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Freedom: A Post-July 4 Conversation with Paul (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/6/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

Last week we heard Paul’s ringing “For freedom Christ has set us free!” and his Flesh/Spirit contrast. The flesh (our humanity curved in on itself) undercuts that freedom; God’s Spirit boosts it. This week he’s still working that Flesh/Spirit contrast. Two days ago we celebrated the 4th of July. So this sermon is mostly a conversation with Paul—in our early 21st century context.

“You reap whatever you sow.” It sounds like it’s already a proverb, which Paul wants to use to keep talking about Flesh and Spirit. Flesh vs. Spirit isn’t the material/immaterial contrast, as though the latter were intrinsically better. It’s not about escaping from the body. Recall the list of the works of the flesh we heard last week: many of the items have nothing to do with the body: “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy.” Luther often talked about sin as being curved in on oneself, and I find that a helpful way of talking about Paul’s ‘flesh.’ Nothing wrong with flesh per se; the problems start when we treat it as the only reality. And Spirit: not any spirit, but the Spirit that brooded over the waters at creation, the Spirit that enlivened Ezekiel’s valley of bones, the Spirit that arrived at Pentecost.

“You reap whatever you sow.” Why does Paul think he needs to say that? If we think about our own experience, the upside to sowing to the flesh is that the reward is usually immediate. And that can deceive us into forgetting the downside. So, a warning. On the other hand, the downside of sowing to the Spirit is that the reward is often not immediate. It’s easy to “grow weary in doing what is right.” So, encouragement: “we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”

And notice what follows: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” As with Paul’s lists of the works of the Flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, the focus is communal, the sowing and reaping that happens in our common life. Paul’s particularly concerned about what happens in the “family of faith”—we might say “the parish.” But the same logic applies outside, and as there’s opportunity, Paul wants us to pay attention to that.

“The good of all.” Back in 2020 the sociologist Robert Putnam published The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. Looking at economic, political, social, and cultural indicators, Putnam thinks we were getting “more equal, less contentious, more connected, and more conscious of shared values” in the period 1900-1960, and since then “less equal, more polarized, more fragmented, and more individualistic” (pp.285-86). The “How We Can Do It Again” part is necessarily short on detail: it’s a bottom-up process. Our attention to “the good of all” in and past parish boundaries can contribute to that badly-needed upswing.

“Let us work for the good of all.” Well, how? “I’m doing this for your good” is usually not reassuring. And here today’s Gospel provides one clue. Jesus gives the seventy impressive power, and pairs it with self-imposed weakness: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals… Whatever house you enter… Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide… Do not move about from house to house.” The work demands not lording it over these towns, but entering into community with them.

Which brings us—recalling July 4th—to Paul’s “For freedom Christ has set us free.” What do we think freedom is about? The German theologian Moltmann observes that we tend to think of freedom in terms of what we can do or have, which is, he argues, to see freedom as a sort of lordship. “Everyone should be his or her own ruler, his or her own lord, his or her own slaveholder.… Each one sees the other as a competitor in the battle for power and ownership.” This sounds like what Paul was confronting among the Galatians: freedom as license to continue to compete with each other. The alternative? Freedom as community. “I am free and feel myself to be free when I am recognized and accepted by others and when I, for my part, recognize and accept others.…Then the other person is no longer a limitation of my freedom but the completion of it.”[1]

In case freedom as lordship vs community sounds like apples and oranges, the following might help. If I’m thinking of freedom to consume (“What can I get this week?”) lordship works. But if I ask: am I free to play the flute? To gain that freedom I’d need teachers, fellow students for encouragement, folk giving honest feedback… a community. Am I free to speak Japanese? Am I free to live as a human being?

Freedom as lordship or community: the alternatives align pretty closely with Paul’s lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. They align pretty closely with Jesus’ instructions to the seventy.

Freedom as community invites us to recognize freedom across the status totem pole, as in, for example, our first reading. Consider the folk at the bottom of the totem pole.

First, the little maid, captured in a Syrian raid, and now serving Naaman’s wife. She could easily have kept the information about Elisha to herself, and taken a sort of joy in watching the commander waste away. She could have seen it as a sort of justice, or even as punishment from her God. She’s near the bottom of the totem pole, but she has choices, and she chooses to give Naaman the information that saves him.

