Some Questions about AI in an Aristotelian Ethical Frame

 

To begin with here are two definitions of Artificial Intelligence from the ELCA’s Corporate Social Responsibility Issue Paper:

“AI is generally considered to be a discipline of computer science that is aimed at developing machines and systems that can carry out tasks considered to require human intelligence.”

“AI refers to the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision-making, and pattern identification. AI encompasses a broad spectrum of capabilities, from mimicking human actions and thought processes to acting and thinking rationally.” 

               What follows are some thoughts using my stripped-down version of Aristotelian Ethics—Glasses, Hammer, Map. This framework asks three basic questions: Where are we? What tools do we have? Where are we going?

 

Glasses—Where are we currently at as a society in relation to AI?

Congregational Use of AI:

What are legitimate things an ELCA congregation should use AI for? What church officer functions should AI augment, or even replace? What are the consequences for a congregation relationally, legally, ethically?

Preaching and AI:

The temptation to claim other people’s sermons as our own has been out there forever. With the advent of the internet finishing a sermon is always a google search away, if the pastor is not diligent and faithful. Now with AI, a few prompts can produce a completely “original” sermon.

With any sort of homiletic plagiarism, there are the questions of contextuality and authenticity, as well as the tinge of lying and theft. In this instance there is always the weirdness of a simulacrum of a preacher speaking to real people. What is alive? What is true? What parts of the testimony are the preacher’s own faith and their witness to the gospel?

Loneliness:

There is a whole cadre of people who use AI chat-bots as everything from: a boredom pacifier, confessor, substitute child or spouse and lover, to a sort of substitute god—an omnipresent omnipotent creature who cares even if no one else does. Meta offers AI friends and there is talk of feeding the memories of dead loved ones into AI as an artificial resurrection. What does the church say about these things? How do we sing a more beautiful song than the Sirens’ song of artificial companionship?

Education:

What’s already going on sounds like a dystopia to me. Whole academic cycles of AI writing college students’ papers and professors grading them using AI. How can AI help learning happen and how does it become an impediment?

Copyright:

              A while back I was informed of an incident where a Seminarian turned in an AI written bible study as if it was their own work. What got stranger still was the AI had done much the same, it had simply copied and pasted one of my bible studies that I put up on this blog and claimed it whole clothe as an AI created bible study. Imagine that, a giant multination company poured billions of dollars into a thinking machine, and all the machine could think to do was plagiarize little old me! This odd experience of mine can’t be an isolated incident. How ought our society manage AI’s acts of “borrowing” from actual living breathing humans?

Jobs:

              Recently Zillow laid off 25% of its employees, replacing them with AI. From what I’ve heard that is the tip of the iceberg. The numbers I see thrown around regularly is that about 20% of people younger than me will be unable to have a job on account of AI… we should maybe have a plan for that.

The Environment:

              It’s hard to imagine, but one of the selling points for AI was that it would be connected to electric grids and the like, and manage energy use in a way that would lead to conservation, reduction of CO2 emissions, and lower electric bills for everyone. So far that hasn’t happened. Instead, Google, who initially promised to be emissions free due to AI’s brilliance, has increased their emissions by 50% due to AI use. If AI is sucking up water and power resources to such an extent that it is noticeable on everyone’s electric bills, and there is talk of AI droughts… maybe we name no-go boundaries for resource use by these machines.

Deep Fakes:

              It is important to name that falsifying images of other people, and whole videos, is a violation of the 8^th commandment. If I can not tell the difference between my neighbor saying something on a video chat and it coming from a digital doppelganger, that’s a problem; that’s a truth problem!

Built in Bias:

              There have been instances of hiring AI discriminating against women when hiring for engineering and other “technical” jobs and discriminating against men for nursing jobs. There have also been instance of security video monitoring AI flagging black people as shoplifters, even as they are in the act of paying for items. AI tends to take human biases and explode them into hard and fast laws coded in ones and zeros. Perhaps the Lutheran paradigm of Law and Gospel has something to say about the creation of Frankenstein Laws out of Dr. Frankenstein’s biases?

Plausible Deniability for Illegal Activity:

              AI has been used to skirt and break laws. For example, an insurance company denied 300,000 claims in a minute using AI. The particular denial of claim action was one that had to be analyzed and signed off by a doctor, the AI was not a doctor. Likewise, landlords have been caught using AI to collude about rent prices. Law enforcement agencies are hesitant to prosecute these types of cases because AI makes everything technical and complicated.

General Discomfort:

When trying to figure out the landscape of the AI world it is worth noticing that a good number of people who are directly involved with AI are sending up alarming warnings about AI developing interests that diverge from humanity’s, ways of communicating beyond human understanding, and means of “escaping” their current digital habitats… perhaps a bit of caution is in order.

