[This is the January newsletter article I wrote for King of Kings. I liked it, so I figured I'd share.]
The Good News about New Year's
Just as surely as Thanksgiving has its turkey and Christmas has its decorations, January has its own tradition: New Year's resolutions. It's a staple of both pop culture and our own lives. After the holidays, after the family celebrations and the overindulgent feasts, we settle down into a dark, cold January, determined to remake ourselves. Join a gym; lose that holiday weight; become a more patient or thankful or kind person; find Mr. or Ms. Right.
What is it we are searching for, after all? When we try to conform our appearance to the photoshopped magazine ideal of slender bodies (or, for gentlemen, toned bodies) and perfect skin, we are doomed to failure. When we search for our lives' meaning in romance, we are more often than not disappointed. And when we try to mold ourselves into patient, kinder people, we often end up frustrated. New Year's resolutions send us chasing after impossible ideals and leave us feeling worse about ourselves than we did before we began.
In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." This is the good news for us about New Year's! Paul reminds us that we are being transformed, not by our own effort but by the Holy Spirit. We are being transformed, not in January but constantly. We are being transformed; therefore we don't have to be slaves to our resolutions, but we can enjoy the freedom of the Spirit.
This year, consider this New Year's resolution: to let go of resolutions. Instead, remember that God's Spirit is constantly transforming us. We are not becoming closer and closer to the false ideals of advertising, but we are becoming closer and closer to the glory of God. And it is through God's grace that we receive this transformation. Therefore, we are free! Thanks be to God!
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Christ the King Sermon
Here's my sermon from this morning!
“This is the King of the Jews.” “This is the King of the Jews,” says our Gospel reading today. “This is the King of the Jews” - those are the words written above Jesus' head as he died on the cross. This is the King of the Jews.
For us, living in 21st century America, we take some pride, I think, in not having a king, not being ruled by a monarch. After all, we fought for our independence from the British crown some 200 years ago. So we don't have a king, or a queen, and we like it that way. At the same time, perhaps our political system distances us somewhat from the meaning of our festival today: Christ the King Sunday. We know, of course, what a king is, but we don't have to think about kings very often in our daily lives. We may not always have a good sense of what a king looks like.
If you've been following the news, you have probably heard that Prince William of England has announced his engagement to his girlfriend Kate Middleton. You've probably seen all the pictures of them together, and all the members of the royal family who are weighing in on the match. So we've had a reminder, we king-less Americans, of what monarchy means. We've had a chance to look at the probable future King of England, to be reminded of what a king is like: the power, the wealth, the life in the public eye.
And then we have our Gospel reading this morning. On the festival celebrating Christ as King, we read about Jesus being crucified, brutally tortured and mocked. “This is the King of the Jews!” the Romans sarcastically declare. To call this convicted and dying man a king is the greatest possible contradiction. The Roman soldiers are not making a statement of faith – they are making a cruel joke. Likewise with the religious leaders who call Jesus “Messiah,” meaning the chosen one of God. They have condemned this man, convicted him, and executed him. Now they mock him with titles of power, reveling in the obvious contradiction between the crucified Jesus and the meaning of “Messiah” and “King.”
I hope you are shocked by the starkness of the contradiction here, between “Christ the King” and Jesus dying on the cross. It is shocking. It is a misuse of the title “King,” someone who rules and has power over others, to apply it to a convicted and dying criminal. Yet we celebrate this festival of Christ the King. We lift up the cross as the central image of our faith. Perhaps we forget sometimes that the cross was an instrument of torture and death, the means by which the Romans kept their many territories in line. We worship here in the shadow of this cross. Imagine if Jesus had been born in a different time – we could be looking at an artist's representation of a guillotine, or an electric chair. How dare we celebrate and glorify death and violence in this way? How can we possibly call Jesus “King”?
Certainly, you will remind me that this is not the end of the story. After all, we know what happens next: Jesus is taken down from the cross, his body is laid in the tomb, and within three days he has risen again. But we do not get to hear the Easter story on this festival. You will not come back a week from now to celebrate the empty tomb. No, Christ the King Sunday leaves us here, at the cross. It is the end of our church year and the end of the story – next week, we start the story over again with Advent, waiting for Christ to be born. So we end with the cross, with the mocking and the cruelty, with death.
It is not enough to skip to Easter, to the resurrection. We cannot look to the risen and glorified Christ to find justification for calling him “King.” You see, if we focus only on Easter, the cross becomes meaningless. If we focus on Easter, then we cannot answer the question, “Why did Jesus have to die, and why die in this way?” We cannot explain the cross by glossing over it, by gilding it with the glory of the resurrection.
