Breaking up with God -or- Choice Moments

I am leading a class on Luther’s Large Catechism.  We are studying the Ten Commandments.  On Saturday, I shared the following proposition with those who gathered: 

If you take away my choice (my ability to choose, or the occasion for me to make a choice), then you annihilate my relationship with God.

I believe this is true in every case, that it can be applied to any circumstance.  

However, I would like to test it more thoroughly than is possible in my own, individual reflections.  Especially given the fact that I write without authority.  Please comment on the statement.  Do you agree or disagree?  And why?  I encourage you to be as concrete as possible--I would like to put flesh on this abstract claim.

I will share my own thoughts, and dialogue with your comments in a future blog.

Go and do likewise.

Easter

“He is risen!!!  Got it?  Ok.”

There is a two year old boy in our congregation that enjoys being a colleague of the pastors.  Once, after Sunday services, this boy went home and played church.  He made breadsticks out of play dough and used a blue pail as a chalice.

As he presided over his own Table in his own home, he held the pail on top of his head, just like Pastor Ryan.  From his angle in the pews, it must look that way...as I hold the chalice up for all to see, it must appear as though I am holding it on top of my head.

He mutters, stumbling over the words, trying to remember the whole thing, “This cup...take this cup...my blood...GIVEN FOR YOU!”

He repeats this a couple of times and then says:

“For you!

Got it?

Ok.”

And he quickly turns back to the table to prepare for distribution.

This is the perfect Easter message.

He is risen!

For you.

Got it?

Ok.

Because it was for you.  All of God’s love, whether you think you deserve it or not, is for you.  And Jesus’ life...the life that cannot be overcome by death...is also for you.

The trick is to “get it.”

Not to acquire it.

Not just to receive it.

But to GET IT.

To understand it, to feel it--to understand it in such a way that your whole life and being becomes new.

Easter is nothing unless you, that single individual, my reader, hears the story with the significance of appropriation.✝

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[✝ appropriation: def. “the action of taking something for one’s own use.”  The story must become significant not in itself but because it becomes relevant to you.  Good Friday and Easter must become a life and death (or a death and life) matter for you, must function in your life such that it creates hope and love--such that it changes you.  If your life does not become Jesus’ resurrected life, then the story is dead and vain.  We tell it over and over again because it is appropriate to our situation, even today.  Only the single individual can apply it to his or her own life...which is why it is so important to tell the story so all can hear, which is why it is so important to hear the story and to study and to live it.  Witnesses can help, but the task is yours.]

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Because if Christ lives today, it is in you.

The story does not end with Easter, but begins.

Where the four Gospels end, you life is to begin.

Because God is the author of your life...

And so when you bear your cross, God writes your ending.

And when you die, God writes your resurrection.

Holy Week for the church has ended.

But the story has just begun.

Your Holy Week is yet to happen.

You are holy now.  You are Jesus Christ for others.

Your life is the next Gospel account of Jesus’ presence in the world.

Because Jesus didn’t die, he wasn’t raised, for his own sake.

It wasn’t for God that Jesus was crucified and raised up.

He did it FOR YOU.

Got it?

Ok.

Amen.

What in Hell...?

Holy Saturday

...was crucified, died and was buried;

he descended into hell.

-the Apostle’s Creed

Now let me tell you that the other time

I came down to the lower part of Hell,

this rock had not then fallen into ruins;

but certainly, if I remember well,

it was just before the coming of that One

who took from Hell’s first circle the great spoil,

that this abyss of stench, from top to bottom

began to shake, so I thought the universe

felt love--whereby, some have maintained, the world

has more than once renewed itself in chaos.

That was the moment when this ancient rock 

was split this way--here, and in other places.

-Virgil, from Dante’s Inferno, Canto XII

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.  He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison...”  1 Peter 3:18-19

__________

For most Christians, Holy Saturday is a great pause.

Everything stops, everyone holds their breath and waits for dawn on Sunday.

Jesus has been killed.  He has been laid to rest.

We wait for him to start up again.

But, Jesus did not rest.

He did not spend one moment lying in that tomb.

Jesus descended into hell.

It is one of the most controversial statements in the Christian creed.

No one wants to picture Jesus in the agony of Hell’s fires.

