Yesterday I posted about Pope Francis’ recent comments critiquing the West’s idolatrous ‘worship’ of the free market.

You can read the post here and the Pope’s own words here.

No sooner did the post post than I got email after email lambasting me NOT (as expected) for praising the Catholic Church and its office of a Teacher among Teachers.

No, the emails all but tarred and feathered me for endorsing the ‘extreme,’ ‘fringe,’ and ‘anti-freedom’ views of ‘Marxist, Socialist liberalism’ seeking to ‘destroy the Tea Party.’ 

I won’t even take the time to note the discontinuity between those last three adjectives: Marxism, Socialism and Liberalism.

Pope Francis- I think we can all agree by virtue of being elected Pope- is definitely NOT liberal.

In fact, theological training has it uses. I can say with some authority that Francis was only speaking from the historic (Augustinian) Christian tradition.

Quickly then:

According to Augustine, both the Protestant and Catholic Church’s most important thinker, we are creatures made to desire an end (telos).

As creatures, God and God’s Kingdom is the End to which we’re properly oriented. Because we’re end-driven creatures, human freedom is different than how we typically define it in modern America.

Culturally, civically and especially economically we tend to think of freedom in the negative; that is, freedom is the absence of coercion.

Thus, the ‘free market’ is a market without any external controls or values imposed upon it.

“Freedom,” in such a context, is not directed to any End.

Or rather, it’s directed to whatever End the individual decides.

For Christians, however, freedom isn’t defined negatively as something that exists in the absence of coercion.

Freedom isn’t freedom from something; freedom is freedom for something.

Freedom is freedom for the Kingdom.

In other words, as telos-driven creatures we are free only when we are directed towards and participating in the Kingdom, only when we’re wrapped up in God’s will, and only when our systems of life together- our politics and our economics- contribute towards that End.

When people and their systems are no longer directed towards or participating in God’s End, the Kingdom, you effectively strip the material things in creation from God’s goodness. They no longer have the purpose for which God gave them. They no longer have any meaning- like a paintbrush without ever having a canvas.

Think of the pervasive sin of consumerism and the praise of the ‘free market’ as an end in and of itself.

As modern Augustinian, William Cavanaugh says:

“All such loves are disordered loves, loves looking for something worth loving that is not just arbitrarily chosen.

A person buys something- anything- trying to fill the hole that is the empty shrine (by which he means our having been created to desire the Kingdom). And once the shopper purchases the thing, it turns into a nothing and he has to head back to the mall to continue the search.

With no objective End to guide the search, his search is literally endless.”

We tend to think of sin simply as a private act we do to break one of God’s rules. We think of sin as an individual free act that violates God’s honor.

Sin is anything but a free act and it’s not always or even primarily about individuals.

Sin is a disordered love that upsets the God-given trajectory of our lives. Sin is a privation of goodness in our lives. And sin is corporate and systemic. 

In a very real way, the more we sin the less human we become, the less real. 

And a free market system for its own sake, one that either exploits the global poor or turns a blind eye to them, one not directed towards the End for which we’re all created, will only succeed in reducing all of us to unreality.

A feeling, let’s be honest, we all feel a hint of every time we go shopping.

Only a market that is free not from controls but for the common good can point toward and participate in God’s Kingdom.

And I salute Francis (his chosen name should’ve been fair warning) for pointing that out.

I took some crap from my Catholic brethren for being unfair to the Holy, Mother Church.

To do penance for that post I thought I’d mention a recent story that is indicative to me of what I take to be the greatest gift the Catholic Church presently offers the world.

In case you missed it, Pope Francis recently spoke about the need for global financial reform “along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. Money has to serve, not to rule” Francis said.

The new Pope went to excoriate Western society for its relationship to money and its worship of the free market, saying the worship of the golden calf of old, has now a new image, “in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.” 

You can read the rest of the story here.

To get back to my reason for writing, Pope Francis’ strong words against unfettered capitalism remind the world that though the Catholic Church advocates against abortion and homosexuality it (the Catholic Church) does not fit into the  ’conservative’ category, at least as its given to us in American culture. The very same seamless garment of life that prompts the Church to protect the unborn provokes it defend the prisoner and the poor.

The Pope before him took a dim view of America’s unprovoked war in Iraq and the current Pope just reminded everyone that the Church’s understanding of economics is both older than Milton Friedman and at odds with him.

And, to my mind, that’s the best thing going about the Catholic Church right now.

While all Christian bodies self-present as a global church, seldom do they meet that assertion.

My own Methodist tradition IS a global stream of Christianity yet that stream is comprised of myriad rivulets and eddies, with each taking the character, perspective and loyalty of their nation and culture. So in the United States we have United Methodism and in Korea we have the Korean Methodist Church and so on.

People called Methodists are not a singular global body with a unified witness.

We’re more like managers and employees of a franchise lacking a CEO.

What United Methodists, for example, say about a particular issue- conservative or liberal- inevitably sounds like what any one else from the United States would say, Christian or not.

No where is this more true and obvious than with the situation in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican “Communion.” In case you missed it, (story here) the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church (USA) used the holy day of Pentecost to cast the Apostle Paul (you know, author of most of the New Testament whether we like it or not) aside as a ‘bigot’ using the Book of Acts of all things to make her case.

One would think she could used a text actually authored by Paul for the one formerly known as Saul gives ample ammunition the cause. While I may have sympathies with the issue behind her sermon even someone who agrees with her on the issue of sexuality must admit the ethnocentrism inherent in her perspective, for to liken one’s position to a fresh outpouring of the Spirit is to put those other sincere Christians who disagree in what sort of light?

While I acknowledge all the flaws and imperfections in the following, I nonetheless believe:

Only the Catholic Church with its bishop among bishops, who is beholden to no other government, politics, military or culture, offers a voice free to be, firstly and thoroughly, Christian.

This is why, I think, on issue after issue, from war to sexuality to torture to economics, the office of the Pope is so routinely ‘all over the place,’ refusing  easy secular categorization.