No, you see, we have to wrestle with the cross, we have to let the cross reveal its own meaning. We can't skip over this just to get to the “happy ending.” If we want to understand Christ, and if we want to know what it means for this man to be our King, then we have to let the cross speak.
So what does the cross mean? What is the significance of hanging this image in our worship spaces and wearing it around our necks? There are three important pieces of this death of Jesus, three rejections: a rejection by religious authority, a condemnation by civil authority, and an abandonment by God. Bear with me for a moment as I say a few words about each of these three.
First, Jesus was rejected by the religious authority: as we know, it is the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Priests, who want to have Jesus killed. They are threatened by his popularity and by his message. As far as they are concerned, he is a heretic — after all, he claims to be the Son of God! And remember, before we pass judgment on these religious leaders, that we are like them. If you meet a man on the street who tells you he’s the Son of God and that God is coming, do you immediately drop everything and follow him? No. You probably assume he is mentally ill and you cross to the other side of the street. For these religious leaders, Jesus was not just a madman, he was a blasphemer. For this reason, they sought Jesus’ death.
Second, Jesus was condemned by the civil authority — the Roman Empire, specifically through the authority of Pontius Pilate. That is why Jesus was killed on the cross at all: for the Jewish community, the usual sentence of death was carried out by stoning. However, the Jewish leaders and the crowds demand crucifixion, a death that the Romans handed down on political rebels. And Jesus’ claims about the coming reign of God certainly were threatening to the Roman Empire. There were others who claimed to be the Messiah and who led violent rebellions against Rome — Jesus might have been seen as one of these. So he had to die.
Lastly, and this is the most difficult to understand, Jesus was abandoned by God. When we read in some of the Gospels that Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” we should take these words seriously. Even though Jesus was the Son of God, in the moment of his death, he felt abandoned even by God. When we talk about the birth of Jesus, we often say that Jesus gave up the power and mightiness of God to be born as a helpless child. How much more so is Jesus removed from God in this moment of his death? After all, as ridiculous as it is for a king to die this way, it is far more ridiculous — even impossible — for a god to die. It is one of the great paradoxes of our faith: Christ is fully human and fully divine, yet Christ dies abandoned by God.
So in the cross, we see that Jesus dies rejected by religion, by the state, and even by God. You may be wondering why this matters. Yes, it’s an interesting fact of Scriptural analysis; yes, it reminds us of how horrible Jesus’ death was; but what does it have to do with us? What does it have to do with our faith in Jesus or with our lives today?
Those questions are absolutely vital. We Christians, who follow Jesus, who wear the cross as jewelry and use it to decorate our homes — we must ask what the cross has to do with us. As I said before, we can’t just skip to the happy ending of Easter, as important as the resurrection is for our faith. We have to understand the cross, the significance of the cross in our lives.
We are followers of Jesus, and Jesus told his followers again and again to “take up your cross and follow me.” The cross is not only the means of Jesus’ death, it’s also the model of discipleship for those who follow him. So for us today, also, we have to look to the cross to understand how to be disciples of Jesus. What does it mean to take up our own cross?
Certainly, it does not mean that all followers of Jesus will die by crucifixion like he did. “Taking up our cross” is not a literal instruction — and crucifixion has fallen out of style in the last two millennia. But how does the cross have meaning for us, even today?
We must look back at that triple rejection I mentioned earlier. Jesus died rejected by religion, the state, and God. His rejection was not accidental; he was not a victim of circumstance. Rather, Jesus chose to go to Jerusalem, chose to anger the authorities, chose to die on the cross. And he chose this death to be united with all those who are rejected by religion, the state, and God. Jesus took on those rejections to stand in solidarity with the rejected. Jesus died abandoned, so that the abandoned might feel hope.
So it is for those who follow Jesus. We are called to “take up our cross,” to accept rejection because it puts us in solidarity with those who are already rejected by the “authorities” of the world. That is not an easy prospect; discipleship should make us pause. Don’t let anyone tell you that following Jesus will make you rich, powerful, and successful. To follow Jesus means accepting the harsh reality of the cross. To declare Jesus our King means giving up the ideals of earthly kings — the power, the money, the glory. To celebrate “Christ the King” this morning means we have to turn all our expectations on their heads, because this King is a King on the cross. This is the King of the Jews. This is our King.
