaia’s son but any of us are separated from earth as our source and power, life will not be sustainable. 

Rome maintains their law and order through threats, actual violence, and armed warfare.  The gods ordain it, justify it, bless it.  The question for us, as people who come to church to say we believe in the gospel of the crucified and vanquished is whether our faith is justified in solidarity with the gospel of Christ?  Or, are we justified in another way, a far more violent way, that says our path is made and secured through violence, domination, and the boot on the neck of people we presume to be barbarians?  Paul’s letter to the Galatians knows the Roman story.  And he does not want his Jewish faith co-opted by it.  Paul writes of a different gospel.  To which gospel will we give our loyalty?  I pray we choose Christ crucified.  I pray.  Amen.

---

[1] Brigitte Kahl, “Reading Galatians and Empire at the Great Altar of Pergamon,” Union Seminar Quarterly Review, p. 24.

[2] Ibid, p. 25.

[3] Ibid, p. 26.

[4] Jay Griffiths, “Dwelling on Earth,” Emergence Magazine, https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/dwelling-on-earth/, October 3, 2019

[5] David R. Montgomery, dirt:  the erosion of civilizations, (Berkley:  University of California Press, 2007), p. 5.

A break in the action

 It is somewhat odd for me to write pretending people actually read this blog.  But . . .

I started my first sermon blog way back when for two reasons.  First, I have a robust interior dialog (sometimes aiding in my depression) but I require a sorting out of that dialog by putting it onto paper.  Sometimes, if I don't get my processing out onto paper, I end up blocked.  

The only way I can describe this "blocking" is it feels like something needs to be done in chronological order so I can move onto the next thing.  I feel freed when I finally accomplish the task that has to be done before I move onto the next one. 

The other reason I write the blog is that it is my own little vanity plate.  From a negative point of view, the blog makes me feel like I contribute something to the world that will go on beyond my life.   

From a positive standpoint, the blog pushes me to be forthcoming and public with my faith.  There it is.  Right there.  That's what he believes, attempts to do with his life, and preaches.  I have to get over my public vulnerability to set them out there.   

 I think my sermons are mediocre.  Some are good.  Some are bad.  I think one of the reasons they are not particularly good is because they don't serve any persons being "one-off" masterpieces.  I'm trying to move a congregation.  

Therefore, I repeat.  I repeat and repeat.  As Fox News knows, repetition has a way of cutting through the buttloads of information people are receiving on a daily basis--even when you're not telling the truth.  And I'm trying to tell the Truth--as best as I am able.  

In trying to process out loud, I ran into Brigitte Kahl's incredible book,  Galatians Re-imagined:  Reading with the Eyes of The Vanquished.  Over the course of several years, I have been teaching Bible 101 classes and happy with how I have led people through Hebrew Scripture.  I preach quite a bit on Hebrew Scripture because I think it is safer.  

The Gospels are a narrower focus of Jewish theology using a mixture of the narrow prophets like Amos and Jesus's teaching strongly derivative of the Jewish Wisdom tradition.  I cut against my Jesus seminar roots to agree with Richard A. Horsely  and say that if prophetic then the Gospels are decidedly apocalyptic.  The prophetic story predicted an end of the unjust world in favor of a world that is gestating, behind-the-scenes, or being revealed.  Quite literally, I think Jesus was giving small, base communities a foretaste of that with exorcisms, meals, mutual healing, and an understanding of a God who was accessible to them.  

The Jewish Wisdom tradition that Jesus used had a different center than much of what we see in Hebrew Scripture.  For the most part, a class of scribes authored the Wisdom tradition in Hebrew Scripture.  Although those scribes critiqued excess wealth and policies and practices against the poor, they largely did that from outside the social status of the poor.  

Jesus teaches the Wisdom tradition as someone who is economically poor, fraught with ecological disaster, and as the world is collapsing all around him.  Taxes and leveraged debt are impoverishing more and more rural Jews.  The land, the object of God's promise, is being sold off underneath the feet of already impoverished, rural Jews in Galilee.  For a people whose primary story is rooted in liberation from bondage, Rome's foundation as a slave society was problematic.  Jewish Temple taxes coming out of an urban Jerusalem are collaborating with Rome's crushing rule.  Disease, deformity, hunger, and violence are part of everyday Jewish life.