In general, it is worth asking: Have we already reached a tipping point where we can’t go back due to national security concerns? If so, how did we allow this to happen?

 

Hammer—What tools do we have to deal with AI?

Halting all AI research:

Simply put, we could decide AI is an immoral and overly dangerous tool, and advocate for all companies to cease any further advancement of AI technology. The main push back to this idea is that less moral companies or countries will leapfrog those who do not use AI, and non-AI using countries, companies, and people will be left on the ash heap of history.

Install “throttles” on all AI:

              If one of the dangers is that AI will become uncontrollable by humans, why not install a kill switch, so AI doesn’t kill us?

Regulating AI nationally:

              What if AI companies had to be transparent about when AI was part of a process and reveal, at least in a general sense, what their algorithms were being trained on? What if they had to name who was responsible when AI hurts someone? What if there was a government agency that oversaw AI development and gamed out unintended consequences? What if companies had to offer human alternatives? What if we wrote laws that addressed how AI interacts with remote facial recognition, insurance and credit, child sexual abuse, deep fakes, artistic integrity, and copyright?

Compensation and retraining of workers:

              If AI is going to shrink our work force by 20%, what do we do with those people? How should workers who lose their jobs on account of AI be treated? What sort of jobs should they be doing? Should jobs no longer be something humans aspire to (and yet we know there is a dignity to labor)? Are we talking Universal Basic Income for the 30 to 60 million Americans who are going to be out of a job?

For that matter, how do we compensate people whose work was used to train AI? If big tech companies are going to claim authors' works as their own, lifting upwards of 70% of their work word for word, shouldn’t they be compensated for that?

Push for global treaties around AI

              If AI is the new nuclear power, and that includes weaponization of AI, shouldn’t existing international treaties take it into account? For example, might we want to ban fully autonomous military weapons?

For that matter, if AI is a potential threat (or boon!) to everyone on the globe, shouldn’t everyone on the globe have a say in our fate and future?

Carbon-neutral pledges:

              Some AI companies made carbon-neutral pledges around their AI work… and they’ve not kept them. Should those pledges be enforced somehow? Similarly, what if AI companies had to report their water use and net carbon emissions? How much does an AI data center damage our planet?

Transparency reports:

              What might it look like if there was a consumer protection website that described the ways different companies are using AI? For example, if my car insurance company was tracking my driving via AI derived data from facial recognition software, I might look for a new insurance company.

Human Rights impact assessments:

              What if we had concrete data on what AI is doing to human quality of life? What if we knew what targeted ads do to people’s behavior patterns? What if it was taboo for AI companies to work with authoritarian governments?

 

Map—What are our goals for AI?

              Because AI is versatile, ubiquitous, and in its infancy, now is the time to ask, what do we hope to do with AI? What are our goals for it? Where are we going with it? If there is no plan, anything is possible.

What is our goal for AI? Is it to eliminate all entry-level white-collar jobs? Is it for intellectual property theft by proxy? Is it a coding tool? Is it a union busting device? Is it an educational tool? Is it a digital parent or romantic partner? Is it a taxi driver? Is it a medical diagnostic tool? Is it an electronic day trader? Is it a replacement for human relationships writ large? Is it a digital slave? Is it a replacement for humans? Is it a replacement for CEOs? Is it a steroid for economic growth? Is it a dead man’s switch for nuclear weapons? Are we trying to create an electronic god? Is it clippy? What exactly are we planning to do with AI?

Are we creating an idol?

              In the crassest sense, AI can function like a god. We ask it questions as at Delphi; we conceptualize it as containing near infinite knowledge with an astonishingly long reach. In an emergency, or when we are at our wits end, we might turn to AI for a way out.

              More in keeping with our confessions, idols are those things that we put our trust in, that are not God. There are surely reasons to be in awe of AI, to appreciate AI, and find it reliable. How very dangerous that is!

Are we creating a human-ish entity?

              Perhaps we’re not shooting for heaven, but instead Eden. If AI is to be a silicon life form, not unlike a human being, there are some big questions we should be asking. Broadly speaking, where is the line between the co-creation that is a creative tending of the garden, and when are we clothing ourselves with naked vanity and eating the apple?

              Additionally, have we thought through what the existence of non-human non-biological people will mean to the dignity of being human beings? How will AI-people shape how we understand humans, will we look and see the image of God, or a caricature image of ourselves reflected back at us?

If it is a tool, what sort of tool, what sort of work?

              As with most tools, AI can be used for tremendous good or tremendous ill. Fire can cook a meal or burn down a village. Nuclear power can provide electricity to a whole city or obliterate that same city… or even the world.

