The Partnership of Christ

Like Isaiah in his vision of the temple (see Isa 6), the writer of Psalm 93 depicts God as a robed figure on a throne. He declares, “The Lord is king . . . / He has established the world; it shall never be moved; / your throne is established from of old; / you are from everlasting” (vv. 1–2). It’s an appropriate picture for this season, as this Sunday marks the culmination of the church year with the festival variously called “Christ the King” or “Reign of Christ” Sunday.

That original language of kingship reflects the royal imagery that pervades the Bible. Psalm 93 and a fair number of other selections from the Psalter depict God as a monarch enthroned either in the heavens or in the temple. So does much of the poetic language of the prophets. The idea that God is a king is practically undisputed.

The softening of this royal language, as evidenced by the alteration to “Reign of Christ,” is a response to the critique of patriarchy by feminist theologians and others who say all the kingly imagery presents a distorted picture of God. I agree, but I don’t believe this solution goes far enough. With the revised name we are still dealing with the concept of reigning, or ruling, as Christ’s (and, by extension, God’s) way of interacting with the world. “Reign of Christ” still leaves God on a throne, and that’s a problem, at least according to my understanding of God’s nature.

As you know, I have embraced process theology as my primary framework for understanding God and God’s activity in the world. The process God does not rule. God exercises “power-with” rather than “power-over.” This means God does not employ coercive force to accomplish God’s will. Instead, God uses persuasion and loving guidance to draw creation into pathways that lead to the created beings’ full flourishing. 

So what do we do with the concept of “Christ the King,” or Psalm 93’s assertion that “The Lord is king”? I think we can continue to use this language, as long as we remind ourselves that it is metaphorical and does not declare absolute truth. Kingly imagery is so deeply ingrained in our collective mind from its centuries of use that it may be futile to try to eradicate it. But as far as it is possible, I believe we ought to replace the monarchical and patriarchal language with something more egalitarian. Instead of the kingdom of God, I propose calling the content of Jesus’s proclamation the commonwealth of God. That captures the process theology notion of partnership and cooperation between God and creation much better than the older language. It speaks of equality and community and interdependence.

In this vision God is still powerful, and God’s glory remains intact. It is still accurate to echo the psalmist, who says, “More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, / more majestic than the waves of the sea, / majestic on high is the Lord!” (v. 4). As long as we do not take “majesty” literally to mean “royal,” but rather “awesome” or “glorious,” we stay on solid theological ground. God is all-powerful, but all-powerful in love and compassion, not in unilateral compulsion.

So let me be the first to wish you a joyous “Partnership of Christ” Sunday. May God’s commonwealth come quickly, and may the nonviolent, non-coercive God be glorified!

The Necessary and the Dispensable

I heard a story once about a church with a curious practice on Sundays when they observed the Lord’s Supper. The congregation would enter the sanctuary to find the trays containing the bread and the juice (it was a Baptist church, so no wine, more’s the pity) covered by a clean white sheet. When it came to the proper time in the service, a pair of deacons would come forward and with solemn dignity very carefully lift the sheet, fold it, and set it aside. After communion, the deacons would reverently unfold the sheet and place it back over the elements.

In the course of time the church called a new pastor, and after watching this ritual a couple of times he (again, it was a Baptist church, so the pastor likely wasn’t a she) asked about it, but no one seemed to know why they did it that way. “That’s just the way we do it,” was the most common answer he got. “We assume there is a good reason for it.”

Well, there was . . . fifty years earlier. After some digging through the church archives, the pastor finally solved the mystery. It seems that in the early part of the last century, before the church installed air conditioning, they would keep the windows open during the sweltering summer months. The windows had no screens, so flies would come in by the dozens and settle on the bread and the little cups of grape juice. To contend with this problem they developed the practice of covering the elements with a sheet until it was time for the Lord’s Supper. Over time this practical expedient took on sacred overtones and became part of the liturgy on a par with the sermon and the Supper itself.

In Matthew 15 Jesus confronts the scribes and Pharisees about a more harmful tradition they have elevated to an almost sacred practice. They have just criticized Jesus for allowing his disciples to eat without going through the meticulous hand-washing practices that have developed over the centuries. Jesus knows these practices are irrelevant to one’s standing with God, so he basically ignores their criticism and levels one of his own. “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God” (vv. 3–6).

What he describes here is the practice of corban, by which one could dedicate part of one’s income to God—it could be used to support the priesthood and the temple operations and for no other purpose, sort like a super-tithe. But since the scribes are themselves a part of the temple hierarchy, this practice is rather self-serving. Worse, they use it as an excuse for not caring for the needs of their aging parents, which Jesus interprets as a violation of the fifth commandment. Tradition has won out over God’s intention, and some members of the community suffer as a result.