As Jews rose up in protest, Rome was ruthless in their treatment and sometimes wholesale slaughter of the Jews.  At the time of Jesus, 1.1 million Jews were crucified to set an example, quell revolt, and remind the Jews who was in charge.  I was always taught in Sunday School that the crucifixion of Jesus, other than two criminals crucified with him, was somewhat exceptional.  On the contrary, telling the story of Jesus's crucifixion was probably a way of saying, "Yes.  Just like you.  Just like any other Jew during our time." 

Teaching and preaching the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, to people who live in the matrix of the United States empire, is hard.  How am I to critically, honestly, teach what amounts to resistance literature when  most people walking into the Gospels have been told that the whole story revolves around Jesus being crucified for their sins?  Or that Jesus was a nice guy.  Be a nice person like Jesus.  

The Gospels are these strongly anti-imperial, anti-colonialist, resistance literature texts.  How do I get there?  And then how do I keep preaching it so it doesn't sound like screed or a milquetoast avoidance of what I know is really there?  

I felt like to teach it meant I would be left with one group of people who did not understand what I was saying because they just could not comprehend something that did not square with years and years of Biblical teaching.  And the other group might just get what I was trying to say and want me out of their church as fast as possible.

Where to begin Bible 101 in the New Testament?

After reading Kahl's book, I remembered that Paul's letters were anywhere from 10 to 25 years before the first gospel (Mark, year 60 to 75 CE) was written.  And in Paul's letter to the Galatians, is a baptismal formula that pre-dates him.  Maybe this baptismal formula was one of the earliest creeds we have from the Christian cult?  Could we place it in the year 40 CE?  Earlier than that? 

In contrast to Paul's extrication from Judaism we see in much of the teaching about Paul, Kahl placed Paul firmly back into Judaism and made it clear that Paul never thought of himself as anything other than a Jew.  Kahl makes an excellent case for seeing so much of what was thought to be Paul's critique of Judaism actually reserved for the Roman imperial project.  

Paul was a Jew through and through.  And a strong strand of Judaism is a critique of imperialism going all the way back to Egypt and Pharaoh.  In fact, Galatians is filled with references to the Exodus story in its discussion of freedom and slavery.  

Paul's radical teaching in Galatians began to emerge for me.  I began to see Paul's letter to the Galatians as foundational to all of the New Testament and its radical anti-imperial, anti-colonial point of view.  Even more so, Paul's letter to the Galatians is a radical egalitarian statement into the matrix of Rome's warring cultures and ethnicities (egged on by divide and conquer tactics), Rome's slave society, and Rome's patriarchy.  

The imperial project always seeks to enforce binaries.  And Paul repeated and expanded on a spectrum of possibilities.  Paul's letter to the Galatians is an explicit critique of Roman law and order.

Galatians came up in the lectionary last summer but it began in a strange way.  I was not ready for it.  

In the Revised Common Lectionary, Trinity Sunday is followed by "Proper" Sundays.  Depending on where Easter falls and the First Sunday of Advent falls, certain parts of the Revised Common Lectionary are lost.

So it was that last summer, the first "Proper" missed two or three Sundays which began the book of Galatians.  We began with the Sunday that had the baptismal formula.  And I wrestled and I struggled to try and get all of the material from Kahl's book into one Sunday but I failed miserably.  

Again, I was thinking chronologically and I needed to work out the theology leading up to the baptismal formula.  But I didn't have the time.  All this year I have been stewing on the sermon (it ended up being two sermons) I needed to write to introduce Galatians 3:26-29.  Everything I tried to write felt like a block.

So no sermons appeared on this blog because I hated them all.  I touched up a Jeremiah sermon series but couldn't post it because I had yet to do the introduction sermon(s) for Galatians.  

This week I finally finished those sermons.  I will never preach them because one makes me out to be a hero (breaking a cardinal rule for my sermons) and I share too much in one of the sermons.  I am a notorious over-sharer so always need to extract that for my final edits on a sermon.  Because I'm not going to preach either, I kept it in here.

Now I can go back and add to this blog.  For the one person who might read this sermon from a small town in Russia, I'm sorry.  I know this had to be painful to read.  

But if I hadn't written this convoluted, involved introduction I might have been--blocked.  And I don't want to go through all that again!