Pope Francis’ words on economics would get pilloried (actually probably yawned at) as ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ language if a United Methodist had said them.

Fact is, he’s just speaking Christian. 

That Francis’ words on economics sound ‘political’ to us (or even ‘partisan’ when on another’s lips) is but an indication of how we’re more captured by our politics than we are by our Great High Priest.

As I’ve noted here before, my boys expend countless hours debating whether or not, say, Gandalf could contend with Jesus in a no-magic-allowed cage match (Jesus).

And so I’m reluctant to puncture their innocence by pointing out that sometimes it seems as though God is less reliable in this world than the Man of Steel.

Case in point, Oklahoma.

I didn’t get to the NPR dial quick enough and the story was unaccompanied by the ‘this could be disturbing to children’ warning.

They heard all about the tornado and the damage and the kids.

And the kids.

And then they asked me questions, each one like they were tabulating God’s cosmic justice on an abacus and seeming surprised at the sum.

I had no idea how to navigate the if/then questions. If God….then…why…?

Related here’s a piece from the NY Times by Bill Franzen about talking to your kids about the darkness in the cosmos.

Avoiding any frank talks with your children about the dangers lurking “out there” in the universe is completely natural. Pointing out a full moon or the Big Dipper is way easier than telling your little Johnny flat-out that a single meteorite the size of his school bus would wipe out everything in the region, including us, and so all his crying now isn’t going to change that.

But as hard as it is to see your youngsters lose their innocence just like that, tiptoeing around the topic of scary stuff in our cosmos will only create worse problems. Better to be candid now, and simply weather little Johnny’s night terrors and his long phases of avoiding all friends and activities, than to hold back on the facts.

Sooner or later your little Susie is going to find out for herself about the inevitability of an asteroid slamming into Earth — probably through a “friend” or on the Internet. So shouldn’t news of our planet’s complete vulnerability come out of your mouth first? Take the initiative early on. That way you can at least reassure her that, as far as killer asteroids go, she’s much more likely to die on an amusement-park ride or at a fireworks display.

Recently I was lying on a blanket in the backyard between my 7-year-old twins, Mark and Missy. We were up way past bedtime, savoring a spectacularly starry night sky. I really got going about supernova explosions of massive stars and about how this results in tremendous gamma-ray bursts that can shoot deadly beams of intense radiation many light years through space, and how, if one ever reached the Earth, it would spell extinction for everyone. I avoided the temptation to sugarcoat things. The twins needed me to tell it like it is.

Well, Mark sobbed away hysterically while Missy asked one simple question: “Are we still gonna get a Christmas tree?”

“Sure we are,” I said, and told the kids they’d probably have Christmas trees for the rest of their lives. I emphasized that it could even take thousands of years for any gamma ray burst to zero in on Earth and so, no worries — we’d be long dead by then anyway. Eventually, maybe, they will take some comfort in that.

It’s hard trying to control your children’s feelings. Yesterday, when I told them about the chances of a huge comet someday crossing Earth’s path, they became very frightened indeed. But, to my credit, I let them know that it was perfectly normal to feel scared — I’m scared, too, I confessed — and gave them probably too many reassuring hugs. Then I microwaved popcorn and we watched “C.S.I.” together, and the twins’ questions turned refreshingly earthbound: What’s rigid mortis? Do kids ever have to get that life insurance? How do vultures know you’re dead and that you’re not just knocked out?And, What does sexy mean? (“Ask your mother next week” — I wimped out on that one.)

Honesty and directness are the best tools for ever so gently shattering your children’s assumption that our planet is a safe and secure place. And if this sometimes makes them feel that their lives on Earth are somehow less meaningful — hey, welcome to the club. But steer clear of the planetarium, unless it’s Laser Rock Night. Then by all means go, even if the homework isn’t done.

For instance, a few weeks ago I confirmed about 40 students in our congregation many of whom I remember from their Day School years here at the church. The students from my first confirmation class 8 years ago are now in the midst of choosing their careers and have since blossomed into adults. One of those first confirmands is joining me this weekend for the Taize Pilgrimage of Trust at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

These are all blessings only made possible by the patience and passage of time, blessings our Methodist system of itinerancy rarely affords pastors.

Yet of all those, one such example is at the fore of my thoughts this week.

On Sunday I was privileged to spend several hours at the deathbed of someone in my congregation, a man whom just a few years ago I would’ve ended any mention with the passive-aggressive Southern epilogue ‘…bless his heart.’

I can be honest about the rough edges of our relationship because to pretend otherwise would be to dishonor the grace-filled trajectory of our relationship ultimately took.

He was a thorn in my side and, to my chagrin, I could not avoid being so in his. He was for me the personification of what pastors and non-churchgoers lament as ‘church politics.’ He was convinced I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t preach my out of a paper-bag and would be the ruination of his church…”bless his heart.”

My- less than pastoral- thoughts generally ran ditto but in the likewise direction.

He has the distinction of being the only parishioner ever to challenge me to a fist fight.

And an arm-wrestling contest.

And the softie in me hopes no one ever takes that distinction from him. 

Yet with all that ‘history’ between us, something in the past couple of years changed between us. He first made peace, I think, that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon and decided to make the best of it.

He then started earnestly to listen and read my sermons, stealing them from the pulpit lectern (sometimes before I’d preached…teaching me to have a spare copy handy) and concluded that even I’m not Billy Graham I’m not without some gospel IQ.

Later, he one day filled up my voicemail box not with complaints but with a thoughtful history of his faith walk.

The barbs I’d once received in the receiving line after worship became playful ‘young fella’ banter and I’d chide him that ‘if I had my own 12 disciples then he’d be….the guy who replaced Judas.’

Last spring he sincerely thanked me for being involved with his granddaughters’ experience at church and this winter he made a substantial gift to our mission work in Guatemala; however, he requested that I carry said gift down to Guatemala myself in cash.

When I asked if this was to insure 100% of his gift went where it was needed or if he was merely trying to get me cavity-searched at the airport, he responded with a cryptic chuckle and a ‘we’ll just see.’