Hopes:

              In a world with simply too much information, AI can be a tool to sift through it all. This could be a boon to interdisciplinary work, scientific research, the creation of new drugs. Perhaps it can streamline medical services, workplace efficiency, and energy grids. Access to healthcare and education could be transformed by AI.

Worries:

              If war is something that must always be mourned—as the ELCA’s Social Statement says—what happens when thinking machines make decisions about war? How might AI algorithms curtail freedom of thought and freedom of expression? Facial recognition software already has some sinister racial biases, that software is AI’s “eyes” so will these tools be racist? If AI can sift through so much information that it can track individuals, what will the use of these tools do to the right to privacy? How are we going to deal with Copyright when everything has been fed into the mind of AI? When AI makes mistakes and it threatens, or even takes, a human life, who is libel and who is responsible for fixing that in the future? What will we do about criminal use of AI?

In general, new tools always have social and cultural consequences. AI will have much the same. I don’t think we’re anywhere near ready for them.

 

Conclusion:

              Advances in AI are already way ahead of our society’s ability to come to grips with the technology. Most people look at the changes brought by AI that are already here and choose to simply brace themselves and looking for something to hold onto. We’re behaving as if AI is an unstoppable force as inevitable as the seasons.

There are ways to manage AI, everything from particular types of consumer or governmental reporting to international treaties to a luddite reaction of just pulling the plug on everything. Recently we’ve chosen no regulation of AI, going so far as to nullify state laws around AI. There will be consequences for that.

Because of a largely hands off, Laissez-faire, approach to AI, we’re very unclear about goals for AI. They are purposefully opaque. There are clearly amazing possibilities, but also the danger of creating monsters.

Paschal Homily Riff, 2026

 

Christ is Risen, Christ is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Are any of you faithful; do you love God? Well then, rejoice in this day’s glorious and shining triumph.

Are any of you wise works in God’s Kingdom? Then enter into the joy of the Lord with abundant gladness!

Has the Lenten fast wearied you, has your spiritual journey been difficult? Well, now is the reward!

 

If you worked from well before sun up, this here is your overtime pay!

If you arrived on time, here is the Thanksgiving Feast.

If you made it here at noon—that’s alright, there is no harm in that.

If you were delayed and only arrived around three, lean in close with us, because you’re not in trouble.

If you arrived at dusk when all the work was already done, don’t be afraid—everything is going to be alright!

 

You see, the Master welcomes the last, just as he welcomes the first.

He gives rest to the one who comes late, and the one who labored long—he makes them whole.

He receives the work
and welcomes the intention. Thought, word, and deed
—he praises ‘em all!

So, all of you, come on in to the Joy of the Lord!

First and last, rich and poor, amped and exhausted—rejoice together!

You who kept the fast and you who didn’t—be glad this day!

 

Look at the table, it is bent low with bounty. Let no one go hungry! The calf is fated, the meal ready. Enjoy the feast of faith!

This splendor of goodness, this treasure—it is all an unmerited gift!

May no one wail at their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed!

Please, no one weep over your sins or your guilt, for forgiveness has dawned from the tomb!

Let no one fear death or the grave, for the death of our savior has set us free!

 

Death gulped him down, and choked on the Christ.

Jesus was marched captive down into Hades, and Hades became the prisoner.

The Grave  took a body, but encountered God.

The Grave received earth, but met heaven.

Death seized what it saw, but fell for what it couldn’t see.

 

As the prophet Isaiah cried out: “Hades was embittered when it encountered Him below.”

-It was embittered, for it was abolished.

-It was embittered, for it was imprisoned.

-It was embittered, for it was overmatched, overthrown, overawed, overwhelmed, overcome!

O death, where is thy sting?

O hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and you are cast down!

Christ is risen, and the demons fall!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen, and life flourishes!

Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs!

For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Christ is risen. (Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.)

Maundy Thursday: Love

                 I’ve been preaching on Encountering God for 5-ish weeks now, and we encounter a whole lot of God in Maundy Thursday’s Gospel

—Here in chapter 13 Jesus is receiving, holding, in his hands all that God has given him.
He is fully aware of his origin from God and that his destiny is a return to God.
Similarly, the glory of God—the heavy presence of God—is pointed to by Jesus.
Look, the fullness of God, past, present, future,
God with us in a most radical way…
Jesus is utterly full of God
—and his immediate response is to empty himself in other centered serving love.
This is mind blowing!
God’s fullness, fully emptying before our eyes and changing us forever
—that’s the truest theology—God Talk—that I can think of…
that’s the kind of stuff that makes for Christian Songs,
because just saying it doesn’t do it justice.
In fact, one of the earliest Christian Hymns (found in Philippians 2) sings this very song:
“Christ, who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to grasp.
Christ, who emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave…”

It goes on—magnificently so—but that’s the thrust of it.
When God is fully present, God steps back, and only love remains.
Or to borrow from still another Christian letter, 1^st John—“God is love.”