Surely God would not send Jesus to the torment reserved for the Adolf Hitlers of the world.

So we have changed the wording.  Now we say: “he descended to the dead.”

We have made the creed more palatable to our sensibilities.

But it is a big leap from the original ad inferna or ad inferos to “to the dead.”

Even if one doesn’t know Latin, one can discern the proper translation: into hell.

So what?  Why is it important to confess that Jesus descended into hell?

While I was Out East, I suffered a deep clinical depression.

I couldn’t enjoy school or work or reading or people or anything I had loved doing before.

I started to cut myself off from people--classmates, colleagues, friends and family.

I would go to class and little else.

And I would always go straight back home and crawl into bed.

I was chained in a prison of self-loathing and loneliness.

I felt...I was...I made sure I was...utterly alone.

Anyone who has experienced such times of extreme loneliness, who has felt cut off from the world, will tell you that it is a hell.

Indeed, Hell is that place where people are cut off from God’s presence.

It is a place of torture, loneliness and self-torment.

There are other “hells” in this life:

War. Rape. Molestation. Drug abuse. Cancer. Pain. Genocide. Tyranny. Natural disaster. Fear of death. Fear of hell.  Hatred.

But just as Jesus suffered great torment on the cross in the land of the living, Jesus also suffered the worst human fate in eternity: Hell.

He did it in order to meet us there--so that, truly, nothing can separate us from him.

Jesus suffered everything we suffer.

I believe this is true, because Jesus descended into my Hell to be with me.

When I was at my deepest point Out East, feeling totally alone, I realized that I still did not feel absolutely alone.

I can’t describe it, except to say that when I felt entirely cut off, I still did not feel alone.

At the bottom of the abyss, I landed on a rock.  I can only describe it as God’s presence.

Because Jesus was crucified, died, was buried...and he descended into Hell.

But Jesus didn’t just go to Hell in order to keep suffering.

He had just defeated sin and death on the cross, and now he was going to take the fight to the home soil of the Enemy.

Jesus went to storm the Gates of Hell, and to bust through its walls.

Just as Satan confronted him in the desert, now Jesus was going to confront the Devil in the Wasteland.

When we are baptized, the sacrament begins with an exorcism.

We are asked, “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?”

And we respond, “I renounce them.”

Behind our words is not our strength and will, but the power of the Second Article of the creed.

Behind our words is Christ’s power, for after he was buried, he acted; he subjected all of the forces that defy God.

Christ’s descent into Hell was the first life-giving act of the resurrection.  

But Jesus did not just go to Hell in order to suffer or to fight the enemy.

Jesus descended into Hell for the sake of those who everyone else had given up on.

1 Peter, Chapter 3 says that Jesus went to proclaim the Gospel to the spirits in prison.

If you read on, he specifically mentions the people around the world who lived during the time of Noah.

These wicked people had provoked God to send the Great Flood.

Even God had, at one time, given up on these humans.

In Jesus Christ, reconciliation and salvation were opened even to them.

This should make us even more uncomfortable than imagining Jesus suffering in the fires of Hell.

Think of all the people today and throughout history that we have looked at and said, “They are evil and they will suffer in Hell for the atrocities that they have done.”

Adolf Hitler is one that comes to mind.

Osama Bin Laden is another.

Jesus even goes to these people and preaches the Gospel of love and forgiveness, even if he has to go to Hell to find them.

Offended?

Me too.

But when Jesus was alive, ministering to the living, he hung out with the worst sinners and outcasts in society.

The Pharisees were offended that Jesus hung out with tax collectors, murderers, lepers, prostitutes--the unclean and criminals of all kinds.

To God, even these people are worth suffering through Hell to find--just for the chance that their suffering might come to an end, just for the chance of reconciliation.

You see, when Jesus descended into Hell, that whole abyss of stench, from top to bottom, began to shake.

And it was as if the whole universe felt love.

And everything was renewed in love’s chaos.

It was the chaos that results when you break down the wall that divides Good and Evil.

It was the chaos that turns people from their set ways, from their anger...turns them in repentance--to become New People.  Because they are first treated like New People.

It was the chaos of a prison break.  Not a riot, but a procession out into freedom.

