Sermon: Listen!

 

          Jesus has preached his beloved blessings of:

the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the reviled,
as well as the corollary woes to: the rich, filled, overjoyed, and honored.

          Then he asks, “Are you listening?”

 

          He takes a beat—he does a sort of mic check,
 to see if people are paying attention.
He insists that the Disciples and the Crowd reflect on what such blessings and woes mean,
 not as abstractions,
but in the world they found themselves in… the world as it actually is!

In Judea long occupied by Rome
—where patriotic rebels and vicious bandits were rather hard to tell apart…
because they were usually the same people…

In a polarized place
—Samaritans and Jews jostling for position,
Judaism itself riven and split
—Patrician Sadducees and Essenes exiled and proud of it,
Pharisees themselves divided between
acceptance of the occupation             and resistance to it…

In such a reality
—what does God’s grand reversal
—the blessing of the Kingdom of God
that Jesus has just spoken into existence
mean in concrete terms?
“Are you listening?” This is what that will look like in your life…

And at base, Jesus insists there is a path between retaliation and reciprocity,
a path that can not be found—only revealed.
The path between retaliation and reciprocity cannot be found, only revealed.

Prayer

 

“Are you listening?”

Jesus warns the crowd of the twin dangers of Retaliation and Reciprocity.

If you live as if the Beatitudes are true
—even as a part time lifestyle, even as a hobby,
there will be consequences, you will make enemies… you will get hurt.

The temptation, an o’ so human one, is to retaliate
—you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back.
An eye for an eye—blinding the whole world.

 

“Are you listening?”

When you are struck, however, offer your enemy the other cheek
—now one reading of this is a so-called post-colonial reading
—Roman citizens alone could be struck with the left hand…
so this second slap is a sort of conferring of dignity—I’m a good as any Roman! (back-hand)

 

Maybe a more meaningful reading is that offering a second strike
is asking of the question: “Do you really mean it?”

So too, when your cloak is requisitioned,
a Roman form of Imminent Domain,
give them more than they are allowed to take
—go naked to get the occupiers to knock it off!

 

Luke’s Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles,
 are both filled with the radical generosity of “give to all who beg”
to the point of sharing everything in common…
a practice often lauded, but rarely done.

 

Then finally, Jesus insists that theft ought to be transformed into a gift…
they can’t take your stuff if you give it to ‘em!
You’re saving them from sinning,
saving them from breaking a commandment!

 

          Resist your enemies by heightening the stakes
—make it uncomfortable and personal
—make them see the evil of their ways
and even force them to go against their own values and rules when they harm you!

          Not only that, heighten your own good deeds
—heighten the rightness of your cause,
treating them like the human beings they are!

 

“Are you listening?”

The other impulse of us humans is to transform kindness and goodness into a game
—I scratch your back, you scratch mine,
Quid Pro Quo
Reciprocity!

 

That Springsteen song might boast that,
“We take care of our own…”
but Sorry Bruce,
Jesus says “guess what, everyone does that
—even sinners love those who love them.”

 

Likewise, you might do good
in order that someone will owe you a favor
—that’s not how the least, last, and lost are going to be blessed,
that’s not Kingdom-work.

 

If you give,
in order to make someone indebted to you
—then it wasn’t a gift!

I think this is something most of us have experienced
—I’d say 1/3 of the fights I’ve mediated in my life have involved some form of this
—“I gave you this thing, and you didn’t use it the way I wanted you to…
-now I’m going to take it back…
-now I’m going to take it from you,
-it was never really yours to begin with!

A gift is only a gift if there are no strings attached to it!

          Instead of relying on reciprocity,
be merciful as our Father is merciful
—start out from a point of thanksgiving
—grateful for every gift, life itself a gift…

 

“Are you listening?”

This way of life
—retaliation replaced with resistance and empathy.

This way of life
—reciprocity overcome by mercy,
and by the Way of Jesus who is the Christ, the Lord, the very Son of God.

 

“Are you listening?”

This is impossible if it is a task,
if it is a way to be found,
to search and sift and struggle to do…

but as a Revelation,
that’s a whole different story
—mercy, empathy, resistance, a way
—is shown to us.

The Life of Jesus Christ reveals God’s own heart.

God is not a God of retaliation
—our sins are not held against us, our shortcomings and misdeeds do not condemn us…

Instead, God holds us back where we would harm another
and looks upon us with tears of compassion and love,
may the lost be found,
the hungry fed,
the least uplifted.

Neither is God a God of reciprocity
—God is not looking for a bribe,
or desires good things only for those who do good…
God doesn’t string us along or make us into, to quote Luther, “workbeasts”
or give us favor, only if we give God something in return…

Instead, God is the God of Gift and Grace,
rushes to us while we are still far off,
cares for us even when we do not care for ourselves
—God loves the unlovable and…
when God showed up to save sinners, he was all in
—living this way of blessing even when it kills him,
and makes him alive again,
and with him all of us!