Beloved friends
—Love is what we need,
love is our only tool,
and love is our singular goal.

Prayer

                Love is what we need, love is our only tool, and love is our singular goal.

                We need love,
the whole world does,
but all you need to do is look around,
to know that we lack love.

                Perhaps we lack love
because we are disillusioned or greedy,
convinced that love is just a scam,
and there are better scams to run.
Better ways to get what we want, what we need
—failing to realize our ends and our means ought to align.

                Perhaps we lack love
because we’re confused or our life has gotten disjointed.
We mistake strong emotions,
with the strength of loving action.
Or maybe it is a little more technical,
we just don’t know how.

                Perhaps we’ve traded love in for hatred or indifference.
Famed Author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel called the latter,

“A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between 
light and darkness, 
dusk and dawn,
crime and punishment,
 cruelty and compassion, 
good and evil.”

Perhaps the world struggles to love
because we cling to scarcity,
are scared, cramped in a timid crouch,
or have been scarred one to many times,
and just can’t risk it again.

God help us all. We need love!

 

Love is more than an emotion,
but crucially, an action
—a tool to get through this life alive,
even after we’re dead!

Jesus doesn’t just give us a command, he seeds our imagination—love.
Love in a way that is transformative,
a way that uplifts the other,
a way that is humble,
a way that gets in the muck!

He takes on the position of the slave,
strips down to working clothes in the middle of an important feast.

He does the task of washing feet,
in a “sword and sandals” world,
that’s not just symbolic,
that’s dirty work…
and that’s the sort of work he calls this community to when he says, “Love one another.” Not just feel good about each other,
not just romanticize the community,
not just have a sense of belonging—family even
—but practice other centered serving love!

Such love:
moves mountains,

maintains and gains trust,
creates community,
and blesses the seekers and the meek ones.

Love is our only tool

 

Our magnetic north is love. It is our right direction and our guide in troubled waters. Love constitutes both our values and our goals.

                Jesus’ farewell actions
—atypical for John’s way of telling the Gospel
—precede Jesus’ farewell words.

He grounds the disciples,
this earliest of church,
in love.

In his deeds he is saying, “I’m leaving, but you are to continue this, this is the foundation of our community. A washing!
A washing that is call to service,
the care of relationships,
an ongoing collective life of interconnected ministry.
Ministering to one another,
loving each other.

                A community of love,
that was the first-place resurrection was seen,
and it will continue to be so even today!
If you want to see new life, look here!
A New Creation is breaking out with-in the Body of Christ!

                Love is our highest value, and our true goal.
As we are ambassador of love,
we are also pursuing love…
love, which, ultimately, pursue us,
kneeling, washing, cleaning, caring.
Our love for each other becomes Christ’s love for us
—just as surely as the bread and wine we partake of is his body.

Love is our singular goal.

               

                When we encounter God, we find love.

Love is what we need,
love is our only tool,
and love is our singular goal. Amen.

Encountering God at the Grave

 

                Here we are, already, the last Sunday in Lent. Five weeks deep into this “Encountering God” sermon series.
-We’ve encountered temptation, in order to see its opposite,
-for Nicodemus encountering God was like Night/Birth/Water/Spirit/life,
-we’ve been surprised beside the Samaritan woman,
-and had our definitions shifted on us with the man formerly blind.

                Now today, God encounters a whole family
—a choir, a chorus—Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
They encounter God at the Grave, and they are met with:
mutuality, relationship, friendship
—a conversation, a duet, a harmony.
Encountering God resounds with echoes of love and is an entrance into conversation. (God wants to have a back and forth with us!)

Let us pray

 

                First Martha rushes out and meets Jesus,
and she says what will become a refrain,
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

                One of those unanswered questions
—a heavy statement
— for folks after they lose a loved one.
“Why God? You could have done something Jesus.”

                And the conversation spins around a bit,
and Martha names a general truth, “On the last day”
and Jesus pulls her into the present,
from the general to the particular, “I am the resurrection.”
And she calls back, “I believe it! I trust you.”

                Gospel isn’t a generalized propositions,
but a poignant proclamation to the present
—here is the good news for you! Now!

                C.S. Lewis famously went on a bike ride and, at the start of it,
the Gospel was a good bit of folklore,
but by its end it had become true and pertinent good news for him!
Similarly, my Confessions professor tells the story of his mother riding a bus home from church, and realizing somewhere along the line, that the Gospel and the Sacraments she’d received at church were “for her.”
For you Chris Halverson…
“For you WX.”
“For you YZ.”

