Here’s what I suspect will be a new word for you: anacoluthon. I think I can correctly conclude you do not use that word on a daily basis. It is, however, what our reading from Ephesians starts off with. An anacoluthon is an abrupt mid-sentence shift to a different subject without any regard for sentence structure. For example, “Do you realize how late, I haven’t mowed the lawn!” Or they may not connect, “I agree that children should - wait! Did you see that car run the red light?”
A more literal translation of the first line of Ephesians 3 is, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given me for you…” It’s jarring. It goes together, but not in any flowing logical sense. While the author created this anacoluthon for effect, the whole rest of the passage may feel the same way for us. It jumps and links though: former generations, mysteries, prophets, gospel, Paul’s apostleship, church, God’s wisdom, heavenly places, confidence, and not losing heart. It may well leave you mentally dizzy trying to follow it. And if you do manage to follow it all your mind is exhausted.
Let’s learn a bit more about the world of that day, and with that I think we can understand what is happening.
There were a number of religions in the first century that we call mystery religions. These were not the main civic religions, which were public and open. They were closed and secretive. Admission usually came by invitation only. There would be a secret initiation right where the new member was united to the deity. Upon joining, and only upon joining, would a new member learn of the mysteries or secrets of the religion. These secrets would usually be about how to attain eternal life. Not surprisingly, eternal life was only attainable by those who were members. Few, if any, outsiders would be thus saved.
Christianity was not a mystery religion. It was open to all and it did not claim specific mysteries that one had to use to reach eternal life. However, there were certainly many beliefs that would puzzle an outsider. For example, how could Jesus be fully human and fully divine at the same time? How can you have two natures but only one person? That’s like saying two equals one. Or the Trinity. Though the doctrine wasn’t developed for quite a while, the idea that there is one and only one God, yet three persons or expressions within that one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, makes very little sense. That’s saying one plus one plus one equals one. Bad math. Good theology. How it works is a mystery.
Yet these Christian mysteries were not the same as the pagan mystery religions. It was commonly believed at the time that there were several layers to the heavens. Each of the several planets existed in a different layer of the heavens. In order to attain eternal life one had to pass through all the layers of the heavens. In each of the layers there were angels, spirits, forces and powers. To get through them might require the use of secret knowledge. Or they might require the passing of tests. Or, during your life you might have to perform certain rituals, offer prayers, or make sacrifices to please the rulers of the layers. By doing so you could pass through them when you die.
None of this is clear. We do not have definite knowledge of the mystery religions or their mysteries. Many of them died with them. But it seems to fit what the author of Ephesians is saying when we read, “…through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (3:2-10)
He goes on, “This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.”
So, for the author of Ephesians it is not mysteries and tests and challenges to get to eternal life. Getting to God is not through numerous layers of heavens. It is direct access to God -in boldness and confidence- through faith.
Remember back to what we read a few weeks ago in chapter 1. There we read in Vs. 20-21, “God put… power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”
Those words aren’t just rhetorical flourish. If the Ephesians believed the heavens were multiple layers with various angels and rulers and powers, then Christ was above them all; and for all time.
So, the mysteries of Christianity, such as they are, are very simple. You don’t need secret knowledge. You don’t need knowledge at all. And you don’t need to say secret prayers or perform rituals or sacrifices or anything like that. You do not need to worry about having to undergo grueling struggles and challenges to get to eternal life after you die. All of that, whatever it might be, was taken care of once and for all for you by Jesus.
I think we often do not appreciate the sheer simplicity of our faith. It is simply a relationship with God. It is a relationship where the all-consuming ways of this world are proven to be dead ends, and instead fullness of life comes by recognizing God’s goodness for you.
Oh, the problems and messes we make of our lives by thinking we need to fit in. Oh, the way we exhaust ourselves in the need to keep up appearances. Oh, how much we worry about things that are not important at all.
It is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. We read that from Ephesians two weeks ago. And remember, the faith that is talked about there is not your own intellectual belief. It is not your mental capacity to believe doctrines or facts about Jesus. Or about living in a particular way. Perhaps it is better to say we are saved by God’s grace through Jesus’ faithfulness. It is probably not referring to our own faith. Even in verse 12 which I quoted a couple minutes ago, “…we have access to God in boldness through faith in him.” It is equally valid, and perhaps better, to translate it as, “we have access to God in boldness through the faith of Jesus.”
In other words, it is not your faithfulness that saves you. It was Jesus’ faithfulness that already saved you. So, what do you have to do to get to eternal life? There’s good news for that. You know this already. You can’t get to eternal life. It’s impossible for you. It is impossible for me. No one has that power. It is the power of Jesus that has done it for us.
Let’s let that rest for a while because those thoughts can make us spin round and round for hours. There’s another important thing to note in all of this. That’s the church.
We read today in Ephesians 3:10, “…through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known…” That is not the church as some supernatural holy institution. You’ll remember that the word church is a very simple word that means the assembly. The church is not intended to be a holy organization with secret rites and rituals that somehow has a mysterious supernatural connection to God. The church is, simply put, the assembly of the believers. The church’s power on earth lies completely within itself. It is the community it creates for its members. Throughout the New Testament we realize the church is not to see itself as a group that collectively calls on God for miraculous problem solving. The church is the practical collection of believers who do things together for their common good and for the good of the world around them.
Faith is not intended to be a private individual affair. Although that is what it has effectively become in many people today. Faith is a community endeavor.
The church is the assembly of believers that lives with the knowledge of what God has done. In so doing it makes known in real ways what God is like. Spreading the gospel is not supposed to be an individual thing. Spreading the gospel is not supposed to be individuals annoying their neighbors to attend a worship service, and that God will then somehow save them. Spreading the gospel is the witness of the assembly of the faithful, as it makes God’s ways known in a world that does not believe in them. The church is the community where God’s truths are alive and functional here and now. That is good news to a world that has lost sight of the real meaning of God’s goodness.
Monday, September 23, 2024
Monday, September 16, 2024
September 15, 2024 Ephesians 2:11-22
Ephesians is an intellectually dense and possibly confusing book. We’ve been reading through it section by section these last few weeks in worship. Each section has a core idea that if you can understand it the rest of it makes sense. The core idea for the section we read today is in verse 19, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…”
We ae citizens and members of the household of God. Citizenship and family. These are ideas we may easily overlook but are essential to understanding the passage.
What is citizenship? What does it mean to be in a family? They give us more than we may realize. Imagine what it would be to not have citizenship or family. You’d be a living human, certainly. But what else.
Here is a painful thing to imagine but it gets at the idea. Imagine that you are a 17-year-old girl living Columbia in South America. Drug cartels in your hometown have made it impossible for your family to stay safe. Making a desperate decision, your family pulls all their resources and hires some smugglers to get you and your siblings to the United States. It’s precarious. It's not legal. But it’s a chance rather than no chance at all.
Along the way you are separated from your siblings. And, you are sexually assaulted by the smugglers and become pregnant. Somehow, someway, you actually make it across the border into the southern United States. You have no money. No contacts. No documents. And limited skill in English.
I have created a very disturbing situation to imagine. I certainly hope it is not true, but there is probably some measure of truth to it. It gets at the point. This 17-year-old is certainly a person. She is alive. But who is she? What would you do? Where would you turn? Who could you trust? You cannot exist alone. But you have no means of getting food, water, shelter, and even the most rudimentary medical care? Who would you approach? You have no outside way of confirming your identity.
Citizenship in a nation gives you an identity. In the United States you have a name. You have a birth certificate. You have a Social Security number. And you have a host of rights, privileges, and expectations that go along with it. If you are a citizen of a different nation you most likely have the same or the equivalent in documentation, rights, and responsibilities.
But take away the protection and rights that your citizenship gives you in this world and who are you? What keeps you safe? What guarantees you at least some sort of rudimentary justice and fairness? If you have no citizenship and someone commits a crime against you, where are you going to turn? Who can you turn to? You can’t turn anywhere.
Ephesians 2:19 says we are citizens with the saints. That means we are citizens in God’s kingdom. It also says that we are members of the household of God.
In the 1st Century Greek and Roman world the father was the head of the household. Being a part of a household was pretty much essential to survival, or at least to thriving. The father, or pater familias was the head of the household. He basically owned everything. He owned his wife. He owned the children. He owned the slaves, the land, the livestock and all the family possessions. If you were a woman, child, or slave you wanted to have a good pater familias. And if you did not, woe to you. You had very few rights. The pater familias even controlled who was in the family and who was out. He could reject a child if he so chose. The father is also the one who gave the children their names.
Do you remember the story of the naming of John the Baptist? John’s father, Zechariah, was unable to speak. He had been visited by an angel who prophesied the birth of John. Zechariah didn’t believe it and asked the angel for a sign as proof. So he got what he asked for. The angel said he wouldn’t be able to speak until the child was born. And so it happened. When it came time to naming the baby he couldn’t do it. So his wife Elizabeth chimed in and said his name was John. The crowd didn’t accept that. She wasn’t the father. She didn’t have naming rights. Finally they gave Zechariah something to write with and he we wrote, “His name is John.”
The pater familias sounds like a tyrant. Some certainly were. But many were not. If you were the father you bore a lot of responsibility. Your wife and children depended upon you. Your workers and slaves depended on you. You had to make good economic decisions, good farming decisions, and good family decisions. Sure, most fathers delegated many tasks, but the buck stopped with them.
So, Ephesians says we are citizens and members of the household of God. When we say, “Our Father,” in the Lord’s Prayer we are invoking this ancient family system. We are acknowledging God as our Pater Familias. God gets to choose whether we are in the family or not. God gets to determine our identity. We look to God for our protection and to provide for us.
Safe, solid, well-run households of the Roman world were the basic building blocks of society. Households built communities, which built cities and provinces, which combined to form nations and empire – which was able to create citizenship for its people. Ephesians tells us that God is our Father. We are members of the household and we are citizens of God’s kingdom.
I hope none of us ever have been in the situation of the undocumented 17-year-old that I used as an example before. I hope none of us are ever in such a situation. But it is a contrast that helps us realize how essential it is to life to be a part of a family and a citizen of a country. Take away those things and what are you? Is survival possible at all? None of us exist alone.