 

“Are you listening?”
Jesus revealed a cosmic mercy and empathy that makes the beatitudes true,
despite all the evidence to the contrary.

He is blessing this poor hungry mournful reviled world,
transforming it into an abundant place
—a whole world resurrected through Jesus Christ!

Amen.

Discipleship in a 4D World Session 3: Decentralization—Judges

               So, first a confession, when I tried to teach this session, I went way overtime… which I should have known would happen, I tried to teach the whole book of Judges, and some of the book of Joshua, in under an hour.

 

The Book of Joshua—A Map of the Tribes

              I love reading Fantasy, and one of my favorite features of the genre are the cool maps in the front of the book. That is a good way to take the book of Joshua, a type of map of an idealized version of the conquest.

 

Joshua 4:1-7—Just feast on this imagery a bit, 12 tribes traveling together before the ark. This is the Utopia the author hopes for, a decentralized theocracy; the ideal that turns into a dystopia once the rubber hits the road, as the book of Judges demonstrates. But ideally—12 tribes, upholding God’s roving presence, founded and forged in crossing out of slavery. That’s some compelling stuff!

Joshua 12:7-24—Here is an idealized account of the 12 tribe’s conquest, almost a completed to-do list, Kings from Ba’al-gad to Mt. Halak.

 

Judges—A Tribal Confederation breaks down ever generation

              If Joshua is akin to Thomas More’s Utopia, then Judges is George Miller’s Mad Max. Any semblance of an ideal society is quickly scraped away, as the faults of a decentralized theocracy are on full display.

 

Judges 2:6-10—Joshua is buried and stability with it

6-The tribes are dispersed to go do their own thing.

10-As is the refrain from Judges to Kings to Ecclesiastes, from one generation to the next everything is lost. Inheritances never pass cleanly from one generation to the next.

Judges 2:11-15—Idolatry

11-Ba’al—Canaanite deity, “Lord” in some Canaanite languages, so Ba’al Peor would be the Lord of Peor, etc.

12-Astartes—a goddess—the local manifestation of Ishtar/Aphrodite.

14-The conquest doesn’t go so well, there are counter-attacks. The indigenous people didn’t much like having their kings killed and put on a list like groceries. These defeats are seen as reproof from God for the Tribes going over to other gods, forgetting the liberation from Egypt.

 

Judges 2:16-23—Judges restrain the people’s unfaithfulness

Just as God provided clothing for Adam and Eve when they were expelled from Eden, called Noah to build an ark to save his family from the flood, and provided the Passover as protection for the people’s first born down in Egypt, so too the people are given a way to continue on even in the face of their own ruptured relationships with their God. God provides charismatic leaders to guide them through challenges in the land.

16-Judges—Shophet, Charismatic Chief of Chiefs, unites the tribes and deals with trouble.

17-It is worth considering that when the people are dispersed throughout the land as they are, decentralized, it is harder for them to hold onto the ways of the previous generation. Traditions warp and break more easily without a center.

18-In some ways we have a replay of Egypt, the people are oppressed, they groan for help, and God sends a Moses figure.

 

A Chart of Judges:

Here is where my Bible Study went off the rails, I tried to review every judge, so I would suggest instead to review my chart here, and simply note that it doesn’t all go well, at best Judges are ambiguous figures. Often times, people read Samson as particularly heroic (the ancients explicitly paralleled him with Hercules), but my reading is that he is intentionally an example of how degraded Judgeship has become. The book of Judges isn’t a story of ongoing faithfulness, but instead the breaking down of decentralized theocracy, it isn’t a working way of governing people!