Traditions can be innocuous, like the sheet-folding in that Baptist church, but they can also become sinful when they take the place of true worship and service of God, or when they lead to the slighting or marginalization of God’s children. We need to be rigorous in examining the things we do in church and in the life of discipleship to see if we are honoring God or we have substituted an expendable tradition for an essential practice. It’s not always easy to tell the two apart, but we can do it if we try.

The church in my story, now that it knows the origin of the sheet-folding tradition, can safely retire it, as it is a non-essential element. Holy communion, on the other hand, is a core practice of Christian worship. Serving the poor is an essential practice; having a beautiful church building is inessential. Worshiping God is essential; having a pipe organ (or guitars and a drum kit) is inessential. Let us always keep our eye on the ball and not confuse the necessary with the dispensable.

The Prophet and the Widow

Elijah the prophet has just come on the scene in 1 Kings 17, and his first prophetic act is to confront the apostate king Ahab and declare that God has ordained a drought over all the land of Israel. Ahab has entered into an alliance with the Sidonian kingdom by marrying the king’s daughter, Jezebel. The new queen is apparently a more devout practitioner of her religion than Ahab is of his, and before long, under her influence, Ahab has built a temple and set up a sacred pole for the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah and her consort, Baal. The writers of the book of Kings take such offense at these actions that they pronounce that Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him” (1 Kgs 16:30).

Under the assumption that God shares their loathing of King Ahab, the writers enlist God in a religious war with Jezebel’s Canaanite deities. Because Baal and Asherah are fertility gods, the battleground of this war will be the arable land, and the weapons will be the giving and withholding of rain. As we will find out in chapter 18, the drought will last approximately three years. The victims of this war will include, as always, innocent victims the Orwellian military spokespeople of today have learned to call “collateral damage.”

We encounter one of those victims in this passage. Elijah has been living by a wadi east of the Jordan River—hiding from the wrath of Jezebel and Ahab and being fed by ravens sent by God. After a while, however, the wadi dries up and God tells Elijah to go west, back across Israel to the town of Zarephath in Sidon. There he will be taken care of again, this time by a widow whom God has commanded to feed him.

It seems the widow didn’t get this memo, because she is none too happy to see the prophet and be put upon to provide for him. Elijah doesn’t make things any easier as he shows up and, without so much as a how-do-you-do, orders—that’s right; he doesn’t ask, he orders—the woman to bring him a drink of water. Obeying the dictates of hospitality, she goes to fetch the water, but as she’s on her way, he calls after her and says, “While you’re at it, bring me a slice of bread, too.” He’s been traveling a while, and he’s thirsty and a bit peckish, the poor dear.

That tears it for the widow. She turns on Elijah, her eyes blazing, and says, “As the Lord your God lives—” which was a more polite way of saying, “Take a flying leap, you dirty so-and-so”—“As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die” (v. 12). Some less well-attested manuscripts add, “So buzz off, jerk!”

The widow and her young son did not choose their fate; it has been thrust upon them by the drought. They have done the best they could to survive, but now they have reached the end of their resources, and death is staring them down hard. Now along comes this prophet of the very God who is said to have caused the drought in the first place, demanding water and bread. If she thought she had the strength, she would punch him.

The passage goes on to tell how Elijah brings a miraculous deliverance from God for the widow. He says, “Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth” (v. 14). I guess we’re supposed to be impressed by this, but I can’t help thinking about all the other widows and orphans and other vulnerable people throughout the region who don’t have a prophet to come to their rescue, who face death without hope of deliverance. What of them? If we are to believe that God did indeed cause this drought, as part of some squabble with Baal and Asherah, what kind of God are we dealing with? Is that really how God works?

The answer, of course, is no. God does not work that way. God is on the side of life, not death—of justice, not corruption. When religious and political leaders in our day say that God brings natural calamities to punish “sinners,” we must raise our voices in protest. When they use fear tactics to sow division and nurture suspicion of those who are “not like us,” we must raise our voices in protest. When they parrot a distorted version of reality in order to keep the “wrong” people from voting, we must raise our voices in protest. When the spokespeople for our nation try to manipulate us by using God language to demand that we support their wars or demonize their enemies, we must raise our voices in protest.

God stands staunchly on the side of the widow—and the refugee, and the migrant farm worker, and the political prisoner, and the minimum-wage employee, and the victim of abuse, and every underdog everywhere. God stands on the side of life and justice and abundance and equity. We too must choose where we will stand.