Reflecting on the cross of Christ is difficult. Not only does it require some sophisticated theological thinking, but it is a painful subject to contemplate. It’s more pleasant to remember the resurrection, the joy and glory that come with Easter. Yet it is the cross — not the empty tomb — that is the center of our faith. On Christ the King Sunday, we remember the death of Jesus. On this day, we reflect on what it means for Christ to die on the cross, rejected by the powers of his world and by God. As we make our faith claim — saying, “This is our King!” — we must acknowledge the implications it has for our own lives. To name Christ our King, to live in the Kingdom of God, means that we will take up our own crosses. To follow Jesus means following him into rejection and lowliness. But it also means that we follow a king who knows what it means to be rejected and abandoned. It means we are part of a kingdom which cares for the lowly. And so, when we name Christ our King, we proclaim good news for the world. Amen.
“This is the King of the Jews.” “This is the King of the Jews,” says our Gospel reading today. “This is the King of the Jews” - those are the words written above Jesus' head as he died on the cross. This is the King of the Jews.
For us, living in 21st century America, we take some pride, I think, in not having a king, not being ruled by a monarch. After all, we fought for our independence from the British crown some 200 years ago. So we don't have a king, or a queen, and we like it that way. At the same time, perhaps our political system distances us somewhat from the meaning of our festival today: Christ the King Sunday. We know, of course, what a king is, but we don't have to think about kings very often in our daily lives. We may not always have a good sense of what a king looks like.
If you've been following the news, you have probably heard that Prince William of England has announced his engagement to his girlfriend Kate Middleton. You've probably seen all the pictures of them together, and all the members of the royal family who are weighing in on the match. So we've had a reminder, we king-less Americans, of what monarchy means. We've had a chance to look at the probable future King of England, to be reminded of what a king is like: the power, the wealth, the life in the public eye.
And then we have our Gospel reading this morning. On the festival celebrating Christ as King, we read about Jesus being crucified, brutally tortured and mocked. “This is the King of the Jews!” the Romans sarcastically declare. To call this convicted and dying man a king is the greatest possible contradiction. The Roman soldiers are not making a statement of faith – they are making a cruel joke. Likewise with the religious leaders who call Jesus “Messiah,” meaning the chosen one of God. They have condemned this man, convicted him, and executed him. Now they mock him with titles of power, reveling in the obvious contradiction between the crucified Jesus and the meaning of “Messiah” and “King.”
I hope you are shocked by the starkness of the contradiction here, between “Christ the King” and Jesus dying on the cross. It is shocking. It is a misuse of the title “King,” someone who rules and has power over others, to apply it to a convicted and dying criminal. Yet we celebrate this festival of Christ the King. We lift up the cross as the central image of our faith. Perhaps we forget sometimes that the cross was an instrument of torture and death, the means by which the Romans kept their many territories in line. We worship here in the shadow of this cross. Imagine if Jesus had been born in a different time – we could be looking at an artist's representation of a guillotine, or an electric chair. How dare we celebrate and glorify death and violence in this way? How can we possibly call Jesus “King”?
Certainly, you will remind me that this is not the end of the story. After all, we know what happens next: Jesus is taken down from the cross, his body is laid in the tomb, and within three days he has risen again. But we do not get to hear the Easter story on this festival. You will not come back a week from now to celebrate the empty tomb. No, Christ the King Sunday leaves us here, at the cross. It is the end of our church year and the end of the story – next week, we start the story over again with Advent, waiting for Christ to be born. So we end with the cross, with the mocking and the cruelty, with death.
It is not enough to skip to Easter, to the resurrection. We cannot look to the risen and glorified Christ to find justification for calling him “King.” You see, if we focus only on Easter, the cross becomes meaningless. If we focus on Easter, then we cannot answer the question, “Why did Jesus have to die, and why die in this way?” We cannot explain the cross by glossing over it, by gilding it with the glory of the resurrection.
No, you see, we have to wrestle with the cross, we have to let the cross reveal its own meaning. We can't skip over this just to get to the “happy ending.” If we want to understand Christ, and if we want to know what it means for this man to be our King, then we have to let the cross speak.
So what does the cross mean? What is the significance of hanging this image in our worship spaces and wearing it around our necks? There are three important pieces of this death of Jesus, three rejections: a rejection by religious authority, a condemnation by civil authority, and an abandonment by God. Bear with me for a moment as I say a few words about each of these three.
First, Jesus was rejected by the religious authority: as we know, it is the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Priests, who want to have Jesus killed. They are threatened by his popularity and by his message. As far as they are concerned, he is a heretic — after all, he claims to be the Son of God! And remember, before we pass judgment on these religious leaders, that we are like them. If you meet a man on the street who tells you he’s the Son of God and that God is coming, do you immediately drop everything and follow him? No. You probably assume he is mentally ill and you cross to the other side of the street. For these religious leaders, Jesus was not just a madman, he was a blasphemer. For this reason, they sought Jesus’ death.
