Idolatry: Both Horizontal and Vertical

I don’t know if I’m right in the following thoughts. These are just some connections I’ve been making in my own mind and blogging seemed to be a good place to lay them out there. As I’ve been reading in Romans 1, the thought occurred to me, the problem with idolatry isn’t just giving allegiance to another deity (bad as that is). The problem of idolatry in Paul’s perspective is that the idols imprison the truth in injustice.

That is, idolatry is the manifestation and cause of a world where both individuals and communities practice injustice against one another and thereby deny the truth of one another’s humanity. It is the manifestation and cause of a world where neither individuals nor communities can challenge or change (or even desire to change) these unjust practices and structures that dehumanize people created in God’s image.

The truth, both on an individual and collective level, becomes imprisoned within the unjust practices and agendas of various human cultural systems. And therefore the truth is not readily obvious – for we have traded what could be known about God for gods made in our own image, gods that will support rather than challenge our unjust hearts and communities.

Wrath then becomes God’s response to human injustice. Wrath is not the unbridled passion of a heartless God. It is the inevitable outcome of a God who values just relationships both on vertical (human to God) and horizontal (human to human) planes. Wrath exists because human injustice is so grave and terrible, and our hearts so apt to imprison the truth in injustice such that we can never see the truth about ourselves or God, that creation itself becomes perverted and inverted.

And this inversion of creation takes us back to idolatry, specifically the collective idolatry of the entire human race. It is an idolatry which perpetuates and is perpetuated by injustice.

Even in the OT, idolatry wasn’t just about the differences between Yahweh and the pagan deities. Rather, in scripture, idolatry always carries with it the practical implications of unethical behavior, specifically blood shed unjustly. In other words, idolatry is both a violation of a person’s vertical relationship with God and also a violation of their horizontal relationship with other persons. When we imprison truth in injustice, this is not just a violation of our relationship with God, but is a violation of our relationships with those created in his image.

Idolatry is thus dehumanization of my neighbor (among other things).

I therefore maintain, that even if one calls on Jesus and then uses the name Jesus to dehumanize another person, or somehow uses Jesus to promote injustice, then that person is participating in idolatry even if they are using the right language. The God of scripture cannot be reduced to my ideological agenda, he will not be shackled to anyone’s unjust causes, and he will not be associated with the dehumanization even of my enemy. Idolatry is, therefore, both a horizontal and a vertical injustice.

 

So, what do you think? Do you have anything to add to this random collection of thoughts? Where have you seen idolatry and injustice combined in obvious ways? How does this change the way we talk about the gospel?

Your Money is Worthless Here: Winning Friends and Losing Social Status Pt. 2

The other day I came across Luke 16:9: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”

I’d never noticed that text before and it kind of threw me for a loop. I wrote a blog piece on how the larger structure of Luke’s last few chapters inform how this verse is to be read. Namely, I said, that the point Jesus is making here is about how one uses their wealth – namely to invite persons to the table who are excluded from “proper” society.

As I’ve been reflecting more on the passage and doing some reading on it, it’s come to my attention (props to Joel Green) that vs. 9 actually has a structural parallel with vs. 4: “I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”

The parallelism helps establish the foundation of Jesus’ point. Jesus is not primarily concerned with just inviting excluding persons to the table (important as that is to the larger context), but he goes a step further. The larger problem here is one of long term hospitality. The Shrewd Manager will have no where to live, so he reduces the debt these others persons owe so that when the time comes they will view him in a positive light and offer him a place to live.

When Jesus interprets the parable in vs. 9, then, he isn’t jus saying “invite outsiders to your table.” He is saying, “Use your money now to help people who can’t reciprocate, so that when the day comes that your money is worthless (the next age) you will have long term (i.e. eternal!) hospitality extended to you by those who cannot reciprocate now.

Notice who will be doing the welcoming, offering the long term hospitality in eternity. It is those very people who were excluded, marginalized, oppressed, and forgotten by “proper” society.

In eternity, it will not just be God who hosts. Tax collectors, sinners, the forgotten, and the broken will be saying, “Your money is worthless here. You befriended us before. Our tables are always open to you.”

*Thank you to Bryne for making the observation that called me deeper into the passage.

Musings on the Message #8: The Word Made Flesh

Christian preaching is sacramental.

What I mean here by “sacramental” is that when Christian preaching occurs Christ is both proclaimed and proclaiming. Christ is present in the sermon. The sermon is the means by which He is revealed as present to the congregation. Every time Christ is preached people can leave the service announcing that they heard Christ on this day – they heard him preaching.