Thus was the down then up path of our relationship that found me visiting him in the hospital this week last. Weak, emaciated and slightly disoriented, he smiled when he saw me. He grabbed my hand and tried to hug me.

Pulling me close, with dehydrated lips he asked me ‘to forgive him for any ugliness he showed in the past- I reckon I was in the wrong…’

I smiled and said: ‘Ditto.’

‘I still could’ve taken you in a fight,’ he said mouthed hoarsely.

‘Try it old man’ I replied loudly into his ear. His smile quickly became another cough.

And then I prayed for/with him.

(* If I was in a different temper I’d insert a diatribe here about how our United Methodist system of itinerancy actively prevents moments like this, moving pastors before relationships can come full circle, but that’s a grouse for another day.)

On Sunday I spent several hours at his bedside, holding his hand while his son rubbed his head and shoulders and reassured him of both our and God’s love.

I sat there quietly amazed that 5 years ago I was about the last person he would’ve wanted next to him in those moments yet all the more amazed that just a few years since there was absolutely nowhere else I’d rather have been on Sunday.

I left him Sunday afternoon not realizing he had only a few hours left.

I got in the elevator of the assisted living facility behind an elderly lady toting a walker. She acted as though she knew me.

I pushed ‘1’ for her and then, to my surprise, I started crying.

‘It’s all right John’ she said.

I’ve no idea who she thought I was but I appreciated the solace nonetheless.

It would take me a while to track back through all the deaths and burials I’ve been a part of since I started out in my little parish back in Princeton. Whatever the number, it’s a lot. Children, parents, men no older than me. They cover the gamut from tragic to the welcome blessed rest, with some well-loved congregants sprinkled in along the way.

Seldom, if ever, has a death hit me the way as has this one.

I’m not quite sure what’s behind this effect.

Is it that I saw in him someone much like myself, someone who as Martin Luther described was ‘at once sinner and justified?’

Is it that, in both the good and the bad, there was absolutely no pretense about our relationship- something that can be rare in congregations?

Is it that he (or our relationship) was a genuine, identifiable proof of grace, that tempers can ease and relationships can heal?

Is it that with him I’d experienced both how petty church politics can be but also how easily such pettiness pass into irrelevance if we let it?

Probably, I suspect, it’s a little of all the above which is but another way of saying:

 ‘_____  was like family to me’ with all the complexity and joy the word ‘family’ entails.

And though the me from 5 years ago would’ve laughed at the thought, I can now honestly say I will miss him like family.

 

I’ve been rereading David Bentley Hart’s little book, The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami? It’s a life-changing kind of book.

In it, David Hart recalls reading an article in the NY Times shortly after the tsunami in South Asia in 2005. The article highlighted a Sri Lankan father, who, in spite of his frantic efforts, which included swimming in the roiling sea with his wife  and mother-in-law on his back, was unable to prevent any of his four children or his wife from being swept to their deaths.

In the article, the father recounted the names of his four children and then, overcome with grief, sobbed to the reporter that “My wife and children must have thought, ‘Father is here….he will save us’ but I couldn’t do it.”

In the Doors of the Sea, Hart wonders: If you had the chance to speak to this father, in the moment of his deepest grief, what should one say? 

Hart argues that only a ‘moral cretin’ would have approached that father with abstract theological explanation:

“Sir, your children’s deaths are a part of God’s eternal but mysterious counsels” or “Your children’s deaths, tragic as they may seem, in the larger sense serve God’s complex design for creation” or “It’s all part of God’s plan.”

Or “It’s okay, God is mourning too” which is only a more sensitive-sounding but equally deficient explanation precisely because it still attempts an explanation.

Hart says that most of us would have the good sense and empathy to talk like that to the father (though my experience tells me Hart would be surprised how many people in fact would say something like it).

This is the point at which Hart takes it to the next level and says something profound and, I think, true:

“And this should tell us something. For if we think it shamefully foolish and cruel to say such things in the moment when another’s sorrow is most real and irresistibly painful, then we ought never to say them.”

Silence is the best thing to (not) say when there’s nothing to say. 

Hart goes on to reflect on The Brothers Karamazov. In it, Dostoyevsky, in the character of Ivan, rages against explanation to his devout brother and gives the best reason I’ve ever encountered for not believing in God. Better than anything in philosophy. Better than anything science can dredge up. Better than any hypocrisy or tragedy I’ve encountered in ministry.

Ivan first recounts, one after another, horrific stories of tortures suffered by children- stories Dostoyevsky ripped from the pages of newspapers- and then asks his pious brother if anything could ever justify the suffering of a single, innocent child.

What makes Ivan’s argument so challenging and unique is that he doesn’t, as you might expect, accuse God for failing to save children like those from suffering. He doesn’t argue as many atheists blandly do that if a good God existed then God would do something to prevent such evil.

Instead Ivan rejects salvation itself; namely, he rejects any salvation, any providence, any cosmic ‘plan’ that would necessitate such suffering.

Ivan admits there very well could be ‘a reason for everything’ that happens under the sun.

Ivan just refuses to have anything to do with such a God.

So, Ivan doesn’t so much disbelieve God as he rejects God, no matter what consequences such rejection might have for Ivan. He turns in his ticket to God’s Kingdom because he wants no part of the cost at which this Kingdom comes.

When I first read the Brothers K, Ivan’s argument, which is followed by the poem ‘The Grand Inquisitor, took my breath away. I had no answer or reply to Ivan. I was convinced he was right. I still am convinced by him.

The irony, I suspect, is that Ivan’s siding with suffering of the little ones is a view profoundly shaped by the cross. It seems to me that Ivan’s compassion for innocent suffering and disavowal of ANY explanation that justifies suffering comes closer to the crucified Christ than an avowed Christian uttering an unfeeling, unthinking platitude like ‘God has a plan for everything.’

The test of whether or not our speech about God is true, Hart says then, isn’t whether it’s logical, rationally demonstrable or culled from scripture.

The test is whether we could say it to a parent standing at their child’s grave.