Stories of Redemption

I have spent some time in the wilderness in my life. One might argue that the present is a wilderness time for me, considering the extended period of unemployment I am enduring and the repeated rejections I have experienced in my job search (I got another one this week). But for whatever reason, I don’t feel as though I am wandering in the wilderness at present. I have a sense of calm and assurance in spite of my circumstances. I feel confident in my status as a beloved child of God, and let me assure you that has not always been the case. I feel that I am one of the “redeemed of the Lord.”

The writer of Psalm 107 says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story” (v. 2), and that is pretty good advice for anyone who is going through difficult times. So here’s at least part of my story of redemption.

When I was in seventh grade I had some experiences that led me to believe that God was calling me into vocational ministry. Around the same time I was suffering some pretty severe emotional trauma at the hands of an abusive parent. It was a tale that would repeat through much of my life: the juxtaposition of God’s nurture and my own crushing self-doubt. As God was calling my name in love, my father’s hurtful words and actions were causing me to question whether I was worthy of any kind of love. I can trace the roots of the depression and spiritual turmoil that have hounded me for four decades to this period of my life.

When you are hurt by someone you should have been able to trust, it messes with not only your mind but also your soul. And because of our tendency to project our experiences with our parents onto our relationship with God, parenting that is less than healthy can distort our image of the divine in profoundly harmful ways. I have written before about the repercussions of my mental image of God as a vindictive judge more inclined to punishment than grace. It has been a lifelong struggle for me to try to find healing for that misperception of God.

I don’t want to make any premature claims to having decisively overcome that distorted understanding of God, because I know from experience just how pernicious it can be. But I can say with some confidence that my picture of God is much healthier now than it has been in the past. Perhaps that is why I have not interpreted my rejection by ever-more-numerous search committees and hiring agents as a concomitant rejection by God. I am learning to trust that God’s opinion of me does not depend on my “success.” God’s affirmation is unequivocal; it is not connected in any way to the decisions of various churches and organizations not to select me as their leader.

If I had to pinpoint the reasons for this new sense of confidence, I could name several. I could point to the good effects of my practice of centering prayer, the work I have done in psychotherapy, and my doctors’ success in settling on an effective medication regime to combat my depressive tendencies and adjust my brain chemistry. I would also give a lot of credit to the unconditional love I have received from several people in my life, most notably my wife Sarah, and the gracious support and prayers of other friends and family members. To use the language of the psalmist, however, I would have to say that the spiritual and emotional progress I have made in the past few years boils down to this: I have realized that I am one of the redeemed of the Lord.

I hope you are, too, and I encourage you to follow the advice of the psalmist and tell your story. Who knows but that it may make a big difference in somebody else’s life, not to mention your own?

Dueling Visions

The Bible, despite the protestations of many a defensive evangelical, is not always internally consistent. This is not all that surprising, considering that its books are authored by many different writers over wide stretches of time and under appreciably different circumstances. Unless one insists that God directly dictated the words of Scripture to God’s human amanuenses and therefore serves as the one and only source, there is really no controversy here. Different writers have different concerns, worldviews, and axes to grind, all of which are reflected in their writings.

We see this when we compare two readings from the Old Testament—one from the Psalter and one from Second Isaiah. Psalm 98 presents a conventional view of the role of Israel vis-à-vis the Gentile nations of the world, while Isaiah 49 evinces a more progressive attitude. If we take just one verse from each reading, we can see this contrast clearly. In verse 3 of Psalm 98, the psalmist extols God because God “has remembered [God’s] steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” Note that word “victory.” Turning to Isaiah 49:6, we have God declaring to a mysterious figure known as the Servant, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” In this case take note of the words “light” and “salvation.”

See the difference? The psalmist portrays God’s relationship with the Gentiles in an almost antagonistic way: Israel’s victory almost assuredly entails the other nations’ defeat. If we look back one verse we see this sentiment expressed even more blatantly; verse 2 says that God “has revealed [God’s] vindication in the sight of the nations” (emphasis added). Israel and the nations are set in an adversarial relationship. But look how the mood changes in the passage from Isaiah. Now instead of taunting the Gentiles with news of God’s victory and vindication, the prophet depicts God as one who cares enough for these non-Israelite nations to give the Servant as a light that will guide them to salvation.

In the contemporary church we see the same dynamic at work. There is a triumphalist and insular branch of the church that is happy to portray God in combative terms, always ready to wreak judgment on those who fail to toe a very narrow line. This version of God curiously seems to share this group of Christians’ prejudices and hates. On the other end of the spectrum are those Christians who have an expansive view of God and of God’s world. Instead of the scarcity and parsimony that characterize the other group, these Christians see the world as a place of abundance and recognize the prodigality of God’s grace. They prefer the prophet’s God, who wants to extend salvation “to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:6), as opposed to the psalmist’s God who exults that “all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God” (Ps 98:3). In one vision the nations are mere spectators, looking on, one assumes in dismay and envy, as the chosen people celebrate their chosenness. In the other they are full participants in the economy of grace, and the chosen people shine a light to help them find their way and then rejoice that God has grown the category of chosenness enough to incorporate everyone.