Then, Naaman’s servants. Naaman’s response to Elisha’s non-appearance suggests that he had a short fuse, and his servants would have been the first to suffer from that. Never mind whether they thought Elisha’s instructions had any merit: they could have enjoyed watching their master stymied. They’re not much up the totem pole from the little maid, but they have choices, and they chose to deal gently and honorably with their master, to give his indignation an offramp, and he is saved.

Let’s try to pull this together. “For freedom Christ has set us free!” That Paul found it necessary to talk about the Flesh and the Spirit tells us that ‘freedom’ can be ambiguous, and I’ve used Moltmann’s freedom as lordship or community as a way of unpacking that. “Let us work for the good of all.” A necessary exhortation, whether in our parish life or two days out from July 4th. The examples of that servant girl and Naaman’s servants together with Jesus’ instructions remind us that this work isn’t about amassing as much power as possible to impose our solutions.

And, simply for the joy of it, let’s watch all this play out in the verses just after today’s first reading:

“Then [Naaman] returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’ But he said, ‘As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’ He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the LORD. But may the LORD pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the LORD pardon your servant on this one count.’”

There are—one might argue—all sorts of things wrong in this request. Elijah and Elisha have spent pretty much their entire careers fighting against idolatry. But this is a foreigner, and Elisha lives in that freedom Paul celebrated. So Elisha says to Naaman: “Go in peace.”

[1] Humanity in God pp. 63-64.

About that exorcism in Philippi (7th Sunday of Easter, 6/1/2025)

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Readings

I like a good story as much as anyone, so, perhaps predictably, we’ll spend most of our time in Acts, in one of Luke’s more open-ended stories. At the same time, our lectionary invites us to notice connections. On the one hand, this proud Roman colony of Philippi, on the other our Psalm’s celebration of the Lord’s kingship, Revelation’s repeated invitation to “come,” our Lord’s prayer that we all be one: what happens when these two hands meet?

So, to our first reading. We’re still in Philippi, where in last Sunday’s reading we met Lydia, that dealer in exclusive high-end purple cloth, who believed and was baptized. And what gets the story started is a slave girl with a “spirit of divination” who over “many days” follows Paul and Silas, crying out “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

Luke tells us “But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.” What’s intriguing about the story is Luke’s decision to name Paul’s motivation, and it’s not flattering. Not “Paul, filled with compassion…” or “Paul, recognizing an evangelistic opportunity…” but “Paul, very much annoyed…” That could have been the end of the story, but the slave girl’s owners know how the city operates, and Paul and Silas end up beaten and jailed.

And here’s where Jesus’ prayer that his disciples all be “one,” comes in. In that prison it’s not hard to imagine Silas saying to Paul, “Well done, mate! What were you thinking?” It may have started there, but by about midnight we’re hearing echoes of Jesus’ prayer: Luke: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”

And whatever the Lord thought of Paul’s impromptu exorcism, the Lord at whose presence “the mountains melt like wax” (so today’s Psalm) is not above throwing in an earthquake. The effects of the earthquake are remarkably focused: it’s “so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.” That pretty much invites Paul and Silas to segue into that bit from Isaiah that Jesus read in the Nazareth synagogue: “he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.” But no.

As Luke tells us, “When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here’.”

It looks like Paul has learned from Peter’s experience, and maybe even from the events of the day. A while back Herod had had Peter imprisoned. At night an angel had sprung him, but in the morning, Herod had the guards “examined” and executed (Acts 12:1-19). Thankfully, that’s not repeated; Paul takes the more difficult path: ”Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer also enters into Paul’s calculus, for the jailer is also a recipient of Revelation’s invitation to come and drink.

(Parenthetically, Paul’s response is echoed repeatedly in Martin Luther King Jr’s practice of non-violence. From various speeches: “the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces… the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding” [A Testament of Hope pp. 8, 12].)

So the story ends, as did last Sunday’s story, with a baptism. Last week, the baptism of Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth, and her household; this Sunday, the baptism of the jailer and his household. Folk near the opposite ends of the social spectrum: Revelation’s invitation to come and drink: Luke’s celebrating that that really is for everyone.

Luke chose to name Paul’s motive in exorcising the slave girl (“very much annoyed”) and that slave girl is the loose end in the story. Exorcised, she’s of less value to her owners, and we would not expect her story to end well. But we don’t know.