We all know that families can be great. But some families are horrible. Some nations are great. Some are horrible. Being a part of a family or a nation in the world today is not a guarantee of success or of a good life. Therefore our real citizenship is in God’s kingdom. That is not about Social Security numbers or documents or what our ancestry is. Ephesians tells us that all are united by the blood of Jesus. It is with that that we wrap up.
It would be great to live in a world where everyone was hard working and responsible. It would be great to live in a world where people earned what they consumed and didn’t take from others. It would be great to live in a world where there was honesty and trust. It would be great to live in a world without barriers and security checks and the need for Social Security numbers and citizenship papers. It would be great to live in a world of responsible loving fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and neighbors nearby and far away. But that is not the case.
Somehow it is the nature of human society to create divisions. They decide who is in and who is out. In the day of the writer of Ephesians one of those divisions was between Jews and non-Jews. Or as they would say, Jews and Gentiles.
I’m not qualified to give an opinion on international politics and trade and immigration and all of that. Human sinfulness is woven through it all. Everyone, including the most loving and selfless among us, cannot escape the sinfulness and the complications of barriers; and effectively the need for them. But as we live with that unavoidable reality we are called to operate at a higher morality.
The cross achieved what no human ever could – reconciliation of a sinful humanity with God. If God is the King in the kingdom and the Pater Familias, is God a stern tyrant who needs to be appeased to deal with his anger? No. Is God drawing lines and to who is capable of being his citizens ad in his household? No. At least not according to Ephesians. God is a loving benefactor, offering all people a stake in salvation. By dying on the cross God breaks down a wall that separates humanity from God. We humans unwittingly and unknowingly built it. Ephesians 2:14 says it is by the blood of Christ that the divide has been broken.
If you, as a citizen of a nation ever encounter a 17-year-old girl with no identity, no safety, and no hope, I cannot give you answers as to how to treat her. The situation is too complex for easy answers. But ultimately you treat her and all people with the recognition that Christ’s blood was for them too. They are fully and freely invited into the household of God and citizens of God’s kingdom. That is who they are and who you are. That is their identity and your identity. I believe things will sort themselves out from there.
We ae citizens and members of the household of God. Citizenship and family. These are ideas we may easily overlook but are essential to understanding the passage.
What is citizenship? What does it mean to be in a family? They give us more than we may realize. Imagine what it would be to not have citizenship or family. You’d be a living human, certainly. But what else.
Here is a painful thing to imagine but it gets at the idea. Imagine that you are a 17-year-old girl living Columbia in South America. Drug cartels in your hometown have made it impossible for your family to stay safe. Making a desperate decision, your family pulls all their resources and hires some smugglers to get you and your siblings to the United States. It’s precarious. It's not legal. But it’s a chance rather than no chance at all.
Along the way you are separated from your siblings. And, you are sexually assaulted by the smugglers and become pregnant. Somehow, someway, you actually make it across the border into the southern United States. You have no money. No contacts. No documents. And limited skill in English.
I have created a very disturbing situation to imagine. I certainly hope it is not true, but there is probably some measure of truth to it. It gets at the point. This 17-year-old is certainly a person. She is alive. But who is she? What would you do? Where would you turn? Who could you trust? You cannot exist alone. But you have no means of getting food, water, shelter, and even the most rudimentary medical care? Who would you approach? You have no outside way of confirming your identity.
Citizenship in a nation gives you an identity. In the United States you have a name. You have a birth certificate. You have a Social Security number. And you have a host of rights, privileges, and expectations that go along with it. If you are a citizen of a different nation you most likely have the same or the equivalent in documentation, rights, and responsibilities.
But take away the protection and rights that your citizenship gives you in this world and who are you? What keeps you safe? What guarantees you at least some sort of rudimentary justice and fairness? If you have no citizenship and someone commits a crime against you, where are you going to turn? Who can you turn to? You can’t turn anywhere.
Ephesians 2:19 says we are citizens with the saints. That means we are citizens in God’s kingdom. It also says that we are members of the household of God.
In the 1st Century Greek and Roman world the father was the head of the household. Being a part of a household was pretty much essential to survival, or at least to thriving. The father, or pater familias was the head of the household. He basically owned everything. He owned his wife. He owned the children. He owned the slaves, the land, the livestock and all the family possessions. If you were a woman, child, or slave you wanted to have a good pater familias. And if you did not, woe to you. You had very few rights. The pater familias even controlled who was in the family and who was out. He could reject a child if he so chose. The father is also the one who gave the children their names.
Do you remember the story of the naming of John the Baptist? John’s father, Zechariah, was unable to speak. He had been visited by an angel who prophesied the birth of John. Zechariah didn’t believe it and asked the angel for a sign as proof. So he got what he asked for. The angel said he wouldn’t be able to speak until the child was born. And so it happened. When it came time to naming the baby he couldn’t do it. So his wife Elizabeth chimed in and said his name was John. The crowd didn’t accept that. She wasn’t the father. She didn’t have naming rights. Finally they gave Zechariah something to write with and he we wrote, “His name is John.”
The pater familias sounds like a tyrant. Some certainly were. But many were not. If you were the father you bore a lot of responsibility. Your wife and children depended upon you. Your workers and slaves depended on you. You had to make good economic decisions, good farming decisions, and good family decisions. Sure, most fathers delegated many tasks, but the buck stopped with them.
So, Ephesians says we are citizens and members of the household of God. When we say, “Our Father,” in the Lord’s Prayer we are invoking this ancient family system. We are acknowledging God as our Pater Familias. God gets to choose whether we are in the family or not. God gets to determine our identity. We look to God for our protection and to provide for us.
Safe, solid, well-run households of the Roman world were the basic building blocks of society. Households built communities, which built cities and provinces, which combined to form nations and empire – which was able to create citizenship for its people. Ephesians tells us that God is our Father. We are members of the household and we are citizens of God’s kingdom.
I hope none of us ever have been in the situation of the undocumented 17-year-old that I used as an example before. I hope none of us are ever in such a situation. But it is a contrast that helps us realize how essential it is to life to be a part of a family and a citizen of a country. Take away those things and what are you? Is survival possible at all? None of us exist alone.
We all know that families can be great. But some families are horrible. Some nations are great. Some are horrible. Being a part of a family or a nation in the world today is not a guarantee of success or of a good life. Therefore our real citizenship is in God’s kingdom. That is not about Social Security numbers or documents or what our ancestry is. Ephesians tells us that all are united by the blood of Jesus. It is with that that we wrap up.
It would be great to live in a world where everyone was hard working and responsible. It would be great to live in a world where people earned what they consumed and didn’t take from others. It would be great to live in a world where there was honesty and trust. It would be great to live in a world without barriers and security checks and the need for Social Security numbers and citizenship papers. It would be great to live in a world of responsible loving fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and neighbors nearby and far away. But that is not the case.
Somehow it is the nature of human society to create divisions. They decide who is in and who is out. In the day of the writer of Ephesians one of those divisions was between Jews and non-Jews. Or as they would say, Jews and Gentiles.
I’m not qualified to give an opinion on international politics and trade and immigration and all of that. Human sinfulness is woven through it all. Everyone, including the most loving and selfless among us, cannot escape the sinfulness and the complications of barriers; and effectively the need for them. But as we live with that unavoidable reality we are called to operate at a higher morality.
The cross achieved what no human ever could – reconciliation of a sinful humanity with God. If God is the King in the kingdom and the Pater Familias, is God a stern tyrant who needs to be appeased to deal with his anger? No. Is God drawing lines and to who is capable of being his citizens ad in his household? No. At least not according to Ephesians. God is a loving benefactor, offering all people a stake in salvation. By dying on the cross God breaks down a wall that separates humanity from God. We humans unwittingly and unknowingly built it. Ephesians 2:14 says it is by the blood of Christ that the divide has been broken.
If you, as a citizen of a nation ever encounter a 17-year-old girl with no identity, no safety, and no hope, I cannot give you answers as to how to treat her. The situation is too complex for easy answers. But ultimately you treat her and all people with the recognition that Christ’s blood was for them too. They are fully and freely invited into the household of God and citizens of God’s kingdom. That is who they are and who you are. That is their identity and your identity. I believe things will sort themselves out from there.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
September 8, 2024 Ephesians 1:15-2:10
As you almost certainly know, the Bills play their opening game this afternoon. Football is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, culture-wide thing in our nation. Even if you don’t care about football at all, about the only thing there is more conversation about is the upcoming election.
I wonder if football will hold its prominence for years to come? I wonder what it will be like, say, 50 years from now. Will there be the same fervor? Will it be stronger? Will it be weaker? And centuries from now I wonder how anthropologists, and possibly archeologists, will describe the football of today. What will make sense? What won’t?
I sometimes wonder how they will interpret the “Bills Mafia”? I think we all know what that means. But will someone understand it decades or centuries from now? Will they think that instead of it referring to loyal fans, will think it is some sort of a regional violent organized crime ring? It is the “mafia” after all! I can see the doctoral dissertations now contemplating the connections between sports, huge expensive stadiums, politics, and organized crime!
This is an example of why things need to be kept in context. Pull the Bills Mafia out of context and you quickly end up with absurdity. And yet, ignore the excitement around football and enthusiastic football fans and you’re missing a big piece of our culture today.
When we read the Bible we need to remember that we are reading just an excerpt from a complex society a couple millennia ago. While they certainly didn’t have the Bills Mafia, there were certainly major regional cultural dynamics that were just for fun. Just like today, society was a complex mix of: politics, economics, theology, science, and geography. What appears confusing our complex to us may have been very clear then.
One thing that may be very confusing for us today is one particular line from Ephesians in our Bible readings. What does it mean when it says, “…following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient”? It sounds sinister, evil, demonic. But is that so? Is the Bills Mafia a violent organized crime ring?
It's impossible to exactly know what the power of the air is. But it is helpful to remember the scientific understanding of that day; which wasn’t as ignorant as we might think. Remember, most educated people knew things like the earth was a sphere. Mostly they lacked the sophisticated testing equipment of today.
In those days they didn’t have the Periodic Table of Elements that you probably had to use in chemistry class. They believed there were only four elements: earth, air, water, and fire.