The preacher and the Word made flesh are brought into a sacramental union during the proclamation in such a way that, though Christ uses the preacher’s voice, it is Christ Himself proclaiming Himself.

But Christ is also in the congregation. The Spirit of Christ dwells within them and when it hears Christ proclaim himself, the Spirit desires to respond and accept the word.

Christ’s presence within the sermon, the preacher, and the congregation is one often overlooked and lost in our homiletical theology and ecclesiology. But without it, I don’t think the sermon is either preachable nor hearable.

In a church world where preaching is reduced to entertainment and audiences are reduced to passive recipients, a sacramental view of preaching provides an avenue by which we can once again begin to take preaching seriously both as speakers and hearers. And more than that, I think it’s another avenue by which preaching can regain a place at the worship table as a necessary aspect of Christian worship – not just a boring afterthought to the cool music.

Preaching is at it’s best when speakers and hearers deem it important to abandon themselves to the Triune God and dwell in His narrative of creation, redemption, and consummation. A narrative proclaimed, embodied (sacramentalized), and given life in the sermon.

Love for God and Love for Neighbor

I wrote this piece a few years ago, but I republish it now because I think these observations are important now more than ever. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we make Justification a completely vertical reality pertaining only to God, but don’t think often think of it as effecting our horizontal relationships with other people. But we are wrong in this. Being justified before God is part and parcel of being in just relationships with other persons. We cannot have God and ignore our neighbors. I think my journey to this realization began a few years ago with this post. 

Saul’s Conversion: The Rest of the Story

It struck me this morning that Saul’s conversion story in Acts 9 is just as much a story about his reconciliation with other people as it is a story about his reconciliation to God. After all, it is not God in some abstract sense that Saul curses in vs. 1. No, it is the Lord’s disciples whom he is “breathing out murderous threats against.” (1)

In other words, Saul’s sins are a violation of God’s law made tangible in his sin against the Lord’s disciples. It is precisely there, in that broken human to human relationship, that Saul’s sins against Christ exist and become incarnate, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (9:4)

Here the 2 Great Commandments – love of God and love of neighbor – are shown to be so intertwined that separation is nonsensical.

Saul is a sinner against God because he does not love his neighbor as himself.

Saul is a sinner against other human beings because he does not love God with his entire heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Interestingly, I’ve never heard this passage preached this way. I always hear it as a ‘gospel’ passage whereby God reconciles Paul to Himself and Himself alone.

But this is only half the story – God tells Saul to go into the city and await instruction. Saul later encounters a group of disciples who are afraid of him; he then spends several days with them (19), probably seeking their forgiveness, learning from them, and healing a very broken relationship with them. It is this part of the story I’ve never heard from an Evangelical pulpit.

But if contemporary Evangelicals wish to maintain some moral authority in the postmodern world, we must begin to pick up this other side of this story. No longer can we permit ourselves to believe the gospel is just a spiritual reconciliation of “my” individual self and God. No, no, we must see that the gospel inescapably entails reconciliation between “me” and the larger community of human beings created in God’s image…especially those whom I have hurt or excluded. The true gospel necessarily holds together love for God and love for neighbor. Any gospel that doesn’t proclaim both isn’t THE gospel.

Winning Friends and Losing Social Status

This morning I came across a verse in Luke that I’ve never noticed before. Jesus has just finished his parable of the Shrewd Manager (16:1-8) and he makes a statement that seems to go against Luke’s otherwise extreme teachings on wealth.

He says, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will  be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (16:9)

I was confused at first. I mean, Jesus has previously, in Luke’s gospel, been incredibly critical of the wealthy. And he will continue to be critical of the wealthy in chapters to come. So why would Jesus say this?

Fortunately, I can’t read my Bible without having my Inductive Bible Study lenses on. And while I’m not sure this is the answer, what I came up with is as follows:

Back at the beginning of chapter 15, Luke sets the context of Jesus confrontation with the wealthy Pharisees regarding the issue of who they refuse to eat with. That theme carries through Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son (the father throws a banquet for the returned son, but the oldest son refuses to participate), and I think right into the parable of the Shrewd Manager.

While the Shrewd Manager doesn’t have any overt discussion of who we are supposed to eat with, the point Jesus makes in that parable still has to do with one’s wealth and how it is to be used. He interprets the parable for his listeners by talking to them about the importance of being faithful and trustworthy with what they have. And warns them that they cannot serve God and money – they will hate one or the other.

So my thought is, Jesus is essentially saying, the “friends” one is supposed to be winning are not others like you, who share your social status. The “friends” are the very people no one else would sit with at the dinner table.