The question we each must answer is, which of these visions is more attractive? Which God do we choose, the tribal deity who is on our side alone or the expansive God who invites everybody to join God’s side? What kind of Christianity do we want to practice, one that is characterized by suspicion or one that is open, one that fears or one that embraces the other? The choice is ours. Let us make it wisely.

The Hour Has Come

A curious encounter takes place in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John. Some Greeks who are in Jerusalem for Passover come to Jesus’s disciples and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip and Andrew relay this message to Jesus, and Jesus responds  by saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” What does Jesus mean by the “hour”? And what is it about this exchange that indicates to him that his hour has come?

The key word here is “Greeks.” These are Gentiles who are asking to meet Jesus. They represent the world beyond the confines of Judaism—what the Hebrew Scriptures call “the nations.” In the fourth Gospel, apart from his conversation with a Samaritan woman (Samaritans were sort of “half-Jews” descended from the survivors of the old northern kingdom of Israel who had intermarried with the Gentile peoples in that region), Jesus has dealt almost entirely with Jews. These Greeks at the festival are the first full-on Gentiles to make an appearance in John.

That’s the signal to Jesus that the hour has finally arrived. Jesus understands his mission in terms of the suffering servant of Isaiah, one of whose roles is to be “a light to the nations.” In his prologue John describes Jesus as “the light of all people” (John 1:4) and “the true light, which enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). Now that Gentiles have been drawn to Jesus’s light, he knows his hour has come.

By his “hour,” of course, he means his death. He explains the connection between being a light to the nations and being crucified in verse 24: “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It is only by remaining faithful to the point of death that Jesus will truly be the light to the nations that God has designated him to be.

This word is not just for Jesus. Three chapters later, he will describe the relationship between his followers and himself with the metaphor of a grapevine. “I am the vine,” he says, “you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our calling as followers of Jesus is to bear fruit, and unless our grains of wheat fall into the earth and die, that simply won’t happen.

As we draw closer to the climactic events of Holy Week, let us recommit ourselves to putting to death everything that threatens to get in the way of our abiding in Jesus and allowing him to abide in us, so that we too may bear much fruit.

Creative Conflict

If you are like most people, including most church people, you are risk-averse, and you try to avoid conflict whenever possible. It is the rare person who considers conflict something to be embraced, something that can lead to positive results. Most of us think of conflict in strictly negative terms. We don’t like to be at odds with another person; it makes us uncomfortable. Conflict can undermine one’s image of oneself as the kind of person whom other people like. We like to be liked. We like to get along.

Sometimes, however, conflict is inevitable. Paul and Barnabas find this out in Acts 15. They have returned to their home base of Antioch after attending the council of Jerusalem, where they successfully defended their practice of preaching the gospel to Gentiles. The council ruled that Gentile converts would not have to be circumcised or observe the Jewish purity laws, beyond abstaining “from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood” (Acts 15:20). Once this agreement was reached they sent representatives to Antioch to deliver the decision. After they did so, “they were sent off in peace by the believers to those who had sent them” (Acts 15:33). Everything was hunky-dory, and good feelings reigned.

After some time in Antioch, Paul goes to Barnabas and suggests that they take another tour of the cities they visited on their missionary journey in order to see how the churches they had established were faring. Barnabas agrees to the trip, but here is where the good feelings go away. He wants to take a young man named John Mark who traveled with them for part of their trip the last time but left the team at Pamphylia and returned home to Jerusalem. Luke tells of Mark’s leaving in Acts 13:13 but gives no reason for his departure. Paul, however, apparently took it as a betrayal, and now he rejects the idea of having Mark accompany them again.

This incident offers some insight into the two missionaries’ characters. Paul comes across as a headstrong, rigid personality who holds himself and his companions to a high standard and who is not tolerant toward anyone who does not measure up to that standard. Barnabas, on the other hand, true to his name, which means “Son of Encouragement,” is a compassionate, forgiving soul who is willing to give Mark a chance to redeem himself from his earlier failure. Paul may have been right in his assessment of Mark’s character, and Barnabas may have been too lenient, too quick to forgive, but I know which of the two men I would prefer to travel with, and it’s not Paul.