Second, Jesus was condemned by the civil authority — the Roman Empire, specifically through the authority of Pontius Pilate. That is why Jesus was killed on the cross at all: for the Jewish community, the usual sentence of death was carried out by stoning. However, the Jewish leaders and the crowds demand crucifixion, a death that the Romans handed down on political rebels. And Jesus’ claims about the coming reign of God certainly were threatening to the Roman Empire. There were others who claimed to be the Messiah and who led violent rebellions against Rome — Jesus might have been seen as one of these. So he had to die.
Lastly, and this is the most difficult to understand, Jesus was abandoned by God. When we read in some of the Gospels that Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” we should take these words seriously. Even though Jesus was the Son of God, in the moment of his death, he felt abandoned even by God. When we talk about the birth of Jesus, we often say that Jesus gave up the power and mightiness of God to be born as a helpless child. How much more so is Jesus removed from God in this moment of his death? After all, as ridiculous as it is for a king to die this way, it is far more ridiculous — even impossible — for a god to die. It is one of the great paradoxes of our faith: Christ is fully human and fully divine, yet Christ dies abandoned by God.
So in the cross, we see that Jesus dies rejected by religion, by the state, and even by God. You may be wondering why this matters. Yes, it’s an interesting fact of Scriptural analysis; yes, it reminds us of how horrible Jesus’ death was; but what does it have to do with us? What does it have to do with our faith in Jesus or with our lives today?
Those questions are absolutely vital. We Christians, who follow Jesus, who wear the cross as jewelry and use it to decorate our homes — we must ask what the cross has to do with us. As I said before, we can’t just skip to the happy ending of Easter, as important as the resurrection is for our faith. We have to understand the cross, the significance of the cross in our lives.
We are followers of Jesus, and Jesus told his followers again and again to “take up your cross and follow me.” The cross is not only the means of Jesus’ death, it’s also the model of discipleship for those who follow him. So for us today, also, we have to look to the cross to understand how to be disciples of Jesus. What does it mean to take up our own cross?
Certainly, it does not mean that all followers of Jesus will die by crucifixion like he did. “Taking up our cross” is not a literal instruction — and crucifixion has fallen out of style in the last two millennia. But how does the cross have meaning for us, even today?
We must look back at that triple rejection I mentioned earlier. Jesus died rejected by religion, the state, and God. His rejection was not accidental; he was not a victim of circumstance. Rather, Jesus chose to go to Jerusalem, chose to anger the authorities, chose to die on the cross. And he chose this death to be united with all those who are rejected by religion, the state, and God. Jesus took on those rejections to stand in solidarity with the rejected. Jesus died abandoned, so that the abandoned might feel hope.
So it is for those who follow Jesus. We are called to “take up our cross,” to accept rejection because it puts us in solidarity with those who are already rejected by the “authorities” of the world. That is not an easy prospect; discipleship should make us pause. Don’t let anyone tell you that following Jesus will make you rich, powerful, and successful. To follow Jesus means accepting the harsh reality of the cross. To declare Jesus our King means giving up the ideals of earthly kings — the power, the money, the glory. To celebrate “Christ the King” this morning means we have to turn all our expectations on their heads, because this King is a King on the cross. This is the King of the Jews. This is our King.
Reflecting on the cross of Christ is difficult. Not only does it require some sophisticated theological thinking, but it is a painful subject to contemplate. It’s more pleasant to remember the resurrection, the joy and glory that come with Easter. Yet it is the cross — not the empty tomb — that is the center of our faith. On Christ the King Sunday, we remember the death of Jesus. On this day, we reflect on what it means for Christ to die on the cross, rejected by the powers of his world and by God. As we make our faith claim — saying, “This is our King!” — we must acknowledge the implications it has for our own lives. To name Christ our King, to live in the Kingdom of God, means that we will take up our own crosses. To follow Jesus means following him into rejection and lowliness. But it also means that we follow a king who knows what it means to be rejected and abandoned. It means we are part of a kingdom which cares for the lowly. And so, when we name Christ our King, we proclaim good news for the world. Amen.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Law and Gospel
While I was thinking about reviewing the Lutheran Study Bible, I was reminded of another topic that has been on my mind recently: the Lutheran concept of "law and gospel". Now, you may be a Lutheran and have never heard this specific terminology. Perhaps to the shock of my classmates, I can honestly say I had never heard the phrase "law and gospel" in my life before I entered seminary. I was baptized, raised, and confirmed in the Lutheran church—maybe it's a regional thing. I certainly hear enough about law and gospel out here.