Paul’s role in her story is part of that loose end. I wonder about that, what Paul did with that. So I wonder whether, some time later, when Paul encountered the slave Onesimus, he did not recognize the opportunity to do it differently this time. He spent time with Onesimus, discipled him, took the trouble to write to his owner, Philemon, arguing—between the lines—that Philemon’s proper response was to receive Onesimus as a brother, not as a runaway slave.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’. And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come’. And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” That’s our message. Sometimes we do a decent job of sharing it; sometimes not so much. We, too, are quite capable of sharing our annoyance, quite capable of failing to distinguish between the forces of evil and those caught in those forces. So, in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer we’ve been using this Easter season, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.” Or, as the Revelation puts it, “And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions (3rd Sunday of Easter, 5/4/2025)

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Readings

Our second lesson picks up in the middle of one of John’s visions: a scroll in God’s hand, sealed with seven seals, and the question “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And whether in heaven or on earth or under the earth—the classic way of dividing up creation—no one was able, and John begins to weep bitterly.

So what’s in the scroll? John doesn’t tell us. Not, I think, because he doesn’t know, but because the scroll as a symbol can do more if it shimmers a little, if it points to a number of possibilities. That scroll might remind us of the collection of scrolls that was Holy Scripture. Who can open that, offer a trustworthy and authoritative interpretation? All the divergent voices, all the dead ends: what does it come to in the end? Or, to worry about more than the Jews, the scroll might remind us of our problem of getting our head around human history. History: “one damn thing after another”? Or, closer to home, that well-sealed scroll might remind us of the challenge of understanding our own selves, our own histories. Take it in any or all of those ways, and we don’t have much difficulty joining John as he weeps.

And then one of the elders says to John, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” Those two titles, ‘Lion of the tribe of Judah’, and ‘Root of David’ had been used in the centuries leading up to Jesus’ birth for the Messiah, and both promised strength, victory, conquest. With that sort of introduction, what we expect John to see is something or someone like Schwarzenegger. But what John sees is “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”

The elder announces a Lion; what John sees is a Lamb. So what’s going on? A divine bait & switch? That’s perhaps what the crowd who cried “Crucify him!” thought. Or perhaps the most profound statement of what God’s power looks like: Jesus of Nazareth, the one who had every right to demand service, but who came to serve and to give his life—this is the slain Lamb part—a ransom for many.

And it is this Lion/Lamb who is worthy to take, open, and read that scroll in all the possible senses we noticed. Jesus, the one whose life and work is the fulfillment of that strange assortment of loose ends that we now call the Old Testament. Jesus, the one who has entered our history, and so given us the hope that it may end with something more than a bang or a whimper. As followers of the slaughtered Lamb, we live from the hope that God will bring good also out of the evils we encounter. Jesus, the one who can open the scroll that is my own life.

Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, opening the scroll that is my life. Our other two readings give us some help imagining what this looks like, and in both cases it’s by asking questions. Jesus, of course, does more than ask questions. He gives commands (“love one another”, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”), describes our world, tells very odd stories, weeps, laughs. But Jesus does ask questions, and that’s maybe when Jesus is most… dangerous.

Let me digress. My favorite poems are a collection of choruses T. S. Eliot wrote for a pageant play called “The Rock.” Friends in Berkeley introduced me to them; I found them in one of Berkeley’s many used bookstores in 1971. A few lines for the sheer joy of it:

We build in vain unless the Lord build with us.
Can you keep the City that the Lord keeps not with you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the Lord….
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

So Saul, en route to Damascus, encounters a very bright light and a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And that question is the beginning of the transformation of his world.

And maybe only a couple of years earlier at the Sea of Galilee, the disciples after a fruitless night of fishing hear the voice of a stranger on the shore: “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They follow his instructions and end up with a net too full to bring into the boat.

Later, after breakfast:
—Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?
—Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.
—Feed my lambs.
—Simon son of John, do you love me?
—Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.
—Tend my sheep.
—Simon son of John, do you love me?
—Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.
—Feed my sheep.

Readers have long noticed that these three questions correspond to Peter’s three denials the night of Jesus’ arrest; the denials were in public, so too these affirmations. But there’s also something very intimate going on here. Peter’s responses matter to Jesus. Jesus loves Peter, and so Peter’s responses matter on a personal level. As do your responses, as do your responses, as do mine. That’s the sort of vulnerability that love brings, even and particularly to this slaughtered Lamb.