The implications of this go right along with Luke’s larger themes. Wealth is not a tool to sustain or acquire a certain social status. Winning friends with one’s wealth, as traditionally done, for the purpose of securing one’s popularity or high esteem misses the point of why God trusts you with wealth to begin with.

Wealth is to be used to gain friends who can’t pay you back. It is to be used to gain friends who can’t give you social status. Wealth is to be used on people no one else would eat with. So that when it’s gone, what stands in the end is not your position in life, but the fact that you have no position in life and therefore have a position in the Kingdom of God.

 

Musings on the Message #7: Pastoral Preaching

Preaching cannot be separated from pastoral ministry. Pastoral ministry establishes the preacher’s ethos, refines his/her character, and affords him/her the opportunity to understand the struggles, victories, and sins of him/herself and congregation. The modernistic dichotomy between theory and practice, between the preacher and the pastor, is obliterated in Christian preaching.

While the pastor may be gifted (and therefore spend more time) in one of these areas, he cannot do one without the other. But the moment the pastor thinks he can preach without also participating in the leadership, relationship building, care, and suffering of his congregation, that is the minute his preaching suffers because it will never itch where his audience is scratching.

It should be noted, again, that this is really an extension of Trinitarian theology. Pastoral ministry and the calling of the church to her God through speech empowered by the Holy Spirit is the outpouring of Trinitarian love. The humble God has chosen to speak through lowly ministers, using their voice combined with His, to minister to the deepest needs and brokenness within the human community. Pastoral preaching is God’s means of extending his Triune love.

Musings on the Message #6: The Nature of Preaching: Holistic and Exegetical

Christian preaching finds its sole authority, foundation, and energy from the text of Scripture. The New York Times, the latest celebrity trend, and the next political agenda have a supplementary, but not preeminent, space within Christian preaching. In modern preaching these things have been reversed, making the latest trends the subject of preaching instead of Scripture.

Christian preaching uses the text of Scripture in two ways. First, it uses the entirety of the Bible. This comment is specifically about those who use the NT exclusively and never venture into to OT. Not only does this often lead to heresy (see Marcion), but it also leads to a lack of understanding of the NT because one cannot understand the symbolism, metaphors, and subtleties of the NT because they are so deeply ingrained in the OT. So truly Christian preaching is not exclusively grounded in the NT. The preaching must venture into the other 2/3 of redemptive history as a necessary background to understanding the God of Israel revealed in Jesus Christ.

Second, Christian preaching is decidedly exegetical. The preacher does not go to the text as a springboard for what s/he already wanted to say. The preacher begins with the text of Scripture, itself, examining the structure, the word usages, the nuances of the grammar, and the genre of the book being studied. This is a spiritual discipline that needs to be recovered in the modern pastorate.

Topical preaching has its place (I use it!), but all good theology and practice are grounded in fully developed hermeneutical and exegetical discipline. In fact, I think I could make a pretty good case that even topical preaching ought to be primarily exegetical.

I suppose the strength with which I say this is grounded in the fact that I’ve heard too many sermons piecemeal scripture, citing texts out of their contexts in order to support some pre-established opinion, agenda, or topic. This kind of preaching does an injustice to the Scriptures, to our hearers, and, of course, the God who breathed the text. Too few of us do the exegetical work necessary to preach truly great sermons.

 

Eating High Schoolers and Other Sinners

When I was in high school who you ate with at lunch was one of the biggest markers of your identity. It was a demonstration of who your friends are, what your social status is, and therefore who you are.

We even had a “Christian table” where all the Christians sat at lunch. I didn’t know about this table until I was a Christian, of course. And no one intentionally created this table to be a Christians-only table, but that’s what it effectively was – a gathering of people who were just like each other serving as an identity marker of who you are.

When I read about Jesus eating with “sinners” in Luke 15, I’m struck by the fact that Jesus, knowing full well that who you eat with defines the type of person you are, intentionally chooses to eat with people nobody else would have sat with in my high school.

It looks to me like Jesus wouldn’t have eaten at the Christian table. He would’ve self-identified with the people nobody else wanted to eat with.

The thing is, to be a person nobody else wants to eat with is to be a person without an identity. Don’t’ miss this. Think about that kid in high school (if you knew he existed) who didn’t have anywhere to sit at lunch. He didn’t have any friends. He was a nobody. He had no social identity.

Jesus would’ve sat with him.

It might have angered the Christian table that Jesus didn’t sit with them. But Jesus’ concern wasn’t in self-identifying with the Christian table. Jesus’ concern was self-identifying with people who have no identity, and thereby giving that person an identity through friendship.

Sharing a meal with someone is one of the most spiritual things we can do. As someone reminded me in yesterday’s blog, pizza is spiritual. Because sharing a meal communicates friendship, equality, solidarity, identity.