Judge	Disobedience	Consequence	Outcome
Othniel	Serve Ba’als & Asherahs.	Captured by King Cushan of Aram for 8 years	War, Tribes prevail, 40 years of peace
Ehud	“Evil in the sight of God”	Conquered by Moab, Amon, and Amalekites. 18 years under King Eglon of Moab	Ehud assassinates Eglon in his restroom, Moab crushed in the confusion, 80 years of peace.
Shamgar			Kill 600 Philistines, the Tribes are delivered
Deborah—both Prophet and Judge (Ja’el & Barak assisting)	“Did evil in the sight of God”	King Jabin of Canaan and General Sisera of The Gentile Fortress (raiding club) invade with massive chariots	The chariots caught in the mud, Sisera tent pegged, 40 years of rest.
Gideon (Reluctant Judge, his father worshipped Ba’al, he is also named Jeru-ba’al)	Did what is evil in the sight of the Lord	Midian and Amalekite raids on farms.	Destruction of Ba’als and Asherahs, Tribal infighting, killing generals, a campaign, he creates an idol out of plunder. No time of peace. His son, Abimelek, tries to create a Kingdom.
Tola	Abimelek’s bad reign		Judged 23 years
Jair			Judged 22 years
Jephthah (outsider, born out of wedlock, chased out of the country, makes a vow that leads to his daughter’s death)	Served Ba’als and Astartes and a plethora of other gods.  Ceased worshipping God!	Ammonites and Philistines control them for 18 years, subdue them out tribe by tribe… God tells them to ask their new gods for help!	Ammonites subdued. Jephtha rules as Judge for 6 years. Intertribal slaughter, 40,000 dead in “civil war”.
Ibzan (makes intertribal alliances using his 30 sons)	(after the slaughter)		Judged 7 years
Elon			Judged 10 years
Abdon (like Ibzan had many sons and donkeys to make alliances)			Judged 8 years
Samson (Special Child, Nazarite, Pursues Philistine Wife, sleeps with prostitutes, falls in lust with Delilah, etc.)	Did evil in the Lord’s sight, given into the hands of Philistines for 40 years	Samson bumbles into fighting Philistines, torches fields.	Blinded and shaven, still destroys temple of Dagon, Judges for 20 years.

 

The Rest of the Book:

New Idolatry and Tribal Dispute, much can be traced back to Gideon’s idol and his son Abimelek. Massive slaughter of Benjaminites.

 

Other Judges:

Eli (and almost his sons) and Samuel (and his sons).

 

My working definition of Decentralization—The Distribution of functions, power, and authority.

 

What’s Judges have to do with Decentralization?

-During this time period Israelite society was dispersed and governed on a tribal level.

-One of the consequences of decentralization is that truth and tradition are harder to pass along without a centralized authority.

-Theoretically this distribution of authority allows for God to be the sole authority. Hypothetically one of the ways a theocracy can work is that there simply are no earthly rulers, or they are so weak that no one pays them any mind.

 

3 Stories to think about Decentralization:

Walter Cronkite

              I hear tell there was a time when authority about current events was centralized. Everyone turned on the TV and listened to Walter Cronkite, and that settled matters. Not so now, now interpretation of current events and even what constitutes news, is diffuse, broken into pieces by 24 hour cable news, algorithms and media silos.

St. Paul and the Werewolf

              One Sunday a visitor to the congregation I was serving came up to me after worship and let me know he was an ex-Roman Catholic, because they were hiding things. After a few conversations over a couple of weeks, I found out he had “discovered,” from some amalgamation of the “History” Channel and chat rooms on the internet, that the difference between Protestants and Catholics was that Protestants acknowledged that the Apostle Paul was a werewolf (that was the thorn in his flesh).

When we got into extended conversation about this idea, and the actual historic divisions between Protestants and Catholics, he didn’t let go of this idea; instead he decided I, an ordained Protestant Pastor, didn’t really know the difference between Protestants and Catholics. For him, I was instead an authority figure hiding the truth.

Part of our decentralized, hyper-democratic society is that anything that looks like a centralized authority is automatically suspect. The slogan “Question Authority” becomes a highest ideal, even as it can at times be exercised without common sense.

 Flash mobs and Terrorist Cells

              Up until now my examples of Decentralization have been fairly negative, but the act of democratizing function, power, and authority can also be transformative, it can do big things—that is the central premise of The Starfish and the Spider. Two examples:

-Flash mobs are an amazing feat. By decentralizing the whole process of putting on a concert, a small group of people are able to give a whole performance without ever practicing together.

-Similarly, terrorist cells are small groups delegated all the function, power, and authority of making war, and they can do damage like you wouldn’t believe. Even if one branch of a terrorist organization is caught, it rarely does long term damage to the organization, because everyone has been empowered to make war.

 

The Elephant in the Room—The Internet:

              Probably the biggest example of decentralization we experienced on the day to day, is the internet. It has flattened the whole world, everything is interconnected, function, power, and authority can be spread out not just among a small group, but among millions, even billions, of people.

 

Challenges:

              I’m sure you can intuit some of the challenges decentralization brings to the church, but here are a few:

-As the Israelites found within one generation of entering the promised land, passing on the faith in a way that doesn’t get confused and involve werewolves is hard without centralized authority figures, leaders, or meeting place.

-In so far as the faith involves claims made by a religious authority, be that authority based on charismatic experience or theological education or lines of tradition, they are all suspect in a decentralized world. The watchword of most people that think about this is that any respect for the pastoral office, any religious sway that can be mustered, comes from pastoral authenticity, not pastoral authority. So, if you notice pastors in skinny jeans who say things like “I’m just being real with you” that’s the move from Pastoral Authority to Pastoral Authenticity.