So, what questions is Jesus asking me? What questions is Jesus asking you? “Well, I don’t hear Jesus asking any questions!” Nor does someone who’s got the sound system cranked all the way up hear the call to dinner. Some noise we can’t control; some we can, and only after we’ve minimized the noise we can control are we in a position to complain “Well, I don’t hear Jesus asking any questions!”

The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the slaughtered Lamb, asking me, asking us, the questions that will open and render intelligible our lives, our world.

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

When weak, then strong??? (7th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/7/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1)

In our second reading Paul ends with “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” Since “weak” is not our preferred operating mode, that gives us more than enough to chew on.

First, what’s Paul talking about? If we’d asked Paul about the strength part, that is, the power of Christ dwelling in him, I would guess that he would have talked about two things: the apostolic work we heard described in today’s Gospel (preaching, healing, exorcising), and the endurance in the face of rejection and opposition (the theme of our reading two weeks ago). This power of Christ is equally available to the Church today: power in preaching, healing, exorcising, and endurance in the face of rejection and opposition. In what we call the “developed” world, we often work with a shorter list: preaching—preferably of the sort that invites neither rejection nor opposition. And so when we hear the phrase “the power of Christ” we may have trouble connecting it to our experience. In much of the rest of the world Christians do not have that problem. In this country I was able to prepare for ordination without a single hour devoted to how we do healing and exorcisms. Had I been preparing for ordination in, say, sub-Saharan Africa, that would have been as unthinkable as omitting preaching or celebrating the Eucharist from the preparation. So when we hear “preaching, healing, exorcising” and scratch our heads, the difficulty’s more with us than with the text.

Endurance. When we are able to endure, to continue to bear witness to our Lord in the face of rejection and opposition, that is God’s power working within us. It’s not something we’re expected to come up with on our own, much less something we’re expected to be able to imagine doing on our own.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” –because the power of Christ in preaching, healing, exorcising, and endurance shines forth.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” A second dimension of this is the sort of weakness involved in Jesus’ instructions to the apostles. They are sent out to proclaim the Kingdom, to cast out demons and heal. Sounds like strength. But Jesus also tells them how to travel: “to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” That, together with being a guest in someone’s house, implies vulnerability, and we recall the ways in which Paul describes his vulnerability. Now the funny thing about that is that something of this sort of vulnerability or weakness is necessary for useful communication and learning to take place.

We wrestled with this in World Vision, the Christian relief and development organization with which I worked for 18 years. World Vision typically seeks to work with very poor communities to help them improve all dimensions of their life. In the early days we did this pretty naively, with all the trappings of power, usually starting with arriving in the village in a vehicle more expensive than any of the villagers could hope to own. And villagers, while poor, are smart. They know that when someone more powerful comes, rule number one is that you tell that person what you think they want to hear. And so we’d come with our ideas, be very pleased that the villagers thought they were all very good ideas, and then wonder why the ideas didn’t work out as we’d planned. Over time we learned that differences in power were one of the chief obstacles to communication, that, in other words, Jesus’ instructions (“no bread, no bag, no money in their belts”) made excellent practical sense.

And the same logic applies here in Wisconsin. Our texts tell us—we heard it from Paul two weeks ago—that we are ambassadors of God Almighty. And we may say: sure doesn’t look like it: very few BMWs, we get sick as often as our pagan neighbors do, no heavenly trumpets herald our arrival. Well, and if it did look like it, how many honest conversations would we succeed in having?

The learning part is equally important. Circling back to the World Vision example, as long as we were comfortable operating from strength, we thought we knew enough. Failure forced new choices: do we whitewash it (we’re still strong, we still have nothing to learn) or acknowledge it and actually learn something.

I’m reminded of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Louise Penny’s mystery novels. He invites new recruits to learn to use (and mean) these four statements: “I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.” Weakness is no fun, but without acknowledgement of weakness, no learning.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” Also because when I acknowledge weakness, useful conversations and learning can take place.

“Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s a third dimension, and for that we go back to Jesus’ instructions: “to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” Why that particular list? Perhaps Jesus is recalling Israel’s time in the wilderness. The Gospel of Mark begins, recall, with the announcement of a new exodus: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” As Moses had lead Israel out of Egypt, so a new Moses will lead Israel and all peoples out of bondage into freedom. And in the march through the desert –testified Deuteronomy—the clothing and shoes lasted, and Israel was fed by manna from heaven. So in this New Exodus, one tunic and one pair of sandals is all the disciples need.