Hart’s axiom shows, I think, how only God-talk that’s centered in the crucified and risen Christ passes the test.

You can listen to the sermon here

Or you can download it in iTunes under ‘Tamed Cynic.’ 

A couple of years ago my wife and I made the decision to get rid of our cable; so that, now we get zero channels on our television. You can imagine how popular that decision was with our children (not).

Even though our boys still claim to hate us and curse the day I sealed our cable receiver in its box and shipped it back to Verizon, Ali and I think it was a good and even necessary decision.

     For one, we thought it was ridiculous to keep paying the mortgage payment that is the Verizon cable bill.

 

For another, we didn’t want out kids exposed to a constant stream of advertisements that train them to want and want and want and want and want.

More.

Of course, if you asked my wife why we got rid of our cable, she wouldn’t mention any of those reasons. No, she’d tell you it was because her husband- me- is a complete sucker for informercials.

A pushover, she’d say. An easy mark.

And it’s true.

     If I was surfing the channels and I heard the words ‘set it and forget it’ fuggedaboutit, I was hooked, convinced I absolutely needed to be able to rotisserie 6 chickens and a side of ribs at one time.

 

If I was flipping channels and came across the informercial for the Forearm Max, I’d spend the next 2 hours shamefully amazed that I’ve made it this far in my life with forearms as pathetic and emasculating as mine.

 

If I saw the commercial for the Shake Weight, my first thought was never ‘that seems to simulate something that violates the Book of Leviticus, something my grandmother said would make me go blind.’

No, my first thought was always ‘that looks like something I need.’

So we got rid of our cable, but that hardly solves my condition.

There are advertisements everywhere.

A few months ago, near Valentine’s Day, Gabriel and I went to Whole Foods to get some fish.

At that point, I’d been on the infomercial wagon for 18 months, 2 weeks and 3 days. But guess what I discovered they were doing back by the seafood section?

Uh huh, a product demonstration.

The person doing the demonstration was a woman in her 20’s or 30’s.

For some inexplicable, yet very effective, reason she was wearing a black evening dress that reminded me of the one worn by Angelina Jolie in Mr and Mrs Smith, which then reminded me of the dress worn by Angelina Jolie in Mr and Mrs Smith. 

Whether the woman doing the demo did in fact look like Angelina Jolie or just had the same effect on me- my memory cannot be trusted.

‘Hey, let’s stick around and watch this’ I said to Gabriel, who smacked his forehead with here-we-go-again embarrassment.

In addition to the slinky dress, the demonstrator was wearing a Madonna mic which pumped her bedroom voice through speakers, which beckoned all the men in the store to obey her siren call. 

The product she was demonstrating that day was the Vitamix.

Have you seen one? Do you own one?

If you haven’t or don’t: the Vitamix is like the Bentley of blenders.

Angelina pulled the Vitamix out of its box like a jeweler at Tiffany’s. And then in her sleepy, kitten voice she went into her schtick:

‘The Vitamix is a high-powered blending machine for your home or your office. It’s redefining what a blender can do. The Vitamix will solve all your blending problems.

With this 1 product, you won’t need any of those other tools and appliances taking up so much space in your kitchen.’

And as she spoke, I wasn’t thinking: ‘Who needs a high-powered blender for their office? Why does a blender need redefining? It’s just a blender.’

No, I was thinking…

‘This could solve all my blending problems. If I have this, I won’t need anything else.’

I looked down at my side, Gabriel was transfixed too.

The first part of her demo she showed off the Vitamix’s many juicing and blending capabilities. But then to display the diversity of the product’s features, she asked the crowd: ‘Who enjoys pesto?’

And like a brown-nosing boy, desperate to impress the teacher, the teacher he has a crush on, I raised my hand and spoke up: ‘I do. I am Italian after all.’

And she smiled at me- only at at me- and said: ‘I’ve always had a thing for Italians.’

Aheh.

‘Can you cook?’ she asked me. And I nodded my head. Like Fonzi, too cool for words.

‘Even better’ she purred.

And then she pretended to be speaking to the entire crowd even though I knew she only cared about me.

‘Have you ever noticed how the pesto you buy in the store never looks fresh? It’s dark and its oily.’

And we all of us, we nodded like Stepford Husbands.

‘But when you try to make pesto at home (and she held up her hands like this was a problem on par with AIDS or world hunger) food processors and traditional blenders just won’t do will they they?’

And then she looked my way, like I was a plant in the audience.

Hypnotized, I said: ‘No, they won’t do’ even though I’ve been making pesto since I was 10 years old and I can’t say I’ve ever had a problem.

She licked some of the pesto off her spoon as though it were a lollypop or a popsicle or… and and then she said in her come-hither voice:

‘I’m not married (sigh) but if I was…this is what I’d want…for Valentine’s Day.’

I drove my new Vitamix home that afternoon.

I showed it to my wife, presenting it to her like a hunter/gatherer laying his bounty at the foot of his woman’s cave.

And then I got back in my car and drove it back to the store in order to return it because as my wife pointed out I already had a blender and a food processor and who could convince me to buy this ridiculous thing and what am I, an idiot?

Sure, I’m an easy mark, but how could I not be?

Take it from someone who knows what he’s talking about: Commercials and product pitches- they’re more powerful and persuasive than any preacher.

Just think, you’re exposed to 3 thousand advertisements a day. A day. And every last single one of them operates on the same, simple, seductive formula:

They identify a problem- maybe a problem you didn’t even know you had until they told you that you had the problem- a pesto problem say.

And then they make you a promise: this product can solve your problem (and maybe all your problems).

And best of all, it’s easy. All you have to do is make a decision, say ‘yes’ to this product.

     There’s nothing else you have to do. 

3 thousand times a day we’re told we have a problem and we’re offered a solution and we’re promised there’s nothing more we need to do.

3 thousand times a day.

And so it shouldn’t surprise us that many Christians pitch Jesus according to this same marketing formula.

‘Faith in Jesus’ gets treated like a product in a sales pitch. In some churches, this sales pitch is called ‘the plan of salvation.’