-Cyberspace, the internet, social media, all of that—poses a grave challenge to the Christian faith, in so far as we are a faith that believes that material stuff matters, that Christianity is an embodied tradition, that God took on a body, took on flesh and blood—matter matters! As we all unfortunately found during the Covid years, a disembodied faith, a cyber faith, is quite malformed. There were neat things we got to try, virtual services, home Holy Week packets, Bible Studies on zoom, meetings on zoom, continuing education on zoom, zoom zoom zoom. But, even the Gnostics among us who notoriously denigrate bodily life, got tired of that disembodied form of decentralized church.

 

Possibilities:

-One of the founding stories of the Christian faith is that a small group of disciples shook the Roman Empire and beyond by dispersing and using the new technology of a codex (a bound book) to spread the Gospel. This is like a flash mob or a terrorist cell, decentralization having a transformative power. Why not again? Why isn’t there a space for a small group of Christians to use technology in a dispersed way to: re-evangelize our world, humble the Powers and Principalities of our era, and re-tune the Church to the Spirit’s calling today?

-Now, for decades we’ve bought into the church growth model of ministry, ultimately Church is about becoming bigger and bigger. There have been instances of pushback of course, the Slow Church movement, the Emergent Church, etc, but by and large those movements have been snatched up and misused to achieve the same goal as Church Growth—bigger is better. But there is a case to be made that small is attractive, that the drive for growth ultimately sours people to these churches (there is evidence that for every person entering Saddleback during its heyday there was another person leaving). In short, what if we’re supposed to be small, salt and light, not every ingredient of the soup, not the sun itself?

-What if the Church is the antithesis of Cyber-Gnosticism? As everything in our society pushes toward the anonymous and depersonalized (or the frighteningly hyper-personalization of AI), the Church as an awkward and weird third place. A place where people are authentically who they are, where you can only be so anonymous for so long, if you sit among a small group of people and worship for more than a week or two, they’re going to get to know you. Maybe that’s what we need in this world?

 

So, even as decentralization has its challenges, maybe we can hope that nimble small churches can navigate those challenges and tame some of those dynamics in order to proclaim the Gospel.

DOGE v. ELCA, DOGE v. DATA

DOGE v. ELCA

              One of the things I noted in my previous post about DOGE going after the Lutheran religious tradition was laziness on the part of Michael Flynn and Elon Musk’s interns. As I pointed out, all they needed to do to understand the numbers was to do a quick google search and they would have been able to read all the Lutheran Social Ministry Organization’s 990s. Instead, they jumped straight to libel about money laundering and false accusations of illegal activity, all leveled at 2am on a Sunday morning.

              And, the more you look at their data, the lazier they seem.

-On one hand, they lump several Lutheran Universities in with their spreadsheet about Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations, making no distinction between them. The only reason I can think that someone would do this is to inflate the numbers.

-On the other hand, and more damning, they are making the claim that this 600-million-dollar figure is 3 months of payments. In the instances I’ve looked into, these figures account for 7 years of federal payments to Lutherans for everything from running orphanages and senior housing to resettling refugees and helping people out after natural disasters.

              There are consequences for this lazy and reckless behavior.

-To my knowledge at least 20 people have been laid off from Lutheran Social Services because of this tweet.

-Additionally, services provided by these organizations are being disrupted. Here in New Jersey the first place this has hit is hospice care.

DOGE v. DATA

              And that would be enough—people losing their jobs and the dying not receiving dignity in their most vulnerable moments, all on account of interns not being able to understand (or purposefully fudging) the difference between 3 months and 7 years, as well as the difference between colleges and social ministry organizations—That. Would. Be. Enough.

But this kind of sloppiness isn’t confined to attacks on the ELCA. In a bunch of different ways, it seems like DOGE is getting their data wrong.

-The DOGE website was put together so poorly that it is editable by anyone and has leaked classified information.

-These interns were so reckless with how and who they fired, that we’re finding out that some of the people they fired were essential for US nuclear safety, and now DOGE can’t get ahold of them to fix major problems.

-Perhaps most alarmingly, as DOGE has started to mess with social security accounts, they are confusing a data entry error code with fraud.

So, I imagine that means a bunch of people on social security will start to get the same treatment as the Lutherans. Out of the blue they’ll be accused of illegal activity and fraud and suffer the consequences, when in fact the only dodgy thing going on is that DOGE interns were too lazy to understand the data they were looking at.

Discipleship in a 4D World Session 2: Disestablishment & the book of Daniel

 

Daniel 1:1-7—Temple and Palace captured

1-This is approximately 606BC. Jerusalem itself was eventually captured in 586BC. So these first captured people are examples/experiments/models for how to live under Babylonian rule.

2-Note both holy things and holy people are taken. If the way Judaism was lived at the time centered around Temple, Palace, People, two out of three of those are endangered and scooped up in the Exile.