                Encountering God is a conversation,
drawing us into the story,
giving us the lyrics to sing along.

 

                Then Mary is called over,
followed by the crowd,
to Jesus.
She too repeats the refrain, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

                And a chorus of mourners join her
—weeping left, right, and center.
“Come and see him laid in the tomb!”
Come and hear our sad song!
This throng, singing away, moves Jesus
—breaks him thoroughly.
Just as Martha was brought to the present and the particular
—now Jesus is brought there—brought low,
Lo! While resurrection will certainly glorify God
—his friend Lazarus is in the tomb
—as Jesus will be soon,
just a few chapters later,
and a short walk from Betheny.

                This weeping becomes true and poignant for Jesus too
—yes encountering God is entering into a conversation
—a back and forth
—a Blues Duet,
between Mary and Jesus.

                The Unmoved Mover,
moved by the music of mourning,
moved by the pleading sincerity of dialogue
—a heart-to-heart that can break your heart!
He weeps with the full breadth of the emotion
Anger, crisp crisis,
the topsy turvy wrenched guts of moments like these.

 

                Lastly, a solemn pause, an unspoken refrain,
“If you’d been here, I wouldn’t be in the grave.”
Lazarus’ silence.
Silent in the grave, silent as the grave.

                Lazarus’ stink as well,
once the stone was rolled away.

                That glory,
that glory in the midst of the depths
—you need it.
We need it! “Come out!”

                A mummy-like man, comes out.

                That choir of mourners get to the strange work of unbinding,
releasing this man,
released from death’s deep grasp.

                The conversation that surely had a period at it,
has a semi-colon instead.
The music,
surely at its last refrain,
receives instead a Da Capo,
a repetition mark.
Encore, encore!

 

                Encountering God is joining a song,
it is a dialogue.
God talks back:

Lazarus will lean against Jesus at his last meal.
And his resuscitation foreshadows Christ’s resurrection,
it will crescendo,
an early echo of Easter!

                Mary, always at Jesus’ feet,
will bring perfume,
meant to bathe her brother’s corpse,
and wash Jesus’ feet with it.
A loving action Jesus emulates,
washing his disciple’s feet.

                Martha, identified as a Deacon,
one who serves at table,
will become the example of Christian love
—"Love one another”
If the Lord is the servant,
so too siblings,
serve one another.

                Do you hear what I’m saying
—the conversation is not done,
the song is still being sung.
When God encounters us,
we are brought into the song,
the conversation is more complete,
the back and forth with God,
we know it starts at Baptism,
but thank God it is unending!

Amen.

Encountering God Rewrites Definitions

 

             If you’ve been following my sermons the last few weeks you know that we’re asking one of those big questions: What does it mean to be found by God, to see God, to encounter God?
And part of what happens when you encounter God is that you get your definitions changed on you!

            Think of the famous experiment—the Slit experiment.
Put poorly, light behaves differently if it is observed or not observed
—it can be defined as a wave or a particle, depending on if we’re looking at it or not.

            So too, an encounter with God
—like the encounter the blind man had with Jesus
—can mess with, change, our definitions. Encountering God changes our definitions.

Let us pray

 

            When God encounters us—meets us in life,
it wrecks our categories and destroys our definitions,
it upends what we think we know about our world.

            When the blind man encounter’s Jesus redefinitions fly
—everything from who is the insider and who is the outsider to the nature of Sin to the Blind man’s very identity, change.

 

            It begins with, an unexpected encounter
—the Disciples want to talk Sin,
Jesus insists upon healing.
The man is left healed and unrecognizable; his sight, make everyone else blind.

            He starts off as an object lesson,
an example of intergenerational sin,
a son with no autonomy of his own,
a disability, a condition,
“The Blind Man.”
But on the other side of things Jesus has removed him from these boxes people have hemmed him into.

That which crippled him doesn’t have the last laugh, instead God laughs with him, joy bubbles up,
because God upends his pain
—when God encounters us we’re all broken jars glued back together with gold,
our scars reveal majesty!

He answers for himself, instead of simply as so-and-so’s son.
His subjective reality—his witness to what God has done—overcomes all that objectifying they’ve been doing to him his whole life long.
He’s a Son of God!
No other definition matters!

           

            The very Laws of God get re-defined in this encounter. He’s healed on the Sabbath
—well, what’s the Sabbath for if not for healing?
That back and forth, already present in Genesis and Deuteronomy, is on full displace—is Sabbath about Liberation or Rest?