The ‘plan of salvation’ makes for great advertising.

It’s simple.

It’s cheap. It hardly costs the customers anything.

And like any good infomercial, it’s lends itself to a visual demonstration.

     First, it identifies a problem: You’re separated from God. 

The emptiness in your life, the sense of something missing, the guilt and shame you feel underneath- it’s because you’re separated from God.

It’s called sin and because of sin there’s a great chasm between you and God.

You’re here and God’s over there.

And there’s nothing you can do, no good deed, no matter how hard you try, there’s nothing you can do to get from where you are to where God is.

    Second- 

     The plan of salvation sales pitch offers you a solution to the problem: Jesus Christ died on the cross so that you might no longer be separated from God. 

If you have faith in Jesus Christ, then your problem? Gone. Shazam.

Your sin? Dealt with. You will be right with God.

You will be “justified” by your faith in Jesus Christ.

     And Third- 

     The plan of salvation- like all sales pitches- ends with a promise too good to be true. 

It’s free. It doesn’t cost anything. There aren’t 3 Easy Payments of $19.95.

     None of the cost is passed on to you.

Better yet, if you choose this product while there’s still time, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, there’s nothing else you have to do, there’s no further obligation required.

It says it right here on the packaging: “You are justified not by your works but by your faith in Christ

For most of you, even if it wasn’t hawked to you in an infomercial kind of way, this is the product you were sold.

The problem is your sin, your separation from God.

If you have faith, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, if you have faith…

Then you’re justified, you’re made right with God.

And there’s nothing else you need to do because you’re justified by your faith not by your works.

For most of you, even it didn’t come packaged in a slick sales pitch, this is the product you were sold.

And maybe you’ve never given it a second thought.

     But some of you have. I know.

Some of you were sold this ‘faith in Christ product’ and then one day you took out the instructions.

You took out the instructions, and what did you read there?

Something more than the salesman promised you.

You read Jesus saying that you should be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, and you read Jesus laying down a whole lot of ‘woes’ if you’re not working to be perfect.

You read Jesus saying I am the vine and you are the branches and if you do not bear fruit with your faith, then you will be pruned away.

You read Jesus warning that ‘when I come back, I will separate the sheep from the goats according to whether or not you gave water to the thirsty or clothing to the naked or food to the hungry.’

Because if you didn’t, Jesus Christ will treat it like you didn’t do it for him.

We’ve all been sold this ‘faith in Christ no more work necessary’ product.

But when you actually open up the instructions to this product, you read Jesus’ brother warning that ‘faith without works is… no good.’

Or you read Paul- Paul!- saying that one day we will be judged by our character, by our work, by our deeds, by the fruit the Holy Spirit has harvested from our faith.

     The promise that was sold to us doesn’t match how the instructions say this product is meant to work in our lives. 

But to discover that, you’ve got to dig into the fine print.

The truth is always in the fine print.

The fine print is always where you realize what the actual cost is going to be.

     And when it comes to fine print, there is no better example than today’s passage from Romans 3.

If you open your pew bibles, you’ll see that today’s text actually comes with fine print- footnotes that imply something far scarier than the fine print in your credit card bill.

The fine print in the case of today’s text- it comes down to just two words: Pistis and Christou.

The word ‘pistis’ is the Greek word that gets translated as ‘faith.’

But the word ‘pistis’ doesn’t mean ‘rational assent’ or ‘belief’’ and certainly not ‘a feeling in your heart.’

It means something closer to ‘trusting obedience,’ and so the better way to translate the word ‘pistis’ isn’t with the word ‘faith’ but with the word ‘faithfulness.’ 

And the word ‘Christou.’

Obviously that’s the word for Christ or Messiah. Christou is in the Genitive Case.

And the best way to translate it is not ‘in Christ’

The best way to translate it ‘of Christ.’

When you read the fine print in Romans 3, you realize Paul is saying something different than what you were sold.

He’s not saying we are justified by our faith in Christ. 

     He’s saying it is the faithfulness of Christ that justifies you. 

Now, I know you’re probably thinking ‘Jason just likes to be a smarty pants and this doesn’t make any difference.’

To the smarty-pants charge: guilty, I say.

But to the other charge: I say it makes all the difference because Paul wants you to see something that is both better news and far more demanding than the ‘faith in Christ’ product that was hawked to you.

For Paul, it’s the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah that justifies us.

It’s Christ’s faithfulness that makes us right with God.

It’s Jesus’ trusting obedience, not just on the cross but all the way up to it, from Galilee to Golgotha, that zeroes out the sin in our ledgers.

For Paul, Christ’s faithfulness isn’t just an example of something. It’s effective for something. It changes something between God and us, perfectly and permanently. Just like Jesus said it did when he said: ‘It is accomplished.’

That’s why, for Paul, any of our attempts to justify ourselves are absurd. Of course they are- because he’s already justified us.

     Dig in to the fine print and you see that, for Paul, the good news of our justification is not a conditional if/then statement: If you have faith in Christ then you will be justified, then your sins will be forgiven.

     That’s not good news; it’s a marketing lure. 

It suggests that Christ’s Cross doesn’t actually change anything until we first invite Jesus to change our hearts.

    But Jesus didn’t hang on the cross and with his dying breath say ‘It is accomplished

     dot, dot, dot

     if and when you have faith in me…’

This is why the fine print’s such a big deal!

Because it’s such better news than the sales pitch.

     Think about what Paul’s saying:

     your believing, your saying the sinner’s prayer, your inviting Jesus in to your heart, your making a decision for Christ- all of it is good.

     But none of it is necessary.

None of it is the precondition for having your sins erased.

None of it is necessary for you being justified.

Because you already are justified- because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

That’s it. That’s the good news.

     You can have a mountain’s worth of doubts and you can have faith as small as a fraction of a mustard seed- no worries.

      Because your justification does not depend on you or your faith or lack thereof.

     But on Jesus Christ and his faithfulness.