The Phrarisees didn’t like Jesus because they thought a believer shouldn’t hang out with such rabble. So they stayed at their own table with people who think, act, and believe like them. But Jesus wanted to give life and love to sinners through authentic friendship. And he calls us to do the same.

So what does who you eat with say about who you are? What does who you eat with communicate about the God you serve? Would other people be able to see, just from who you eat with at school and work, that you are a person who sees sharing a meal as a spiritual practice?

The Whores All Seemed to Love Him, and the Drunks Proposed a Toast

I have a friend who, though he is a pastor, is always surrounded by people who are on the outside or the fringes of the church.

You might think because of this that he’s particularly adept at doing ministry to non-Christians.

But as you get to know him more, you see that that’s not actually true. He has no particular gift for evangelism, so far as I know. Rather, he’s just really good at relationships of authenticity.

And, though I haven’t asked him this, I suspect that he finds some of his most fulfilling authentic relationships with people outside the church – people who don’t treat him like ‘pastor,’ people who don’t treat him as anything more than just a normal guy loving God and loving people, people who love him for who he is, not what he does for a living.

I bet both he and they find this relationship of mutual authenticity refreshing. After all, this relationship of authenticity also tells them that they don’t have to try to be anything other than what they are. That they don’t have to be Christians if they’re not really Christians. They don’t have to watch their language around him. They don’t have to fake anything.

When I read about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners in Luke 15, I see a similar thing. I don’t think Jesus was probably particularly adept at what we call evangelism. I think Jesus was just really good at relationships – and in particular, he was really good at including people who were excluded by the dominant religious atmosphere.

Eating with a person in the ancient world was a sociological symbol. It said, “I approve of you and your behavior.” This is why the religious people wouldn’t sit with sinners – they didn’t want to seem like they approved of sinful behavior.

But Jesus doesn’t care about what good, proper, religious society thinks. He sits with sinners precisely because he loves them. They’re real with him. They don’t expect him to be anything more than he is. And he makes them feel like they can truly be themselves – honest, open, authentic…even about those less than honorable parts of their lives (and is not authentic openness the beginnings of confession and repentance?!?!). And so, unsurprisingly, it almost seems like the sinners liked Jesus a lot more than the religious folks did.

I take it as a compliment when someone tells me that if they didn’t know me, they wouldn’t know I was a pastor. It tells me that maybe I’m doing something right. Maybe I’m inching closer to what Jesus looked like: to quote Rich Mullins, “The whores all seemed to love him, and the drunks proposed a toast – and they say, Surely God is with us!”

So you tell me: Have you ever met a pastor who was more at home with those outside the church than inside? Do you ever find yourself in situations where people expect you to be something other than you are? And who do you think Jesus would make it a point to eat with in our world?

Musings on the Message #5: Revelation and Accessibility

 

Preaching is fundamentally about revealing the person of God in a way that is accessible to the audience. In the modern context preaching has been reduced to jokes, therapy, and self-help. While some of these may naturally occur in a sermon, they are not the telos of Christian preaching. Christian preaching begins and ends with the proclamation of the God who spoke creation into existence and in the incarnation makes himself accessible to that which he created.

This too is an extension of the Trinitarian nature of preaching. In the Trinity, both the Son and the Spirit reveal that their purpose is not to point to themselves but to point to the Father. In every role they take on in creation and redemption, their intention is to point to the Father. Indeed, they are the self-revelation of the Father. They are how He is known. It is necessary, therefore, to see Christian preaching and the preacher as primarily concerned with revealing the Father.  Preaching that fails to point to the Father’s creative and redemptive purposes or His very character as revealed through the Son and the Spirit, is not truly Christian preaching at all. Self-help and therapy are not the primary agenda of preaching; God and His gospel are the sole subject (and object) of Christian preaching.

But preaching that fails to embody the incarnation, to show how accessible God is, also fails. I’m often struck be the frequency with which preachers like to use language, quotes, and ideas that go over their audience’s head. There’s certainly something to be said for asking your people to reach a little – after all, we’re not in the business of spoon feeding spirituality.

But the question has to be asked, “Is this word, quote, or idea so far beyond my audience that it will more distract than attract them from God?”  Because at the end of the day, a sermon that reveals God cannot be inaccessible to the audience. Accessibility is part and parcel of revelation. Accessibility doesn’t always mean the sermon has to appeal to the lowest common denominator or sit on the bottom shelf. But it must not be so over the audience’s head that only a select few can intellectually attain to it. Would that not be homiletical Gnosticism at its worst?