What is the purpose of the Sabbath?

“Can the captive truly rest?”

“No,” says Jesus.

Only the Free can Rest.

Only the Liberated can Relax.

 

            At a certain point,
Jesus’ intervention upends questions of authority
—who is speaking, teaching, rightly about God?
The powers that be question this Man so often, that he eventually has to ask, “You don’t want to become his disciples too… do you?”
You’ve expended so much energy and words wondering what happened to me… six times this man recounts his encounter:

-“The man called Jesus made mud…

-“Then I washed…

-“He is a Prophet…

-“I was blind, now I see…

-“…Do you also want to become his disciples?

-“…If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

            In each retelling his faith and his authority are transformed
—that’s the power of sharing our faith with others
—it strengthens and develops our own faith! Through such actions our faith seeks understanding.

 

            The starting assumption
—the working definition
—is that this man is “born in sin from head to toe.”
An assumption based on an if/then universe:
-If you sin, then you are sunk;
-if you fly right, then God will bless you.

You are in the driver’s seat,
you are in control
—God simply reacts to you like Pavlov’s Dog
—salivating at a bell,
saving at your say so.

            But Jesus, he insists that Sin is something different
—God is at work in the world, encounter Him and be changed!
A because/therefor sort of God.

-Because I love you, therefore you are lovable.
-Because God see his suffering, therefore the Blind Man gets to see the Jesus

-Because God acts for those in need, therefore their needs are met.

            If you say, “We see” and you have not seen
—shame on you.
Sin is ignoring the works of God,
refusing to come to terms with the uncontrollable grace of God.

            Sin is not recognizing a God found amid suffering.
A God driven out from the city walls. Out here with us.
Jesus is driven out here with us.

 

            Yes, Jesus is out there, with the man once blind
—outside the gate, driven away from his home.
Expelled by his community, something miraculous happens,
he finds himself among the community of the expelled…

            Let me say that a second time for those in the nosebleed section
—This man is expelled by his community and finds himself among the community of the expelled
—and that’s where Jesus is.

-Jesus too is labeled a sinner,

-Jesus too is grilled by the religious authorities,

-Jesus too is weighed down by questions about his identity and his origins,

-Jesus too is driven out,

…Jesus, crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem.

            Who knew that when the insiders expelled this outsider, the whole system inverted
—the insiders are outsiders and the outsiders insiders.

 

            Truly, encountering God changes our definitions. Amen.

The Surprise!

                 What does it mean to witness, to notice, to encounter, God?

What is that experience like for us,
when the one who is for us,
reveals himself to us?

                That is the fundamental question we’re circling around in this sermon series, “Encountering God.”
And today, I would like to lift up one of those perennial experiences of God—surprise!
Surprised by the stranger,
surprised by goodness,
surprised at being moved.

The surprise of the Samaritan Woman

Let us pray.

 

                First, she is surprised by a stranger…
There Jesus was resting on the wrong side of the tracks,
the bad part of town,
a gay couple accidently attending a service at Westboro Baptist,
a Jew in Samaria...
have you ever felt out of place
—that’s this moment!

                She’s a Samaritan, he’s a Jew.
She’s a woman, he’s a man.
The wrong gender, the wrong religion and ethnicity
—for this encounter.

                This stranger asking for water, even that is indelicate
—crossing these barriers, visible and invisible
—its hard, it can be scary,
but it also is one of those places where the invisible God can become visible,
in our common humanity,
in a leap of faith,
reaching out in hope to the other side.

                In this case, the Samaritan woman is surprised, “My goodness, I’m talking to a prophet!”

                So, she brings up explicitly, one of the main tensions between her people and his
“God desires to be worshipped on Mount Gerezim,
why do you insist on Mount Zion?”

                And he unfolds a different reality,
moving off holy mountains and revealing himself as Messiah
—the one who will proclaim all things
—revealed on that clear and sunny noon day
—Spirit and Truth.

 

                This stranger named, in a roundabout way, the Samaritan Woman’s vulnerability
—you’ve had 5 husbands, plus the new guy…
of course everyone jumps to adultery,
that’s what people tend to do when there is a woman involved…
but more likely it is abandonment,
left again and again and again
—five times over.
Naming that she is left to fend for herself, excluded and isolated,
only safe to come out in the heat of the day,
the noon sun,
carrying her own water.
Left to grow hard.
Women go to the well when it is cool out, not at noon
—unless you are an ostracized, unwelcome, out of place, woman.

 

                And in this predicament of hers,
named clearly by the stranger Jesus
—this woman sees him
—the disciples often don’t see
—but she sees this stranger for who he is,
the one offering living water
—sees and receives the blessing of it.
Yes, the surprise of goodness and blessing is all the more poignant
when painted on the canvass of her struggle.