Shinar-is another name for Babylon.

3-This brings things into a stark relief, that third thing, the palace, is also under threat, the royal court has been kidnapped!

4-Chaldeans-is another way to say Babylonians. It is worth noting what the Babylonians are doing, they are raising these Israelite royals in court as hostages.

7-Think for a second on the significance of receiving new names—they are being enculturated into Babylon. Even their names change in this new culture. Their names once all pointed to God with the endings -iah and -el… now they point toward Babylon

 

Daniel 1:8-17—Rejecting Defiling Foods

8-Daniel refuses to enculturate, at least when it comes to foodstuff. Most likely these foods have been offered to Idols as a routine part of making the meal. Additionally, some of the foods were likely not kosher.

17-And look, despite the young men’s choice not to fully assimilate into Babylonian culture, they excel. They excel in the Babylonian court without taking on the trappings of Babylon!

 

Daniel 1:18-21—The Best

21-It is worth noting these young men navigate being faithful through the governance of Babylon by four kings: Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and finally its capture by Cyrus of Persia. I would go so far as to suggest they survived four beasts and were ready for a humane ruler.

 

Daniel 3:13-18—Refusing to Worship Idols

14-So, the Babylonians were okay with the young men not eating food sacrificed to idols, but not worshipping idols… that was a bridge too far. It is worth reflecting on the level of inculturation Daniel and his crew were willing to compromise—new names, but not a new diet, and definitely not a new god.

18-And when they say that they are unwilling to compromise over worship of other gods, they are not saying this as a half measure, they mean it in full. They would rather become martyrs than forsake the sole worship of God.

 

Daniel 7:15-18—Daniel asks the heavenly attendants to interpret his dream

17-Beastly Kingdoms—I read Daniel’s 4 kings as being intratextual (and to be clear there are multiple strands of interpretive traditions, both Jewish and Christian, ancient and modern, that don’t do this), that is Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus of Persia, the four kings who all make appearances in the book of Daniel, are beastly kings. We can, of course, look at beasts of our own day and see parallels, but hunting for beasts in every closet, claiming every evil leader on this earth to be some prophesied potentate—instead of just a present variation on a theme, it tiring and does not further the Christian witness.

18-A Holy Kingdom—And while Daniel and his crew have had to contend with these beastly kings, they can trust that God is the ultimate ruler of all. They have no authority that is not from above.

 

What’s this have to do with Disestablishment?

-God’s people are not in charge of the cultural and political forces of Babylon. So too, when church and society disconnect, the church has to grapple with a loss of power and control. The church must contend with being exiled from the center of culture.

-Like Daniel and Co. the Church must learn how to navigate faithfully from the bottom. The Church must re-learn how to ask permission, explain every act, be a stranger seeking a place.

-The exiles had to decide where to compromise, where to find atypical paths, and where to hold fast, come what may. The church too must ask those sorts of questions. What is simply a name change? What is the equivalent of trading fancy food for vegetables and water as long as we can keep up? What are idols that we shall never bow down to?

-Finally, it is worth noting that the beastly Kingdoms aren’t forever, but God’s Kingdom is. So too, levels of disestablishment will vary, different regimes and cultural practices will come and go, but God will hold us fast.

 

My working definition of Disestablishment—Church and Society aren’t mutually reinforcing.

 

3 Stories about Disestablishment:

-Augustine:

St. Augustine famously dealt with the shock of disestablishment in his weighty work “City of God.” You see, after Constantine’s conversion and the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, it, at times, became hard for Christians to distinguish between their Roman-ness and their Christianity. Then, when Rome fell, they wondered if that meant heaven fell too. St. Augustine did the hard work of distinguishing between the Church of his time and the Society/culture/country in which he found himself.

The Church of England:

              When I was over in England, I ended up worshipping with the good people of the United Reformed Church, instead of the Church of England. When I worshipped with the Anglicans it felt… off. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but then an Irishman explained it to me. He said that in his experience the Church of England tends to step more firmly on the England part of their identity, than the Church part. People who have never set foot in a congregation, don’t read the bible, never received a sacrament, will gladly tell you they are a member of the Church of England—because they are English. The Church is so established in England that, to non-Englishmen, it can feel like a culture-club instead of a congregation.

Football:

              There is an apocryphal story that Maryland was such a Catholic State that the Archbishop of Baltimore used to dictate when kick-off happened for the Baltimore Colts. Then, when Baltimore got a new team, the Ravens, the Archbishop went to the NFL to let them know the kick-off time, and it didn’t go so well. You see, in the period between when the Colts played in Baltimore and the Ravens became their team, the relationships between Church and Culture had shifted, the Catholic Church no longer held the power of being the Establishment.