If that’s the script, then it would be simply superfluous to bring bread, money, extra clothing! Travel light, because God is handling the logistics. And that in itself brings its own sort of power and liberty.

“Whenever I am weak, I am strong.” When I acknowledge my weakness, that my resources are simply incommensurate with the road that lies ahead, then I am free to acknowledge God as the Quartermaster of the whole project and to focus on the particular tasks to which I am called.

I’ve not yet said anything about David. The story of his rise contains one of the dramatic examples of “Whenever I am weak”: the young shepherd and his slingshot vs. Goliath. Closer to the heart of our reflection, there’s David Gunn’s observation that gift vs. grasp is a central tension in David’s story: will he receive God’s gifts as gifts, or grasp them? David certainly succeeds in grasping Jerusalem, and the narrator intones “And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.” In light of the following chapters we may suspect the narrator of irony, for Jerusalem will be the site of David’s greatest failings. We hope for a New Jerusalem not so that Jerusalem can be vindicated, but so that Jerusalem can be redeemed.

“Whenever I am weak, I am strong.” The universe is not arranged so that we get to choose whether to be strong or weak. When we are strong, let us do what we can with our strength. But we often have the choice between acknowledging our weakness and denying it. In those moments both for our own sake and for the sake of those around us, let us acknowledge it. Let us discover what God’s power within us might want to do. Let us discover what conversations and learning acknowledging our weakness might permit. And let us learn that, since our strength does not suffice the journey on which we’ve embarked, one tunic is quite enough, and bread is found in the most unexpected places.

God’s Clashing Desires (5th after Pentecost, 6/23/2024)

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Lessons (Track 1, 1st set)

What a combination of readings: David & Goliath, Jesus in the middle of the lake calming the storm—and Paul pleading with the Corinthians.

Let us start with the obvious. Our world has plenty of Goliaths, enemies who claim to dominate our present and future. Our world has plenty of storms. It is very good news that Goliath’s claims are simply claims, that the pitch black skies and the water-drenched deck at unbelievable angles are not the last things we’ll experience. The battle is the Lord’s: Goliath doesn’t get the last word, our feet will again be on solid ground. These are stories to hang onto, and there are times in our lives when that’s all we need to hear from them.

But how does Paul’s “through great endurance” fit into those stories? It’s not Paul’s fault; David and Jesus had their share of “through great endurance” moments. It’s that in many situations “where’s my slingshot” isn’t the appropriate response—though we’ve all had experience with folk like that. There were probably parts of Paul that wished for a slingshot, wished to simply shout into the storm “How about you all just shut up and do what I say!” Why not go there?

Recall our Old Testament lesson from two weeks ago: the people want a king, which the Lord and Samuel think is a really bad idea, and the Lord tells Samuel to give them what they want. How do we make sense of that?

Wrestling with the text two weeks ago, this is what I came up with. God wants two things, that we be free and that we make good choices. Either would be relatively easy. Together, not so much, as any parent knows. This combination of desires is one way to talk about God’s love. God loves us: desires that we be free, desires that we make good choices. “We want a king like all the nations.” “OK; we’ll do this the hard way.” A king can serve as a template for the Messiah.

Where this gets challenging: God desires that we share these desires. This is typically not an easy sell. Recall that scene in Luke, when the Samaritan village refuses hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. James and John: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). Desiring people’s freedom and that they choose well means that their good becomes primary, so Jesus has to work on the disciples’ notion of greatness: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-44). Discipleship is a lengthy process because learning to desire what God desires doesn’t come easily.

Which brings us to Paul, trying through letters to reset his relationship with the Corinthians. They’re a typical congregation, working out what being Christian means, and sometimes avoiding that work. The city of Corinth’s motto could have been “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” so some in the congregation assumed “The one who has the most spiritual gifts wins.” So Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about spiritual gifts, culminating in that bracing chapter that begins “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).

And in the text we heard this morning Paul details what that love has meant: “great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love.”

Paul gives them this long list not to score points—though perhaps that’s not completely absent, Paul being human and all—but because this is how the Corinthians need to love each other. So that—picking up David’s words—“all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not save by sword and spear.”