When you think about it, there’s a reason Paul’s message gets pushed to the fine print. It makes for terrible marketing.

There’s no problem to get your attention.

There’s no bad news to spark your worrying.

There’s no scary threat to provoke your fear.

     Paul’s fine print message could never be an informercial because there’s no visual to demonstrate. The chasm that once separated you from God- it’s gone.

It’s already been repaired. By Christ.

Your justification. Already taken care of.

Paul’s message doesn’t follow the sales pitch formula.

     There’s no problem; there’s just good news.

     There’s no way that’ll sell.

But there’s another reason why Paul’s message gets pushed to the fine print.

Because when you realize that it’s the faithfulness of Jesus Christ that has set you right with God, his faithful life of sacrifice and selfless love, his faithful life of compassion and forgiveness and generosity and boundary-breaking, enemy-embracing love- then you realize…

You can’t just respond to that with “faith,” with “belief,” with “a feeling inside you.”

You can only respond by attempting a life like his- a life that once led to a cross.

You see it’s not there is anything you are required to do. Rather there is now  so much you are summoned to do.

     When you realize and trust it’s the faithfulness of Christ that justifies you, his faithful life all the way to the cross, you realize…

     That what’s been given to you for free- it could end up costing you EVERYTHING.

     And that’s terrible advertising. That’s an awful sales pitch.

     No one would ever buy into that.

     No wonder it’s easier to count ‘decisions for Christ’ than to count people carrying bearing crosses for him.

Pentecost

Genesis 11.1-9 & Acts 2

Speaking a Different Language

I studied five years of Latin in high school and four years of German.

I can still decline the word for ‘farmer:’ acricola, agricolae, agricolam. And I can recall enough German to appreciate Indiana Jones on a deeper

level.

I studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary, and I still know them well enough to venture into the Old and New Testaments like a treasure hunter armed with a few well-chosen tools.

But when it comes to speaking, when it comes to listening, I’ve never been very good at languages.

I’ve always heard how languages come easier for babies than they do for adults- their minds are like sponges, so goes the cliche. But, really, I think the difference is that no one hands out little treats when an adult finally gets the right word for ‘potty’ or ‘hungry.’

Despite my relative ambivalence about languages, on my second day of my first semester of college I decided to enroll in French class. My roommate and I were sitting in a boring Intro to English Literature course, listening to a beer- bellied, gray-haired professor recite Beowulf in Old English.

And across the hall, in the classroom opposite ours, we both noticed a twenty-something, red-haired woman standing in front of a chalk board wearing a tight leather skirt, teaching French.

We changed our schedules that afternoon.

The French teacher’s name was Isabelle, but, because of the siren-like spell she cast over my friend and I, to this day my wife refers to her as ‘Jezebel.’

My interest in French more or less began and ended with Isabelle but, once I’d enrolled, the college required me to stick it out for three additional semesters.

The good thing about French is that you can get by by approximating an accented mumble. My own accent slash mumble was a hybrid of Charles Aznavour and Detective Briscoe from Casablanca.

I passed the written exams by rote memorization, and I survived the listening comprehension tests by correctly assuming that most French conversations were about Miles Davis or American Imperialism.

After four semesters, I ended up with an A average but the memory of Isabelle lingered longer.

Today I can recall a few French words, but when it comes to understanding, it’s all confusion for me.

And the Lord said, ‘Look, the people all have one language; this is only the beginning of what they will do.

I traveled to France a while ago to spend a week at Taize, an ecumenical monastery in the Burgundy countryside. Taize is a destination for thousands of Christian pilgrims from places scattered all over the globe.

And ‘pilgrimage’ seems an appropriate descriptor when you consider how long and trying and confusing the journey there can prove.

At the beginning of the pilgrimage I was wandering around CDG airport in Paris, trying to locate my connecting flight. The gate number printed on my boarding pass didn’t match the listings on the terminal television screen.

I made the mistake of walking up to the desk at what should’ve been my gate and asking for help.

‘I’m just wondering if I’m at the right gate’ I said. The frenchman behind the counter stared at me blankly and said ‘Oui.’

Not satisfied he’d understood me, I handed him my boarding pass and decided to speak every traveling American’s second language. I just spoke louder: I’M JUST WONDERING IF I’M AT THE RIGHT GATE.’

He looked down at my boarding pass without moving his head- sort of like those haunted house portraits where only the eyes move- and again he said ‘Oui’ even though the sign directly behind him said that particular flight would be landing in Budapest.

I sighed, feeling confused, and as I walked away and he said ‘Thank you. Have a nice day’ in rehearsed non-comprehension.

Not trusting his reassurances, I walked up to Air France’s euphemistically titled Customer Service desk and pressed my dilemma to a young frenchwoman who wore her hair in a matronly bun.

‘You’re American?’ she said in textbook English. ‘And you don’t speak French?’

When I said no she said ‘Oh’ like she was a doctor examining my MRI and had found a suspicious mass.

Then she spoke rapid French to her customer service colleagues and set them all to tittering with laughter. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I was pretty sure I knew who they were talking about.

Not understanding, I walked away confused.

And God said: Come, let us go down, and confuse their language…

The next leg of my journey was by train.

For what seemed like an eternity, I vainly searched around the train station for a men’s room. When I finally found one, there was an old woman standing in front of the stall doors with a mop, absently wiping at the same spot on the floor.

From the cobwebs of my memory, I pulled some of the French Isabelle had taught me. ‘I need to use the restroom’ I told the old woman.

At least I’d thought that was what I’d said. In hindsight, having later consulted my French book, I think what I actually said was: ‘I need to drive your toilet.’

The old woman with the mop looked confused so I repeated it, louder: ‘I NEED TO DRIVE YOUR TOILET.’

And she held out her palm and said: ‘You need to be 25 years old.’ At least, that’s what I thought she’d said.

I nodded and said ‘Don’t worry I’m well past 25’ and I walked over to the bathroom stall. But she kept talking, faster this time, her words lashing at my ankles.

When I turned around to close the stall door, the old woman was standing in the middle of it, holding out her hand and telling me I needed to be 25 years old.