 

Challenges:

              There are many challenges that the Church faces when we are not in lock-step with the society we’re in. For example:

We’re not society’s Heroes—So, during the Cold War, America was fighting Godless Communism… so those who were not Godless, the Churches, were good Americans.
Then, during the War on Terror, America was fighting religious extremists… so people of faith became suspicious Americans.

Special Privileges—While some religious folks will object, it seems pretty plain to most people that the Church has special privileges in our society, from tax status to connection with community organizations to geographic locations. As those things are reconsidered, and at times taken away, it can hurt, it can even feel like persecution.

We’re weird—Things that are outside the mainstream experience tend to be looked at askance. As fewer people experience the church, those things that we do, including traditional milestone events in life, will seem stranger and stranger to the average person. What once was commonplace will begin to seem downright weird!

 

Possibility:

Fear not, I will never leave you with challenges alone; this new reality, disestablishment, also offers possibility!

Partnerships with fresh eyes: When many of the connections between church and neighbors are built on cultural assumptions, the church can go on autopilot. Our disestablishment offers an opportunity to reconsider how we connect with the world around us, the possibility to start again! Why do we have boy scouts in our building, but not book clubs? NA and AA meet in our buildings, but not the local soccer team most of the NA folk are a member of; what’s the difference between the sobriety shared on the pitch versus a coffee and cigarette-soaked meeting room?

Minister in the Margins: If the church is no longer in the business of playing by society’s rules, if making good little Americans who have a patina of religion to their name, is no longer our game, if we are freed from the shackles of respectability, where can we minister? Where are the places we’ve felt the tug of the Spirit before, but shrugged it off in the name of getting with the program? Where would we find Christ if we allowed ourselves to look?

Distinguishing between Church and Christ: Our disestablishment may be the perfect time to return to Augustine’s City of God. We can begin the generation long process of sifting out what practices, beliefs, symbols, and vocations are a product of our culture, and which are of Christ. Then, when we have a sense of that, we can look again at the world as it is, and apply the things of God to God’s world in need. We can best address the needs of our culture, when we have at least a bit of distance from it.

Discipleship in a 4D World session 1: 1st Samuel 3:1-21

Discipleship in a 4D World session 1: 1st Samuel 3:1-21

              The story of Samuel is a story of transitions, the story of a person born into one world and buried in one totally changed.

 

Backstory:

              Samuel’s mother Hannah was a barren woman, spurned by her household on account of that condition. She called out to God and bargained: I’ll give you my son if I can get pregnant. And she does get pregnant.

              Eli was the head Priest at the temple in Shiloh at the time, who took in little Samuel and cares for him as a son. Eli’s biological sons are awful priests; they are steal the offering and abuse women. Yet the working assumption is that they’ll take over the Temple and care for the Ark of the Covenant. Eli has been told by a wandering holy man that his sons will not succeed him.

 

3:1-7—A Sleepless Night

1-Visions and Words are rare—Throughout the book of Samuel there is an ongoing sense that there was a vibrant religious and political world in the past, but it had petered out and is on its last legs. Imagine, there next to the Ark itself, no words or signs from God!

2-A dim sighted priest—Eli’s vision acts as a metaphor for his turning a blind eye on his son’s evil deeds, and the dimness of his generation.

3-Low light, the Ark, where God resides—Again, the dazzling light of God, the heavy presence of God, has almost gone out, has almost entirely left the temple. Whatever God had done in the past with these people, seems almost over. The place where God is bodily present is burning itself out.

4-“Hinanni”—"Here I am,” is a frequent mortal response to God/heaven/angels throughout scripture.

6-Eli doesn’t get it yet—This is a classic rule of three situation (3 Bears, Billy Goats Gruff, etc) establishing a pattern, in order to break it. Samuel and Eli don’t know it is God yet, but it will dawn on them! We get to watch as the tension rises and the plot thickens!

7-Raised in temple, sleeps next to the ark… doesn’t yet know the LORD—Again, this is pointing out how bankrupt and broken the relationship between God and God’s people is in Eli’s generation. It also reminds me of a saying, by Scottish poet and Macdonald, “Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.”

 

3:8-14—Oh, it’s a Message from God!

8-The rule of threes—And here we are, third times the charm, it dawns on Eli that Samuel isn’t being a bratty boy, but God, instead, is up to something.

11-Ear tingling, new thing!—And that new thing will be overwhelming to hear! An escape from the present predicament, folk shall again know the LORD!

13-Both the sin and failing to stop the sin—Eli’s house had committed not only sins of commission but also sins of omission. Eli should have stopped his sons from sinning, but did not, and in failing to act, doomed his family.

14-The end of the house of Eli—There is no way out. This is an end. Those who cared for God’s dwelling place, shall no longer do so. That family shall fall.