I believe firmly that Hell is going to be much more sparsely populated than any living human being would care to imagine.

In fact, true victory over Satan means that Hell’s halls will remain empty, unpopulated.

I can believe and hope such things because I confess that Jesus Christ even descended into Hell, and that he did it before he burst from the tomb on Easter morning.

He went to seek the lost first.  He went to those who were most hopeless first.

Jesus went to minister to those that we had given up on...those that even God had given up on once upon a time.  Even God turns from his anger, and finally shows mercy.

This is love, this is the beginning of the Resurrection:

“For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”   Psalm 16:10, KJV

Tomorrow, when we say “Christ is Risen,” we mean he has been raised up from the very depths.

Risen, indeed.  Amen.  Alleluia.

Love Unswerving

Good Friday

John 19:16b-42

For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation,

thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;

thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, 

for my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee;

think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,

not my deserving.

- “Ah, Holy Jesus”

  Evangelical Lutheran Worship

  Hymn #349, Stanzas 3 & 4

When we share Holy Communion, we hear the words:

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”

“The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

What ghastly things to say.

As people come forward and I hand to them these Communion gifts, gifts of grace, almost no one looks up.  Few look at me, few look at the Body of Christ, though it comes to them in the form of bread.

And I can’t blame them.  

When we are presented with images of broken and bleeding bodies, we all feel the need to look away.

There was a lot of controversy about Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, when it came out some years ago.

Some of his anti-semitism was injected into the story, just as Christians have injected theirs into the Bible for hundreds of years.

The gore was a little over the top, as though Superman were being tortured, instead of a real life human being.

Some of the theological undertones of the film were questionable.

But there is one thing that the movie did right--it impressed upon us the utter brutality that Jesus suffered.

Christians today, I think, have an all too clean and sanitized--a romanticized--picture of Jesus’ death and the torture he suffered both on the cross and on the way to the cross.

Most Protestants even prefer gold crosses on gold chains, instead of the crucifix.

The crucifix has the image of Jesus’ body hanged on the cross.

Even the crucifix displays an image of a clean and fit body of Christ.

But life is not without sweat, life is not without its broken bones, life is not without blood.

Life is not without tears.

I think of my time volunteering as a chaplain at a local hospital...

The many patients who have come in with injuries from motorcycle accidents.

They were often the ones who were following the rules of the road, who were driving carefully; but even if they were reckless, no one deserves injuries like those you only see in motorcycle accidents.

I remember, long ago, a patient at another hospital far away who had fallen off of a high stool.

He landed in such a way that he would never walk again.

Why?

Broken bones, torn flesh.

People bruised beyond recognition.

This is the way Jesus looked on the cross.

I remember seeing my first dead body.

At least, it was the first one that hadn’t first been cleaned and prepped by morticians at the funeral home.

Gouges still open that no longer bled.

A bone in the arm that was obviously out of place...that would never be put back.

The chest no longer rose and fell with the breath of life.

There was a stillness surrounding the body...the presence of absence that drew your attention to that spot in the room immediately.

A person should be there...but wasn’t.

Now there was a void that sucked and drew your attention.

The eyes of Mother Mary, and those of the disciples were caught up in the same gravity as they stood beneath the cross...

They could not help but look.

Where there should be presence, there was absence.

Who could look?

Who could turn away?

Why do we have at the center of our faith such a horrid image?

It is offensive.

It is at the center of our faith because it is offensive.

Because when our bodies are broken, we can’t look away, we can’t ignore it.

When we are in pain, we cannot run from it.

When we are about to die, we can’t avoid it.

Since we cannot be spared these tragedies, these gruesome things of life,

neither will God be spared.

If God were to run, how should we be expected to endure?

I will reference another movie.  Schindler’s List.

It is a movie that causes me to look away, it is so difficult to stomach.

But my looking away does not change what happened, my looking away cannot prevent the same things happening in the world today throughout the world.

God sees the torture and death that human beings perpetrate on one another.

God does not look away.

He saw his Son endure similar things.

During the Holocaust, Jesus was crucified all over again...and Jesus was still Jewish.

James Cone, theologian, author and social justice advocate compares the cross to the lynching tree.

And he is right to do so.

Because Americans crucified black bodies for their own purposes.