I was about to pull out my passport to prove I was old enough when a tall, blond man with hipster glasses said in a Swedish accent: ‘It costs 25 cents. You need to pay her 25 cents.’

‘Oh’ I said and fished around in my pockets.
‘Sorry for the confusion’ I muttered to her, but she did not understand a word

I spoke.

And the Lord said: Come, let us confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another…

For the final leg of my journey, I had to take a bus from Macon to Taize.

I had my fare counted out in my sweaty hand. For the entire train ride I’d practiced how to ask for a bus ticket. When it was my turn, I stepped up to the driver, an elderly, tough-looking frenchman.

I laid my euros down on the tray and spit out the one sentence I’d been playing in my head like a broken record: ‘A ticket to Taize, please.’

But then the driver asked me a question and, just like that, it was like my homework had blown away with the wind. I had no idea what he was asking me.

‘Lociento, no seh Francais’ I babbled….in Spanish.
The driver clenched his wrinkled jaw and asked his question again, and I just

smiled, feeling confused.

‘He is asking if you want the roundtrip ticket’ the skinny man behind me explained with a German accent.

‘Oh, yes. Yes, please’ I said.

The bus driver tore off my receipt and slapped it down in my palm and began shouting at me: ‘SPEAK THE LANGUAGE. YOU COME TO FRANCE…SPEAK FRENCH!’

The skinny German behind me continued his translating duties: ‘He’s saying that when you come to France you should speak French.’

‘Yeah, I got that part. Danke’ I said and sat down, confused and red-faced.

Therefore the place was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.

The story of Babel belongs to what is known as the Primeval History.

The Primeval History narrates God’s dealings with creation before God ever called Abraham or commissioned Israel to be a light to the nations.

The Primeval History is not, like the rest of scripture, a particular history of a chosen People. It’s a general history of all humanity.

The Primeval History is Israel’s attempt to project backwards in time and answer some of the questions we still ask:

Where did we come from? Who made us and how? Why is there Sin in the world?

Babel is the climax of the Primeval History.
But the story isn’t just meant to answer the obvious question:

Why are there so many languages in the world?

The story of Babel is also the bible’s attempt to pinpoint the origination of: War
and
Our Fear of the Stranger and Hatred of the Other
Our Suspicion of
And Hostility towards
and Distrust of
Difference.

Because even though the confusing and scattering God does at Babel is meant as a grace to save us from our own hubris, we don’t receive it as gift.

At Babel God creates tribes with different languages and customs and complexions. Different, diverse tribes.

And we respond by creating tribalism.

The energies and ingenuities we’d spent on baking bricks and cutting stone we soon turn to making weapons.

The Sin of Cain and the Sin of Babel mix and, as the Primeval History draws to a close, war is born.

For much of the time, my time at the monastery was as confusing as my journey there.

Going through the dinner line one evening and seeing they were serving a gruel that resembled the porridge from Oliver Twist, I said: ‘No thank you, I’ll just have the bread and the apple.’

The volunteer server, a teenage girl who’d colored the Hungarian flag onto her name tag, she just smiled at me and said ‘Yah’ and then plopped a heaping spoonful on my plate.

One afternoon I asked another pilgrim for the time- I even gestured to my wrist- but I was instead pointed the way to the bathroom.

In the group bible study, I tried in vain to discuss Paul’s Letter to the Romans with folks for whom English was a second language.

It was confusing all round.

And I couldn’t help but think that everything would be so much easier if we all spoke the same language.

That’s pretty much how I felt the Thursday evening I ventured into the monastery sanctuary for the fixed-hour worship.

I grabbed a wrinkled blue paper songbook at the door and found an empty spot among the couple thousand pilgrims. All of us sat on the sloped cement floor facing a terra cotta altar table, above which hung three red-orange sheets of canvas arranged to resemble a fiery dove.

The worship that Thursday night followed the same pattern as all the other nights. Scripture was read. Prayers were spoken and sung. Silence was stretched out longer than any sermon.

Towards the end of the worship, before we took communion, a song number flashed on the digital screen that hung on either side of the altar.

Everyone flipped in their books, a 12 string guitar struck the right note and we started to sing: ‘Da pacem in diebus.’ Give Peace in our Days.

It’s a chant, only a couple of phrases. We sang it maybe two dozen times at first, in Latin. But then I noticed the pilgrims in front of me, a youth group it looked like, they’d started to sing it in German.

We kept singing and after a few more repetitions I could make out French being sung behind me by a husband and wife and their three little children. And after that I could hear French starting to pop out in the crowd from other places in the sanctuary.

We were still singing the same song; it was the same tune. They’d just started to sing it in their own language.

It took me a few times more through the song before I worked up the courage to sing in English, but when I did I heard British accents joining me.

And to my left I could make out the hard consonants of what sounded like Russian and to my right I could hear Italian that reminded me of my grandparents.

And maybe it’s the tune or the words but together, the thousands of us, all singing each in our own language, it kind of sounded like the roll of an ocean wave.

Or like a mighty rushing wind.

And even though there were other sounds I couldn’t make out, other languages I couldn’t identify, I understood everyone of them.

And after we sang we passed the Peace of Christ and a teenage girl with stonewashed jeans and dyed green hair embraced me and said something in my ear.

And I didn’t know what language she was speaking, but I understood.

And when I filed up through the line and held my hands out to receive the Body of Christ, the dark-skinned monk looked down upon me, smiling and softly spoke a few words.

I didn’t know what he’d said, but I’d understood perfectly.

And after the worship service ended and a small crowd of us lingered behind to gather around the Cross, I couldn’t have translated all the whispered prayers I heard but I understood everyone of them.

God doesn’t undo what God did at Babel until Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends upon a crowd of thousands of scattered tribes: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, and visitors all the way from Rome.”

Just as God comes down at Babel to confuse their speech, the Holy Spirit comes down at Pentecost to fill with them with praise.

And though each of them speaks their own language, each of them is understood.

No more confusion.