The conflict between Barnabas and Paul becomes so severe that they part company. Barnabas takes Mark and sets out to Cyprus, while Paul teams up with a guy named Silas and travels throughout Syria and southeastern Asia Minor, visiting and, ironically enough, offering encouragement to the churches there.

This episode, as painful as it must have been in the moment, serves to shed light on the overarching theme of the book of Acts, which is the unhindered nature of the gospel. Throughout the narrative, obstacles arise again and again, threatening to stop the spread of the good news. Conflicts between Hebraic and Hellenistic Jews, questions about taking the gospel to Samaritans and God-fearing Gentiles such as Cornelius, and the dispute over whether pagan Gentiles could be accepted into the faith without first becoming Jews all represent potential barriers to the gospel’s advance. Arrests, persecutions, and this conflict between two of the most prominent leaders in the young church threaten to hinder the forward motion of the message.

But in each case the Holy Spirit overcomes the obstacle and sends the movement in new and fruitful directions. The stoning of Stephen and the persecution that followed scattered the apostles so that the gospel moved beyond the borders of Palestine. Peter’s bold decision to baptize Cornelius was the Spirit’s way of cracking open the shell that bound the church within a Jewish-only framework, and Paul’s and Barnabas’s work among the pagan Gentiles demolished what was left of that shell. Now here in chapter 15 a bitter dispute between two leaders, a conflict that could have had far-reaching negative consequences, leads to a doubling of the missionary effort. No barrier is too strong for the Spirit to overcome. Nothing can stop the unhindered gospel.

The story of the apostles’ argument shows us that conflict can be creative. It need not be the death knell of a relationship; it can instead help germinate seeds that otherwise would remain sterile, thereby producing fruit in unexpected and wonderful ways. The Spirit is always ready to transform our conflicts into something positive, holy even. The question is, are we willing to open ourselves to the Spirit’s gracious work in our lives and the conflicts that will inevitably come?

Control

I “attended” a livestream interfaith prayer service the other night, after the chaotic and shameful events at the Capitol, and one of the participants offered this nugget as part of  her prayer: “We know that you are in control.” Meaning God. It’s a sentiment I have heard expressed countless times, but it is becoming harder and harder for me to countenance. The thought that came to mind this time, and which I almost shared in the comments pane, was, “God is in control? Then God has an interesting strategy.”

If God were in control of the events at the Capitol, at what point did God intend to step in and exercise that control? Apparently not before a woman was killed and our country became a laughingstock or an object of pity in the eyes of the world. If God is in control when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic, what’s the magic number of deaths that will trigger God’s action? Two million? Three million? If God was in control during, say, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, then God must have meant for a quarter of a million people to die, right?

I don’t mean to blaspheme or sound impious. What I do mean to do is to look at the world clear-eyed and forgo comforting fictions such as, “We know God is in control,” or, “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; / the Lord sits enthroned as king forever,” as Psalm 29:10 would have us believe. These statements, when contrasted with the reality of life in the world, lay bare the inadequacy of the depiction of God as a divine interventionist who can miraculously step in to avert disaster. Or bring it, for that matter. Logically, if God is in control and 360,000 people in our country lie dead from a viral pandemic, with more dying every day, then this controlling God must get the credit for those deaths. That’s the clear implication we ignore when we blithely mouth the untruth that “God is in control.”

So where is our hope if we cannot trust in a divine puppet master directing the activity of the world? I may sound like a record stuck on a scratch when I say this, but I believe our hope lies in the portrait of God that process theology paints. This God is not in control in any simplistic sense; rather, God accompanies creation and seeks to persuade recalcitrant matter to go in a direction that will result in the full flourishing of life for all concerned. But it’s not called recalcitrant matter for nothing. It resists. We resist. Viruses that arise in the course of the evolutionary processes that make life possible resist God’s direction and wreak devastating havoc. Think of the last time you tried to convince somebody who held a different political opinion to come over to your way of seeing things, and you will have an idea of what God is up against in seeking to persuade the world to operate according to God’s good and perfect will.

Make no mistake, “The voice of the Lord is powerful; / the voice of the Lord is full of majesty” (v. 4), and we ought always to “ascribe to the Lord the glory of [God’s] name; / worship the Lord in holy splendor” (v. 2). But we do not ascribe glory to God when we misrepresent the divine nature. You may come to a different conclusion, but I find more comfort in the thought that God is unequivocally for us and is working with all God’s might to bring about the best outcomes despite considerable resistance than in the  notion of a God who is “in control” but allows death and destruction on a massive scale. That God sounds to me more monstrous than divine.

I for one do not wish to worship a monster. I want to worship the God of infinite love, and seek to cooperate with that God in the reclamation and renewal of the world.