Air was particularly complex because it could be contaminated so easily. It was chaotic. When there was a rain storm the air was also conveying water. When there was a dust storm the air was carrying earth. Thunder storms that caused tornadoes were a chaotic and dangerous jumble of earth, air, water, and fire.
Despite knowing the earth was a sphere, they lived in what they thought was a three-fold universe. Hell was literally down in the ground. Living people lived on the surface. Up and high were the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They were the heavens.
When you combine the way the air could be a chaotic mix you start to understand how they saw the air as a murky polluted region between the earth and heaven. It wasn’t necessarily bad. It just couldn’t be guaranteed to be either good or bad.
Again, we can’t be absolutely certain of this, but the ruler of the power of the air was something that was unknown, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. If you are living in a world where you have to work hard to survive, and you die because of either warfare, disease, or the breakdown of your body because of the intensity of labor needed to stay alive, you don’t want unpredictable and uncontrollable. You want stability!
There is no way to pin down the meaning of the next verse, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” Scholars debate that one a lot. What they all agree on is that is was chaos and instability.
That, then, is in contrast to what comes next: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”
However you understand the ruler of the power of the air, those in Christ have been elevated to the heavenly places. That does not mean that you have actually gone to heaven before you die. There is too much wrong in our world to call it heaven! But it does mean that despite living in this chaos, our ultimate place is a place of stability and surety. We live now with that surety.
If in the chaos of this life you have created for yourself a place of surety…, well…, it isn’t all that sure. It is pretty precarious. It’s the false security of wealth. And if in the chaos of this life you have not created for yourself a place of surety, then you need not worry. You are alive together with Christ and that is the ultimate place of surety. Whether you have created a life of surety for yourself here and now or not, the task before us is the same.
The perennial weakness of Lutheran theology is that inadvertently creates laziness. Lutheran theology is built on Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
The problem with that is that we humans tend to be opportunists. We think, “If I don’t have to work for my salvation, and if I don’t have to work to prove my worthiness to God, then I don’t have to do anything. I’ll just sit back and enjoy this life to the fullest. Then after I die I’ll get the benefits of heaven too.” It’s a win-win situation for us! It promotes laziness.
The author of Ephesians will have none of that. Almost as if he knew laziness was going to be what happens, we get the very next verse, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
So, we may be saved by grace though faith, but we are created for good works. They are the way of life prepared by God beforehand for our way of life.
If you’re prone to laziness you’re huffing in disgust at this news. The way of life God has prepared for us is a life of work.
If there’s anything we humans don’t like it’s work. We want to do the minimal amount possible yet still get the most benefit. The idea of reducing work is the heart of innovation and efficiency. Why should I push hard to slide a heavy object when I can put it on a roller? Or why should I push on an object on a roller when I can put it on a cart with wheels. And why should I push on a cart with wheels when I can invent something that will propel the wheels for me?
The work God prepared beforehand for our way of life is not meant to undermine our inventiveness. To the contrary. God gave us brains to use them to make the work better.
The good works God has in mind is a direction of our lives that is focused outside of ourselves. Yes, we are to work to earn our keep. But we are also to work for the betterment of our community. The ruler of the powers of the air – whatever that may be – will always be creating chaos and uncertainty. We, who are solidly with Christ, work to create order and solidness in this world.
Life is not about leisure. Life is about applying your skills to the world around you. It is about developing your skills more fully for the world around you. That goes for a strapping teenage boy who is all muscle and energy, and it goes for an elderly woman in a nursing home whose frail body is failing.
Use what you have. Think, stretch your limits, grow, and use that for the world in which you live.
It is my opinion, admittedly not backed by lots of research, that the biggest reason why so many people in our world today are struggling to find themselves is because they do not have meaningful work to do. Meaningful work does not mean highly paid work, or even paid work at all. Meaningful work is a life orientation of commitment of your energy away from yourself and instead directed to the world around you.
That is the honor and the dignity and the purpose God has given you. While we certainly need to take breaks, and we need to do fun things too, work is what fulfills us.
Today is God’s Work Our Hands Sunday. We have some work projects planned. The weather is probably thwarting them. But we will do them when we can. It is our privilege to work for God.
I wonder if football will hold its prominence for years to come? I wonder what it will be like, say, 50 years from now. Will there be the same fervor? Will it be stronger? Will it be weaker? And centuries from now I wonder how anthropologists, and possibly archeologists, will describe the football of today. What will make sense? What won’t?
I sometimes wonder how they will interpret the “Bills Mafia”? I think we all know what that means. But will someone understand it decades or centuries from now? Will they think that instead of it referring to loyal fans, will think it is some sort of a regional violent organized crime ring? It is the “mafia” after all! I can see the doctoral dissertations now contemplating the connections between sports, huge expensive stadiums, politics, and organized crime!
This is an example of why things need to be kept in context. Pull the Bills Mafia out of context and you quickly end up with absurdity. And yet, ignore the excitement around football and enthusiastic football fans and you’re missing a big piece of our culture today.
When we read the Bible we need to remember that we are reading just an excerpt from a complex society a couple millennia ago. While they certainly didn’t have the Bills Mafia, there were certainly major regional cultural dynamics that were just for fun. Just like today, society was a complex mix of: politics, economics, theology, science, and geography. What appears confusing our complex to us may have been very clear then.
One thing that may be very confusing for us today is one particular line from Ephesians in our Bible readings. What does it mean when it says, “…following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient”? It sounds sinister, evil, demonic. But is that so? Is the Bills Mafia a violent organized crime ring?
It's impossible to exactly know what the power of the air is. But it is helpful to remember the scientific understanding of that day; which wasn’t as ignorant as we might think. Remember, most educated people knew things like the earth was a sphere. Mostly they lacked the sophisticated testing equipment of today.
In those days they didn’t have the Periodic Table of Elements that you probably had to use in chemistry class. They believed there were only four elements: earth, air, water, and fire.
Air was particularly complex because it could be contaminated so easily. It was chaotic. When there was a rain storm the air was also conveying water. When there was a dust storm the air was carrying earth. Thunder storms that caused tornadoes were a chaotic and dangerous jumble of earth, air, water, and fire.
Despite knowing the earth was a sphere, they lived in what they thought was a three-fold universe. Hell was literally down in the ground. Living people lived on the surface. Up and high were the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They were the heavens.
When you combine the way the air could be a chaotic mix you start to understand how they saw the air as a murky polluted region between the earth and heaven. It wasn’t necessarily bad. It just couldn’t be guaranteed to be either good or bad.
Again, we can’t be absolutely certain of this, but the ruler of the power of the air was something that was unknown, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. If you are living in a world where you have to work hard to survive, and you die because of either warfare, disease, or the breakdown of your body because of the intensity of labor needed to stay alive, you don’t want unpredictable and uncontrollable. You want stability!
There is no way to pin down the meaning of the next verse, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” Scholars debate that one a lot. What they all agree on is that is was chaos and instability.
That, then, is in contrast to what comes next: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”
However you understand the ruler of the power of the air, those in Christ have been elevated to the heavenly places. That does not mean that you have actually gone to heaven before you die. There is too much wrong in our world to call it heaven! But it does mean that despite living in this chaos, our ultimate place is a place of stability and surety. We live now with that surety.
If in the chaos of this life you have created for yourself a place of surety…, well…, it isn’t all that sure. It is pretty precarious. It’s the false security of wealth. And if in the chaos of this life you have not created for yourself a place of surety, then you need not worry. You are alive together with Christ and that is the ultimate place of surety. Whether you have created a life of surety for yourself here and now or not, the task before us is the same.
The perennial weakness of Lutheran theology is that inadvertently creates laziness. Lutheran theology is built on Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
The problem with that is that we humans tend to be opportunists. We think, “If I don’t have to work for my salvation, and if I don’t have to work to prove my worthiness to God, then I don’t have to do anything. I’ll just sit back and enjoy this life to the fullest. Then after I die I’ll get the benefits of heaven too.” It’s a win-win situation for us! It promotes laziness.
The author of Ephesians will have none of that. Almost as if he knew laziness was going to be what happens, we get the very next verse, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
So, we may be saved by grace though faith, but we are created for good works. They are the way of life prepared by God beforehand for our way of life.
If you’re prone to laziness you’re huffing in disgust at this news. The way of life God has prepared for us is a life of work.
If there’s anything we humans don’t like it’s work. We want to do the minimal amount possible yet still get the most benefit. The idea of reducing work is the heart of innovation and efficiency. Why should I push hard to slide a heavy object when I can put it on a roller? Or why should I push on an object on a roller when I can put it on a cart with wheels. And why should I push on a cart with wheels when I can invent something that will propel the wheels for me?
The work God prepared beforehand for our way of life is not meant to undermine our inventiveness. To the contrary. God gave us brains to use them to make the work better.
The good works God has in mind is a direction of our lives that is focused outside of ourselves. Yes, we are to work to earn our keep. But we are also to work for the betterment of our community. The ruler of the powers of the air – whatever that may be – will always be creating chaos and uncertainty. We, who are solidly with Christ, work to create order and solidness in this world.
Life is not about leisure. Life is about applying your skills to the world around you. It is about developing your skills more fully for the world around you. That goes for a strapping teenage boy who is all muscle and energy, and it goes for an elderly woman in a nursing home whose frail body is failing.
Use what you have. Think, stretch your limits, grow, and use that for the world in which you live.
It is my opinion, admittedly not backed by lots of research, that the biggest reason why so many people in our world today are struggling to find themselves is because they do not have meaningful work to do. Meaningful work does not mean highly paid work, or even paid work at all. Meaningful work is a life orientation of commitment of your energy away from yourself and instead directed to the world around you.
That is the honor and the dignity and the purpose God has given you. While we certainly need to take breaks, and we need to do fun things too, work is what fulfills us.
Today is God’s Work Our Hands Sunday. We have some work projects planned. The weather is probably thwarting them. But we will do them when we can. It is our privilege to work for God.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
September 1, 2024 Ephesians 1:1-14
In your worship bulletin is a blank sheet of white paper. Here is your task for it. You are to pull it out and fold it into the paper airplane design of your choice. I’ll give you four minutes to fold it. If you have forgotten how to fold a paper airplane, or you want some help, you may ask someone else to help you. You have four minutes to fold the airplane. Also, within those four minutes you can write on it or decorate it any way you’d like.