The concept comes from Luther's writings, though it is not unique to Lutherans. Luther used law and gospel as a method of reading and interpreting Scripture. It is important to note that law and gospel is not supposed to be a parallel distinction to Old Testament and New Testament, or to Jewish thinking as opposed to Christian thinking (however, see below). Law is that which condemns us (and therefore forces us to recognize the need for God's grace). Gospel is that which proclaims that same grace. Any given text in the Bible can be seen as law or as gospel. For example, the Ten Commandments can be seen as law because they condemn us (because we fail to live up to their standards), but also as gospel because they are the words of God speaking to the Israelites who have been rescued from slavery. Likewise, the teachings of Jesus could be seen either as condemning (law) or proclaiming the good news (gospel).
As far as it goes, the law and gospel idea is pretty useful. It fits into the Lutheran teaching about salvation—that we cannot save ourselves, but are saved by God's grace. I have to confess, though, that I'm getting tired of hearing about it; I feel that it's being overused. At the same time, I have some serious concerns that the phrase runs the risk of serious misunderstanding. If I have to explain that by "law", I don't actually mean the law in the Old Testament, and by "gospel", I don't actually mean the Gospels in the New Testament, doesn't that indicate that I need to use some different terms?
Specifically, I worry that using "law and gospel" language encourages a negative view of Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures. It is too easy to equate "law" with the Law, the Torah, and "gospel" with the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. That naturally leads one to think that the Old Testament is all bad news or outdated, which is then replaced by the New Testament. (On the same note, the very names "Old Testament" and "New Testament" promote the same line of thought. One of my professors suggests calling the Old Testament the "Ancient Witness" instead.) When my professors or my fellow seminarians use the phrase "law and gospel", I know that they are not making these stereotyped assumptions—but what about all the other people, Lutheran or not, who are not familiar with the use of these terms? Why do we keep using language that is very easy to misinterpret and has the potential to be so harmful to people's understanding of the Bible?
Personally, I'm trying to avoid using "law and gospel" language. I can appreciate the value of the idea without using the same terminology. I just don't think we should hang on to certain language purely for the sake of tradition, especially when there are compelling reasons to do otherwise. Call the two "condemning word" and "word of grace", if you like. Just don't inadvertently teach a bad understanding of the Bible by using confusing language.
The concept comes from Luther's writings, though it is not unique to Lutherans. Luther used law and gospel as a method of reading and interpreting Scripture. It is important to note that law and gospel is not supposed to be a parallel distinction to Old Testament and New Testament, or to Jewish thinking as opposed to Christian thinking (however, see below). Law is that which condemns us (and therefore forces us to recognize the need for God's grace). Gospel is that which proclaims that same grace. Any given text in the Bible can be seen as law or as gospel. For example, the Ten Commandments can be seen as law because they condemn us (because we fail to live up to their standards), but also as gospel because they are the words of God speaking to the Israelites who have been rescued from slavery. Likewise, the teachings of Jesus could be seen either as condemning (law) or proclaiming the good news (gospel).
As far as it goes, the law and gospel idea is pretty useful. It fits into the Lutheran teaching about salvation—that we cannot save ourselves, but are saved by God's grace. I have to confess, though, that I'm getting tired of hearing about it; I feel that it's being overused. At the same time, I have some serious concerns that the phrase runs the risk of serious misunderstanding. If I have to explain that by "law", I don't actually mean the law in the Old Testament, and by "gospel", I don't actually mean the Gospels in the New Testament, doesn't that indicate that I need to use some different terms?
Specifically, I worry that using "law and gospel" language encourages a negative view of Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures. It is too easy to equate "law" with the Law, the Torah, and "gospel" with the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. That naturally leads one to think that the Old Testament is all bad news or outdated, which is then replaced by the New Testament. (On the same note, the very names "Old Testament" and "New Testament" promote the same line of thought. One of my professors suggests calling the Old Testament the "Ancient Witness" instead.) When my professors or my fellow seminarians use the phrase "law and gospel", I know that they are not making these stereotyped assumptions—but what about all the other people, Lutheran or not, who are not familiar with the use of these terms? Why do we keep using language that is very easy to misinterpret and has the potential to be so harmful to people's understanding of the Bible?
Personally, I'm trying to avoid using "law and gospel" language. I can appreciate the value of the idea without using the same terminology. I just don't think we should hang on to certain language purely for the sake of tradition, especially when there are compelling reasons to do otherwise. Call the two "condemning word" and "word of grace", if you like. Just don't inadvertently teach a bad understanding of the Bible by using confusing language.
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