For a long time in America, Jesus was black...and most white Christians didn’t realize it because there wasn’t a cross--we couldn’t make the connection--we had lost the point.

A body hung on the cross.

A broken and bleeding body hung on the cross.

We turned away, couldn’t look, at the body on the cross, and so we were able to disassociate the suffering of black bodies with the suffering of the body of Christ.

We could just turn and look away...

thinking the cross was empty now.

Jesus Christ, lives, indeed.

Jesus lives in all of those who are tortured, in all of those whose bones are broken, in all those who are bleeding, in all of those who suffer, in all of those people in conditions that make us turn away because it is too horrifying.

Jesus doesn’t live in those lives to glorify their suffering.

He lives those lives, suffering the crucifixion all over again...because we--humanity--we keep doing it to him...we keep doing it to ourselves.

And we all keep dying.  

So Jesus keeps dying.

Because Jesus conquers death every time it shows up.

When we die, we die in Christ.

Why is death at the center of our faith?

Because that is the crisis.

That is the point in life when we need God the most.

God knows it.

And God doesn’t turn away.

What makes us look at that body in the center of the room?

What makes us look at that body on the cross?

God’s presence in what looks and feels an awful lot like absence.

If God can be present on the cross, God can be present in my misery and trauma, whatever it may be.

Look!  That is unswerving love.  Given for you.

Amen.

Sir, I wish to see Jesus.

Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

The first thing to change was the Passover.

Oh, the Spirit of Death would still pass over the firstborn of the Israelites.

But Death would also pass over the first born of the Egyptians.

No Roman child would die, no son of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing council.  King Herod’s children would live...even though Herod’s father, Herod the Great, was guilty of executing innocent children, the Holy Infants.

But God’s Son, his only child (God’s own Isaac) would die.

Death would not pass over God.

But I am getting ahead of myself, passing over an important event.

Let us not forget the night in which Jesus was betrayed.

Let us always hold it in remembrance.

When death is near, the last memories are the most vivid, and hopefully the most precious.  Is this not so?

And what do we remember?  Jesus wrapping a towel around his waist and stooping (stooping before he is lifted up!) to wash his disciples’ feet.

The Passover meal was supposed to be eaten in haste.  Exodus says: “This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet...”  (Exodus 12:11).  The Israelites needed to be ready to move, to flee, once the final plague had struck.  Their window to freedom would be small--Pharaoh, the mercurial, would not allow his heart to be softened for long.  There was no time--no point--to wash one’s feet.

But Jesus didn’t follow the Passover laws and regulations.

He stopped.  He removed the sandals from their feet.

No more running.

The Israelites in Egypt had somewhere to go.

But evil and corruption followed them.

Before freedom could be had by moving somewhere else.

Now their oppressors had come to them, and invaded their home.

Nowhere in the world was safe.

Jesus said, “Where I am going, you cannot come.”

“I must leave you behind,” he said.

Left behind.

Because the time of running was over.

Just as evil had followed them and come close, now goodness and mercy and blessing and freedom will follow and come close.

Jesus went further, to death.

He left us behind, to remain--to abide--in life.

I am reminded of the book of Revelation.  The enemies are taken up and banished.

The saints, followers of Jesus, remain behind  (Matthew 24:38-42).

Because the New Jerusalem is coming down from heaven to earth.

God is coming to make his new home here, in the world (Revelation 21:1-2).

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD 

in the land of the living.  

Wait for the LORD; 

be strong, and let your heart take courage; 

wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:13-14).

Wait.  Look for Jesus to be lifted up--broken, poured out...given for you.

Call on God: “Sir, I wish to see Jesus.”  He will come.

Appendix I: Do Not Run from the Task

“So, if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”  (John 13:14-15)

In other words, do not run and flee, but stay and help.

Remove your sandals.  Remove the sandals of others.  Keep them with you, so that they, too, will be here to receive the blessings of the Kingdom when it comes.

Stay together in love, sharing love and comfort.  

Do not run from the task.

There is a set of feet out there that only you can wash.

Appendix II: Do Not Run from Yourself

“So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot.  After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him.  Jesus said to him, ‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’  ...So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out.”  (John 13:26b-27; 30a)

We do not share this part of the text in worship, but skip over it from the washing of the feet to the Great Commandment to love one another.  We skip over it because it is frightening...we run away from it.