To help you know how to design your airplane I’m going to tell what you’re going to do with it. After four minutes are up, you’re going to throw your paper airplane into this big plastic bowl that I’m going to put up front. You can stay in your seat and throw it from there. Or, you can come up here to this line, which is 12 feet back, and throw it from there. You are allowed a couple test throws to see how it flies. But once you get ready to throw it in the bowl, you get one and only one shot. If you make it in that one shot, great! If you don’t, you’re out of luck.
(4 minutes later)
Are you ready with your paper airplanes? Are you ready to try throwing them in the bowl?
I’ve decided to change the rules on you. Instead of the bowl being 12 away and you have to hit it, I’m going to attach a string to the bowl and let one of the children drag it around through the aisles. He or she can drag it fast or slow, and he or she may determine where to go. The bowl may or may not come back your aisle. You’ll just have to see.
(select a child to pull the bowl)
Ready? Go!
(after a few minutes)
How’d you do? How did it feel to have the rules changed on you midway? You may or may not have changed your design. And was it fair?
The blank unfolded piece of paper is your life. You get it clean and blank. It’s smooth. It’s perfect. But you can’t just go through life as a blank piece of paper. Folding the paper airplane was you shaping yourself the way you wanted, but still shaping yourself into something useful. The bowl represented success, or being successful – whatever that may mean. Being successful for you may mean, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.” Or, whoever is the wealthiest or most prestigious. Perhaps it is having a large and successful family. Perhaps “success” is living in a way that you get to go to heaven when you die.
But I changed the rules on you at a crucial point. You shaped your airplane and then the goal changed. What it took to be successful changed. It became unpredictable, and even chaotic. What were you to do? How were you to know? It was no longer under your control. Yet you only get one shot at it, because life doesn’t really allow for do-overs.
I wanted us to do this exercise because, while all images have flaws, it’s somewhat of an approximation of life in our culture today. The bowl moving is a lot like the fluidity of our culture’s current morality. What is right? What is wrong? What is a virtue? What is a vice? Things that were completely unacceptable not that long ago are now considered perfectly fine, if not celebrated. And things considered virtues are now laughable or forbidden.
If your employer requires you to have gender justice training, or anti-racism training, or anti-implicit bias training you’ve probably been offended. Perhaps you were smart enough to sit there quietly biting your lip as the foundations of your morality are questioned and condemned. Bring up something about Christian faith and ethics and be prepared to be labeled a racist, sexist, homophobe, anti-science, judgmental, hypocritical, a misogynist, a prude, a patriarchist, or something else.
Our society is, at least in my opinion, a moral cesspool. And while many will call it “enlightenment” I call it this ever-shifting morality the relativism necessary to excuse the endless craving people have for more stuff.
When I say “moral cesspool” I am not making a reference to sexuality. You may include that if you want, but you don’t have to. We humans who are alive in the developed world today are consuming gluttonous amounts of energy in our lives. We want comforts, conveniences, and entertainment. We want everything to be easy. What many call a hardship today a century ago would have been called a mere inconvenience, or life as usual.
We call things “progress” but we are really just consuming more. We live lives divorced from reality. The only way to consume more is to change the morality.
I long to hear a presidential candidate give a speech about honesty and humility, about conscientiousness, about greed avoidance, about being satisfied with less, about agreeableness, about delayed gratification, about working harder. These are things I brought up a few weeks ago when we looked at Ecclesiastes and its recommendation that all take satisfaction in toil and hard work.
All of this is a very long introduction to the book of Ephesians. We read only the first 14 verses. They are the greeting and the thanksgiving portions of the letter. Ephesians gives us a solid foundation to build upon. It tells us how to fold the paper airplanes of our lives. It gives us solid ground for our morality. And if getting the airplane in the bowl means going to heaven, it tells us how that happens too.
The letter starts off with who its from and to – from Paul to the saints in Ephesus who are faithful in Christ Jesus.
Then what? What is the opening of verse 2?
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
These may sound like throw away words. Words like when you ask someone, “How are you doing?” Or wish them a happy Labor Day. But they are not throw away words.
The first word is fundamental to everything that follows in Ephesians. “Grace”… unmerited favor from God. And then “peace” from God. Grace and peace. This means God’s favor and God’s peace; from God to them. It is saying that they are in right relationship with God. It is not their doing. It is God’s doing.
Let’s have our helper who pulled the bowl around earlier get the bowl again. We have paper airplanes laying all over the place. If we consider “success” in life to be living in right relationship then watch what happens. Now I’d like our helper to be God here. God goes around and putting in the airplanes. It doesn’t matter if your design and construction were good. It doesn’t matter if your throw was good. You’re getting into the bowl by God’s work. It is not your own. That is grace.
That is the foundation of our Christian faith. That is what we build everything upon. You’re in. You’re successful. God has made it so! So now what? What are you going to do? How are you going to move forward in life? The remaining verses of what we read today start to open that up. We’ll return to it in more detail and with a greater answer next week when we read the next verses. But we spend a couple minutes with these.
Verses 5 and following say, “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”
Grace, grace, and more grace. We have to always remember that when reading Ephesians.
Let’s read a couple more verses to the core of this text, “With all wisdom and insight he had made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time…”
That may make us scratch our heads. What does that mean? How are we supposed to know God’s will? What is this plan for the fullness of time?
Don’t make it harder than it is. You know the mystery. You know the plan fully already. Ephesians has just reminded us of it. God’s plan is the redemption of the world through the death of Jesus. That is the plan for the fullness of time. We are reminded that God has had this plan from the beginning of time. And God will surely bring it to completion.
We’ll learn about how we participate in that plan in the verse we read next week. For here, the point is that God has this. God’s in charge. God knows. And God is moving things forward exactly as God wants things to go.
Do the ways of society and the world make sense to us? Do we know where they are going? I doubt it. But we do not ultimately worry about that. God is taking the creation forward into its conclusion.
While I certainly encourage you to care about the upcoming political elections (and please pay attention to a lot more than just the presidential race), ultimately nothing can happen that will derail God’s plan. Ephesians wants us to live and move in confidence.
We are “in the bowl” of success. God has put us there. No one can take us out. We do have work to do in God’s kingdom. We do not become lax or lazy. But we do live with bold confidence that all is secure. All is well. All is in God.
To help you know how to design your airplane I’m going to tell what you’re going to do with it. After four minutes are up, you’re going to throw your paper airplane into this big plastic bowl that I’m going to put up front. You can stay in your seat and throw it from there. Or, you can come up here to this line, which is 12 feet back, and throw it from there. You are allowed a couple test throws to see how it flies. But once you get ready to throw it in the bowl, you get one and only one shot. If you make it in that one shot, great! If you don’t, you’re out of luck.
(4 minutes later)
Are you ready with your paper airplanes? Are you ready to try throwing them in the bowl?
I’ve decided to change the rules on you. Instead of the bowl being 12 away and you have to hit it, I’m going to attach a string to the bowl and let one of the children drag it around through the aisles. He or she can drag it fast or slow, and he or she may determine where to go. The bowl may or may not come back your aisle. You’ll just have to see.
(select a child to pull the bowl)
Ready? Go!
(after a few minutes)
How’d you do? How did it feel to have the rules changed on you midway? You may or may not have changed your design. And was it fair?
The blank unfolded piece of paper is your life. You get it clean and blank. It’s smooth. It’s perfect. But you can’t just go through life as a blank piece of paper. Folding the paper airplane was you shaping yourself the way you wanted, but still shaping yourself into something useful. The bowl represented success, or being successful – whatever that may mean. Being successful for you may mean, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.” Or, whoever is the wealthiest or most prestigious. Perhaps it is having a large and successful family. Perhaps “success” is living in a way that you get to go to heaven when you die.
But I changed the rules on you at a crucial point. You shaped your airplane and then the goal changed. What it took to be successful changed. It became unpredictable, and even chaotic. What were you to do? How were you to know? It was no longer under your control. Yet you only get one shot at it, because life doesn’t really allow for do-overs.
I wanted us to do this exercise because, while all images have flaws, it’s somewhat of an approximation of life in our culture today. The bowl moving is a lot like the fluidity of our culture’s current morality. What is right? What is wrong? What is a virtue? What is a vice? Things that were completely unacceptable not that long ago are now considered perfectly fine, if not celebrated. And things considered virtues are now laughable or forbidden.
If your employer requires you to have gender justice training, or anti-racism training, or anti-implicit bias training you’ve probably been offended. Perhaps you were smart enough to sit there quietly biting your lip as the foundations of your morality are questioned and condemned. Bring up something about Christian faith and ethics and be prepared to be labeled a racist, sexist, homophobe, anti-science, judgmental, hypocritical, a misogynist, a prude, a patriarchist, or something else.
Our society is, at least in my opinion, a moral cesspool. And while many will call it “enlightenment” I call it this ever-shifting morality the relativism necessary to excuse the endless craving people have for more stuff.
When I say “moral cesspool” I am not making a reference to sexuality. You may include that if you want, but you don’t have to. We humans who are alive in the developed world today are consuming gluttonous amounts of energy in our lives. We want comforts, conveniences, and entertainment. We want everything to be easy. What many call a hardship today a century ago would have been called a mere inconvenience, or life as usual.
We call things “progress” but we are really just consuming more. We live lives divorced from reality. The only way to consume more is to change the morality.
I long to hear a presidential candidate give a speech about honesty and humility, about conscientiousness, about greed avoidance, about being satisfied with less, about agreeableness, about delayed gratification, about working harder. These are things I brought up a few weeks ago when we looked at Ecclesiastes and its recommendation that all take satisfaction in toil and hard work.
All of this is a very long introduction to the book of Ephesians. We read only the first 14 verses. They are the greeting and the thanksgiving portions of the letter. Ephesians gives us a solid foundation to build upon. It tells us how to fold the paper airplanes of our lives. It gives us solid ground for our morality. And if getting the airplane in the bowl means going to heaven, it tells us how that happens too.
The letter starts off with who its from and to – from Paul to the saints in Ephesus who are faithful in Christ Jesus.
Then what? What is the opening of verse 2?