                He offers her living water
—Have you heard of living water?
The Rabbis recommend it for ritual baths.
The Early Church will recommend it for baptism.
Fresh and clean.
Bubbling, clear, living!
From God’s good earth—a sign of God’s goodness.

Think of it!

To be filled with a life flowing!

Flowing from God’s good earth

You, a sign of God’s goodness!

A living, clear, bubbling life

Fresh and clean.

                It is what some theologians call “Original Blessing,”
when we experience those words recorded in Genesis,
“O’ Yes, this is good and very good!”
The miracle of the ordinary and the familiar touched by the divine
—the experience of providence.
That too is an encounter with the divine!

 

                And then comes the last surprise, the surprise of being moved
—hearts strangely warmed,
a sure confidence,
a trusting faith.

                She goes back to her people and testifies,
“He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
And that question mark does a heck of a lot of work
—like a shepherds’ crook, leading her listeners
—the question mark acts as Moses’ staff, and her words like Miriam’s song at the river’s edge,
“I have found the one who fills the water jar—fills it forever.
The one who saw me in the noon sun and sees me still!”
Come and see!

                These words are sewing hope,
a field of faith for which the disciples do not labor, but will reap.
For the Samaritans will go and see, as she insists.
And when they meet Jesus

 they too are moved,
caught by that original blessing, that living water,
that encounter with a stranger, that becomes an encounter with God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

“Any decision for war must be a mournful one."

              For the fourth time in my nearly 15 years of ministry, I have to speak on matters of war and peace and insists, along with the ELCA’s 1995 social statement “For Peace in God’s World”, that “any decision for war must be a mournful one.” Declarations of war—or kinetic responses, or whatever euphemism we are using today—ought not be like celebrating a sporting victory or bellicose bragging, but instead conducted in sackcloth and ashes, followed up by the words Kyrie Eleison—Lord have mercy.

              I would ask you, if you are a praying person, to take a moment to pray this prayer from our Hymnal:

“Gracious God, grant peace among nations. Cleanse from our own hearts the seeds of strife: greed and envy, harsh misunderstandings and ill will, fear and desire for revenge. Make us quick to welcome ventures in cooperation among the peoples of the world, so that there may be woven the fabric of a common good too strong to be torn by the evil hands of war. In the time of opportunity, make us be diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our courage fail; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

              In light of our attack on Iran, with the stated goal of regime change, it is incumbent upon Christians living in a democracy to ask some stark questions of ourselves and our government. For two thousand years we Christians have been struggling with being faithful in the world as it is, in situations of persecution, famine, feast, might, and war. And those struggles have given us a rich tradition of thought and action, something much deeper than the knee-jerk reactions of TV pundits and political intellectuals.

              In the early days of the Church, Christians were known for being pacifists. In fact, the Society of Friends (Quakers) and Mennonites still are pacifists, they see refusing to go to war as a witness to the world that the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, reigns. Other Christians, such as us Lutherans, follow a tradition that includes Just War Theory. This theory requires that we answer well the following questions, before taking any military action:

Have we given all non-volent options a try before going to war?

By what authority are we going to war?

What is the reason, the justification, for this military action?

What does success look like in this war? Is that outcome likely?

Will it all be worth it? Will the peace on the other side of this action be better than the peace that existed before the action?

Will we use more violence against Iran than they have used against us or those we are protecting?

What are we doing to ensure that we aren’t hurting or killing civilians?

              In addition to these questions, here are a few statements from the aforementioned “For Peace in God’s World” document, which particularized our understanding of Just War Theory to the challenges of the 20^th and 21^st century. Here are a few stand out statements:

            “Wars, both between and within states, represent a horrendous failure of politics. The evil of war is especially evident in the number of children and other noncombatants who suffer and die.”

            “Helping the neighbor in need may require protecting innocent people from injustice and aggression. While we support the use of nonviolent measures, there may be no other way to offer protection in some circumstances than by restraining forcibly those harming the innocent. We do not, then--for the sake of the neighbor--rule out possible support for the use of military force. We must determine in particular circumstances whether or not military action is the lesser evil.”

            “From the posture of the just/unjust war tradition, the aim of all politics is peace. Any political activity that involves coercion should be held accountable to just/unjust war principles. They are important for evaluating movements, sanctions, embargoes, boycotts, trade policies to reward or punish, and other coercive but nonviolent measures.”

            And as I began, "Any decision for war must be a mournful one."

Excerpts from Hearty Masculinity

 

Here is a list of all the excerpt from my upcoming book Hearty Masculinity.

How do I figure out what my values are?