But it is crucial.

It tells us something important about Holy Communion, about what happens to us when we dip the bread into the wine and receive it.

The sacrament of Holy Communion is a mirror.

When we eat and drink, we invite Jesus inside of us...and all of a sudden we share in such a communion with God that nothing within us is hidden.  We can no longer run from ourselves.

And who we are inside is magnified.

We still go out to do what we were going to do anyway...but one thing has changed:

We know that God can see it.

We now can see ourselves.

And so if we go out to love, we see Jesus Christ in our works and in our souls.

We see the wonderful things that the Holy Spirit does in and through us. 

And if we go out to sin, we see the sin within us.

We see the Law and where we have broken it.

Seeing our sin, we can be turned.

Seeing Jesus, we can follow behind.

Don’t run.

Take off your sandals...stay for the meal.

And let the Spirit say in you: “Sir, I wish to see Jesus.”

Watch the bread and cup be lifted up.

Look to the cross... 

Final Notice

Wednesday of Holy Week
John, Chapter 18

A few days ago, Jesus was in the spotlight.

Now, he is under the microscope.

Judas scrutinized Jesus’ habits, and knew where he would go to pray.

The Roman guards scrutinized him in a stakeout.

The high priest scrutinized his disciples and his teaching.

Pilate scrutinized Jesus to find out who he was.

The crowd scrutinized between Barabbas and Jesus. 

Each and all gave Jesus their final notice.

I wonder what each one saw.

Did they see Jesus or their own concerns and responsibilities?

Did they see what Jesus was doing or what they wanted to do?

Jesus stood on the balcony overlooking the crowd.

Barabbas was at his left, looking safe and smug.

Pilate stood at his right, bending over the rail to plead with the crowd.

They shouted back, “Crucify Him!”

How can “Hosanna!” turn to “Crucify Him!” in a matter of days?

Judas betrayed him because Jesus wasn’t acting like the Messiah Judas wanted.

The Roman guards arrested him because he wouldn’t behave like a subject of the Empire.

The High Priests condemned him because he wouldn’t teach what they wanted him to teach.

Pilate condemned him because he would give the answers that Pilate wanted to hear.

In the same way, the crowd turned on Jesus because it was clear that he wasn’t going to give them what they wanted, either.

They wanted violence.  They wanted victory.  They wanted freedom in the world.

In Jesus, God was going to give the world what it needed...now what it wanted.

The crowd wanted to see glory.

Jesus was going to show them suffering.

The crowd wanted a harvest.

Jesus was going to plant a seed of grain.

The crowd wanted their situation to be transformed in the chaos of war.

Jesus was going to transform hearts in the chaos of love.

When two people have different goals, they can part ways and each focus on their own passion and aim.

But when two people share the same goal, but disagree on how it is to be done...

That is when conflict rages fiercely.  Each advocates vehemently for his or her own way.

The crowd trusted God to deliver them.  God’s goal was to deliver them.

But the crowd wanted God to do it one way...God was going to do it a different way.

How difficult it is for humans to give up their own methods!

And when someone does not perform...

They are put on final notice.

But even on the cross, they gave Jesus one more chance:

“He trusts God.  Let him deliver him, if he delight in him.” (Matthew 27:43)

And: “Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”  (Mark 15:32)

They would stop torturing the Son of God, they would stay his execution, if Jesus would call on the hosts of angels, the warriors of God.

In other words: “We will believe you are the Messiah if you start acting like one, if you start doing what we want you to do, if you show us you have the muscle to back up all of your strong words.”

God came in glory on that day.

But it was not the glory of bright light, shining armor and armies of angels.

It was not the glory of consuming fire.

It was not the glory of trumpets and fanfare.

It was the glory of wood, a crown of thorns.

It was the glory of fire that blazed but did not consume.

It was the glory of availing not prevailing.

It was the glory of...

...sheer silence.

If God doesn’t announce his arrival, how are we to know when he has come?

How are we to tell whether God is truly with us?

What sign shall we look for?

God has revealed God’s self.

God has taught us what to look for...

A broken body...

Shed blood...

Abasement.

Suffering.

Deus Obscura!