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
These may sound like throw away words. Words like when you ask someone, “How are you doing?” Or wish them a happy Labor Day. But they are not throw away words.
The first word is fundamental to everything that follows in Ephesians. “Grace”… unmerited favor from God. And then “peace” from God. Grace and peace. This means God’s favor and God’s peace; from God to them. It is saying that they are in right relationship with God. It is not their doing. It is God’s doing.
Let’s have our helper who pulled the bowl around earlier get the bowl again. We have paper airplanes laying all over the place. If we consider “success” in life to be living in right relationship then watch what happens. Now I’d like our helper to be God here. God goes around and putting in the airplanes. It doesn’t matter if your design and construction were good. It doesn’t matter if your throw was good. You’re getting into the bowl by God’s work. It is not your own. That is grace.
That is the foundation of our Christian faith. That is what we build everything upon. You’re in. You’re successful. God has made it so! So now what? What are you going to do? How are you going to move forward in life? The remaining verses of what we read today start to open that up. We’ll return to it in more detail and with a greater answer next week when we read the next verses. But we spend a couple minutes with these.
Verses 5 and following say, “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”
Grace, grace, and more grace. We have to always remember that when reading Ephesians.
Let’s read a couple more verses to the core of this text, “With all wisdom and insight he had made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time…”
That may make us scratch our heads. What does that mean? How are we supposed to know God’s will? What is this plan for the fullness of time?
Don’t make it harder than it is. You know the mystery. You know the plan fully already. Ephesians has just reminded us of it. God’s plan is the redemption of the world through the death of Jesus. That is the plan for the fullness of time. We are reminded that God has had this plan from the beginning of time. And God will surely bring it to completion.
We’ll learn about how we participate in that plan in the verse we read next week. For here, the point is that God has this. God’s in charge. God knows. And God is moving things forward exactly as God wants things to go.
Do the ways of society and the world make sense to us? Do we know where they are going? I doubt it. But we do not ultimately worry about that. God is taking the creation forward into its conclusion.
While I certainly encourage you to care about the upcoming political elections (and please pay attention to a lot more than just the presidential race), ultimately nothing can happen that will derail God’s plan. Ephesians wants us to live and move in confidence.
We are “in the bowl” of success. God has put us there. No one can take us out. We do have work to do in God’s kingdom. We do not become lax or lazy. But we do live with bold confidence that all is secure. All is well. All is in God.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
August 25, 2024 Song of Solomon 2
I knew when we started a summer worship series on Old Testament poetry that we’d have to include the Song of Solomon, or perhaps more accurately named, “The Song of Songs.” You simply can’t leave it out. It is important poetry after all. But what to do with it? It is an erotic love poem. There’s no getting around it. It is so full of innuendos and sensuousness that it’s tough to find a passage that is suitable for a family friendly worship service! Five verses from Chapter 2 are tame enough to make it into the lectionary, but that is it! Harder yet, how to preach on it!?! For today we went with the entirety of Chapter 2. That gives us a sense of the passion at work in the whole without getting into the graphic depictions that are in most of it.
On the surface the Song of Solomon is poem that is back and forth between two adolescent lovers. They are sneaky, deceitful, and they fully indulge their physical passions without any regard for morality; or perhaps they are thumbing their noses at morality.
It is hard to tell exactly what is going on, but it appears as if there are reasons why the boy and girl cannot ultimately be together. It seems that there is something about her that makes their relationship unacceptable. Perhaps it is something to do with race or class or perhaps inter-family disputes. It is hard to tell. What we want to avoid is projecting too many modern-day ideas into it.
It is difficult to know why the Song of Solmon is in scripture at all. It is one of two books of the Bible that contain absolutely no theology and never once mention God. The other book is Esther. But even though Esther has no mention of God, it does tell the story that gave rise to the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Song of Solomon does nothing.
In the traditional Jewish understanding the Song of Solomon is a religious allegory recounting God’s love for Israel and the history of their relationship. For Christians it is an allegory for Christ’s love for the church. Michael V. Fox, in the Harpers Study Bible says this is the reason why the Song of Solomon became scripture.
I think that’s a stretch! While I recognize that the history of Christian interpretation of this book has been to see it as an allegory, it is a very warped allegory at best! The Song of Solomon is an erotic love poem. Period. Other cultures of the ancient near east had similar poems. The Song is based on, or at least derived from, a Mesopotamian ritual of marriage between two gods, the fertility god Dummuzi-Tammuz and his sister Inanna-Astarte. It has been suggested that it is part of a marriage ritual, or perhaps a funeral ritual that sets the power of love against the power of death. Who knows?
I generally reject what it called Womanist Theology, but I do think it is important to read and study the work of those you think are wrong. Womanist Theology is not the same as Feminist Theology. Womanist Theology rejects traditional theology as being too male dominated. It also rejects Feminist Theology for being too European. Womanist Theology claims to be the theology of black women. I generally reject it, not because of its perspective, but because I find it to be poor biblical scholarship that reaches conclusions that are not supported by the texts. However, as I just said, it is important to read those you disagree with because they will point out things you may miss otherwise.
Womanist Theologian Renita Weems points out that the Song of Solomon is the only book in the entirety of our scripture where a female voice predominates. The female gets 56 verses. The male gets 36. It is also the only book of scripture dominated by female imagery. Other books of the Bible about women, like Ruth and Esther, are still dominated by male-identified dramas. There is no such drama here. The girl in the Song of Solmon is assertive, uninhibited, and unabashed about her sexual desires. Renita Weems takes those thoughts and reaches conclusions that I think are flawed scholarship, but she brings up a significant point. The love portrayed in the Song of Solomon is mutual, with both lovers desiring, behaving, feeling, and speaking in the same ways and with the same intensity; immature and foolish as they both are.
So, what do we do with this love poem in scripture that nowhere mentions God, has no theology, and is just two immature lovers indulging their bodily passions?
I can’t honestly say I know why it is in the Bible. But if we believe the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Song of Solomon has had its place in scripture for thousands of years, then it must be there for good reasons.
Let’s note what it is not. It is not a heady theological treatise like some of St. Paul’s writings. It is not a complex and multi-layered story like many ancient Hebrew writings. It is not a list of names and dates and detailed instructions that are tedious to read through.
It is also not like the prophetic writings. There are no politics. No religious or political leaders are being criticized. No one is being rewarded or punished. It’s not a list of dos and don’ts. There is not a heroic struggle or a call for superior virtue.
It is also not a struggle between right and wrong. It is not wisdom literature. No one is asking why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people. Last week we read from Ecclesiastes. The weeks before we read from Proverbs. Proverbs calls for wisdom and extols its benefits. Ecclesiastes calls into question wisdom and says that both the wise and the foolish end up equally dead, so what’s the point? Those are all good issues to struggle with. But the Song of Solomon has none of that. It is simply passion and indulgence in that passion.
If the Song of Solomon were not in scripture there would be no celebration of human passion in our faith. The book is a romantic idealization of life and passion. And yes, flawed and dangerous as it is, it acknowledges those feelings and desires. The Bible dives into and explores everything that it is to be a human, including sexuality. No subject, no struggle, no feeling is so offensive or taboo that the Bible will not get into it.
In the Song of Solomon life is good. Nature is blossoming. All obstacles can be overcome by love. There is energy, hope, delight, and happiness. The mundane drudgeries of life will come upon this blissfully happy couple in time. But they are going to enjoy this time fully. If you think about it, the Bible has very little in the way of passages about joy; or passages that develop any idea of joy as an inspiring and creative force. The Song of Solomon is one of those few places where it does.
I criticized Womanist Theology earlier for the way it can reach misguided conclusions. Here is a more solid conclusion from traditional theology by Hugh Kerr:
“For better or for worse, the Song of Songs found its way into the canon of Scripture, and unless we are to say that is has no place there, we must reckon with this historical fact of context. We need not press its earthly figures into allegorical molds.
“From the biblical perspective itself there is no reason why its sensuous and sensual language cannot be taken at its face value. The Bible… does not minimize the love of man and woman. This indeed is a negative understatement, for, rightly viewed, the biblical conception of love can enhance and exalt what otherwise is merely human and mundane. The biblical perspective accordingly can appreciate the Song of Songs for what it is and rejoice in its eulogy of love. “All things are yours” says the apostle, “whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours (1 Corinthians 3:21-22). Writing to the Philippian Christians who wondered what to do about the secular society in which they lived, Paul said: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8). From the Christian point of view therefore the [oversimplified] distinction which is so often made between secular and sacred is transcended simply because we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).” (The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 5, Pg 147)
Or said more simply, for the Bible to be complete is needs to include everything about being human, including adolescent love. Refuse to acknowledge, or take away, any part of humanness is to discredit or shame it. But acknowledge it, and encourage us to use it as part of a whole life of faith, is to be a true and complete person; blessed by God, and capable in the world.
On the surface the Song of Solomon is poem that is back and forth between two adolescent lovers. They are sneaky, deceitful, and they fully indulge their physical passions without any regard for morality; or perhaps they are thumbing their noses at morality.
It is hard to tell exactly what is going on, but it appears as if there are reasons why the boy and girl cannot ultimately be together. It seems that there is something about her that makes their relationship unacceptable. Perhaps it is something to do with race or class or perhaps inter-family disputes. It is hard to tell. What we want to avoid is projecting too many modern-day ideas into it.
It is difficult to know why the Song of Solmon is in scripture at all. It is one of two books of the Bible that contain absolutely no theology and never once mention God. The other book is Esther. But even though Esther has no mention of God, it does tell the story that gave rise to the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Song of Solomon does nothing.
In the traditional Jewish understanding the Song of Solomon is a religious allegory recounting God’s love for Israel and the history of their relationship. For Christians it is an allegory for Christ’s love for the church. Michael V. Fox, in the Harpers Study Bible says this is the reason why the Song of Solomon became scripture.
I think that’s a stretch! While I recognize that the history of Christian interpretation of this book has been to see it as an allegory, it is a very warped allegory at best! The Song of Solomon is an erotic love poem. Period. Other cultures of the ancient near east had similar poems. The Song is based on, or at least derived from, a Mesopotamian ritual of marriage between two gods, the fertility god Dummuzi-Tammuz and his sister Inanna-Astarte. It has been suggested that it is part of a marriage ritual, or perhaps a funeral ritual that sets the power of love against the power of death. Who knows?