I will now begin posting at will. Please, I love the conversation.  If you want to reflect on any of these sermons, please let me know.

צֶדֶק

 tzedakah (righteousness)

Tzedakah is the active intervention into societal affairs to rehabilitate society.  Tzedakah is also about having an inner integrity that is expressed through outward and public action.  Your word is your deed.  Your name is righteous.  

Interrupting the status quo and working toward transformation can be long and hard.  Nobody likes to enter into that much conflict.  Righteousness says that if interruption, transformation, and conflict need to happen to rehabilitate society, then bring it on!  

No hurdles are too high, no stumbling blocks are too many which will keep us off the walk, the march, the vigil, or the path.  If one says, "I value this!" and then blinks or gives up when things get tough, that person betrays themselves as less than righteous.  

Righteousness is not charity from above, a one-time thing, but an assertion of dignity and worth that is contrary to the Domination System.  And that assertion is a regular, consistent, and persistent practice.

מִשְׁפָט

mishpat (justice)

Mishpat is making sure all members of the eco-system have access to resources and goods for the sake of a viable life of dignity.  Mishpat is love with legs on.  Mishpat is love in the public square--particularly in solidarity with those who have their backs up against the wall.  Justice is darning and stitching together community from the ground up as a form of spiritual practice.  This practice begins with the local eco-systems--knowing we are one with that eco-system.  In the covenant tradition, Hebrew Scripture centers four groups for knowing the health of any system or structure.  These groups--animals/creation, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant--often experience vulnerability with having their access to resources and goods compromised.  Or being "thinged" by systems and structures of political power, economic profit, and national policy.  

In a culture still largely governed by the whims and wishes of adult, Hebrew males, these groups have historically needed solidarity and advocacy to make their way.  Animals/creation, widows, orphans, and immigrants had no standing of their own in the senate, the town square, the market or bank--places of power, wealth, and insider wisdom.  Too often, these groups are literally "the canaries in the coal mine."  To do justice then, is to know life from their perspective and begin the hard work of centering and solidarity in piecing together community.  

For those privileged, justice requires humility, often silence, and sometimes yielding, in hopes for transformation.  Right relationship is established when trees, the poor, and the refugee are known as teachers.  Outside or underneath the halls of dominating and violent power, God is found present and at work regularly, consistently, persistently, and incarnationally.  

Justice work begins with a bubbling up, a resurgent rise, energy from below or acrossed the table.  God's wisdom is made manifest in those places.  

חֶסֶד

 chesed  (steadfast love)

Chesed is to stand in solidarity with one another--regularly, persistently, and consistently.  Chesed  is to tie one's fate to the fate of the O/other.  Chesed is then to honor our commitments and and to be reliable partners on the road of life.  Steadfast love means that we will stand and stay on task regardless of hurdles, impediments, differences, or cost.  Even when the Domination System or the wider culture might seek to de-humanize, objectify, colonize, or trivialize another, distance or de-value, break relationship with God's good creation, or commodify value, steadfast love knows your name.  The Living God will not be mocked or duped by name-calling or faulty facts.  Steadfast love is profoundly non-violent, hoping against hope for transformation.   But it begins among the poor and oppressed the outcast and the sinner, the sick and the dying.  As they weave together community on the backstrap loom of steadfast love, perhaps chaotically and beautifully, like a murmuration of starlings or ever-flowing like an underground stream, God's power is made manifest.  The rhythm of steadfast love always includes Sabbath for rest, play, celebration, and fun.

Jeremiah 9:24

Whenever I begin a new pastorate, I get a new journal.  And when I get a new journal, I use the first pages to define terms anew.  

I think a huge part of faith is trying to discern the Heart of God.  What is it that God loves?  What is it that delights God, gives God joy?  If I truly know what that is, I can then turn to other discernment tools like Scripture to decide what I will take forward and what I will leave behind.

Right there, in Jeremiah 9:24, I see the wisdom of Jeremiah.  

Jeremiah 9:24

Let those who boast

Boast in this    

That they understand and know me  

That I am the Creator of the Universe 

 I act with  

Steadfast Love 

Justice 

And Righteousness 

In the Earth  

For in these things 

I DELIGHT 

Says the Creator of the Universe 

As I begin my new pastorate at Pilgrim Congregational UCC in St. Joseph, Michigan, then, I write out new definitions for those terms.  I began with how Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann defined each of them.  And then I expanded from there.