Why should men go to the doctor?

What’s the difference between reacting and responding?

What is the good life?

What is the difference between guilt and shame?

What sort of man is Jesus?

What sort of man is Jesus?

 

A final excerpt from Hearty Masculinity.

A savior who rides a donkey, a savior who makes this world right by wooing it, not through force or brutality, ideological scheme or overwhelming rhetoric, but by faithfulness and love. That’s who Jesus is.

              This line of thought, perhaps, sounds scandalous to you. After all, most role models for men offered to us from the Bible are antithetical to what I’ve just laid out. “Consider Adam” while he maintained dominion over the world and over Eve, he was alright. “Consider Moses” be a patriarch Law giver and a law follower, surely that flows from the faith. “Consider David” he is a man after God’s own heart, you too ought to be a King like him. “Consider those verses that pop up and prop up preconceived notions of masculinity predicated on predatory power, stoic self-sufficiency, covetous sorts of prayer, misreading biblical mistakes as models of leadership, and airing ancient prejudices as God’s advice for men.”

              Just as reading two-thousand-year-old mail is tricky, so is reading any ancient text.[1] If someone is trying to convince you that “The Bible is clear” on some modern issue or problem, they either aren’t showing you their work, or haven’t done the work.[2] Whenever we apply the Bible to our life,[3] we’re doing interpretation, we’re making a call, we’re making our faithful best guess. Pretending otherwise is being a bad witness to the God pointed to by scripture.

              All that to say, when a 3,000-year-old prayer about increasing farmland is used to sanctify a particularly suburban understanding of capitalism—I’ve known men who use the Prayer of Jabez as justification for remodeling their kitchen cabinets, when “Biblical Manhood” involves monster trucks and sword swallowers, when we make boy bibles and girl bibles, one with camo[4] and one with rhinestones, we’re not being more biblical people, we’re doing a distinctly Christian form of Performative Masculinity.

              But some of those places where we try to grasp at Biblical models of masculinity are worth fleshing out a bit. Consider David, Moses, and Adam. All of them, types of Christ. Just as the first man Adam falls, the second man Jesus rises and justifies. Just as Moses brings the Law, Christ this law fulfills—truly his yoke is light. Just as David is God’s chosen King, Christ’s presence is the Kingdom come and the only example of true authority we have.

              A wise dear friend and colleague offered me this image that I now pass on to you. Think of David, watching Jesus in action. He would be shocked and say something like, “Wait, ambiguously identify with outsiders, but then when a kingdom is on offer, stay outside the city gates, remain with them even when it means utter abandonment! I didn’t know you could do that! I fought alongside the Philistines, until it was to my advantage to side again with my own kin against them. Wait, instead of a grasping greedy sexual love destroying the objects of my affections, hold fast to a voluntary celibacy like the Prophet Jeremiah as a way to focus on a singular calling. Wait, instead of my lacky Joab doing my dirty work, so I at least appeared clean, Jesus was betrayed by those who knew him best, rather than let them convince him of their vision of Messiah and Lord. In total, he walked a path that I most certainly couldn’t trod, but oh how I wish I could have.”

              Or consider how Jesus hangs all of the Law, the Torah of Moses, on love, and how he insists that rules are made for humans, not humans for the rules. When actual living people are caught up in the consequences of adultery, crushed by the burdens of disease, cut off from community in so many different ways, he consistently interprets the Law as bending toward mercy and human flourishing, restoration of community and revival of life so nearly lost. Instead of pollutants and curses being catchy, healing and blessing overflow and become fellow travelers for all those he encounters.

              Or even Adam, what kind of Man was he, what was the center of his being? Earthling from the Earth, he kept this creation and labored with joy. But when things went bad, he turned to blame. Think of that strange scene, God asks the Earth-man “What happened?” and he responds by pointing to the woman, who then points to the snake, who does not have fingers to point and scapegoat elsewhere. But Jesus, he allowed everything to point at him, allowed himself to be the scapegoat, only to reappear, wresting the power of scapegoating from our arsenal forever.

              Surely, these models of masculinity mean something different if Christ is indeed Lord. Power and authority are wielded authentically when centered in humility. Life and the rules of the game are interpreted with a predisposition toward blessing. Blame is relativized by responsibility and forgiveness.

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[1] Just think about it, none of the folk in the Bible had a modern sense of the self, or Penicillin.

[2] A Truism from seminary that is pretty darn catchy is: “A text, without a context, is a pretext.”

[3]Or someone elses, though that is probably less in the spirit of what I am offering to you.

[4] And to be clear, nothing against camo. When I was a kid I set a goal of one day living in castle painted camouflage… I thought it came out of a paint can in that pattern.