I generally reject what it called Womanist Theology, but I do think it is important to read and study the work of those you think are wrong. Womanist Theology is not the same as Feminist Theology. Womanist Theology rejects traditional theology as being too male dominated. It also rejects Feminist Theology for being too European. Womanist Theology claims to be the theology of black women. I generally reject it, not because of its perspective, but because I find it to be poor biblical scholarship that reaches conclusions that are not supported by the texts. However, as I just said, it is important to read those you disagree with because they will point out things you may miss otherwise.
Womanist Theologian Renita Weems points out that the Song of Solomon is the only book in the entirety of our scripture where a female voice predominates. The female gets 56 verses. The male gets 36. It is also the only book of scripture dominated by female imagery. Other books of the Bible about women, like Ruth and Esther, are still dominated by male-identified dramas. There is no such drama here. The girl in the Song of Solmon is assertive, uninhibited, and unabashed about her sexual desires. Renita Weems takes those thoughts and reaches conclusions that I think are flawed scholarship, but she brings up a significant point. The love portrayed in the Song of Solomon is mutual, with both lovers desiring, behaving, feeling, and speaking in the same ways and with the same intensity; immature and foolish as they both are.
So, what do we do with this love poem in scripture that nowhere mentions God, has no theology, and is just two immature lovers indulging their bodily passions?
I can’t honestly say I know why it is in the Bible. But if we believe the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Song of Solomon has had its place in scripture for thousands of years, then it must be there for good reasons.
Let’s note what it is not. It is not a heady theological treatise like some of St. Paul’s writings. It is not a complex and multi-layered story like many ancient Hebrew writings. It is not a list of names and dates and detailed instructions that are tedious to read through.
It is also not like the prophetic writings. There are no politics. No religious or political leaders are being criticized. No one is being rewarded or punished. It’s not a list of dos and don’ts. There is not a heroic struggle or a call for superior virtue.
It is also not a struggle between right and wrong. It is not wisdom literature. No one is asking why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people. Last week we read from Ecclesiastes. The weeks before we read from Proverbs. Proverbs calls for wisdom and extols its benefits. Ecclesiastes calls into question wisdom and says that both the wise and the foolish end up equally dead, so what’s the point? Those are all good issues to struggle with. But the Song of Solomon has none of that. It is simply passion and indulgence in that passion.
If the Song of Solomon were not in scripture there would be no celebration of human passion in our faith. The book is a romantic idealization of life and passion. And yes, flawed and dangerous as it is, it acknowledges those feelings and desires. The Bible dives into and explores everything that it is to be a human, including sexuality. No subject, no struggle, no feeling is so offensive or taboo that the Bible will not get into it.
In the Song of Solomon life is good. Nature is blossoming. All obstacles can be overcome by love. There is energy, hope, delight, and happiness. The mundane drudgeries of life will come upon this blissfully happy couple in time. But they are going to enjoy this time fully. If you think about it, the Bible has very little in the way of passages about joy; or passages that develop any idea of joy as an inspiring and creative force. The Song of Solomon is one of those few places where it does.
I criticized Womanist Theology earlier for the way it can reach misguided conclusions. Here is a more solid conclusion from traditional theology by Hugh Kerr:
“For better or for worse, the Song of Songs found its way into the canon of Scripture, and unless we are to say that is has no place there, we must reckon with this historical fact of context. We need not press its earthly figures into allegorical molds.
“From the biblical perspective itself there is no reason why its sensuous and sensual language cannot be taken at its face value. The Bible… does not minimize the love of man and woman. This indeed is a negative understatement, for, rightly viewed, the biblical conception of love can enhance and exalt what otherwise is merely human and mundane. The biblical perspective accordingly can appreciate the Song of Songs for what it is and rejoice in its eulogy of love. “All things are yours” says the apostle, “whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours (1 Corinthians 3:21-22). Writing to the Philippian Christians who wondered what to do about the secular society in which they lived, Paul said: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Philippians 4:8). From the Christian point of view therefore the [oversimplified] distinction which is so often made between secular and sacred is transcended simply because we are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).” (The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 5, Pg 147)
Or said more simply, for the Bible to be complete is needs to include everything about being human, including adolescent love. Refuse to acknowledge, or take away, any part of humanness is to discredit or shame it. But acknowledge it, and encourage us to use it as part of a whole life of faith, is to be a true and complete person; blessed by God, and capable in the world.
Monday, August 19, 2024
August 18, 2024 Ecclesiastes 3
(I was in Cohocton for the day. This "sermon" was written in the form of a New Testament letter to be read in worship.)
To St. John’s Lutheran Church of Victor, New York.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am thankful to be able to serve as the pastor of our congregation. I feel God has blessed us with the task of sharing the good news of salvation to the people of Victor. Who, while quite wealthy in possessions, tend to be poor in their acknowledgement of the need for grace. It is always difficult to proclaim to “successful people” that their worldly success is actually quite shallow. Success can easily fool people into thinking that they are righteous before God. Successful people tend to think their possessions ensure their value;… and that everyone else thinks they’re valuable people because of all their things. Nevertheless, all are in need of God’s grace, and true success only comes by faithfully living according to God’s will.
It is a sad reality that the more wealth and success a society has the more they turn away from religion. That goes for Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, and eastern religions as well. The prosperity of North America and Europe today is unparalleled in human history. Never before have humans had life so easy. Never before have people enjoyed such a glut of comfort, entertainment, and luxury. People should be more thankful to God than ever before! But not so.
The Bible is full of stories of people who turn away from God when they become prosperous. The prophets often criticized the greedy kings of Israel. Jesus challenged the scribes and Pharisees who felt themselves righteous because of their prosperity. The rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life could not give up his reliance upon his wealth. From Adam and Eve onward, it seems to be a truth that people would rather turn to themselves for fulfillment rather than turning to God.
The book of Ecclesiastes dares to challenge the lie that deeply drives the lives of many people. Ecclesiastes is sometime attributed to King Solomon. This is almost certainly not true. But it is impossible to narrow down who wrote it or when it was written. A fragment of the book exists that carbon dates to 150 B.C. So, it was written sometime before then. That’s all we can say for certain.
Ecclesiastes is perhaps not popular because it dares the challenge many things. In general, we do not like what it has to say. It is almost never read for Sunday worship. Only a portion of Chapter 3 is read occasionally at funerals or weddings. But then it is pulled out of context. When left in its context we realize it is part of a larger writing that dares to question everything. It dares to speak things we don’t want to think about:
What is the purpose of life?
Why is God so often silent?
Why is life so unfair?
Why does God seem so far away?
Why doesn’t God give us clearer instructions for life?
Last week when reading Proverbs we talked about wisdom. The author of Ecclesiastes even questions the point of wisdom. After all, the both the foolish and the wise end up equally dead!
And what is the point of anything and everything that we do? Will it not all deteriorate in time?
If you have great accomplishments and live in wisdom, how do you ensure that your descendants won’t just squander it all?
Ecclesiastes does not preach well to most people in Victor, New York. And yet it dares to speak things that most people in Victor know about but don’t speak. Along those lines, Ecclesiastes asks lots of questions. It gives almost no answers. Or, perhaps it gives answers that we do not want to hear!
The first part of Chapter 3 that we read probably brought to mind the 1965 hit from the Byrds, Turn! Turn! It’s a catchy song. There’s nothing wrong with the song in and of itself. However, it can lead to a misinterpretation of the text. Some people read things like, “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and, “a time to love and a time to hate,” and they think that’s talking about human time. They think that sometimes it is okay to love and other times it is okay to hate. Or that sometimes will be times to keep silence and other times will be times to speak. That is not what is meant.
Time is God’s time. That means that as time passes there will be times of love and times of hate. There will be times of war and times of peace. There will be times to gather stones and times to cast away stones. All of that is just the movement of time. All of that is within God’s hands. 3:14 says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.”
This text ultimately calls us to be faith-filled people at all times. A faith-filled person is knows what type the time is and then acts appropriately. But how are we to be faith-filled people? The answers are woven in the text.
It starts with a healthy fear of God. Verse 11 says that God has put a sense of past and future in the minds of humans. We alone of all of God’s creatures have a sense of eternity. We alone of all of God’s creatures can sense God the way we do, and have questions about the meaning of existence. So, God has given us this ability to sense Him, yet God has kept from us full knowledge of what He is actually up to. This is the beginning of the fear of God. It puts us in our place and keeps us from getting arrogant.
Once we have a healthy fear of God, the next step in faithfulness is to trust God. We need to trust that God is indeed good. We need to trust that God cares about us. But what does God caring about us look like? Shouldn’t those who trust God have easy lives and those who do not trust God have miserable lives? Wouldn’t that prove that God is trustworthy? That makes sense. But that is not the way things work. Verses 16 and following talk about injustice in the world. They talk about wickedness being in the place of justice; and even in the place of righteousness there was wickedness. So what does that mean for trusting God? The author of Ecclesiastes answers that God is ultimately the judge of all of this. We (in our humility brought about by the fear of God) trust that God sees and that God knows. And we trust that in God’s time justice will be done.
Once we fear God and trust God, then what? How does that look in our lives? What are we to actually do?
We once again go back to humility and the fear of God. In Verse 14 the author says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, or taken from it.” That means that God and God alone can do anything permanent. We shouldn’t even try. We need to understand that even the greatest of our life’s work will fade away in time. We will be forgotten. Our greatest accomplishments will all be replaced sooner or later.
Perhaps a look at sports stadiums is a good example. We build these great works that cost billions of dollars. We spend years building them. Someone buys the right to name them. And so they are named. Until someone buys the right to change the name. Frontier Field in Rochester becomes Innovative Field. The War Memorial Auditorium becomes Blue Cross Blue Shield Arena. The Auditorium Theatre becomes the West Herr Auditorium Theatre.
How big do we have to build something, how much do we have to spend to make our name permanent? We can’t. Only God does things that endure forever. Part of being a faith-filled person is having the humility to know that even the best of your life’s work is transitory.
So then what? Is it all pointless?