Paul’s saying nothing new here, simply reminding the Corinthians of Jesus’ story, a story that’s to become our story. Jesus’ love, a love serving others, means a story of death and resurrection. So in our baptism we pray “Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection.”

God desires that all be free and that all use their freedom well. For that God needs a people committed to that project, and baptism is how we are enlisted. “Yes, Lord, I want to learn to love as you love, desiring people’s freedom and that they use it well. I want to learn to serve them, so that Jesus’ death and resurrection play out in this flesh.” Amen.

Love complicates things (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

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Readings (Track 1)

In the middle of Jesus’ argument with the scribes he tells this short parable: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Plunder: that’s an intriguing image for what Jesus is about. For what God’s about, for that matter. The Exodus: plunder on a national scale. The mob stirred up by Paul and Silas’ presence in Thessalonica didn’t get it entirely wrong: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). No wonder Paul’s regularly in trouble—as we heard in our second reading.

But it’s not plunder for the sake of plunder (“My pile of loot’s bigger than yours!”), but, whether at the Exodus or in Galilee, for human freedom, restoring it so that it can be used well. Pulling back the camera to take in all of Mark’s Gospel, whether in the exorcisms, the healings, the conversations or the proclamation, that plundering is about restoring human freedom and encouraging us humans to use it well. The first thing out of Jesus’ mouth in that Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

The kingdom/reign of God, with two divine desires in play: that we be free, that we choose well. Either one of these would be easy to fulfill; both—that quickly gets complicated. Consider our first reading from Samuel’s time, a few centuries after the Exodus. The people have repeatedly used their freedom badly, and now they want a human king. A king: they’d celebrated the Lord as their king back at the Exodus (Exodus 15:18). But now, no, a human king “so that we also may be like other nations.” If God’s desire were simply that the people choose well, well, so much for freedom: no human king. But God desires both that they be free and that they choose well. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want; we’ll do it the hard way.

That’s a pretty good illustration of God’s love. God loves us too much either to compromise our freedom or to stop caring about our choices. Love—as any parent knows—complicates things. God can bring good out of our bad choices (the king is the template for the Messiah), but the price is high (“King of the Jews” was the sign on Jesus’ cross).

Does God always get what God wants? Since what God wants is that we be free and that we choose well, the answer is pretty clearly no. (That’s one of the main reasons why the Bible is a lengthy book!) And one of the recurrent challenges in worshipping this God is to respect both of these divine desires. If we think the people are choosing badly is their freedom really all that important?

Bad choices bring death. Adam and Eve choose badly in Genesis chapter 3; only one of their sons (Cain and Abel) is alive by the end of chapter 4. Death ends the story; death ends all stories. In the psalms one of the most frequent arguments the psalmists make for deliverance: rescue me, because in Hades no one praises you; that’s the lose-lose option. Shakespeare nails it in MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So if there were ever a game-changer, it’s Jesus’ resurrection (the motor for Paul’s reflections in our second reading). Death isn’t the end. Jesus’ transformed body grounds our hope for a similarly transformed body, “an eternal weight of glory,” as Paul put it.

How to tie this together? At least three ways come to mind. “God desires our freedom and that we use it well.” That, of course, is only one of many ways we might summarize what God’s up to. But play with it; wonder how it might serve to guide our outreach budget and activities.

Second. God desires our freedom and that we use it well. Because neither desire is negotiable God’s history with us is as messy as it is (recall, again, Holy Week) and Mick Jagger’s “You can’t always get what you want” turns out to apply to God as well. So we don’t know how all this will play out in the end. Will all be saved? We do know that it comes down to a fairly simple question: is my character such that I’d enjoy spending eternity with this God who keeps making hard choices and who loves my enemies as much as me?

In this respect heaven and hell reflect who we are. Recall that old analogy: a large banquet hall, the tables loaded. The complication is that our arms no longer bend at the elbows. At some tables, despair: despite increasingly acrobatic strategies no one can feed themselves. At other tables, delight: everyone feeding their neighbor.

A third way of tying this together: C. S. Lewis’ luminous sermon “The Weight of Glory” that draws on our second reading. After imagining what this weight of glory might mean, he pivots:

…it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.…There are no ordinary people.

God, in love, desires our freedom and that we use it well, for our choices really matter. That doesn’t make it easy for God or for us. Easy, apparently, is not the point.