This writing helps me to articulate my faith, sharpen my faith, develop language with which I can engage Scripture and other people.  That language then calls me into action.

 

 

Resource for Abortion Rights

 I gave two important sermons on Galatians recently but hesitate to bring them to print because I don't think they are fully formed.  Brigitte Kahl's book, Reimagining Galatians, has become formative for my spiritual growth.  So I want to make sure I am working that theology out well and fully.  

In the meantime, I want to share some of the writing I am doing in other areas.  I tend to be an assimilator in all my writing.  I am the redactor, using the work of others to try and bring about a cohesive whole.  When I am at my worst, it can feel like my writing is all over the place.  When I am at my best, people remark that they are not sure how I got there but I did.  That is true with sermons as well as collections.

In this age, I think religious literacy is critical for people who are not aligned with the Religious Right.  We have to be able to speak forcefully and viscerally our truths.  We must speak with short clarity as a way of providing visual and audio cues that can be repeated.  That short clarity must also open up to a wider complexity and comprehensiveness which gives us depth and a broad base to stand on.  

So here is a document in my google docs that seeks to provide a theological basis for abortion rights.  I welcome comment, conversation, and potential edits for our work together as we seek to offset the patriarchy that has found power in this moment.  

Sermon, Pentecost Sunday, "God's gift of diversity, necessary conflict, and the fire for mission"

 

C Pentecost Pilg 2022

Acts 2:1-21

June 5, 2022

          I’m sure.  Our family, the family of my childhood . . . and the family of my life partner and the three strewn-about-the world young adults, . . . both of these families had absolutely no conflict whatsoever.  Hard to believe, I know.  But I am a pastor.  As the oldest of four, I was the perfect older brother who was the perfect child, never embarrassing my parents, lovingly embracing my three younger siblings.  We all lived together in perfect harmony. 

Thus it is with our family now.  In a household with three opinionated children who think they know better, their parents never have to get angry, call them into account, or judge them too harshly.  We always mete out the perfect amount of discipline.  And they, in turn, are angels of respect and kindness.  All of their teachers remarked through their time in school how they never talked too much in class, always got perfect grades, and were forever treating their classmates with love, empathy, and kindness.  Our children, in turn, know that they have the most mature and perfect parents such that there is never any conflict.

No, there was never any conflict in the house I grew up in in little ole Metamora, Illinois.  Nor has there ever been any conflict in the variety of places our children grew up in--as I traveled from church job to church job.  You know what they say about pastor’s kids, and our children always had the double-pastor whammy.  Pastor’s kids are just the best, you know?  They never rebel and become adults who go to church every Sunday.   They would never be found lighting the new church carpet on fire, crawling underneath the pews, or isolating themselves from all the other church members by reading a book in an isolated pew.  Never.  

Yeah.  All not true.  But you guessed that, right?  Both my family of origin and my present family have had a familial life filled with conflict.  Both families are diverse individuals with diverse personalities.  And that can be the real struggle. Or that can be the glory of both.  A few years ago the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference decided to open the floor to a talent show.  Our daughter, smiling and brimming with confidence, decided to do a stand-up routine, sharing to the delight of the crowd, the inner most failings and flailings of her pastor parents.  Wonderful.  Some people said they had never laughed so hard. 

Yeah, so you know?  Her phone number is being kept in a lock box away from any of you.  Not happening.

As a Healthy Congregations facilitator for local congregations, one of the first things I say to a congregation that feels like it is coming apart at the seams is that conflict is a normal and natural part of our common life together.  Many of us develop our deep intimacy with friends and family members by walking through deep, deep conflict and fires we would never have wished or wanted to walk through. 

But too often we develop expectations of church life that are wildly unrealistic.  The friendships I have kept in former churches are with those people who walked through so much church conflict and pain together. 

I really think that is what happened to the mainline church in the 60s through the 80s and is now happening to the evangelical and conservative churches.  We all had this romantic notion we were pretty much the same.  But then we begin to learn that we are actually much more diverse than we ever thought.  And the conflict we experience as a result of that diversity somehow has us believing that that makes us a bad church, an unhealthy church.  When, in reality, what it makes us is a real church community.  If we can find a way to remain connected as we discover our diversity, so much energy is released, so much possibility becomes apparent, and the church catches fire with energy and life.   