Have you picked up on the irony of Ecclesiastes? It is part of scripture. It is an enduring writing that has been passed on for a few millennium. Yet it is impossible to know who actually wrote these enduring words!
Ecclesiastes tells us what to do with our transitory lives. The final verse of our reading from Ecclesiastes says, “So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot.” And Verse 12 says, “…moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
There we have it. Two “four-letter” words: “work” and “toil”. You’d think they’d become swear words. No one likes them. People avoid them as much as possible.
We have the New York State Lottery and all sorts of casinos. They all hold out the promise of gain without work and toil. How successful would they be if the winner got to do more work and toil for less pay?
The idea is absurd. We laugh. Work and toil are for people in prison. They are not for lottery winners! Yet that takes us back to where we began… life in Victor among successful people.
To be sure, the people of Victor know the meaning of words like work and toil. And it is reasonably likely that they have done a share of it. Perhaps friends and family even criticize them for doing it too much! The question is, for what are they toiling? Why are they doing it?
If they are toiling to afford a nice house, send their kids to an expensive college, and have a lot of nice things, then they are toiling in vain. We didn’t read any parts of Ecclesiastes that talk about vanity, but there are many of them. They talk about toiling in vain. Toiling in vain is toiling apart from a relationship with God. Toil that builds a person’s life is toiling with the knowledge and fear of God.
I’m fairly sure most of the population of Victor is toiling in vain. They toil effectively enough to appear successful. But their toils will take them nowhere. They are tired. They are frustrated. They end up in a vicious cycle of toiling for things so they can afford luxuries and entertainment, which they use to escape from their toil!
Work and toil done in faith-filled relationship with God will create a full life. According to Ecclesiastes it is an end unto itself. This is not a flashy message, but it is good news. It is the good news that we know and the good news that we live for.
Whether we are young and energetic, or old and tired, may God fill our days with work and toil that is meaningful. May we be willing to pick up those tasks and perform them well. In that way, whether their effects be short-lived or long-lasting, they will be done for the kingdom of God, which is truly enduring and worthwhile.
To St. John’s Lutheran Church of Victor, New York.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am thankful to be able to serve as the pastor of our congregation. I feel God has blessed us with the task of sharing the good news of salvation to the people of Victor. Who, while quite wealthy in possessions, tend to be poor in their acknowledgement of the need for grace. It is always difficult to proclaim to “successful people” that their worldly success is actually quite shallow. Success can easily fool people into thinking that they are righteous before God. Successful people tend to think their possessions ensure their value;… and that everyone else thinks they’re valuable people because of all their things. Nevertheless, all are in need of God’s grace, and true success only comes by faithfully living according to God’s will.
It is a sad reality that the more wealth and success a society has the more they turn away from religion. That goes for Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, and eastern religions as well. The prosperity of North America and Europe today is unparalleled in human history. Never before have humans had life so easy. Never before have people enjoyed such a glut of comfort, entertainment, and luxury. People should be more thankful to God than ever before! But not so.
The Bible is full of stories of people who turn away from God when they become prosperous. The prophets often criticized the greedy kings of Israel. Jesus challenged the scribes and Pharisees who felt themselves righteous because of their prosperity. The rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life could not give up his reliance upon his wealth. From Adam and Eve onward, it seems to be a truth that people would rather turn to themselves for fulfillment rather than turning to God.
The book of Ecclesiastes dares to challenge the lie that deeply drives the lives of many people. Ecclesiastes is sometime attributed to King Solomon. This is almost certainly not true. But it is impossible to narrow down who wrote it or when it was written. A fragment of the book exists that carbon dates to 150 B.C. So, it was written sometime before then. That’s all we can say for certain.
Ecclesiastes is perhaps not popular because it dares the challenge many things. In general, we do not like what it has to say. It is almost never read for Sunday worship. Only a portion of Chapter 3 is read occasionally at funerals or weddings. But then it is pulled out of context. When left in its context we realize it is part of a larger writing that dares to question everything. It dares to speak things we don’t want to think about:
What is the purpose of life?
Why is God so often silent?
Why is life so unfair?
Why does God seem so far away?
Why doesn’t God give us clearer instructions for life?
Last week when reading Proverbs we talked about wisdom. The author of Ecclesiastes even questions the point of wisdom. After all, the both the foolish and the wise end up equally dead!
And what is the point of anything and everything that we do? Will it not all deteriorate in time?
If you have great accomplishments and live in wisdom, how do you ensure that your descendants won’t just squander it all?
Ecclesiastes does not preach well to most people in Victor, New York. And yet it dares to speak things that most people in Victor know about but don’t speak. Along those lines, Ecclesiastes asks lots of questions. It gives almost no answers. Or, perhaps it gives answers that we do not want to hear!
The first part of Chapter 3 that we read probably brought to mind the 1965 hit from the Byrds, Turn! Turn! It’s a catchy song. There’s nothing wrong with the song in and of itself. However, it can lead to a misinterpretation of the text. Some people read things like, “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and, “a time to love and a time to hate,” and they think that’s talking about human time. They think that sometimes it is okay to love and other times it is okay to hate. Or that sometimes will be times to keep silence and other times will be times to speak. That is not what is meant.
Time is God’s time. That means that as time passes there will be times of love and times of hate. There will be times of war and times of peace. There will be times to gather stones and times to cast away stones. All of that is just the movement of time. All of that is within God’s hands. 3:14 says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.”
This text ultimately calls us to be faith-filled people at all times. A faith-filled person is knows what type the time is and then acts appropriately. But how are we to be faith-filled people? The answers are woven in the text.
It starts with a healthy fear of God. Verse 11 says that God has put a sense of past and future in the minds of humans. We alone of all of God’s creatures have a sense of eternity. We alone of all of God’s creatures can sense God the way we do, and have questions about the meaning of existence. So, God has given us this ability to sense Him, yet God has kept from us full knowledge of what He is actually up to. This is the beginning of the fear of God. It puts us in our place and keeps us from getting arrogant.
Once we have a healthy fear of God, the next step in faithfulness is to trust God. We need to trust that God is indeed good. We need to trust that God cares about us. But what does God caring about us look like? Shouldn’t those who trust God have easy lives and those who do not trust God have miserable lives? Wouldn’t that prove that God is trustworthy? That makes sense. But that is not the way things work. Verses 16 and following talk about injustice in the world. They talk about wickedness being in the place of justice; and even in the place of righteousness there was wickedness. So what does that mean for trusting God? The author of Ecclesiastes answers that God is ultimately the judge of all of this. We (in our humility brought about by the fear of God) trust that God sees and that God knows. And we trust that in God’s time justice will be done.
Once we fear God and trust God, then what? How does that look in our lives? What are we to actually do?
We once again go back to humility and the fear of God. In Verse 14 the author says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, or taken from it.” That means that God and God alone can do anything permanent. We shouldn’t even try. We need to understand that even the greatest of our life’s work will fade away in time. We will be forgotten. Our greatest accomplishments will all be replaced sooner or later.
Perhaps a look at sports stadiums is a good example. We build these great works that cost billions of dollars. We spend years building them. Someone buys the right to name them. And so they are named. Until someone buys the right to change the name. Frontier Field in Rochester becomes Innovative Field. The War Memorial Auditorium becomes Blue Cross Blue Shield Arena. The Auditorium Theatre becomes the West Herr Auditorium Theatre.
How big do we have to build something, how much do we have to spend to make our name permanent? We can’t. Only God does things that endure forever. Part of being a faith-filled person is having the humility to know that even the best of your life’s work is transitory.
So then what? Is it all pointless?
Have you picked up on the irony of Ecclesiastes? It is part of scripture. It is an enduring writing that has been passed on for a few millennium. Yet it is impossible to know who actually wrote these enduring words!
Ecclesiastes tells us what to do with our transitory lives. The final verse of our reading from Ecclesiastes says, “So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot.” And Verse 12 says, “…moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”
There we have it. Two “four-letter” words: “work” and “toil”. You’d think they’d become swear words. No one likes them. People avoid them as much as possible.
We have the New York State Lottery and all sorts of casinos. They all hold out the promise of gain without work and toil. How successful would they be if the winner got to do more work and toil for less pay?
The idea is absurd. We laugh. Work and toil are for people in prison. They are not for lottery winners! Yet that takes us back to where we began… life in Victor among successful people.
To be sure, the people of Victor know the meaning of words like work and toil. And it is reasonably likely that they have done a share of it. Perhaps friends and family even criticize them for doing it too much! The question is, for what are they toiling? Why are they doing it?
If they are toiling to afford a nice house, send their kids to an expensive college, and have a lot of nice things, then they are toiling in vain. We didn’t read any parts of Ecclesiastes that talk about vanity, but there are many of them. They talk about toiling in vain. Toiling in vain is toiling apart from a relationship with God. Toil that builds a person’s life is toiling with the knowledge and fear of God.
I’m fairly sure most of the population of Victor is toiling in vain. They toil effectively enough to appear successful. But their toils will take them nowhere. They are tired. They are frustrated. They end up in a vicious cycle of toiling for things so they can afford luxuries and entertainment, which they use to escape from their toil!
Work and toil done in faith-filled relationship with God will create a full life. According to Ecclesiastes it is an end unto itself. This is not a flashy message, but it is good news. It is the good news that we know and the good news that we live for.
Whether we are young and energetic, or old and tired, may God fill our days with work and toil that is meaningful. May we be willing to pick up those tasks and perform them well. In that way, whether their effects be short-lived or long-lasting, they will be done for the kingdom of God, which is truly enduring and worthwhile.
Monday, August 12, 2024
August 11, 2024 Proverbs 8:1-9:6
In recent decades there has been a desire to develop more female imagery for God. It’s understandable. We usually refer to God in male terms yet God is not confined to a gender. But I take issue with the way many try to go about it.
Some want to say that the Holy Spirit is female. They base this on the Greek word for spirit being feminine. There are a lot of problems with this. At best this is a very weak argument to make. You’re stretching if you’re taking the noun gender of an ancient language and trying to expand it into a description of God’s femaleness. And of course you run into a hard wall in John’s gospel where Jesus specifically refers to the Holy Spirit as “he”.