God heals the wounds of Babel not by creating a common language, but by creating a People.

A people who, despite their differences, understand one another because they remember what was forgotten at Babel: that you were made to praise God and embody God’s love and serve in God’s name and point towards God’s future.

God heals the wounds of Babel not by creating a new language.

God heals the wounds of Babel by creating a People who are God’s new language.

* This sermon owes, as does my entire theological worldview, to Stanley Hauerwas.

Here’s a funny short from Mr Deity questioning someone who did not have faith in him. Quite the opposite.

Note, if you’re a dullard the guy in the goatee is ‘El’ (God), the young, hip guy is Jesse (Jesus) and the nerd in the glasses is Larry (the Holy Spirit)

Indeed for many in Reformed and Evangelical circles, Justification is synonymous with the ‘Gospel.’

The problem with conflating Justification with the Gospel is that the Gospels themselves do not so identify Justification as the Gospel.

According to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (in fact, Peter and Paul as well), the Gospel is the proclamation that Jesus the crucified Messiah has been raised and ascended to be Lord over creation.

Conflating Justification with Gospel leads to this provocative question: Did Jesus preach the Gospel?

Listen to Scot McKnight tackle this question, taking many a evangelical to task:

You only think things should change because you’re young.

Young people always want to change things.

He/she said.

Cue wag of the finger: But if you were older…

I honestly considered the possibility. Really, I did. Sans snark.

And then decided, no, I’d still be pushing the same view. Because it’s not a ‘young person’s view.’ It’s naming reality. Reality with a ticking expiration date on it.

And to prove this, I offer this snippet from Bishop Will Willimon, who will be preaching and lecturing at Aldersgate next Lent.

Willimon, as you can see by his pic, is old, put out to pasture by the mandatory retirement age. His membership in the AARP, however, does not determine what he says about his membership in the Body of Christ.

He also says exactly the same things I say:

Being bishop gave me a front row seat to observe ministry in the Protestant mainline that is being rapidly sidelined.

Pastoral leadership of a mainline congregation is no picnic.  My admiration is unbounded for clergy who persist in proclaiming the gospel in the face of the resistance that the world throws at them.  Now, as a seminary professor, I’m eager to do my bit in the classroom to prepare new clergy for the most demanding of vocations.

From what I saw, too many contemporary clergy limit themselves to ministries of congregational care-giving – soothing the fears of the anxiously affluent.

One of my pastors led a self-study of her congregation.  Eighty percent responded that their chief expectation of their pastor was, “Care for me and my family.”

I left seminary in the heady Sixties, eager to be on the front line in the struggle for a renaissance of the church as countercultural work of God.  By a happy confluence of events, the church was again being given the opportunity to be salt and light to the world rather than sweet syrup to enable the world’s solutions to go down easier.

Four decades later as bishop I saw too many of my fellow clergy allow congregational-caregiving and maintenance to trump other more important acts of ministry like truth-telling and mission leadership.  Lacking the theological resources to resist the relentless cloying of self-centered congregations, these tired pastors breathlessly dashed about offering their parishioners undisciplined compassion rather than sharp biblical truth.

North American parishes are in a bad neighborhood for care-giving.  Most of our people (at least those we are willing to include in mainline churches) solve biblically legitimate need (food, clothing, housing) with their check books.

Now, in the little free time they have for religion, they seek a purpose-driven life, deeper spirituality, reason to get out of bed in the morning, or inner well-being – matters of unconcern to Jesus.  In this narcissistic environment, the gospel is presented as a technique, a vaguely spiritual response to free-floating, ill-defined omnivorous human desire.

A consumptive society perverts the church’s ministry into another commodity which the clergy dole out to self-centered consumers who enlist us in their attempt to cure their emptiness.

Exclusively therapeutic ministry is the result.

I saw fatigue and depression among many clergy whom I served as bishop.

Debilitation is predictable for a cleros with no higher purpose for ministry than servitude to the voracious personal needs of the laos. 

The 12 million dollar Duke Clergy Health study implies that our biggest challenge is to drop a few pounds and take a day off.  If you can’t be faithful, be healthy and happy.

I believe that our toughest task is to love the Truth who is Jesus Christ more than we love our people who are so skillful in conning us into their idolatries.

Yet I must say that by comparison, the poor old demoralized mainline church, for all its faults, is a good deal more self-critical and boldly innovative than the seminary.  Our most effective clergy are finding creative ways to critique the practice of ministry, to start new communities of faith, to reach out to underserved and unwelcomed constituencies, and to engage the laity in something more important than themselves.  Alas, seminaries have changed less in the past one hundred years than the worship, preaching, and life of vibrant congregations have changed in the last two decades.

As bishop I served as chair of our denomination’s Theological Schools Commission. Most of our seminaries are clueless, or at least unresponsive, to the huge transformation that is sweeping through mainline Protestantism.  We have so many seminaries for one reason: the church has given seminaries a monopoly on training our clergy with no accountability for the clergy they produce.  Increasing numbers of our most vital congregations say that seminary fails to give them the leadership they now require.  Oblivious to our current crisis, seminaries continue to produce pastors for congregational care-giving and institutional preservation.

The result is another generation of pastors who know only how to be chaplains for the status quo and managers of decline rather than leaders of a movement in transformational faith.

As a fellow bishop said, “Seminaries are still cranking out pastors to serve healthy congregations, giving us new pastors who are ill equipped to serve two-thirds of my churches.”

In just a decade, United Methodists, various Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians will have half of our strength and resources – judgment upon our unfaithful limitation of ministry to a demographic (mine) that is rapidly exiting.

After decades of study, finger-pointing and blaming, we now know that a major factor in our rapid decline is our unwillingness to go where the people are and to plant new churches.  Yet few traditionalist mainline seminaries teach future pastors how to start new communities of faith.

My new pastors repeatedly told me: “We got out of seminary with lots of good ideas but without the ability to lead people from here to there.”  “I’ve learned enough to know that something is bad wrong with the current church but I don’t know where to begin to fix it.”

You can read the full article here.