 

3:15-21—The New Judge/Priest, Samuel

15-If you thought it was a sleepless night before!—What a message for poor Samuel. If he was having a tough time sleeping, with God whispering in his ear, how much more, the anxiety of anticipation.

16-“My son” what pathos!—If little Samuel wasn’t already feeling the weight of the message God gave to him, guilt for being the bearer of bad news, he’s feeling it now. Eli states plainly their relationship,” you are like a son to me!”

18-Eli is resigned to this fall

20-A trustworthy prophet—Samuel, not the offspring of Eli, acts rightly and faithfully. He does not abuse or steal, instead he does what is right.

 

A Few Details of Note:

Visions were rare, even the religious do not know God

As I said before, here is a drumbeat of debased religion in this book. Eli’s sons are untrustworthy abusers. Eli doesn’t understand Hannah’s prayers; he can’t tell the difference between prayers and drunk utterances. Little Samuel, literally in the temple, does not know God. And one way to talk about such a situation is that they live in a secular frame. Because they don’t pay attention to God, God isn’t a reality in their life. If you don’t have a habit of listening to God, God speaking to you will be a terrifying proposition.

“To see what’s in front of your nose is a constant struggle.”—George Orwell

              There is a repeated insistence that it is hard to see, it is dark, the senses grow dim, and that is all punctured by a promising new thing—ears tingling. In the midst of massive societal changes, it is very hard to see what the heck is going on and nearly impossible to guess what things will look like on the other side. Israel’s reality before and after Samuel are so different from each other. Before Samuel 12 tribes worshipped at local shrines, and were cared for by bands of prophets and, only, when necessary, charismatic judges who would temporarily unite the tribes. After Samuel there was one kingdom, everything centered in Jerusalem—Temple, Court prophets, and King.

              As the above Orwell quote suggests, seeing the present aright, let alone having insights into the future and what comes next, is a great challenge. A King Saul, let alone a Davidic Dynasty, Jerusalem of all places the center of it all, the dissolution of local shrines… all the fixed realities of the previous generation are in flux.

 

1^st Samuel 3 and the 4Ds

              Back in 2015, I was the Counselor of the Raritan Cluster, and that meant I saw a slightly wider church than just my congregation, and it became clear to me that we are in one of those generational transition moments, like Samuel. At one point, I gathered the folk from my cluster together, we read these verses from 1^st Samuel, and I asked the group what aspects of ministry were, like the life of Israel in Samuel’s days, making both their ears tingle?  How is God uniquely at work today? How do we see the world as it is, not as we would imagine it to be? What are the challenges of ministry for us now?

By the end of the conversation, we’d come up with 3 things in front of our nose that we were pretty sure we saw: A greater cleaving of Church and Society, all aspects of life becoming more decentralized, and the demographics of our neighborhoods changing swiftly. Quite recently I added a 4^th dynamic to that list from a decade ago, most of our habits are secular, not sacred—we’ve become disenchanted as a people.

So, for these five Bible Studies, we’ll be looking at the 4Ds, Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and Disenchantment. We’ll look and hopefully see what’s in front of our noses, we’ll listen and hear what makes our ears tingle.

 

Broad overview:

Disestablishment: Church and Society aren’t mutually reinforcing.

The thinker I focus on most to think through this reality is Douglas John Hall and his book: The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity.

The piece of scripture we’ll look at to consider this aspect of discipleship is the book of Daniel, where God’s people are in a culture that in no ways supports their faith. The big question is: How are we faithful when it is hard and we are out of synch with the surrounding society?

              If the Church is to survive and thrive in a Disestablished society, it must learn how to partner with people and organizations that have missions that are similar to ours, we will have to become creative in forming alliances and doing the work God has called us to with and among unexpected peoples.

 

Decentralization: The Distribution of functions and power.

              The book that most helped me think about this dynamic in our society was The Spider and the Starfish by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

              The piece of scripture we’ll be reading to think about God working among a decentralized people will be the book of Judges. This book of the Bible follows a tribal model of being God’s people.

              If the Church is to be faithful in a decentralized world, we ought to embrace the good parts of being small, namely being nimble. We need to be able to act and react in a way that fits a wide variety of contexts.

 

Demographic Shift: A significant change in a population’s structure over time.

              The two books that I’ve read that influence how I think about shifting demographics are and William Strauss, Neil Howe’s Generations as well as Kenneth Gronbach’s Upside.

              The piece of scripture we’ll be looking at to think about God at work in the midst of a diversity of people is the Pentecost, as found in Acts 2. This is the beginning of the Holy Spirit widening what it means to be Church again and again—the whole of the book of Acts can be summed up as: the disciples figure they’ve expanded the church as far as it can go, they decide to take a breather, and then the Holy Spirit does something new just beyond the limits of their imagination, so they go and catch up.