But despite that, people press on with all sorts of theology that goes nowhere at best, and creates a garbled mess at worst. I say a garbled mess because this is what I see happening: People will call the Holy Spirit female, then interpret that into the description of the Trinity laid out in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. Then they use that credal description as a lens to interpret the Bible.
Perhaps you didn’t follow that logic, and that’s okay. The point is you get a weak garbled mess. Anytime you use the creeds to interpret the Bible you’re going to get a mess. It’s one way logic. Scripture can point to an understanding of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But once you’ve gotten a definition of the Trinity you cannot then reverse the process and use the Trinity as a tool to interpret scripture. When you add in that: you’re using a current day understanding of gender, imposing in on a pre-industrial age understanding of gender, and then using that to back-interpret your way into an understanding of the femaleness of God as described in the Bible… you just end up with a complete and total mess!
I suggest the opposite approach. I say let the masculine understanding of the Trinity stand unchallenged. Just leave it be. Instead go directly to the Bible to and let it speak in its own original terms about what we might be called God’s feminine qualities. Do that and you get not only a very strong argument; you’ll also get a vast and powerful useful theology.
The ancient Hebrews considered wisdom to be a female quality, and it was a quality created by God. Proverbs 8 and 9 are the mostly fully developed description of Wisdom. Wisdom is personified as a woman, and is sometimes called “Woman Wisdom.”
In Proverbs 8:22 Woman Wisdom says that the Lord created her at the beginning of his works, the first of God’s acts long ago. The verses continue to describe how Woman Wisdom was present and watching as the universe took its shape: stars, planets, the Earth, the features of the earth, and the living things upon it. Wisdom says she rejoiced in the inhabited world and delighted in the human race.
Does this mean that God literally created a being called “Wisdom”? No, I wouldn’t go that far. That gets you into a mess pretty fast. But you can say that the structure and orderliness of creation is interwoven with wisdom, and wisdom is feminine. This makes sense with the gender roles of the time.
We must remember that not too many centuries ago it took incredible amounts of human strength to survive. The strong survived. The weak died. Humanity was in a constant struggle against nature to even exist. Disease, wild animals, natural disasters, scarcity of resources, the complete lack of medical care, and more made survival constantly difficult. Men, the physically stronger of the sexes, were the providers and protectors. Women, the birth givers, were usually entrusted with child rearing and safety. Women had to be highly conscientious as they shouldered the responsibility of managing the family’s limited resources. Thus, wisdom was understood in a feminine light.
Femininity in this light is not week. It is not silly. It is a powerful guiding principle for life and prosperity. I say that if you want feminine imagery for God, build it from here. Don’t associate masculinity with toughness and femininity with weakness. If you do that then you must develop a feminine understanding of God so that God has a soft side. That’s just a mess. Masculinity has both toughness and tenderness. Femininity also has both toughness and tenderness. I don’t think anyone who reads about Woman Wisdom in Proverbs would call her weak. She’s a solid and strong dynamic; and one that you mess with at your own peril!
In Proverbs 8 Woman Wisdom calls for prudence, intelligence, and nobility. She claims strength for herself. She calls for honesty, honor, and discretion. She attacks pride, arrogance, perverted speech, and evil.
She says that by her ways there is justice and rightness. She says that by her ways nations are stable and prosperous. Without her all things fall apart. They descend into chaos and evil.
The idea of Woman Wisdom is not limited to just Proverbs 8 and 9. It’s not like you only find a bit of feminine understanding of God there. It spreads throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well. It shows up in other parts of Proverbs. Job 28 seems to pull in ideas of Woman Wisdom. And there are a number of references in what we Protestants call the Apocrypha – those books of the Old Testament recognized as scripture to the Roman Catholic Church but generally not in Protestant Churches. The reason for that isn’t the point here. The point is that Woman Wisdom is frequently woven into ancient Hebrew thought.
And speaking of the references to these other books not in Protestant Bibles, we’ll use them to take the next step in feminine understandings of God. You’re surely familiar with these words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
There Jesus is quoting from a book called Sirach 51:23. There Woman Wisdom says, “Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? I opened my mouth and said, Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money. Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction…”
Jesus teaches that within himself are the dynamics and presence of Woman Wisdom. While Jesus is undeniably male, some biblical scholars point out that Jesus embraces the fullness of both masculine and feminine qualities.
And speaking of combining ancient feminine understanding, God’s creative work, and Jesus’ own embrace, we also have the opening line of John’s gospel. It’s almost certainly influenced by the idea of Woman Wisdom: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Wod was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The language there is clearly masculine. But as I said before I read it, the idea of Woman Wisdom is almost certainly woven through that.
So, if you want feminine qualities for God, there are plenty of them. They are strong. They are capable. They are important. They are an inseparable mix in the creation of the world and of the order of human society. For those who long for more feminine concepts of God I say that you do not have to invent them. They are already there. They are even highly sophisticated. You just have to get out of their way and let them speak on their own terms. True Wisdom is the knowledge and fear of God. Wisdom will lead you to fullness of life.
Some want to say that the Holy Spirit is female. They base this on the Greek word for spirit being feminine. There are a lot of problems with this. At best this is a very weak argument to make. You’re stretching if you’re taking the noun gender of an ancient language and trying to expand it into a description of God’s femaleness. And of course you run into a hard wall in John’s gospel where Jesus specifically refers to the Holy Spirit as “he”.
But despite that, people press on with all sorts of theology that goes nowhere at best, and creates a garbled mess at worst. I say a garbled mess because this is what I see happening: People will call the Holy Spirit female, then interpret that into the description of the Trinity laid out in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. Then they use that credal description as a lens to interpret the Bible.
Perhaps you didn’t follow that logic, and that’s okay. The point is you get a weak garbled mess. Anytime you use the creeds to interpret the Bible you’re going to get a mess. It’s one way logic. Scripture can point to an understanding of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But once you’ve gotten a definition of the Trinity you cannot then reverse the process and use the Trinity as a tool to interpret scripture. When you add in that: you’re using a current day understanding of gender, imposing in on a pre-industrial age understanding of gender, and then using that to back-interpret your way into an understanding of the femaleness of God as described in the Bible… you just end up with a complete and total mess!
I suggest the opposite approach. I say let the masculine understanding of the Trinity stand unchallenged. Just leave it be. Instead go directly to the Bible to and let it speak in its own original terms about what we might be called God’s feminine qualities. Do that and you get not only a very strong argument; you’ll also get a vast and powerful useful theology.
The ancient Hebrews considered wisdom to be a female quality, and it was a quality created by God. Proverbs 8 and 9 are the mostly fully developed description of Wisdom. Wisdom is personified as a woman, and is sometimes called “Woman Wisdom.”
In Proverbs 8:22 Woman Wisdom says that the Lord created her at the beginning of his works, the first of God’s acts long ago. The verses continue to describe how Woman Wisdom was present and watching as the universe took its shape: stars, planets, the Earth, the features of the earth, and the living things upon it. Wisdom says she rejoiced in the inhabited world and delighted in the human race.
Does this mean that God literally created a being called “Wisdom”? No, I wouldn’t go that far. That gets you into a mess pretty fast. But you can say that the structure and orderliness of creation is interwoven with wisdom, and wisdom is feminine. This makes sense with the gender roles of the time.
We must remember that not too many centuries ago it took incredible amounts of human strength to survive. The strong survived. The weak died. Humanity was in a constant struggle against nature to even exist. Disease, wild animals, natural disasters, scarcity of resources, the complete lack of medical care, and more made survival constantly difficult. Men, the physically stronger of the sexes, were the providers and protectors. Women, the birth givers, were usually entrusted with child rearing and safety. Women had to be highly conscientious as they shouldered the responsibility of managing the family’s limited resources. Thus, wisdom was understood in a feminine light.
Femininity in this light is not week. It is not silly. It is a powerful guiding principle for life and prosperity. I say that if you want feminine imagery for God, build it from here. Don’t associate masculinity with toughness and femininity with weakness. If you do that then you must develop a feminine understanding of God so that God has a soft side. That’s just a mess. Masculinity has both toughness and tenderness. Femininity also has both toughness and tenderness. I don’t think anyone who reads about Woman Wisdom in Proverbs would call her weak. She’s a solid and strong dynamic; and one that you mess with at your own peril!
In Proverbs 8 Woman Wisdom calls for prudence, intelligence, and nobility. She claims strength for herself. She calls for honesty, honor, and discretion. She attacks pride, arrogance, perverted speech, and evil.
She says that by her ways there is justice and rightness. She says that by her ways nations are stable and prosperous. Without her all things fall apart. They descend into chaos and evil.
The idea of Woman Wisdom is not limited to just Proverbs 8 and 9. It’s not like you only find a bit of feminine understanding of God there. It spreads throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well. It shows up in other parts of Proverbs. Job 28 seems to pull in ideas of Woman Wisdom. And there are a number of references in what we Protestants call the Apocrypha – those books of the Old Testament recognized as scripture to the Roman Catholic Church but generally not in Protestant Churches. The reason for that isn’t the point here. The point is that Woman Wisdom is frequently woven into ancient Hebrew thought.
And speaking of the references to these other books not in Protestant Bibles, we’ll use them to take the next step in feminine understandings of God. You’re surely familiar with these words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
There Jesus is quoting from a book called Sirach 51:23. There Woman Wisdom says, “Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? I opened my mouth and said, Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money. Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction…”
Jesus teaches that within himself are the dynamics and presence of Woman Wisdom. While Jesus is undeniably male, some biblical scholars point out that Jesus embraces the fullness of both masculine and feminine qualities.
And speaking of combining ancient feminine understanding, God’s creative work, and Jesus’ own embrace, we also have the opening line of John’s gospel. It’s almost certainly influenced by the idea of Woman Wisdom: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Wod was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The language there is clearly masculine. But as I said before I read it, the idea of Woman Wisdom is almost certainly woven through that.
So, if you want feminine qualities for God, there are plenty of them. They are strong. They are capable. They are important. They are an inseparable mix in the creation of the world and of the order of human society. For those who long for more feminine concepts of God I say that you do not have to invent them. They are already there. They are even highly sophisticated. You just have to get out of their way and let them speak on their own terms. True Wisdom is the knowledge and fear of God. Wisdom will lead you to fullness of life.
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