Strange, right?  Because we know families don’t work that way, somehow believing we are all the same.  But we have these romantic notions of what churches are supposed to be, the sameness, the lack of conflict, and sometimes we lose out on the fire God intends for us, the gift of diversity, the newness and the growth. 

The Pentecost story is an ancient one.  The author of the story knows that the liturgical season of Pentecost is a celebration of the harvest in the Jewish tradition.  Pentecost is a thanksgiving celebration for the abundance of wheat and grapes.  Jewish people not only celebrate the growth and flower of their crops but also remember that God delivered them from Egypt to a broad and spacious place for community life and conduct. 

Pentecost also celebrates God giving the Divine Law to the people of Israel on Mt. Sinai.  As the story goes, the words of the Law, the way, came down by fire and divided into 70 tongues, one tongue for each known nation in that ancient world.  God gives the Law, universally, to all peoples in all their diversity, and they can all understand the Law or way of life as freely given. 

In the new telling of the ancient story of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, two

signs of the spirit moving on that day were that Jews, from all corners of the globe gathered in Jerusalem, all of them were able to hear the disciples speaking in their own diverse languages.  “How is this so?” they ask.  How does the divine celebrate our diversity so well?

When accused of being drunk on new wine, ridiculing that Spirit, Peter rises to make a speech reminding the people of the ancient Biblical text of the Biblical book of Joel where other signs of the Spirit moving as fire fire were that diverse ages would contribute to the project.  Your young ones will see visions.  Your old ones will dream dreams.  All genders and sexualities, Peter says, shall tell the truth together.  They shall prophesy.  Though the Spirit’s arrival creates fear, anxiety, and conflict, Peter assures the crowd that on the other side of the Spirit’s activity,  God is beginning to do something new. 

It is always the same for the faithful church.  What begins with fear, anxiety, and conflict, a diverse outpouring of gifts, ancient tradition and story are told to welcome the new that God is creating among us.

Time was, on one of the national church websites that the United Church of Christ was described as “a heady and exasperating mix.”  We tend to be a mutt church, a mongrel, many of us castaways from other traditions, other denominations.  Two of the strongest church members at the church I served in New Hampshire were a couple of Irish Catholic guys from Boston.  Both of them said they would always be Roman Catholic but, goodness, how they loved being part of the United Church of Christ in North Hampton.  Both guys were the raunchiest, rowdiest, kind, and dear-hearted people you would ever want to meet.  And they loved to tell their pastor dirty jokes . . . just before the worship service started.  As that congregation loved its diversity, learned how to accept that conflict was a necessary part of intimate, loving relationship, that church caught fire with mission and ministry.  What unleashed the Spirit for them?  They found new people in their present congregation who were willing to listen to their stories of pain for what it meant to be Roman Catholic as altar boys in Boston.  They knew the congregation did not try to muzzle their painful stories, change who they were deep down, and could hold them even as they still identified as Irish Catholics. 

But again, the daughter is never doing the stand-up comedy routine here.  And no, this is not an invitation to dirty jokes on Sundays.  I do hope that we can hear the Pentecost story and embrace the beautiful diversity God intended  so that we might see the ways this church catches fire in mission and ministry. 

Last week I outlined already the incredible things this church does on the regular.  I asked you to wear red today as a reminder of the Spirit I see moving among you, like wind and flame, to creatively bring something new out of the ancient.  Oh, there will be conflict.  That’s what happens when we celebrate God’s wonderful diversity.  May we once again re-tell ancient story of a newness given across diverse age groups, diverse stories so that we might develop an intimacy with one another that feeds us and helps us spiritually grow.  And have fun as we do it all. 

Where do you see the Spirit moving?  Catching flame?  Maybe a place that scares you a bit but also has the hint of new life, maybe the old story told in a new way?  Where do you see a necessary diversity happening in our congregation and our community that is pregnant with new possibility?  How might we be on fire with the goodness of God?  Recognize the necessary conflict as an opportunity for our growth and life?  I can feel the spirit moving.  Amen.