              The Church needs to navigate the many demographic shifts in our world—racial and ethnic, financial and generational—and do so in a way that is not lip service, but instead an embrace of authentic diversity.

 

Disenchantment: To lose the habit of paying attention to the Holy.

The book that has most influenced my thought on disenchantment is Chasing Magic Eels by Richard Beck.

The book of Esther is one of only two books in the Bible that never mention God. As such, it is an excellent scripture to read to consider how the people of God can be faithful while navigating the world with secular lenses.

I believe Disenchantment is the greatest challenge of the Church. In order for faith to survive, as something more than a social curiosity or something that is one step removed from our actual experiences, we need to find way to notice God at work in the world and embrace and renew habits of enchantment.

 

Conclusion:

              So that’s what these remaining 4 bible studies will look like. We’ll start off in scripture, wrap our minds around one of the 4Ds, notice the challenges they bring to being followers of Jesus Christ, and then conclude with opportunities for renewal hiding in plain sight. In short, this Bible Study is a call for the Church to see the world as it is and change to meet those challenges. It is a call for us to become a Partnering, Nimble, Authentically Diverse, and Enchanted Church!

A Defense of Lutheran Social Ministries

                 Did you ever wonder why, in the movie Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski blames the Lutherans for settling the Hmong in Michigan? Isn’t it curious that one of the subplots of the book Silence of the Lambs is that Clarice Starling was raised in a Lutheran orphanage in Montana? Why would these works of fiction both single out Lutherans as do-gooders in American society? Because it was good writing, it, even in such small details, points to realities about America. In America when refugees need to be resettled, the Lutherans will be there; when orphans need to be cared for, the Lutherans will be there.

                You see, there are nearly 300 Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations scattered throughout the United States doing good. 1 out of every 50 Americas are helped by these organizations. Think of it, it is as if the entire state of Missouri or Indiana have been assisted by Lutherans.

One of the neat things about Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations is that they are one of the few places where the conservative LC-MS and the liberal ELCA still work together. We may disagree about: Bishops, women in ministry, gay marriage, ecumenical relationships, and a bunch of other things, but we sure as hell are going to help the least, last, and lost, even when it means working together.

                The previous congregation I served partnered with Lutheran Social Ministries New Jersey (LSM-NJ) to create affordable housing for seniors. At my current congregation we have a long history of collecting school supplies for poor children through LSM-NJ. I have friends who have adopted their children through Lutheran adoption agencies, I once knew a security guard who had been a “lost boy” in Somalia and was transformed into a productive tax paying American citizen, thanks to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (now Global Refugee).

                I bring all this up, because the good and faithful work of Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations are currently under attack.

                Now, I am not surprised that Musk, an heir to a South African emerald mine, and Flynn, a registered agent of Turkey and Russia who has an eight-figure bank account, don’t regularly rub shoulders with people who have had their lives made whole by Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations.

                I’m also not surprised that they are trying to make good on their promise of cutting two trillion dollars from the US budget through the process of creative destruction. They’re essentially borrowing a playbook from Richard Gere’s character at the start of Pretty Woman. The only difference is, instead of grabbing US businesses and throwing them against the wall until money falls out, they’re smashing US institutions to see if they’re piggy banks.

                What I am surprised about, is how lazy they are. It is obvious to anyone with eyes that some intern was reading through a spreadsheet, noticed a payment to Lutherans and didn’t understand it. Then someone pressed Ctrl+F and found that there were other payments to Lutheran Organizations. From there they went directly onto social media at 2am and picked a fight. They scare quoted these good and faithful organizations as “Lutheran” and “religious”, they falsely accused Lutherans of money laundering, and declared the payments the federal government makes to these organizations to be illegal.

                All they needed to do was google the organizations. Every one of them publicly publishes their budgets and tax information (they are all required to post their 990s). The payments are for grants the organizations have applied for and received, the payments are for services rendered, the payments are for contracts state and federal governments have entered into with these organizations.

                Or you know what, Musk is rather well off, I bet he has a plane; he could get out of his smelly DOGE office and go and see what these organizations do. He could go to New Orleans, step beyond the tourist areas, and talk to folk about Katrina—Lutheran Disaster Relief was the last organization out. Or go to communities along the Red River and ask them who had their back; he could go to Red Bank, NJ and they’ll tell him a thing or two—might even be less polite than the Midwesterners about it. Go to a food bank, after care or elder care—they know the score.

                Here is the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA’s response:

                And I would ask for a secondary response from all of my readers. Call your Representative and Senators. Tell them this libelous and knee jerk attack shows that Elon Musk does not have the wherewithal to be involved in DOGE, or any other aspect of the US government. Ask them to defend these vital organizations and stand with the 2% of their constituents who are most in need. Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations are part of the fabric of America, tearing them out at a whim will damage our country.